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Homemaking
by Kassia
ebonbird: I started writing this for your birthday, but I trailed off due to a lack of momentum. And then I finished it anyway, because this is not a story that needs momentum to be written. As you will see.
So, happy birthday! Or not-all-that-early Halloween! Or, you know, happy Tuesday.
Takes place a little over two episodes into the season 2. Corrections on continuity -- or anything, for that matter -- gratefully, sometimes even graciously, accepted.
Homemaking
The silence in the hallways was so deep that it seemed to be a low buzz, kind of like how water could get so hot it felt cold. She didn't think she'd ever been in a building of this size that felt so utterly empty. Door after door, leading to room after room, and not a single person in them. It felt nightmarishly unnatural.
Of course, nightmarishly unnatural felt kind of homey.
She walked down the stairs to the second floor, and peered down another corridor. This one was different, because there was a man standing in it. He was staring intently at a door, his brow furrowed in a way that she had found sexy two incarnations ago.
"Hey," Cordelia said.
She grinned as Wesley jumped and whirled, raising his hands in ineffectual-looking fists.
His hands dropped, and he took a deep, shuddery breath. "It's you."
"Of course. Who'd you think it was? No, don't tell me. I don't need any ghost stories. This hotel is already creepy like I'm Scooby Doo."
"It is, isn't it?" They observed a moment of silent appreciation of the creepiness before he added, "But it certainly has its appeal. And Angel seems quite attached to the place."
"Well, that's what I call a recommendation. Because God knows the man's not at all style impaired." She looked around the hallway. "You find anything?"
"I'm not looking for things. I'm merely trying to familiarize myself with the hotel. If we make this our base of operations, some of the fights will inevitably come to us. It behooves us to become familiar with our home ground."
"So that's a no, huh?"
Wesley ignored her, which meant he was getting better at this and she'd have to up the doses of irritation soon. "But there is -- that is, do you smell anything?"
She sniffed the air. "New cologne, Wes? Not a bad scent, but it clashes with your body chemistry. If I were you I'd go for something that's not so aggressively masculine."
He glared at her. "I was referring to the eau de corpse in the air."
"Oh." She sniffed again, deeply and loudly. After giving her olfactory nerves a few seconds to process the data, she shook her head. "Nothing but the lemony fresh scent of our floor cleaner."
Wesley's eyebrows went up. "You cleaned the floors?"
"You don't have to act so surprised! And no, I didn't. I spilled the bottle, though." She inhaled again and, nope, nothing but artificial lemon and moderately expensive cologne. "You really smell dead body?"
"Not precisely. Just a combination of odors that, combined, seem to say death to me."
"Oh, wow, Wesley. I'm going to have to go far away from you right now. Don't take it personally, okay?"
"Do you know where the keys are?" he said, once again ignoring.
"I couldn't find any of the staff's keys, but I put all the guest keys in a shoe box downstairs. Want me to get them?"
"If you would be so kind."
She didn't tell him that it had nothing to do with kindness -- she was happy to get some breathing space from Wesley and his strange new preoccupation with obviously psychosomatic death smells. She had put the shoebox in the office, and she took the time to sort out all the second floor keys before returning.
When she got back upstairs, Wesley was pressed against one of the doors like it was a satin dress on a gorgeous woman. "Should I leave you two alone?" He glared at her, and she held out the box of keys. "You think your corpse smell is coming from that room?"
"It would seem to be. I've checked the other rooms, but this one is locked. Ah, thank you." He rummaged around for the correct room number. "It's not here."
"No? Very suspicious. I wouldn't worry about it, though. I don't smell anything."
"Then by all means let's not worry about it."
It sounded like a good conclusion to her, but she had a feeling he was being sarcastic. She was just about to put him in his place, when someone spoke from the end of the hall. "Guys?"
She was surprised that Angel had the decency to call to them, instead of waiting until he was right behind them to speak. Angel could pretend that he never meant to startle people with his sneaky vamp ways, but she was pretty sure he got a kick out of it. God knew, she would've done the same if she'd had an eerily light tread.
