Well, Spike is an integral part of everyone's history, after all! :-)

Credit for the whole puzzle pieces concept -- indeed, for most of the story after the first chapter -- has to go to my subconscious. I'm religious about doing outlines before I start my story, but this is the first multi-chapter story I ever completed that I did *not* do an outline for -- and it turned out to be one of my best stories. In other words, to a large degree I was winging it. So maybe I need to rethink my writing methods!