6.3: A Temp is Just a Temp

By Kara

"So, your schedule looks pretty clear, Cindy. Sure there's no days you can't come in? Classes, weekly hair appointments, Avril Lavigne's birthday?" Gunn tried not to sound too hopeful as he scanned down the resume in front of him.

The latest applicant for the receptionist position looked back at him with wide, slightly vacant blue eyes. "Avril Lavigne?"

Maybe he'd picked the wrong artist; this girl was a bit of a hippie throwback: long, stringy brown hair, ankle-length skirt, sandals, fringed suede bag hanging from the arm of her chair. "Joni Mitchell?"

She favored him with a slow blink. "No... I don't take singers' birthdays off work. Do people usually do that?"

"You wouldn't think so until you spend a week straight interviewing for new employees. Trust me, though, a completely open schedule is a mark in the plus column." This time, Gunn allowed himself a pleased smile. Vacant, they could work with; randomly absent, not so much.

Spike coughed from the far corner of their little office alcove, slouched on the edge of the extra desk. "Counting chickens..." he mouthed at Gunn with a grin of his own, though his fell more towards the smug end of the range.

The girl spared Spike a confused glance, not quick enough to pick up on his unvoiced comment.

Spike kicked the wall beside the desk and drywall dust sifted down. "Allergies," he said and coughed again.

She nodded sympathetically, then looked earnestly back at Gunn. "Well, my schedule's not completely open."

Gunn set her papers flat on his desk and nodded. It was the hope. He should never let the hope show through; it was like waving a tiny little red flag in the face of whatever new weirdness was hiding between the black and white lines of each resume. "Of course not. When aren't you free?"

"Just when Venus is in retrograde. I don't even leave the apartment then. My spiritual advisor says it's not safe; everybody's vibes get all tangled up in everybody else's vibes, and... eww. It's like psychic spaghetti. I just get the grocery store to deliver for six weeks and curl up with my DVDs."

"Six weeks." Gunn tried to ignore the way Spike's grin was spreading rapidly from 'smug' to 'you owe me five more bucks.'

"It shouldn't be a problem," Cindy assured him. "The next retro period's not until December of next year. I'm completely free until then."

"That's... a relief." He gathered up the pages of her resume and the report from her temporary agency and slid them into a manila folder, then stood and offered his hand. "Thanks for coming in to see us, Cindy. We've got a few more interviews to conduct, but we'll definitely be in contact with your agency shortly."

She rose from her chair and shook his hand, frowning slightly as she did so. "Oh, and there was no place to put it down on the form... Nobody minds if I meditate at lunch, do they?" She glanced at Spike. "Sometimes the incense sets off people's allergies, so I always ask."

"Not a problem," Spike assured her, the grin never leaving his face. "Strictly dust, pollen, and the occasional common household seasoning."

"Oh, good!" she said as she left. "I wouldn't want to make anybody uncomfortable."

If only their nine o' clock appointment were that... kind.

"It's not going to be a problem if I don't wear underwear, right?" It couldn't be a pretty girl in a short skirt asking. It had to be a skinny guy in over-tight leather jeans, wearing a matching vest over a faded Metallica t-shirt that Gunn hoped had been tie-dyed, though it looked more like the stains came from natural causes.

"My last boss had issues with that for some reason." The temp shook his head; multiple piercings jangled. "I mean, business casual, right? It's not like people can see under your clothes, anyway."

Gunn didn't offer his hand to that one when he waved the man out the door.

"You never answered his question," Spike pointed out.

"I'm trying to forget I ever heard it. I don't have a problem with what people do or don't wear under their clothes, but I sure as hell have a problem with them telling me about it."

"Ah. Good to know." Spike crossed one leg nonchalantly over the other and looked innocently towards the ceiling. Gunn threw a crumpled-up resume at his head. "What?"

The next temp entering saved Gunn from having to kill Spike on general principle, at least for the moment.

This one wasn't going to have any issues with business-casual; she was better-dressed than Gunn. Charcoal gray suit, perfectly cut blonde hair, leather briefcase from which she pulled a three-page resume on expensive-looking cream-colored paper as she walked across the lobby towards them.

"I assume the severance package is..." She looked around a bit distastefully, then quickly smiled as if to cover it. "I assume there is a severance package?"

"It's... negotiable." Gunn refrained from adding that it was usually based on Angel's mood and whatever he had in his pocket when he showed them the door. Gunn took her resume and glanced at the first page, wondering what on earth she was even doing here, let alone already asking how much she'd be paid if she got fired. "Ms. Brooks. Your most recent employment experience was as a paralegal with... ah."

"Quite a few of us were laid off due to... structural problems within the firm. I have several references, if you'd like to see them." She began to pull a rather large sheaf of paper from her briefcase.

Gunn handed her back the resume and steered her smoothly back towards the door with his other hand. "I think you're actually a bit overqualified for our position. But, really, good luck with your job search. I'm sure you'll find something any day now."

When the door had closed firmly behind her, he glanced back at Spike, who was holding out his hand.

"No. No way." Gunn shook his head. "That one does not count."

Spike just looked at him.

He held his ground. "No."

"She applied here," Spike pointed out.

Gunn glared at Spike before reaching into his pocket and pulling out his wallet. "Shut up," he said as he slapped three five dollar bills down in Spike's palm.

Spike pocketed the money and kept grinning. "Did I say a word?"

"You mean besides listing off your nonexistent allergies for the first one? No."

"Hey, the garlic's real," Spike protested. "What was I supposed to do - add in holy water and beheading? Might be a bit much for Ms. Bad Planetary Vibes to take in on the first day."

"I meant you being quiet wasn't actually helpful. You were supposed to help me weed out the weirdos before we got half an hour into the interview process, not spend the whole time smirking at me while you waited for whatever piece of crazy this one had hidden up her sleeve to fall out." Gunn picked up the first temp's resume folder and dropped it into one of the upright sorting slots on his desk.

Spike returned to his seat on the edge of the other desk. "You mean ask questions and such? Don't think so, Charlie boy; that's your bag. Like somebody I don't work for keeps pointing out, I don't work for him. I'm just here for the pointing, laughing, and freelance evil-fighting. Maybe a little quality control on the side, make sure you don't hire another one that can't tell blood from gazpacho soup."

"Not my fault you don't put your name on your lunch. Nice fresh box of Sharpie markers in that desk you keep saying ain't yours."

"You see me sitting behind it? Little plastic label-plate anywhere?" Spike tapped the scarred surface of the surplus-warehouse desk. "I start putting my name on things around here and pretty soon it's gonna be a timesheet, and your boss'll start assuming he can tell me what to do and think I might actually listen."

"I don't think Angel's that far gone." Gunn ran a finger along the edges of the scant few folders still standing upright on his desk, comparing them to the 'No, hell, no' stack in his out-box. "Though I've got to admit it's a pretty fine line. When he's managed to fire or scare off enough temps that Venus Retrograde ends up in the 'maybe' pile, things aren't looking good."

"You'd get in a few more - and I'd be making a few less Spot the Loony bucks off you - if you'd take 'familiarity with the occult a must' out of the advert," Spike pointed out.

"You're not telling me anything I don't know. Angel's still insisting that we need somebody who can - " Gunn cut off as one of the main glass doors opened and a small swatch of reflected sunlight swept across the room. Spike jumped down from his desk and darted out of its path.

"Pound any trouble into the lobby floor with one swing of his mighty hammer?"

Spike wasn't kidding. The demon that stood in the open doorway wasn't actually a troll - too many horns, and Gunn was pretty sure trolls didn't order clothes from the Land's End catalog - but it was about that big. It also wasn't carrying a hammer; just a briefcase almost as high-class as the last temp's had been.

"Is this Angel Investigations?" The demon's voice was loud and gravelly. "Because the sign outside says 'We shag sheep.'"

Gunn looked at Spike, who held up his hands defensively as he walked over to stare at the newcomer. "Not me. My money's on gazpacho boy."

"This is Angel Investigations, home of we need a new sign with non-movable letters." Gunn tentatively held out his hand towards the new temp, hoping he'd get it back more or less uncrushed. "Sorry about that."

"Oh, good." The demon nodded and let the door slam closed behind it. "Because I don't hold with animal abuse. In fact, I'm only willing to work in strictly vegan establishments. Figured I should get that out in the open right away."

"You suppose Wolfram & Hart owned their own evil temp agency on the side?" Spike whispered to Gunn. "Also, this one counts."

---

• Episode 6.3: A Temp Is Just A Temp
• Written by: Kara
• Story Developed by: Kara, The Brat Queen
• Edited by: Winterlive, Deaver
• Produced by: Mad Poetess, Flaming Muse, The Brat Queen

---

In the basement of the Walden, Angel watched Nina step out of her cage. "Pretty sound sleep you had going there. I was thinking I could make you some breakfast at my place, but now it's looking more like lunch."

"I wish I could, but I've got a ten-thirty class," Nina told him as she reached for her clothes. "You could've woken me earlier, you know. I guarantee there's no danger of me biting anybody's head off once that third full moon goes down. Not counting the post-fuzzy fuzziness, I'm actually kind of a morning person."