Wesley waved towards the door. "Angel, I'm glad you're here. Do you smell anything?"
Angel's eyes widened just a teeny tiny bit, in the way that meant he was mildly surprised. Though sometimes it meant he was intensely surprised. Or horrified. Or bored. As far as facial expressions went, the man had all the range of Kevin Costner. "Yes," he said to Wesley. "Why?"
"What I meant is, what do you smell?"
Angel hesitated. "Do you really want to go into that?"
"Wes thinks he smells corpse," said Cordelia.
"Oh." Angel sniffed. "I don't smell anything but -- lemon-scented cleaner? Did one of you clean?"
Cordelia noticed that he had his coat on. All dressed up with somewhere depressing to go. She put on a bright smile and asked, "And where are you off to?"
"That's what I came to tell you. I'm going out."
Cordelia beamed. "Good for you. You should be out in the world. Go enjoy the nightlife. Chat up some hotties. You'll feel like a new man afterwards."
"To patrol."
She hid her annoyance and didn't let herself miss a beat. "Ooh, proactive. That's great. Go get 'em, tiger."
He gave her a Look from under half-shut eyelids. She grinned and waved him away.
As soon as he had disappeared down the stairs -- none of them cared to risk the elevator yet -- she let the residual grin slip away and said, in a voice way too close to being a growl, "Sometimes that man makes me crazy."
"Yes, he seems to have that effect on women."
"I didn't mean crazy in the good way," she said. "Anyway, ew."
Wesley looked at her sidewise; his expression was mildly hurt. "You think Angel is... ew?"
"No, not ew, really. He's a good-looking man. It's just that he's -- he's Angel. And, you know, a vampire."
Now Wesley looked perplexed. "I didn't think that bothered you."
"It doesn't. I've known the guy since high school. I'm totally over the creature of the night thing. But the thing about vampires is," she paused, searching. After a few seconds she tried, "They're not alive." And she didn't need Wesley's increasingly confused expression to know that that was a lame explanation. She wanted to elaborate, but, strangely enough, it made her uncomfortable her to say these things out loud, in connection to Angel. Usually she had no trouble speaking her mind. "Take Spike," she said.
"Do I have to?"
"And that one's old, Wesley. I'm just using Spike as an example because some people might find him hot in a hygienically-challenged homicidal Billy Idol kind of way and --" And she didn't particularly want to talk about Spike this way, either, though for different reasons. "Okay, forget Spike. Let's take Johnny Depp. Say Johnny D. was a vampire. He'd still be gorgeous, right? All the features would still be there. But no matter how pretty he is, he'd be dead. He'd be dead Johnny Depp. He'd be corpse Johnny Depp, and his blood wouldn't be moving, and his skin would be cold and old and -- eughk! It would be gross, right?"
Wesley was staring through her -- past her -- with a kind of puzzled, repulsed look. "What?" she said, defensive. "I know it's shallow. I'm working on it, okay?"
"No, it's just -- "
Her heart stopped beating. "Oh my God, Angel's standing right behind me, isn't he?"
"No...."
"No as in yes?" she squeaked.
His expression became a normal, thoughtful frown. "No as in no."
She didn't quite relax, because the thought had been too, too horrible to come down from quickly, but at least her heart started fluttering again. Then she remembered that Wesley had gotten that look because of something. "What is it?" She turned, nothing. She looked back at him.
He shook his head. "I thought I saw the lift doors close."
Once she had translated the statement -- and shouldn't Wesley be speaking American by now, anyway? -- she was conscious of a desire not to have her back to the elevator. She turned it towards the wall instead. "You imagined it?" she suggested. Hinted.
"Honestly, I could have. But -- "
"-- we'll have to look into it, yeah. Just between you and me, Wesley, I don't like this place. I don't care what Angel says. It feels -- "
"Haunted," Wesley finished for her. "We may have exorcised the Thesulac, but it still feels haunted."
