Lily finds Buffy at the diner. She tells Buffy that Rickie has disappeared, and begs her for help. Buffy doesn't want to get involved, but Lily wears her down. Cut to a blood bank, where Lily exposits that she and Rickie have given blood there before. Buffy asks a large female doctor if Rickie has been in in the last day. The answer is negative, and Buffy and Lily decide to split up and look for him. As they leave, the doctor's face falls, and she takes a troubled breath. Ominous music of I'm So Not Telling The Whole Story plays.

Buffy searches through an abandoned-looking warehouse that looks like a creepier version of the one in "My So-Called Angels." A few random homeless people are around. She finds the man whose life she saved the previous night lying on the floor, very dead, with a bottle of drain cleaner next to him which he apparently drank. She kneels and turns his arm over, and finds the "Lily" tattoo. Buffy looks nine ways of creeped out as she tells the slower members of the audience, "Rickie?"

Lily waits nervously at Buffy's apartment. Buffy enters, and breaks the news about Rickie. Lily says despairingly, "But -- he takes care of me." That line isn't as all-about-her as it sounds. Buffy explains about Rickie's appearance, and wonders whether something in his blood could have been responsible. Lily is confused and in denial, but Buffy isn't very sympathetic, which prompts Lily to wonder, "Was it because of you? You know about monsters and stuff. You could have brought this with you." Wrong thing to say. Buffy tells Lily off, and Lily leaves. Buffy looks around with regret, and with good reason, if you ask me. Gee, Buffy, you lost Angel months ago, and you're still kind of a basket case. Maybe you could give Lily five minutes to get over losing her boyfriend?

Lily, crying in an alley, is approached by Ramon. He offers some words of comfort, and when she utters Rickie's name, he places her as Lily. He invites her to Family Home, where he says Rickie is waiting for her, and she accepts. Yeah, that's pretty dumb of her. But she's not the dumbest person in this episode. More on that later.

We see the inside of the blood bank in dim light. A shadow appears outside the glass pane of the door. The doorknob rattles, then is ripped out of the frame. Slayer strength! Cut to Buffy rifling through some files. She finds Rickie's, which lists him as a "candidate." The portly doctor from earlier enters and asks Buffy what she's doing. Buffy: "Breaking into your office and going through your private files. Candidate for what?" Heh. The woman threatens to call the police, but Buffy, barely looking up, rips the phone out of the wall. Slayer strength again! I love these gratuitous displays. Buffy wonders whether other kids are missing like Rickie, and then launches into a diatribe: "I don't want trouble. I just want to be alone in a quiet room with a chair and a fireplace and a tea cozy. I don't even know what a tea cozy is, but I want one." Hee! "Instead, I keep getting trouble, which I am more than willing to share." I love snarky Buffy. Not mean Buffy from the last scene, but snarky Buffy. The doctor reveals that she passes on the names of the healthy kids to an unnamed man. Cut to Ramon preparing Lily, who's now wearing a government-issue-looking smock, for a ceremony called a "cleansing." Sounds ominous. Lily, get out of there! Anyone who'd dress you like that is no friend of yours.