"That makes one of us." Angel smiled. "Anyway, I like watching you. Something wrong with watching a beautiful naked woman sleep?"

Nina finished pulling a wine-red blouse over her head and turned to face him. "As long as it's me, I'm good with that. If windows and binoculars are involved, then we need to talk."

"Binoculars? I would never... Okay, so that thing where you don't want to know about my old girlfriends, that still stands, right?"

She nodded. "Tall and proud."

"Oh, good." He stood up and wrapped one arm around her, pulling her to him. "Then we don't need to talk." His free hand splayed on her still-bare hip as they kissed.

"Oww." Nina pulled away after a pleasant moment. "We could talk about what's poking me in unexpected places, no entendre intended." She rubbed at her thigh for a second, then reached for the contents of Angel's other hand.

"Sorry about that." He handed over the sketchbook whose sharp corner had been the guilty party.

"So this is what you were doing all this time?" She flipped it open.

"I told you," Angel replied as her eyes widened. "I was watching you sleep."

The sketch she was looking at was incomplete, showing only face, arms, shoulders, and the curve of a breast as she rested on her side. Her blonde hair was wild and tousled, one last trace of the raging beast that had paced the cage only hours ago, half-covering a face relaxed in gentle repose.

"Angel, this is... wow." Nina turned to the next page, a more detailed study of her face. "You told me you 'drew a little.' This is not drawing a little. This is real talent."

He shrugged. "I had a very cooperative model. Makes all the difference."

"Very funny. Seriously, you could go places with this. Why not take a night class with me sometime? Life drawing; we could go watch naked people together."

Angel smiled. "Interesting - or possibly kinky - as that sounds, I kind of need the nights free for work." He took the sketchbook from her hands and flipped the cover over it. "This is just a hobby for me. You're the artist; I'm the... helpless... helping guy. Which really needs a better job title."

Nina shook her head. "If you say so."

"I do. Anyway..." Angel held up the book. "I've been doing it for two and a half centuries; that's plenty of practice. I think this is probably as good as it gets."

She moved close to him again, sliding her arms around his waist. "Yeah? You sure there's absolutely no room for improvement?"

"No room for much of anything right now. Also pretty sure we're not talking about art anymore."

"Well, there's a little room." Nina pointed towards the mattress on the floor of her cage. She took a step toward it, then stopped. "Or maybe not." Nina ran a finger across the grimy wall and wrinkled her nose. "Can werewolves get staph infections?"

---

"Next time, I'll wake you up in time for breakfast," Angel promised as they stepped out of the basement stairwell and into the lobby.

"Or time to go back to your place so you can show me your etchings?" Nina was holding the sketchbook, having asked for one last look at the pictures, and she offered it back to him.

"Or that. Keep it; consider it a happy Human For Twenty-Eight More Days present."

"Usually the human thing is the present. Go me, I get a bonus gift." Nina tucked the book under her arm as they walked into the main lobby area.

Gunn stood behind the concession stand, surrounded by newspapers and stacks of computer printouts. Apparently cross-referencing them with a map that was spread out over the length of the counter, he walked back and forth, occasionally pausing to circle things on the map with a pencil.

Spike looked over Gunn's shoulder during one of those pauses, a game controller forgotten in his hand. On the screen of the small portable TV he'd installed next to the disused popcorn popper, some sort of orange cartoon animal bounced impatiently to tinkly music.

"That last poor sod Angel fired really thought it could be a K'un Po demon?" As Angel watched, Spike leaned closer to examine a piece of scrap paper. "Or was that just his takeout order?"

"Spike still doesn't work for you, right?" Nina whispered as she avoided a new stain on the faded red and gold carpet.

"Since that would involve him following orders, I'm going with no." Angel didn't bother to whisper in reply. "Which is fine with me, since it would also involve me giving him money on a regular basis, and I've got better things to spend it on."

"Like getting this place fixed up a bit?" Nina offered.

Angel nodded, pleased that she'd noticed. "It's cleaned up pretty well, hasn't it? Not as nice as our old place - before the evil one, I mean - but it's getting there. Got those broken windows fixed, and somebody's coming in to shampoo the carpet this weekend. Might end up looking halfway decent."

"Just keep telling yourself that, Angel. Someday you might actually believe yourself, even if nobody else does," Spike commented, not raising his head from the paper he was studying.

"These do add to the... decor. Sort of," Nina said. She was examining one of the old movie posters covering the windows: Bride of the Sludge Monster, in sensurround 3-D. She tugged at one faded corner. "Makes a nice sun block, at least; that was smart."

"Anything that lets me work without going up in flames is a good thing," Angel agreed, reaching out to straighten one of the few posters that were tacked to the wall instead of a window. The bottom edge ripped off in his hand. "Though, okay, maybe we need a few new ones."

Nina moved in a slow circle about the reception area. "New posters might help. Depends on the look you're going for."

"'Credible' would work for me," Gunn commented.

"Anyway, I've got to go," Nina placed a kiss on Angel's cheek. "Tell me it won't be long before you call me?"

"It won't be long," Angel promised. "Spike, you can stop making those gagging sounds any time now."

"You could stop giving me reason to," Spike replied.

Nina re-shouldered her bag. "I'm off. You guys have fun with your evil-fighting."

"Later, Nina," Gunn said as she walked out the front door. He picked up the paper Spike had been scrutinizing and brought it over to Angel. "Angel, what do you think? Does this say K'un Po? Or Kung Pao?"

Angel took the paper - the back side of a receipt, it looked like - from Gunn. It was covered in something that could have been Chinese. Or shorthand. Or a five-year-old's scribbles. "Lemme guess, the latest temp?"

Gunn nodded. "The last one that stayed more than three hours, anyway. We had him working on the Oxman case, but damn if I can make head or tail of his notes."

"Oxman..." Angel frowned. "That's the sorcerer in El Segundo with the missing knife collection, right?"

"Missing ritual dagger collection, yeah." Gunn pulled a file folder out from beneath several newspapers and opened it to show Angel a few close-ups of the nasty-looking implements. "And he's got the missing housekeeper to match up with it. Except her car's still there, her clothes are still there, and she's been with the family for years, helped raise the guy's kids. Boss swears she wouldn't so much as dip into the grocery money, let alone steal his heirlooms. He thinks she must have been kidnapped."

"And she's not the only one, just the first," Spike said, reaching for a notebook. "Been happening for days. Two more women went missing in the LAX area last night. One disappeared from a gas station on her way to work at the airport; the other was a professor at that school on the bluff. That makes eleven, plus Mary Poppins in El Segundo." When Angel looked at him, Spike crossed his arms, gamepad still in hand. "What, I can't take an interest just 'cause I'm not getting paid? Man cannot live by bandicoot alone."

Angel just shook his head, then looked down at the paper in his hand again. "So the last temp thought it was... what, some kind of Chinese food demon?" He turned the page upside down. The writing didn't get any clearer.

"K'un Po demons like shiny, pointy things, and blood sacrifices," Gunn answered. "But they also tend to go for nubile young virgin types, which these - " He spread out a combination of snapshots and newspaper photos in front of Angel. " - are not. At least not the young or nubile parts."

The women in the pictures were all middle-aged, most of them graying and sturdy-looking, with faces that ranged from plain to 'only a mother could love.'

"At least a couple were married with kids," Spike said as he glanced over at the pictures. "So either this K'un Po fellow's not doing his research in addition to having weird taste in sacrifices, or..."

"Or it doesn't say K'un Po at all," Angel finished. He slapped the paper down on the counter. "Gunn, I thought we agreed that we were only going to hire people with applicable skills."

"He could answer phones, make coffee, and he was doing just fine with basic research," Gunn shot back. "He had applicable skills."

"Of course he did. This was the one that was supposed to be fluent in Latin, right? And French. And Spanish." Angel rummaged through the folders on Gunn's desk until he found the temp's statistics. "And Sindarin, which I think he made up." He turned to the counter and shoved the resume towards Gunn. "But he couldn't manage to write in English?"

Gunn slapped the resume down on the counter. "We didn't hire him for his handwriting, and you fired him before he could get his notes typed into the computer."

The front door opened before Angel could respond; he moved smoothly out of the path of the sunlight and watched as someone he assumed must be Gunn's latest temp interview came in.

From behind him, Spike muttered, "Oh, I've got to sit in on this."

The woman didn't walk into the lobby. She glided, her long black coat billowing behind her. Her hair was pitch black - the smudgy, unreflecting black of a bad home dye-job - and her skin was as pale as Angel's own. Paler, maybe.

"Which one of you is the Master?" The temp looked at each of them, studying them in turn. When her question received dumbfounded - or possibly appalled - silence from everyone in the room, she finally sniffed disdainfully and handed her resume to Angel.

"She knows who's in charge. That's a good start," he said, though if cornered he'd probably admit that she'd turned to him simply because he was standing the closest to her.

"Yeah, that's definitely high on the applicable skills list." Gunn rolled his eyes.

Angel gave him a look. He laid the resume out atop Gunn's spread-out map, then leaned against the customer-side of the concession counter, facing the woman as she sat down in a chair.