* * *
The next day, she went around opening doors so that the rooms could air out. She discovered where a lot of the cleaning supplies had been stashed, too, and brought them into the lobby. Afterwards, she searched the rooms for pretty things that might make the lobby area a little less depressing. She even found an almost-sightly carpet in one of the rooms, and experimented with positioning it near the entrance of the hotel, before deciding it wouldn't do.
She rolled it up and let it sit there, to be returned later when she had more energy. She would man the phone for a while, instead. She settled down at the receptionist's desk with a magazine and a bottle of fruit-flavored soda water, and waited.
She was reading about spa treatments when Angel came into the lobby. He stood at the bottom of the staircase with a kind of arrested look on his face, before coming over to her.
"Cordelia -- " He glanced around the lobby. His expression seemed a bit dazed, and she wondered if he had gotten enough sleep. "I appreciate the gesture, but you don't have to, um, clean or anything."
She shrugged one shoulder. "Who's cleaning?"
"Yeah, that's just -- it."
"But you're right," she said. "Somebody needs to take the Pine-Sol to this place. There's, like, thirty years of dust on everything." She rolled her eyes. "Paranoia demons are apparently not big on the housekeeping."
"Just... don't start anything you can't finish."
"Um... okay." She shut her magazine over her index finger. "How'd your night on the town go?"
He ran his hand through his over-gelled hair. "Pretty uneventful. A couple of muggings and a pimp." He hesitated. "Um, and yours?"
It was so cute when he made an effort. She grinned. "Thanks for asking. Wesley and I saw a ghost."
His expression stiffened. "A ghost? Here?"
"There's no reason to get worked up about it," she said. "It was probably nothing. Wesley just thought he saw something."
Angel looked around sharply. "Where's Wesley?"
"Geez. Who knows? Really, it was nothing -- "
"Here," called Wesley, poking his head out of the office door. "What is it?"
"Ghost, Wesley. What did you see?"
Wesley looked as puzzled by Angel's urgency and low-voiced anger as Cordelia felt. "I simply thought I saw the elevator door close. I could easily have been mistaken."
"You must have been," Angel snapped. "There shouldn't be any ghosts here. The Thesulac wouldn't have allowed it and -- and any souls that might have been here should be at peace now, anyway." He sounded not just angry, she realized, but worried.
He caught her eye, and resumed his poker face. And his poker voice, which never fooled anyone. "It was probably nothing. If you'd excuse me." He turned and walked purposefully towards the back of the hotel. Wesley had come into the lobby for the conversation, and Cordelia exchanged glances with him.
"Well, that was an interesting reaction."
"That was a psycho reaction. You know what it is? He let this hotel get under his skin. He had decided it was the perfect place, and he can't accept that there might actually be something wrong -- " She was interrupted by a sledgehammer to the back of her eye sockets, and jerked forward, clutching her forehead and shutting her eyes tightly. A sign flashed in front of her, and a garden. People were screaming, and she didn't know why until sharp needles slipped into the skin of her upper arm. She saw a creature hovering by her, a large-eyed whir of rough green with a round, pulsating body. Energy drained out of her -- no, liquid. She was drying up, and her eyes throbbed like they were about to explode. Soon she was hollow, as if she was about to cave in on herself.
When she opened her eyes Wesley was already pressing pills and a glass of water into her hand. Good man. He ran back towards the door to the service area while she swallowed her pills and drained her glass -- the water was gorgeous, but nowhere near sufficient. She finished off her fruit soda water, too. She heard Wes calling to Angel, and opened a drawer to get out a notepad and pen.
She had written the address down by the time Angel and Wesley got back to her.
"What did you see?" Angel asked, with that earnest, solicitous expression that touched her almost as much as it annoyed her.
She held out the address to him. "At the botanical gardens. I think it'll take you a bit of time to get there. The West Coast Cactus and Succulent Society is having a rare succulents show this evening. And I think the succulents will be doing some sucking."
He blinked at her. "Vampire cacti?"