"So you were an office manager for a doctor's office." Gunn pointed to a particular spot on the resume. "That shows medical knowledge. We can always use that around here; we're kind of..." Gunn glanced at Angel. "Accident-prone. And she answered phones." He traced the line with his finger, like Angel couldn't see it for himself, and said slowly, and not to the temp, "Phone skills are a good thing."

"Right, phone skills." Angel brushed him off and looked more closely at the resume. "Phone, typing, fax, fine... wait, what's this 'embracing' deal?"

"Oh, the Embracing!" The temp's dour look actually brightened. "When my maker, Lestat, claimed me in - " she began. Angel resisted the urge to bury his head in his hands.

"You're a vampire?" Spike interrupted, managing to sound shocked and not a little frightened.

"Indeed." She inclined her head. "But you don't need to be afraid..."

"Shouldn't we stake her?" Spike gave Angel a fake-hopeful look. Or at least Angel was hopeful that the look was fake. "She's a creature of darkness, come to kill us all!"

"I assure you, that's not necessary," the woman said quickly. "I'm strictly on the side of good. I'm a special kind of vampire; I have..." She lowered her voice to a whisper, and leaned forward towards Angel. "...a soul. It's very rare."

Angel sighed and rested his forehead on his hand after all.

"But, hey, at least she knows who's in charge," Gunn said far too smugly.

Spike dropped his game console and stalked around the counter to stare at the temp from close-up. "I say we stake her anyway. I don't trust that soul thing. Any old body could say they've got one. Much easier to dust now and ask questions later."

"Spike, she came in from the sunlight. She's a 'special' vampire," Angel sketched the quotes in the air with his fingertips. "We don't stake people like that. No matter how much we might want to."

"You sure? Better safe than sorry..." Spike walked over to the weapons cabinet and grabbed an actual stake, leaving the doors hanging open to frame the large array of swords, knives, and axes within.

The temp actually got paler, if that was possible. "Really, this isn't needed. I'm not - "

"A fake. Come on guys, lay off; she's legit." Gunn leaned across the counter, speaking in a reassuring tone. "They're just pulling your leg. Didn't your agency tell you anything about this place in advance? Angel's a vamp himself. So's Spike."

She looked nervously between the two vampires. "They... are?"

"Yeah. They pull this stuff all the time to sort out the wanna-bes, which obviously doesn't include you." Gunn shook his head. "Why don't you offer the lady a drink, Angel?"

"A..." Angel blinked at him.

"Drink. Nah, don't bother; I'll get it." Gunn reached down to the mini-fridge behind the counter and pulled out a sealed plastic container, the red liquid inside clearly visible. "Do you prefer O negative or AB positive?" he asked the woman. "The flavor of the AB is supposed to be a bit more robust. Or so I've heard; I don't imbibe, myself."

"I... really not hungry right now, thanks!" The temp rose and fled much less gracefully than she'd entered, coat now flapping instead of billowing and almost getting caught in the door as it closed behind her.

"So, airport, yeah?" Spike asked.

"Airport?" Angel turned to look at him, still a bit unpleasantly dazed.

Spike nodded. "Yeah. I mean, not that it's anything to do with me; not my case. But I could still lend a hand, if you lot really need it."

Gunn took pity on Angel. "The probably not a K'un Po demon? The missing women from the LAX area? That case."

"Checked all the actual kidnap sites, got nothing, but the airport's smack in the middle of the disappearance pattern," Spike added.

"Ah. Right. That case." Angel nodded, focus returning. "The one where the only lead we have on the bad guy could also be some idiot temp's last meal."

Gunn pointed a pencil at him. "Do not start with me. I have no problem staking 'special' vampires."

---

"You really think sending Spike off with Illyria was such a great idea?" Gunn asked as he and Angel approached their third cargo warehouse of the evening. Working their way through the vampire-safe interior portions of the airport - those they could talk or sneak their way into, anyway - had taken up most of the day. Now the sun had dropped past the horizon, and the buildings loomed dull and gray in the twilight.

"Better idea than me having to put up with one more second of him after the drive over. Next time he's riding in the trunk, necro-tempered glass or not." Angel picked the lock on the door in front of them in the tried and true vampire way: he turned the handle, really hard. There was a ping, a metallic crunch, and then the door swung open, just like the last two.

Also just like the last two, there didn't seem to be an alarm, at least not on this side entrance. They moved carefully through the darkened warehouse, the only noise they made the sound of their own lowered voices.

"Just saying, you leave those two on their own together, nine times out of ten things end up... dented," Gunn said. "Subtlety is not their strong suit."

"We didn't bring them for subtlety; we brought them for denting. Specifically that demon that might or might not exist." Angel paused before a tall stack of empty wooden pallets and peered around the corner into the darkness beyond them. "Or Spike; I told Illyria that if she didn't get to pound any demons on this trip she could dent him when we get back."

Gunn snorted. "I'm sure you mentioned that to Spike, too."

"It may have slipped my mind."

"You do get that whether it's a demon or just your garden-variety psycho, somebody's doing a number on the local female population?" Gunn asked.

"If I didn't get that, we wouldn't be here." There was more than a little annoyance in Angel's response. "It'd just be nice to have some kind of clue what the hell we're looking for."

"Probably - " Gunn broke off as Angel held up a hand, finger to his mouth. A second later Gunn heard the approaching footsteps, too. "Probably not them," he whispered as the outlines of two uniformed men took shape in the darkness.

"You might as well come out. We can see you're back there," the taller figure called out, pointing his flashlight at them.

Gunn muttered, "You know, I was just telling myself, Charles, you don't get arrested nearly enough now that you're qualified to represent yourself..."

Angel shook his head. "They're not police." He stepped out of the shadow of the pallets, and Gunn followed him. In better lighting, Gunn could see that the uniforms were the work-coveralls of a cargo handler. One man's sewn-in nametag said 'Dillon,' the other 'Royce.'

"What do you two think you're doing in here?" the shorter, rounder one - Dillon - asked.

Angel moved forward, both hands raised and empty. "My name's Angel." He reached carefully into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out a card, which he held out to the two men.

The stylized angel - or much-abused paper-clip - printed on it gave Gunn a second's bittersweet pause. It was hard to remember the last time any of them had handed out a business card that didn't say Wolfram & Hart at the top of it.

"Private investigator, huh?" Royce didn't sound especially impressed. "Well, you may not have noticed the signs while you were breaking in, but this is an airport, and we tend to not like it when people wander around any of the restricted sections."

"Door's not locked," Angel pointed out. Which was true enough - now.

The two men glanced at each other as if they were each trying to decide how to pin the lapse on the other; then Dillon shook his head and looked back at Angel. "Maybe. Still off-limits, and still doesn't explain why you think that doesn't apply to you, Mr. Possible Terrorist."

Angel indicated Gunn with an inclusive gesture. "My team's investigating a string of recent disappearances in the Westchester area. All women."

Again, the other men exchanged glances, but this time the look was more weighted.

Angel must have caught it as well, because he lowered his voice quickly and added in a conspiratorial tone. "One of our sources seemed to think something went down around here?"

"Damn, you guys are fast," Dillon said. "Hasn't even hit the papers yet."

This time it was Angel and Gunn who looked at each other.

"Something happened today?" Gunn asked.

Dillon nodded. "This morning, end of third shift."

Royce elbowed him. "Shut it, Jerry. These guys aren't the cops; they're trespassers. We don't need to be telling them anything they can't read in tomorrow's Times."

"We're trying to help these women," Angel said. "Wait 'til tomorrow's paper comes out, we might be reading an obituary. I don't know about you, but I'd rather it turned out to be a heartwarming rescue story, possibly with a great photo of you guys and a caption about your heroic help that lead you to a raise and a promotion."

Despite Royce's still-disapproving look, Dillon gave another nod, this one slow and considered. "Mechanic for United. Left her hangar for a smoke break around three a.m., never showed back up."

"No chance she'd just got fed up with the job and walked?" Gunn asked.

"Nah." Dillon shook his head. "She's been here twenty years. Loves it. People like that don't just walk off the job. And - "

Royce cut him off. "And everybody in the airport's supposed to be on the lookout for suspicious activity. Like, say, strangers hanging around in places they aren't supposed to be, handing out cards that say they're private investigators." Royce turned a hard gaze on Angel. "Got a license to back up the cardboard?"

"In my car, yeah," Angel said smoothly. "Not on me."

"Maybe you'd better go get it," Royce responded, not backing down. "Unless you'd rather I radio in to central security and have them send a few of the guys in blue down to talk to you?"

Gunn could clearly see the irritated furrow that tended to show up on Angel's brow when he was being kept from something he wanted, but Angel replied politely enough. "Not necessary. It sounds like we're done here anyway. Why don't we just get out of your way?" He turned back towards the warehouse entrance, motioning to Gunn to follow.

They were a few feet outside the door when it opened behind them, and Dillon poked his head out into the twilight. "Hey..." he said in a low voice.

Angel smiled, as though he'd expected that. "Yeah?"

"What's keeping you, Jerry?" Gunn heard from further inside the building.