"No! Dummy. Some of the plants aren't plants. They're eggs. They look kind of like moss-green golf balls, and they're going to be hatching soon. And they're thirsty." She rubbed her upper arms, and was slightly relieved to find them fleshy and resilient. "Very thirsty," she repeated. Her hand went up to feel her face. Also fleshy, phew. "Um, is there anything hydrating around here?"
Angel went behind her to get the pitcher they kept in the reception area. "What do these creatures look like when they hatch?" Wesley asked, going for the demon reference books behind the front desk.
"I didn't get a good look. Offhand, I'd say they looked like pumpkin-sized floaty lizard maggots." She held out her glass to Angel, who refilled it from the pitcher he held. "At least, they're pumpkin-sized now, but they'll get bigger if they get to drink. They suck the liquid out of anything they can get their," she put her free hand up in front of her mouth, and made jabbing motions with her index and middle fingers, "straw thing into."
"Proboscis," said Wesley.
"Yeah, probably."
"We should try to kill the bastards before they hatch," said Angel. He paused and added, a little more quietly, "Not that that ever seems to work for us, but, we should try."
Cordelia found herself tossing back her drink like she was doing water shots. She held out her glass for another refill.
Wesley page through the demon reference. "It sounds like this demon is adapted to dry climates. The Watcher's Council, I remember, had a desert magic book that would almost certainly have contained the relevant information...."
Cordelia rolled her eyes at Angel. "Guess we know what to get him for his next birthday."
"It would put you out a few thousand dollars, but by all means, do."
Cordelia set her now-empty glass on the desk and opened the drawer where they kept the phonebook. "I'll call the botanical gardens and find out where what plants will be when. I'll tell them I'm showing my -- my -- "
"Cactus," Angel said.
"Asclepiad," said Wesley. "Angel, why don't you see if you can find anything on this particular demon in Coltus?"
"That's the gold one, right?" Angel asked, moving towards the office.
"Leather bound," Wesley called after him.
Some lady at the botanical gardens picked up. "Hello?" Cordelia said hesitantly, willing herself to sound like someone who had no life but her plants. "I've got a slepilad plant that I'm showing at tonight's cactus show -- "
She managed to wrangle out the information she needed and had hung up by the time Angel had returned. She took the ugly leather book out of his hands, and told them to get the hell to the plant show.
Wesley reached out a hand towards the leather-bound volume. "I would prefer to know how to kill them first -- "
Cordelia slapped his hand away. "No. Books takes too long."
Angel shrugged. "I feel comfortable enough with our usual sharp pointy object plan."
"I'll call you if I can find anything on them," Cordelia said, making a shooing gesture. "You guys go and make them into your brain on drugs so that I don't have to find anything on them."
They left. Cordelia took the other book that Wesley had been looking at, and curled up on the couch, ignoring the throbbing ache behind her eyes. She paged through the book for a while, but the florid text made her feel carsick, and she finally closed the book, and her eyes.
The next thing she knew, someone's hand was on her shoulder. "Hey. Cordy. Hey."
She opened her eyes to see upside-down Angel standing above her. She shifted, and something slipped off her chest and fell to the floor with a loud, rustly clap.
Wesley made an inhuman noise in his throat and threw himself down after the book. Cordelia squinted contemptuously at him, and then sat up and turned to look at Angel. He was splattered in spongy green and slimy yellow. "I take it it went well?"
"These pages are brittle, you can't just -- " Wesley murmured from where he was crouched on the floor. "If only -- no, it appears to be all right. Wait, this page, was it always like that -- ?"
"Pretty well," said Angel.
Wesley looked up at her, pressing the book protectively against his chest and giving Cordelia freaky Gollum vibes. "There were some minor obstacles," he said, "and a few unfortunate misidentifications, but ultimately we triumphed."
"Over the eggs? Good job, manly warrior men."
"Then we avoided fines and potential lawsuits by running fast," Angel put in. "Those succulent people, for some reason they don't like you to destroy their plants."