"Nothing, just checking on that door," Dillon yelled back over his shoulder. "Looks like the handle's busted, so the lock didn't catch." In a softer tone, he said quickly to Angel and Gunn, "They found her security pass in one of the service tunnels near the hangars. Nobody's saying it officially, but it looks like whoever snatched her probably got out that way. Cops haven't found much else. With all the construction that's been going on, tracking somebody through those old tunnels is a mess; some of 'em are blocked off, some of them don't go where the building plans say they should go."

Angel nodded. "Thanks."

"I know her," Dillon said, with a shrug of his visible shoulder. "She's a nice lady. No beauty queen, but real friendly. I hope you find her."

"Jerry!" Royce was louder now, and closer.

"Coming!" Dillon disappeared; Gunn and Angel took the cue to head away from the building as fast as possible.

As they made their way back toward short-term parking, where they'd agreed to meet up with Spike and Illyria, that furrow in Angel's brow grew deeper.

"What's up with you?" Gunn asked. "We got some kind of lead at least. Know where to look now, even if we don't know what for."

Angel nodded, but he still looked perturbed. "We got lucky; stumbled over somebody who cared about one of the victims. But he's the only person who's spilled anything all day."

"And? What's so bad about getting lucky?" Gunn asked. "Okay, bad phrasing for present company, but you know what I mean."

Angel frowned. "We didn't have to get lucky, before. We had sources. Actual sources, that I didn't need to make up. Wes had a finger in half the pies in the city, even after we took over Wolfram & Hart," he said. "Hell, he probably even knew somebody here at the airport."

"Wes was good at working the system, yeah," Gunn agreed tentatively. "But it's not like you never had your own sources. Wes just kept up with his contacts when we went corporate. You didn't. We have to build them up again, that's all."

Angel shook his head as they walked. "It's not the same. Most of our old street contacts are dead, or gone, or have a convenient case of not knowing me anymore. Half of 'em are pissed that we went to work for Wolfram & Hart, and the other half are scared of what might come down on them because we left Wolfram & Hart."

"And what, you think that'd be different with Wesley's people?"

"I wouldn't know; they won't talk to me either, the ones I could ferret out from his notes. They'll only trust someone who actually breathes, apparently." Angel kicked at a piece of broken taillight on the asphalt, then started up the walkway to the garage. "This is L.A.. Like everyone breathes here. Like anyone breathes here."

"So we find new sources," Gunn said patiently.

"We need somebody who's good at that kind of stuff," Angel insisted. "Looking things up in the right place, knowing who knows what. We need - "

"We need all kinds of things, Angel," Gunn interrupted. "We need better furniture, DSL, and never to let Illyria answer the phone again unless it's somebody wanting us to switch our long distance service. Hell, maybe we do need somebody who can do all the things Wes did, and maybe the Temp Fairy'll leave one like that in a basket on our doorstep, but meanwhile in the real world what we've got is us. That's gonna have to do."

Angel didn't answer, just pushed the elevator button for the basement.

---

"Humans put such investment into these fragile toys." In a hangar that looked to be out of service, filled with tools and half-repaired airplane parts but no whole machines, Illyria ran her hand over an unattached wheel. "So many years spent learning to fly in metal tubes, when if your people had focused their attention on the proper gods they could have grown wings centuries ago."

"My people don't make airplanes. Or have a lot of truck with gods," Spike pointed out as he looked around for signs of... anything. Blood, struggle, piece of torn cloth with a label that said 'I'm a clue' attached to it. "Most vampires are pretty happy with food that can't sprout feathers and take off into the sky when you chase it."

"You were human once; you might have escaped your own death had you offered your worship to an entity of sufficient power."

"Maybe," Spike answered shortly, looking over a tray of tools. He picked up a large socket wrench and hefted it experimentally; nice balance for coshing someone over the head if they managed to run across anybody cosh-worthy. Not that they had in the hours they'd been searching the less-frequented areas of the airport, anyplace that looked big enough and out of the way enough to put those ritual knives to use in. "But where would I be now? Dead the old fashioned way, tucked up in some cozy churchyard somewhere."

"Vampires are hardly the only species that can grant immortality." Illyria gave one impatient shake of her head, blue hair fanning out then falling back like a curtain across her face. "You have no vision, no ability to choose between paths; you do not even see more than the one you walk. Angel is the same."

"If that's a roundabout way of saying he's dumb as a mentally challenged rock, the kind even the other rocks make fun of behind his back, I can get behind that statement." Spike paused. "But not the 'same' part."

"He is obsessive; a useful enough trait for a ruler - " Illyria didn't pause to acknowledge Spike's snort. " - but not when the obsession is a foolish one. He will not find another human like Wesley, no matter how many cretins you parade before him in your attempts to please him."

"Please him? Angel? Me?" Spike laughed. "Boy, do you ever have the wrong idea about the way our relationship works. Gunn might be into that; I just want somebody in the office who can make a decent cup of coffee."

Spike walked around behind the workbench in front of him and bent to examine a metal access grate set in the wall at about waist-height. A series of splints were riveted down the non-hinged side, as if the opening was meant to be blocked off, but the bolt-holes were empty, the panel hanging slightly ajar.

He pulled it open and peered into the gloom of the low passage. "Didn't think you even noticed the carousel-of-temps, what with you being so busy hiding down in the basement, not obsessing."

Illyria walked up behind him and crouched down to stare over his shoulder. "I am not obsessed; I am attempting to solve a... conundrum. The constant presence of strangers disrupts my concentration."

He turned his head to look at her and managed not to blink in response to the nearness of her fixed-pupil stare. "Even if his picky-pain-in-the-ass-ness does settle on a new sucker for the front desk, there'll still be clients coming and going, you know."

"Clients do not commandeer your annoying machine and refuse to let me play the Silent Hill game because the deaths of fictional zombies pollute their aura."

Spike chuckled. "Notice you didn't waste any time getting invested in that fragile toy."

"I am not - " Illyria stopped in the middle of her sentence, cocking her head and peering down the tunnel. "Something moves in the darkness."

The shadows in the distance did seem to flicker, as though light from a cross-tunnel were being blocked by a moving form. Then there were sounds - half footstep, half scrabble of claws - and the heavy slide-thud of something being dragged over metal ductwork.

"Right, then." Spike ducked down and entered the tunnel, Illyria close behind him.

They moved quickly, even crouched as they were, and as quietly as possible, but they weren't immune to making the same noises of movement that had given away their quarry. As they neared the end of the passage, there was a lull in the scraping footsteps, then a loud thump, as whatever it was carrying hit the floor of the cross-corridor.

"Knows we're here." Spike gave up the attempt at stealth and headed around the corner at what passed for full-tilt in these conditions.

Against the dim light that filtered in from a ceiling grate further down the passage, he could make out the general silhouette of something skinny and long-limbed. Pointy-muzzled, with sharp triangular ears sticking up from its head, the thing crouched even lower than the low ceiling would force it to, over a bulky human-shaped form at its feet.

It growled, the echo bouncing off the narrow walls, and rose up, taking a step toward him. Spike did a quick gauge of how much room he'd have to be swinging his impromptu head-coshing weapon and didn't really like the answer. With a shrug, he tossed the wrench away - underhand, as hard as he could, directly at one of the thing's knees.

There was a solid thunk of metal against flesh and bone, and the demon howled.

Spike rushed at it, but instead of diving forward to meet him it dropped to all fours and moved back the way it had come - fast. Before Spike got even halfway down the tunnel, the creature had reached the end of the passage and disappeared.

One second it was there, the next, gone. Spike stepped over the body - and it was just a body, since there were no sounds of life, like breathing or heartbeat, coming from it - and ran to where he'd seen the demon vanish.

Not so much vanished as dropped out of sight, he realized when he got there. The next cross-tunnel was long, both left and right, no time for the demon to escape in either direction, but in front of Spike was an open vent in the floor. It was too narrow for a human or somebody who used to be human to slide through but apparently perfect demon escape-hatch size; the thing's damp, musky scent led straight up to it and disappeared.

"Bugger. Lost it, at least for now. Might have been able to track it, but I don't think even you'd fit down that hole." Spike walked back to Illyria, who knelt beside the corpse.

It was a woman, thickset and wearing a mechanic's coverall, or the remains of one, anyway; both sleeves and those of the shirt beneath it had been torn off, and both garments were ripped straight down the center as well, hanging open in front.

"This one has been drained of blood." Illyria lifted the dead woman's pale, doughy arm, then let it drop. "But not by one of your kind."

Spike knelt down, too. "Don't suppose you'd have a clue what I meant if I mentioned teaching grandmums to suck eggs."

"Suck... eggs?" Illyria's mouth made a curious sound, as if she were mentally doing just that, to see why anyone would bother.

"I know what a vampire attack looks like. Also what a vampire looks and smells like, and that wasn't one."

The body was bloodless, though. The woman's bare chest and arms bore the evidence of how it had escaped: intricate carvings, deep into the flesh. Unfamiliar symbols, though their practical purpose would be quite clear even if Spike didn't have his own wince-inducing memories of the sharp end of a ceremonial dagger.

He pulled a notepad and pencil out of his coat pocket and began copying the markings down as best he could. "Looks like we found our guy's ritual knives. Or at least she did." Spike didn't imagine the victim had been any more pleased about it than Angel was going to be.