"You avoided fines? Now I'm impressed." She looked searchingly at Angel, wondering if his current lightness was an effort to cover for his ghost-related freak out earlier.
"Oh, ghosts -- !" Cordelia sprang to her feet. "I've got to get home. Dennis is making dinner tonight." Making? Made. It was probably getting cold -- She ran to the reception desk and grabbed her bag.
"He makes dinner?" said Angel.
"Yeah, he does. He doesn't salt the food, since he can't taste it, but he always keeps the shaker filled. Oh, God, I'm so late." She checked the bag to make sure her keys were present.
"That's a very cozy domestic arrangement you have," said Wesley. "But -- not to be presumptuous -- but do you ever think it might be a tad unethical to impose upon a trapped soul in that manner?"
Cordelia rolled her eyes at his naivete, and started towards the door. "Believe me, I made his afterlife a whole lot better. Before I came along, he was still living with his mother." She pushed the door open. "Night, you two."
"Good night," she heard Angel call after her, as the door swung shut.
* * *
Cordelia usually didn't notice that her life was a series of evenings and nights, mainly because that was how she'd been living even before she came to work for Angel. But, looking closely at her reflection, it occurred to her that this was probably the palest she'd been in her life. She hadn't been this colorless even during those first hand-to-mouth months in L.A., and then she had lived from party to party, from night scene to night scene.
Those first months. She was so glad no one had been around to witness them. They would stand in her memory as the lowest point in her life, for reasons she would never admit to anyone else, and didn't plan to admit to herself very often. Anyway, it was okay now. She wasn't one of the night people anymore. Now she was someone who tried to help the night people. Hence the paleness. Paleness as a badge of courage. The consolation would have to do until she could invest in some serious tanning time.
Someone came into the lobby, and Cordelia snapped the compact shut. Angel crossed the floor, holding a medium-sized, worn-looking leather bag. His kind of accessory, except that he didn't do accessories. She opened her mouth to ask him where he was off to, but an exuberant voice from the second floor stopped her.
"Both of you have to come up here!" An excited Wesley appeared on the balcony. "The stench is very powerful now!"
He disappeared back into the hallway, and Cordelia looked towards Angel, who looked back at her.
Then he hoisted the bag he was holding, and continued to walk towards the door.
"Going for an late night walk?" Cordelia called sweetly.
She knew she sounded sweet, but no one would've been able to tell that from the temperature of Angel's response. It was a little chillier than his poker face. "I'm mailing something."
"Really? 'Cause I could do that for you, you know. Tomorrow. During the daytime, which is, oddly enough, when things get mailed."
"Kinko's is still open," he said, apparently not at all aware that the sentence sounded hilarious coming from him.
He started to walk past her. She widened her eyes at him. "But didn't you hear Wesley? The stench is super powerful now."
He looked irritated. "I'll smell it later, I promise."
He walked briskly out of the hotel. As soon as the door slammed behind him, she stuck out her tongue after him. It was true. Aside from the occasional forceful removal or injection of a soul, men never did change.
Upstairs, Wesley was standing by the same old door. She walked over to his side, and then retreated a few steps and put the sleeve of her hoodie in front of her face. "Okay, you win, Wesley. It does smell like evil." She put her other hand to her stomach. "And I'm so glad I just ate. You think maybe a raccoon broke in and died?"
"I don't think that accounts for this particular smell. This is -- distinctly human."
Yeah, that's what she had thought, too. And, yuck. "I guess we can ask Angel about it when he gets back."
"He isn't here?"
"No. He's gone all Rear Window on us. He just left to mail a mysterious briefcase."
"Oh. Hrm."
They stood in the stench, until, finally, Cordelia threw her hands up. "Oh, what the hell. We're professionals. Let's do it." She pulled a bobby pin from her hair and knelt in front of the door.
He bent over her shoulder. "Do what?"
"Trying to pick the lock, duh." She slipped the bobby pin into the keyhole. "I have no idea what I'm doing, by the way." She wiggled the pin, feeling for something to catch on to, or for something to give.
Wesley drew back and leaned against the wall, arms crossed, just like the cool kids did. It looked a bit awkward on him. Oh, yeah, she so knew what he was up to, but -- cool Wesley? The mind boggled. Fortunately it had no hope of working.
"If Angel were here he could just break down the door," she said resentfully, raising her free hand to clamp her nostrils shut.
"Do you even think he would be willing?"
"You're getting that vibe, too?" she droned.
"Certainly. His behavior has made it obvious that he has many regrets concerning this place. This," he gestured to the locked door, "may be another."
"That one smells a lot fresher than the other regrets. And by fresh I mean decomposing."
"I know. It's very strange."
She gave up on holding her nose shut. "I'm getting really sick of his regrets. It's like he runs on uber-energy-efficient guilt. He gets a hundred miles per murder." Something shifted encouragingly inside the keyhole. "All the people he killed? They'd all be dead by now, anyway." Well, except -- yeah. She pulled out the pin and jabbed it in again. "What does he think he's going to do? Save the whole world?"
"He has saved the world several times now, I believe."
"Has he? I just remember him trying to destroy it," she said tartly. "But that's not how I meant. I'm talking about his Mission. I mean, come *on*. Helping the helpless? I'm all for it, but you've got to pace yourself." That's why Doyle had been sent to him in the first place, to make Angel see people, instead of just a tally of souls. "Do you have any idea how many people are helpless?" she said. "Like, nine out of ten on any given day."
"Naturally, everyone's helpless some times in their life, Cordelia." Wesley had stopped leaning, and was standing with his hands in his pockets. "That's why people band together, so they'll have someone to rely on when that time comes. But not everyone has a support network, and those are the people Angel is trying to help."
She thrust the bobby pin at him. "Here, you try."
"I don't -- "
"What? Don't you learn how to pick locks in Watcher School? Considering the way you guys were always barging into everyone else's business, you'd think it'd be the first thing they'd teach you."
"It wasn't a skill they emphasized," Wesley replied dryly. He took the pin from her hand. "But I'll see what I can do."
He knelt in front of the door and squinted at. From several angles. He looked incredibly earnest, putting the bobby pin into the lock, slow and cautious like he was aiming it. Cordelia half expected to see the tip of his tongue poke out, like Charlie Brown taking a test.
"Wes?"
"Hmm?" He didn't turn.
"I like that. About the banding."
"About the -- ? Oh, yes. Even prehistoric man instinctively understood the advantages of such an arrangement. Before we evolved to our present species, we lived in family groups. The archaeological evidence indicates that, as far back as thirty six hundred thousand years ago, man and woman walked alongside each other...."
"Wes, no offense, but please shut up *now*."
He eyed her malevolently and turned back to the lock. "Of course," he muttered, "man's brain was very small."
After about fifteen minutes of turn-taking, Cordelia said, "Want to go get an axe?"
Wesley drew back from trying to squint into the keyhole. "Do you think we should? It feels rather like cheating."
"I know what you mean, but I think it will be worth it for the satisfaction of smashing this goddamn stubborn door into little splinters."
"When you put it that way...."
The dream of hacking the evil door to bits was short-lived. When they got to the lobby, Gunn was sanding there. He hailed them perfunctorily, and asked, "Where's Angel?"
"He just left. What brings you here?"
"Angel wanted me to come by when I had a free moment. But I don't really have free moments, so if he's not here, I'll get back to work." He strained his neck, looking past them. "If he's not here, who's in the elevator?"
She spun around to see the elevator pointer had lit up and was moving.
Cordelia beamed at Wesley. "You didn't imagine it! Yay for you and your sanity!"
She looked back at the slowly-moving pointer. They both watched in tense silence until it stopped at last on the fourth floor.
"Fourth floor," said Wesley. He ran over to the weapons cabinet, and flung it open.
"I'd like something light, please," said Cordelia, as Wes took out a crossbow. "And for you, Gunn?"