---

Less than pleased didn't really begin to cover Angel's mood, even a day later. "You know, I don't care that the one thing we managed to learn from the one person who'd talk to us, Spike and Illyria stumbled over all by themselves. I really don't."

He sat in his office, Gunn looking at him skeptically from the doorway. "Uh huh."

"I don't care that he found the body, copied the symbols on it, and got the best look at the demon." Angel tossed his pencil so hard onto the papers on his desk that the point snapped off.

"Right," Gunn said, nodding. He had a rolled-up bunch of papers in one hand, and he tapped them against the doorframe as he spoke. "Which is why you're telling me about it. Again. Even though I was there when you found out. Because you don't care."

"I don't. That body they found was the most recent missing person, which means there's a good chance the others are dead, too; we've gone from serial kidnapping to serial murder. Anything that brings us closer to stopping this thing is a plus; I don't care who finds the clues." Angel held up the invoice on which he'd just broken his pencil lead. "What I do care about is this."

Gunn glanced over at it just quickly enough to confirm Angel's suspicions, then looked uncomfortable. "Oh, that."

"Spike's billing for his services now? Itemized? With multiple carbons?" Angel stabbed at the paper with the pencil to emphasize his words.

"You'd rather he didn't itemize?" Gunn raised an eyebrow. "'Cause he'd be perfectly happy to give you a lump sum and let you try and figure out what he did to earn it. I told him I didn't see that working out so well; thought I was doing you both a favor."

"You told Spike to bill me," Angel accused.

"No, I told Spike not to just take what he figured you owed him from your jacket, which you should by the way be smart enough not to leave hanging where he can get at it. The invoice was his idea." Gunn shrugged. "I just gave him a few pointers."

Angel put the bill and the pencil down before he hurt someone with either of them. Possibly himself. "Please tell me that when you said you have something for me that's going to improve my day this was not it."

A grin spread across Gunn's face. "No." He beckoned to Angel, then headed out the door. "Come on; it's downstairs in the lobby."

"If this involves camels, you're fired. I'd just like to point that out now."

Gunn shook his head, and when Angel got to the bottom of the steps, he pointed. "Temp fairy dropped by."

Angel's first thought was to check for wings on the man sitting at the ticket counter that they'd re-purposed into a reception desk; at this point it wouldn't be surprising. His second thought he said quietly, through gritted teeth. "Very funny. You made your point. Now get rid of him."

The man was slim, brown-haired, clothed in a dark gray three-piece suit. Wire-rimmed glasses glinted as he bent his head to look down at one of several large books in front of him. "Was the head more like a jackal's, or a wolf's?" he was asking Spike, in smooth, professional tones. Smooth, professionalBritish tones.

"Like I spend a lot of time around jackals?" Spike responded. "It was dark and the light was behind it; just got the general shape. Could've been Scooby Doo, for all I know."

At the foot of the stairs, Gunn shook his head at Angel. "I'm not messing with you; he's for real. Walk-in, read the ad on one of the UCLA bulletin boards."

"He's a student?" Angel asked, still keeping his voice low. The newcomer looked to be in his forties or fifties, his hair receding slightly and flecked with gray.

"Teacher." Gunn handed Angel a several-page-long resume, still curled-up from the way he'd been holding it. "Adjunct professor of linguistics and early medieval languages."

"So what's he doing here?" Angel couldn't quite keep his voice down this time, and the man looked over at him.

"Researching canid and pseudo-canid demonic species, at the moment. It's certainly more in-depth than I was expecting from a simple employment interview, but I can't say the challenge isn't refreshing. You'd be Angel, I take it?" The man rose and offered his hand. "John Ashbury."

"I meant, why on earth is an adjunct professor of anything interviewing for a part-time receptionist position?" Angel said as he walked over, not actually offering his hand in return. He was too busy scanning the resume, still half wondering if Gunn wasn't playing him.

Ashbury withdrew his hand and sat down again after a second. "Largely because 'adjunct professor' is university-speak for 'part-time lecturer'" he said frankly. "A position that paid well enough when my wife and I were both teaching, but since I lost her..." He looked down at the book in front of him again as he added, "Quite a number of circumstances have changed."

Angel winced. "Sorry for your loss. Didn't mean to pry, it's just..."

"I'm vastly overqualified for the job?" Ashbury looked up, and Angel was relieved to see a wry smile on his face. "On paper, you'd be correct. In practice, I'm quite equipped to mark any essays on Beowulf you happen to have lying about, but it's been years since I've done anything like this. Not since my Watchers' Council days."

"You're joking." Behind the man, Spike shook his head, grinning. Angel flipped rapidly through the man's resume again, and this time saw the line at the bottom of the chronological work experience listing on the second page. "You're not joking. You were actually a Watcher."

"Before I was married, yes. Years ago, as I said. I left the Council in the early eighties to move to America with my wife."

"I think that would be what we in this business call applicable skills," Gunn said.

"Yeah..." Angel frowned. It wasn't like he could argue with that, or even figure out what was making him want to argue. "So what about Spike's demon? You said canid species. Can your applicable skills give us anything more specific than 'looks like a dog'?"

"Smelled like a dog, too," Spike said thoughtfully. "Well, wet dog with a side of brimstone."

"Did it?" Ashbury looked interested. "I should have asked that, of course. It has been a while."

"Does that help?" Angel asked.

"It does indeed." Ashbury pulled out one of the larger books from the bottom of his stack, placed it atop the notebook containing Spike's symbol-jottings, and flipped through it rapidly. "They'd need to cross running water..." he muttered, stopping on a particular page, "but I imagine their standards for that would be fairly low in this climate."

Spike studied the illustration over Ashbury's shoulder. "Looks about right."

"Travelers are their preferred prey, or locals who live in the vicinity of the places where travelers congregate. Inns and crossroads in the old days; the modern equivalent would be hotels, bus stations." He looked up. "Airports."

"You know what we're looking for, then?" Angel leaned over the candy counter, looking down at the book.

"I believe so." Ashbury tilted up the book so that Angel could see a line drawing of a wiry demon with a long-snouted canine head. "Hun'dah'e. If you can provide me with a map and let me make a few phone calls, I might even be able to tell you where to find it."

"That part we know," Angel said. "Somewhere underneath LAX."

Ashbury shook his head. "Actually, no."

---

"I don't like this," Angel said. He stood beneath a whining steam valve and raised his sword.

"Really? 'Cause I was just gonna ask if we can do this every day," Gunn shot back, a bit breathlessly. It might have had something to do with the long, furred arm he'd just ducked or the strength it must have taken to bring his axe around quickly enough to whack off the demon's head before it came back for another swipe at him. "The smell alone's worth the price of admission."

The price of admission so far had been a couple more doors worth of vamp-style lock-picking, a trip down Angel wasn't sure how many sets of stairs, and a moment of deja-vu more surreal than nostalgic when he'd had spotted a small dedication plaque on the wall and realized they were standing under something called the Hyperion, only this one was a sewage treatment plant.

He hadn't had time to stare at the little brass sign for more than a few seconds before a shouted obscenity from Spike had clued them in to the fact that Ashbury had been right. They'd found exactly the thing they were looking for, except it wasn't so much 'thing' as 'pack.'

They fought in a small circle now, the four of them, backs to each other and facing the remaining demons. They'd already taken three down, but there were still three strong, fast, sharp-toothed, wet-dog-scented attackers left. Around them, the lower level of the plant echoed with barks and howls.

Angel brought his sword flashing down to lop off a round, claw-tipped paw. Like a dog's, the demons' nails weren't especially sharp, but they were long enough to do damage if the creatures put their full strength behind their swings, and they weren't holding back. "I meant I don't like..." Angel waved his sword around to indicate the situation and then swung it at an approaching demon. "This. It's too easy."

"You are cracked, mate," Spike said as he bobbed and slashed with his own weapon. "Easy?"

There was a loud snap from Illyria's side of the circle, then a thud as a body hit the concrete floor. Another snap, softer, and a second demon writhed on the floor, spine broken, and howled loud enough to be heard in Encino. Gunn ducked down to chop off its head, putting it and them, especially the sensitive-eared vampires, out of their misery.

Angel took the last one, running his sword through its middle at the last second as it launched itself at him, teeth bared.

"Maybe not easy," he admitted, as he pulled his sword out and wiped it off on the demon's fur. "But it's just... I don't know. Off. Everything pointed to the airport. The only body we found was at the airport."

"Not like we're all that far; it's just across the street. And John did say they won't kill where they lair," Gunn reminded him. "Have to cross running water." He pointed up at the pipes above their heads. "Guess this counts."

"Apparently they don't have any problem bringing home doggie bags, though," Spike said. He stood next to a large metal boiler apparatus, rusty and obviously out of use. Old sheets and other pieces of ragged cloth formed a curtain across the area behind it, but with Spike holding the material away from the opening, they could all see what lay within.

Bodies. Well, pieces of bodies. Some still half-recognizable as the women they'd been, others torn apart and gnawed down to the bone. An arm covered with carved symbols poked out from beneath a nest-like pile of rags, but the cloth wasn't mounded up enough to make Angel believe that the rest of the body was still attached to it.