Wesley's eyes narrowed. "I don't know if that's a good idea. Angel is very protective of his weapons -- "
"Don't matter," Gunn interrupted, smiling cordially. "I'm leavin', anyway." He stuffed his hands in his pockets and started towards the door. "You two have fun now."
And this was just what she needed when some unknown danger was lurking in the creepy upper levels of their creepy hotel.
She stomped her foot and glowered at Gunn. "No! We will not have fun!" She turned to Wesley. "Wesley, give him an axe. Gunn, you have to come up with us because we have no idea what just got off that elevator, and the more of us, the better I'll feel."
As Wesley handed an axe to Gunn, Cordelia felt like she could see the bitter internal monologue playing behind his eyes. Gunn smirked back at him like a man who had a few choice words on the tip of his tongue. The posturing was not very impressive, because Cordelia had seen them interact enough to knew that whatever they were thinking boiled down to the other guy being a big fat stupidhead.
She took a reasonably light sword from the case, and used it to point to the Eastern -- or was it Northern? staircase. "Wes, you take -- um, those stairs. Gunn and I will take the others." Considering that Gunn was probably the better fighter, it would have made more sense to send him up alone while she doubled up with Wesley. But she didn't really know Gunn well enough to feel comfortable giving him a solo assignment.
They didn't talk much as they walked up the stairs. Gunn asked a few questions about the backstory of the elevator incident, but fell silent once they reached the third floor.
Gunn was new, but Cordelia had a feeling he'd be around for a while. She had mixed feelings about that. More help was good -- case in point -- but Gunn seemed like the kind of help that needed help himself. She already had two men who were perfectly capable of quietly bleeding to death if she looked away for a second; she hoped she wouldn't be expected to babysit Charles Gunn, too. He seemed like a burn-brighter-faster kinda guy. Bleah.
They reached the door to the fourth floor, and she pressed her ear against it. She didn't hear anything, and she pushed it open as quietly as possible, sword at the ready.
The hall was empty. A few moments later, Wesley appeared at the other end.
He mouthed something. She shook her head to show she hadn't understood. "Try the rooms?" he stage-whispered.
She nodded.
They started at one end, Wesley opening the doors as quietly as possible, with Gunn and Cordelia flanking him. They had gone through about ten rooms when somebody said, "You looking for someone?"
They all jumped in surprise -- even Gunn, Cordelia noted -- and turned to face the speaker. A small, slim squish-looking gray demon said, "Um, can I help you people?"
He was so very non-threatening that Cordelia relaxed immediately. Relaxation to be immediately replaced by irritation. "Yeah, you can help us. Have you been riding our elevator?"
He blinked large orange eyes at them. "Am I not supposed to? You see, it's very tiring for me to take the stairs." He gestured down towards his legs. His torso was long, but his legs were only about a two feet high.
"You shouldn't be taking the stairs, either! You shouldn't be here at all!"
Wesley recovered from his surprise. "Who are you, what are you, and what are you doing here?"
"I'm Ringo, I'm offended by the second question, and I live here. Who are you?"
Gunn made some kind of choking sound. Cordelia crossed her arms, and gave the demon a glare that had sent better men than he -- er, better demons than he scrambling for cover. "We own this building, mister, and it's a detective agency, not the Motel 666."
He crossed his own long arms over each other a few times. "You don't own this place. It's been abandoned. And now that the paranoia spirit's gone, it's fair game."
It took a second for Cordelia to recover from the audacity of this statement. "Hey! We got rid of the Thesulac!"
"That's right," said Wesley. "We have the superior claim to this place by almost any social code you care to name."
The little demon shook his head in disgust. "What, are you using the whole building? You've got tons of space. I don't see why I can't live here."
It was kind of a reasonable point, Cordelia had to admit. Apparently Wesley felt the same way, because he hesitated.
Gunn didn't. "I don't get this," he said. "Why are you trying to talk with him?" He strode over and picked up the small demon by his thin neck. "Come on, you're gonna have to find another place to squat."