"It's not right." Angel frowned as he stared at the scene, and shook his head.

"Piles of dead bodies usually aren't," Gunn agreed. "But at least we stopped it from happening again."

"Yeah..." Angel was still frowning, though, as he turned away.

---

When they got back to the office, there was coffee brewing in the machine behind the concession stand, and Ashbury sat at the reception desk, research materials neatly stacked up and obviously ready to be filed away. He looked up with an affable expression as they entered from the underground garage. "Did you find your demons?"

Gunn indicated their disheveled clothing and dirty weapons and nodded. "Right where you said they'd be. Good call."

Illyria handed Gunn her sword with a curt, "I have no further need of this," and stalked off to the basement.

"And someday when I'm sure she's housetrained enough not to do a tongue-ectomy on me for it, I'll explain to Illyria exactly how much I am not her personal assistant," Gunn said, as he stared after her.

"She is..." Ashbury paused as if looking for a politically correct way to phrase it. "Rather imposing."

"You don't know the half of it. Wait 'til she's tossed you across the room a few times in one of her 'sparring' sessions." Spike shot a dark look at Angel.

"Is that... er... likely to be a requirement of the job?" Ashbury asked, looking at them over the top of his glasses. "Because it's been rather a long time since I've trained with anyone."

"Nah," Gunn assured him. "We leave the Illyria-taming to the vampires. All we need from you is some typing, filing, little light research. And you've got that last one down cold."

"Not-so-nubile women all over the city can walk the streets safely thanks to you," Spike agreed, tossing his coat over a chair. "Got any idea what that was about? Lots of demons aren't picky, but don't think I've ever come across a breed that intentionally goes for the less toothsome when they're looking for a snack." Ashbury shook his head, frowning slightly. "The texts only say that the creatures eat human flesh, not what sort they're attracted to. Perhaps this pack merely had a different definition of... toothsome... than the norm."

Spike just shrugged. "Suppose so; no accounting for taste."

As Angel, who'd been silent all along, passed the desk after hanging up his coat, Ashbury gave him an optimistic glance. "Dare I hope that this means I've got the job?"

"Are you kidd- " Gunn began.

Angel cut him off. "We'll let you know." He didn't even pause, just walked straight into the auditorium, letting the door slam shut behind him.

"Illyria's right; he is dumber than a really obsessed rock," Spike said, staring at the closed door. When that earned him two stares of his own, he added, "I'm paraphrasing."

"You know, she might be onto something there." Gunn dropped the weapons he was carrying on a side-table, then followed after Angel, letting the door slam just as loudly.

He found the vampire in the open space that they were calling a training area more out of optimism than anything else; it hadn't been fixed up enough really to be one. There were just a few rows of torn-out seats and a punching-bag on a stand, since they didn't trust any part of the ceiling to support its weight. It was there that Angel stood, jabbing distractedly at the bag, obviously not using his full strength.

"You're gonna fire him, aren't you."

Angel laid a fist into the bag, a bit harder than he had been. "Can't fire him. Haven't hired him."

Gunn blew off the distinction. "You are. You're gonna fire the widowed college professor. Who used to be a Watcher."

"Wolfram & Hart had their own ex-Watcher too," Angel said, punctuating the comment with another slam of his fist. "Remember him? Sent me off on a wild goose chase that ended in a cup full of Mountain Dew, then disappeared?"

"Yeah, and he was working for Evil Incorporated when we got there. This one works for the English department at UCLA. And he's not only not a nutcase, which puts him ahead of just about everybody else who's responded to your 'must have occult knowledge' ads, but he's got every damn thing on his resume that you keep firing people for not having."

Angel hit the bag again, harder. "On paper, yeah."

"On paper, nothing." Gunn crossed his arms. "He just found our demons for us after twenty minutes of research. Case closed, bad guys dead, and the next best candidate is the girl who needs to take off an entire planetary phase sometime next year, so what exactly is your problem with this one? Think hard, because if you don't have an answer in about five seconds, I'm going to go out there and hire him."

Angel stopped punching, and rested his hand on the bag. "He's just... wrong."

"Okay, obviously I should've specified a good answer..."

"I don't have one, damn it," Angel admitted grudgingly. "Why the hell do I need one? I'm supposed to be the boss around here. I still sign your paycheck and don't sign Spike's invoice because it's ridiculous, right?"

Gunn just looked at him, arms still crossed.

Angel leaned against the punching bag. "Fine. Best answer, something about him's just... off. I can't put my finger on it, but I know there's something I'm missing here."

Gunn nodded. "Yeah. I know. I miss him too. But he's not coming back."

"What?" Angel stood up straight and looked at him like he'd grown another head.

"Come on, Angel. You fired or chased off every temp we've hired, because 'We need a Wesley.'"

"Yeah," Angel said. "We need somebody who can do what Wes did."

"That guy out there comes as close as you're gonna find in this lifetime, and you don't want to hire him because there's something 'wrong.' That you can't put your finger on. Something missing." Gunn shook his head. "Angel, the only thing wrong with that man is that he's not somebody else."

"That's pretty much what's wrong with most people I don't like."

"He's not Wes," Gunn said bluntly. "And the next one won't be Wes either, or the one after that. There's only one of him, and that one's dead."

Angel glared at him. "Thanks for the newsflash, and, by the way, I haven't completely lost touch with reality. I know you can't replace people. You think I could possibly not know that after the number of friends we've lost?"

"Don't think you're trying to replace him," Gunn said. "I think you're trying to make sure nobody ever takes his place. You never let us hire anybody else, no chance you ever lose track of that big empty spot just to your left. And no chance of you giving a damn about somebody new and them dying on you too."

"That's..." Angel closed his mouth, then opened it again. "Way more psychoanalysis than I'm comfortable with from someone who's not tying me up and shoving hot pokers between my ribs."

"I ever get vamped, remind me not to go to your therapist. Right before you kill me," Gunn responded. "I notice nowhere here did you say, 'Gunn, you're wrong.'"

"Gunn, you're wrong. Do I like doing this thing we do without the people we used to do it with?" Angel closed his eyes for a second, and Gunn could guess at the parade of faces flashing behind them. "No." Then Angel looked at him again, and his gaze was hard. "Do I think that means we can stop doing it or we don't need help? No."

"Fine. Then go out there and offer that man a job. Or do I have to call the girl from the Age of Aquarius and tell her she's in?"

Angel shook his head but started walking for the door. "I'll hire him... which in no way means I think you're right or that there's not something wrong with him. But at least you'll stop bitching at me about it."

"Hey, whatever works."

But when they stepped out into the lobby, the receptionist desk was empty. The only person in the room was Spike, sitting on the corner of his own desk a with a mug of coffee in hand.

"Where's our guy?" Gunn asked.

"Just headed for the garage. Going home. Said call him when you make up your mind." Spike held up his mug. "Think you could manage that before he gets another offer? This is damn fine coffee."

Angel glanced at the empty desk. His eyebrows curled in towards each other again, and suddenly he was off, grabbing his jacket and striding out the door to the garage.

"Man did leave a phone number. No need to chase after him that fast," Spike commented, raising an eyebrow.

Gunn shook his head. "He doesn't even really want to - oh, for God's sake."

He raced to the door and then ran flat out for the car; it was the only way he managed to get there and slide into the passenger seat before Angel pulled the Viper out of its spot.

"You know what? You have lost touch with reality." Gunn was pressed back into the seat as Angel guided the car out of the garage and onto the street at a less than sane speed. "Because unless you're about to tell me you just desperately want to get to him before he takes a job as a greeter at Wal-Mart, I have no choice but to go with the theory that you are tailing our receptionist."

Angel turned left, his eyes on the road and the little blue Geo that belonged to Ashbury, which was several vehicles ahead of them. "He's not our receptionist yet."

"Oh good, there's a yet. I like yet; it implies that you're not completely out of your mind. Just a little."

"If I'm wrong - "

"If you're wrong, then what? What do you even think you're going to follow this guy to? A meeting of the secret evil middle-aged teachers cabal?"

"If I'm wrong - " Angel sped through a yellow light and fell in behind a truck that would provide them with some cover if Ashbury happened to look back. " - and he drives up to a nice safe suburban house, then I'll let you walk up, ring his nice safe suburban doorbell, and offer him a job. Happy?"

"Ecstatic."

"If I'm right, I get to say I told you so. A lot."

Gunn wisely kept his mouth shut about the likelihood of that happening as they followed the little blue car through surface streets and eventually to the interstate. No point in playing the same argument out one more time.

Except -

"Hey, Gunn?"

Gunn watched as the Geo pulled off into the exit lane for Sepulveda Boulevard. Next stop, LAX. He said nothing. This time, though, it was because he wasn't sure what to say.

"I told you so," Angel said as he followed. "A lot."

---

"He could be going to pick up his sweet little old auntie at the baggage claim," Gunn suggested as they moved through the crowd of travelers inside the airport. He seemed to have rallied from his initial silence during the walk from the parking garage and was now coming up with all sorts of innocent explanations for what Ashbury might be doing here.

Angel didn't slow down, keeping an eye on the graying brown head that bobbed among so many other strangers. "He told Spike he was going home."

"People say that when they're leaving work, Angel," Gunn answered. "It's shorthand for everything from heading straight to the strip club for the night to picking up some groceries and then on to dinner at Mom's."

"You'd don't think he'd mention going to the airport after just having helped solve this case?"

"Maybe. Maybe he didn't think it's any of our business." Gunn shook his head. "I mean what is it you think he is up to?" When Angel didn't answer, just stalked on past the last baggage claim in the terminal where Ashbury hadn't in fact stopped to pick up any little old relatives, Gunn said, "Right. You can't put your finger on it. You still don't actually know."

"Not meeting anybody, not carrying luggage," Angel replied. He knew it wasn't really an answer, but it was what he had. So far.

"I think the minimum jail time for those offenses would be... nothing and nothing," Gunn retorted.

Up ahead, Ashbury turned left under an overhead sign that read 'Baggage Lockers.' Angel sped up, determined not to lose him, given how hard it would be to track him by scent in a place this crowded.

"See?" Gunn added as he didn't quite keep pace with Angel. "Left something in a locker, came to pick it up. Also not illegal, last I heard."

Angel didn't answer until he'd turned the corner into the hallway and stood under the sign waiting for Gunn to catch up. "How about stuffing yourself into a baggage locker? Is that legal?" The hallway - really more of a long recess, with an airport map spread out on its back wall - was empty.

Gunn didn't seem to have a comeback for that one or for the placard on the wall between two sets of lockers: 'Electronic lockers out of service until further notice due to heightened security measures.'

"Okay," he finally said. "Possibly, just possibly, something's up with this guy."

"You think?" Angel rolled his eyes and walked down towards the closed end of the hall. In this isolated spot, he could pick up Ashbury's scent fairly clearly, but that advantage didn't do him a lot of good when the trail led to a big brick-and-glass dead end. Right up to the wall, in fact, as though Ashbury had stopped and stood here, looking at the map.

The problem was that he hadn't had time to stand there and do anything besides maybe disappear in a puff of smoke. Angel had been too close behind him.

"Doesn't have to be something evil," Gunn tried gamely. "Could've just figured out we were tailing him and freaked. Because..."

Angel looked back over his shoulder, eyebrow raised.

"I got nothin'," Gunn admitted.

"He didn't know we were tailing him." Angel would swear to it; Ashbury had never looked back, never paused, never looked less than confident in where he was going and what he was doing.

"What, you're that good?"

"Yes." Angel turned back to the wall and reached out for what he suddenly knew must be there. His hand plunged straight through the line-drawing of the spider-like hi-rise Theme Building in the center of the map, and clasped around a door handle.

When he touched the cool, solid metal, the map in front of him wavered, then shimmered away entirely, leaving a door marked 'Maintenance Tunnels - Authorized Personnel Only' set into the wall. Angel pushed down on the handle. It was locked, of course. There was a card-reader panel set into the base of it, much like a modern hotel room door.

Gunn stared. "Okay, you're that good."

"He's that good; bet anybody who doesn't know this is here still sees a map or he'd break it every time he went through. Kind of makes you wonder why he didn't list long-term glamours and magical lock-picking on that yard-long resume." Angel tried the handle again, this time a little harder. The metal creaked, and the green lights in the electronic key-box flickered ominously.

Gunn, behind him now, tapped on his shoulder. "Please tell me you are not going to break a door handle that weknow is keyed into an alarm, five feet away from a sign that says they closed thebaggage lockers for heightened security."

Angel nodded. "I'm not going to break the door handle."

"Oh, good."

Angel yanked the handle downwards as hard as he could and finally felt the latch break off inside its metal plate. The door swung open just as the alarm began to sound.

"That would be you lying, huh?" Gunn asked as he moved quickly through the door and into the poorly lit stairwell beyond.

"Looks like it. Go." There was only one way to go - down. Angel took a quick look behind them for the security that hadn't yet arrived before catching up with Gunn on the stairs.

"You're operating under the delusion that I'm gonna defend you when they arrest us, aren't you." Gunn took the steps almost as fast as Angel did, the piercing alarm ringing in their ears.

"I'm operating under the delusion that nobody remembers there's a door there, and they'll think the alarm's malfunctioning. It's a nice delusion. It gives me comfort." Angel beat Gunn to the bottom and started for the leftmost of the three tunnels that presented themselves, Ashbury's recent scent still clear. The man himself was nowhere to be seen, though; he'd gained too much time on them while they stood around upstairs trying to figure out where he'd gone.

"As long as you're not thinking our guy can't tell somebody's following him now, I'm good with the rest," Gunn said.

They moved quickly through the seemingly abandoned halls, mindful of possible pursuit, and followed the track for about five minutes before the scent suddenly stopped cold in the middle of a tunnel segment. Angel did the same and started looking around for another hidden doorway, feeling the walls around them.

Gunn pointed down at the floor. "I think we got the magic-free option this time." He was standing on the edge of a large, square deck plate with a metal ring for a handle.

Angel yanked it up without a word and started down the almost completely unlit ladder.

"Why does it always have to be the basement?" Gunn asked as he followed more slowly. "And why does this place's basement have a basement?"

"Because that's where the monsters live," Angel said.

"Let me take some time here to explain to you how not funny your joke is," Gunn retorted.

"I'm not joking. Think about who used to own a lot of this town." Angel moved down the smaller, lower-ceilinged tunnel in the only direction it offered. Faint greenish lights were dotted sparsely along the walls. "Maybe even the airport. I'm sure they put in plenty of nice dark off-the-map holes for their clients and the things they used to hire to skulk around in."

"Congratulations. That was completely unsuccessful at not creeping me out."

"I try." Angel stopped a bit further down the tunnel and sniffed the air.

"Lost the scent again?" Gunn asked. "Because if this place has a sub-sub-sub-basement..."

"No, found another one." A long-familiar one. "Blood, pretty fresh."

The tunnel ended in a T. Left was dark and scentless, or almost so; there was the fading ghost of wet-dog demon smell. Right had that too, and Ashbury. And blood, lots of it. Angel ran; Gunn's footsteps pounded behind him.

The passage opened out after a sharp turn into a small cave-like room, its walls decorated with the same symbols Spike and Illyria had found on the airplane mechanic's body. They were dry and brown, though - old blood. The strong, wet blood scent came from what was laid out before Angel and Gunn in the middle of the room.

"I know, you told me so. You think it would help if we added 'not evil' to our list of applicable skills?" Gunn asked.

On the floor sat twelve open glass jars of blood, arranged in a semi-circle. A black-handled knife lay just to the right of each, and a small bowl to the left of all but one. Ashbury knelt on the floor in the center, holding that last bowl... in front of a woman.

She was gagged and tied to a chair that completed the circle formed by the jars of blood. Like the other missing - murdered - women, she was older, plain-faced, gray-haired, and on the border between stocky and plump. Unlike the rest, though, she was alive. She was also obviously terrified, her eyes wide and rolling as Ashbury reached for her.

Angel lunged for him, but fell several feet short, slamming into a barrier that he could feel but not see. It was like trying to walk into a home into which he hadn't been invited, except that this place was nobody's living space and that, seconds later, Gunn hit the invisible wall, too, though not quite as hard as Angel had.

"I'm not, really," Ashbury said, finally looking up at them. "Evil, I mean." At Angel's incredulous stare, Ashbury smiled genially. "Oh, mad, probably, I wouldn't argue that; that's what love does, after all. Makes fools and madmen of us all." He dipped his finger into the bowl in his hand and reached for the woman in front of him again; his finger traced a sigil on the inside of her bared, tied-down arm in fresh red blood.

Gunn stood at the edge of Ashbury's protective barrier, still pushing against it. "You tortured and killed thirteen women for love?"

"Twelve," Ashbury answered calmly, still painting on the woman before him. "And I've tortured no one; my... assistants... broke their necks quite humanely before I took their blood. I honestly had no wish to bring pain to anyone; if I could have avoided harming them at all, I'd have been happy to, but one does what is necessary."

"Twelve?" Gunn echoed. "There's thirteen missing, not counting this one."

"Counting this one. That's, er... Mary Poppins," Angel answered, pointing at the frightened woman. "Oxman's housekeeper, the first victim," he said, when Gunn blinked at him. "I don't think I ever got her name, just saw the photo." It was also probably a hell of a lot easier for Angel to picture any random person bound and gagged than it was for Gunn, which he declined to mention on the grounds that this woman was already scared out of her mind.

"Mona Simmons," Ashbury supplied. He turned back to the woman and began to unbutton the neck of her blouse. When she struggled, muffled protests coming from behind the gag, Ashbury shushed her. "Please keep calm, Miss Simmons; I'm only painting on the rest of the runes. I haven't harmed you in all the time you've been here, have I?" He reached for another bowl of blood and began finger-painting symbols above her breastbone.

"You picked them all out; that's how your pet demons knew who to snatch," Angel said, putting things together at a rapid pace... now that it was right in front of his face and he couldn't do a damned thing about it. He slammed his fist against the barrier.

"Pets? I wouldn't call them that; they were controllable, with the proper amulets, food, but certainly not - " Ashbury glanced over at Gunn with a smile. " - house-trained."

"Until you sent us off to kill them. To get us off your trail."

"Yes. Pity it didn't work, but, oddly, I can't say I find myself all that surprised," Ashbury said. "You're good at what you do. Under other circumstances, I might have enjoyed working for you."

Angel's memory flashed across the scene of carnage in the dog-demons' lair, then back to the blood-scented room in which he stood. "That's what was missing, Gunn. What I couldn't put my finger on. Those." He pointed at the ritual knives, fanned out like stylized sun-rays beside their matching jars of blood. "Demons might've been paid off with the leftovers, but they weren't doing the dirty work. Those paws couldn't hold a knife, much less carve pretty pictures with it."

"Though useful, the runes aren't especially pretty," Ashbury answered, placing the bowl he'd been holding on the floor next to its corresponding jar and knife. "Then again, I've been told I lack the common taste in such matters. I, for instance, find Miss Simmons quite lovely. They all were; it's unlikely you'll believe me, but I do regret the necessity of their deaths."

"Necessary for what?" Gunn asked. "And yeah, it's pretty damn unlikely."

Angel stared across the room at the slim, innocuous-looking man, kneeling next to his prisoner and gently brushing a lock of hair out of her face. "To bring his wife back."

Ashbury looked over at him, startled.

Gunn's expression wasn't that different. "What?"

"You want to resurrect her," Angel looked directly into Ashbury's eyes. "Probably channel her soul into a new body that at least looks something like her. That's why you chose physically similar victims, to tie the blood to her. Why you kept one of them alive."

"Ah." Ashbury smiled. He looked friendly, even pleased. "Very clever."

"Not really. Resurrection spells usually fail, and when they don't... somebody usually wishes they had," Angel told him. "You can't put things back the way they were; you just have to go on."

"Two hundred fifty years old and the man can learn, ladies and gentlemen..." Gunn muttered.

"Very clever, but completely mistaken," Ashbury said, sliding something out from beneath Mona Simmons' chair and rising to his feet. He stood in the center of the circle, facing the woman, a thirteenth knife in his hands, pointed upward, as if in prayer. "I said I lost my wife, and I didn't lie. Then, or, as a matter of fact, ever. It seemed less likely I would trip myself up if I told the truth, albeit a limited version. But I never said my wife was dead."

Angel frowned. "Then what..."

"It was three years ago." Ashbury intoned it over his shoulder at them, slow but smooth, like a story he'd told so many times that he'd memorized the rhythm of the words. "We were flying home from London in the spring, coming back from visiting my family. Everything was normal; the flight was fine, the chicken rather dry, we both had perhaps a bit too much sherry to make up for it. And then..." He shook his head. "The FAA report called it an unexpected weather disturbance. A rather dry term, much like the chicken, for the sky being ripped open outside the windows. A great spreading black and silver hole in the night, and all sorts of things tumbled out of it. Buildings. Demons. I think there may have been a dragon." He shrugged, the action sharply outlined by his thin shoulders. "We flew past it. Through it. And then it was gone. So were a third of the people on the plane."

"I... heard about something like that." Angel had, from the perspective of someone else who'd fallen through part of that unexpected weather disturbance, and not come out the other side. At least not alive.

"So you see," Ashbury said, "I'm not trying to bring her back. I wouldn't even know how to go about it without hurting her, if she's alive somewhere out there. I just want to go where she is. Home, wherever that might be." He turned to look at them over his shoulder, sweeping a circle with his hand at the knives. "And that, now that I have these, I can do." Then he turned his gaze back to the woman in front of him.

With a sudden lurching certainty, Angel knew what Ashbury had in mind for his final victim. "She's not the vessel to bring back your wife; she's the door you want to walk through."

"Indeed." Ashbury put out his arms, knife in his right hand, and began to chant. "Here at this crossing of paths, where travelers meet and part - "

Around Mona Simmons, a faint blue light began to glow, like a nimbus. It spread quickly along the circle of knives in both directions, until Ashbury was surrounded by its light. His eyes were closed, his concentration centered on the words coming out of his mouth, clear and precise.

" - let one road make itself known, one gateway open..."

Angel leaned over to Gunn and whispered quickly, "This may take everything he's got. If it does, the wall goes down. When I signal, we rush it."

Gunn put a hand against the barrier and nodded.

"You don't even know if this'll work. You might get killed," Angel shouted at Ashbury, more to add one more ball to the mental juggling act the man had to be performing than out of any hope he could be reasoned with at this point.

Ashbury was silent for a moment, then nodded once. "True. But that would at least be an end to it, wouldn't it. I'm tired of just going on, Angel."

He lifted his head and started chanting again, loudly, this time. "...one line, straight and sure, to the land beyond the gate..."

The light pulsed, growing brighter and brighter, and Ashbury raised the knife in his right hand.

In front of Angel, the unseen barrier flickered, just slightly, a ripple of visibility like sunlight across glass. Angel nodded hard at Gunn, and they rushed it, hitting it shoulder-first.

At first it was just like before, like hitting a physical wall, but then something started to give. It softened, not giving way completely, but stretching like taffy, letting them further and further into the room.

Ashbury turned to look at them, and the light flared from the knives on the floor to the knife in his hand. He started to bring it down towards the woman in the chair, and Angel pushed against the sticky-soft barrier with all his might.

With an audible sucking pop, it gave way, and Angel and Gunn both tumbled into the circle. Angel tackled Ashbury, knocking him to the floor. The blue light around the circle began to die out as the two of them struggled.

He shouldn't even have been able to call it a struggle, a vampire against a thin, middle-aged human, but it was; Ashbury fought with the strength of the crazy and determined. One second, Angel was sure he had the man subdued, the next, Ashbury was wriggling away, knife in hand.

"Come on; it's over. You're not getting to her," Gunn said, already standing in front of Mona Simmons' chair.

"I suppose there's one way to find out, isn't there?" Ashbury replied, and before Angel had a chance to rise and reach him he plunged the black-handled knife down and into his own chest.

The blue light rose around the circle again, curving in on itself to connect to Ashbury, glowing brighter and brighter until the whole room shone with it, pouring out of the circle's rim and into the man until Angel couldn't even make out his features anymore.

Then just as quickly, it stopped. The light from the knives on the floor seemed to let go, sucked away into the man-shaped glow that flared once, then died away, too. It shrunk in on itself like the picture on a television screen that had been turned off, until it was gone completely, leaving nothing behind. Not even a body.

There was silence, except for the sound of Ashbury's only surviving victim, whimpering softly behind her gag.

---

The lobby of the Walden was quiet the next morning, something for which Angel was grateful as he sat behind Gunn's desk, looking carefully at every resume and temp application he found there.

Gunn sat next to him, occasionally handing him a folder or pointing out a candidate that had looked almost promising, except for the rare sudden bout of speaking in tongues.

Behind the concession counter, Illyria sat on a kitchen stool, her eyes fixed on the television screen, game-pad in her hands. The intermittent sound of gunfire and the screams of a dying electronic monster were things Angel had learned to tune out months ago.

Even Spike leaned silently against the concession counter as he read the paper, a cup of coffee in his hand that he'd made himself without bitching about the lack of someone to do it for them.

"You know, you don't have to go through every one of these yourself," Gunn said as he handed Angel another folder. "Just because we got one evil guy doesn't mean - "

"Ashbury wasn't evil," Angel told him, still looking down at the resume in front of him. "Nuts, and at the end pretty damned stupid..." He didn't recognize how much it apparently bothered him until the words and the tone came out of his mouth. He shook his head, and said with less intensity, "I don't know. Don't even know what he did to himself at the end there. I do know if I'm going to hire somebody else, even if it's just to make the coffee, I'm going to damn well make sure they're not..."

"Mass-murdering psychos?" Spike offered. "Wait, you've already got at least two of those."

"Ex-mass-murdering psychos," Gunn corrected, then glanced from Spike to Angel. "Ex on the murdering, anyway."

"I meant him and Illyria," Spike said, grinning. "Somebody'd have to pay my invoice before I admitted to working here, even on contract."

Gunn shook his head and leaned over to look at the resume spread out before Angel now. "Anyhow, I don't mind turning the interviewing over to you, Angel. I just want to make sure you're looking for somebody you actually want to hire."

"Not that again." Angel closed the folder. "I want to hire somebody, okay? I always wanted to hire somebody. I may have been wrong about what we should be advertising for, but - "

"Wait, did I just hear Angel say 'may have been wrong?'" Spike pretended to clean out one ear, then banged the opposite side of his head as if shaking water from it.

Angel ignored him, and, since Gunn thankfully seemed to have been distracted from the argument, didn't finish his sentence. Instead he opened the folder he was holding again, actually studying the resume.

A few seconds later, he heard the front door to the office open and careful footsteps enter the lobby. "If you're here about the job, we're not interviewing any more applicants at the moment," Angel said without looking up.

"So you've already filled the position?" The voice was familiar, almost painfully familiar. So was the scent as a breeze wafted in through the closing door.

Angel looked up... and found Wesley leaning casually in the doorway.

The End