He dragged the protesting, struggling demon down the hall, and hit the elevator button with the end of his axe handle. In her peripheral vision, Cordelia could see that Wes was trying to catch her eye, probably to express his exasperation. So she kept her eyes ahead and followed Gunn into the elevator.
The ride down was a sadistic kind of delight. Gunn pumped the demon's ear -- wherever it was -- full of elaborate threats of what would happen to him if Gunn ever saw his scrawny gray ass again. And when he finally dragged the protesting demon to the front door and threw him out, he even called "And stay out!" after him.
"You have to admit," Cordelia murmured to Wesley, "the man's got style."
Wesley made a noise in his throat, and said, in a choked voice, "Yes. All his own."
* * *
They were standing across from each other, leaning over the front desk and looking through the books, when Angel came in. Cordelia turned around and rested her elbows on the desk. "Well, hello. Where have you been all day?"
Angel stopped, and ran his eyes around her face. "Sleeping mostly."
Wesley turned the page of his book. "Gunn came looking for you last night."
"Oh." His eyes went to Wesley. "What did he want?"
"He said you wanted him."
"It's a good thing he came by," said Cordelia. "He helped us evict Ringo."
"Evict -- " Angel walked over to them. "What are you talking about?"
"Remember how Wesley thought he saw the elevator moving? Well, he was right. It was being used by ugly gray demon who's moved upstairs."
"His legs were very short," explained Wesley "Might he have been a Decapla demon, Cordelia?"
She twisted her neck to look at the picture he was indicating in the book. "I dunno. That one looks kind of scaly, not all smooth like the guy upstairs. But it could be him." She turned back to Angel. "Anyway, Gunn helped us get rid of him, but we need better security here or something. I did not sign on to work in a demon B&B. We spent the rest of the night making sure nothing else had moved in."
"What did you want to see Gunn for?" Wesley asked, turning the page.
"I -- just wanted his opinion on something. Nothing important."
"Thanks, Angel. Because my day's not complete without your saying something really vague and unhelpful."
Angel's eyes narrowed at her. "I wanted to know whether he'd been encountering unusual numbers of demons lately, because I have." He started to walk towards the office. "But the main reason was that I like to keep Gunn in touch."
Wesley looked bewildered. "Why?"
Cordelia hit his arm. "What do you mean, why? If it weren't for him, we'd still be arguing with Ringo the free-loading demon. The man's useful."
Angel paused. "There's that, yes." He looked over his shoulder at them. "But also, Gunn never forgets what I am."
Wesley, whose mouth had been hanging open on the 'why' that seemed to have been wrenched out of him, pressed his lips shut, and said "Mm," as Angel vanished into his office.
Cordelia pushed the demon reference book aside, and picked up her magazine. "Well, that's sweet."
Wesley looked at her in surprise. "Sweet? What's sweet?"
"That he thinks that either of us ever forgets he's a vampire." She opened up to her four-star, three-heart horoscope. Three hearts her ass.
"Hm. That reminds me." Wesley brushed past her.
She looked up from a suggestion that she go with the flow this month, and saw that he was going for the weapons case. "Reminds you of what?"
He took out a nice large axe, weighing it in his hands. "Want to find out what's in that room?"
She gave him an are-you-kidding? look. "You have no idea how much I don't want to." She tossed her magazine aside. "But I think I'll die if I go another second not knowing."
The second floor hallway no longer reeked, but a faint after-smell hung in the air. Cordelia stepped way back as Wesley lifted the axe. She didn't think the few yards she put between them was nearly enough, but when she tried to retreat further he shot her a glare. "Please, Cordelia. I know what I'm doing."
"Sorry," she said. His eyes went to the door, and she took one more step back.
He raised the axe again, and, after a shaky start, made short work of the doorknob area. Cordelia raised her eyebrows. "You really did know what you were doing." She saw his self-satisfied smile, and had to add, "You've spent a lot of time practicing, haven't you?"
He looked away with a mumbled, "Yes," and pushed the door open. Cordelia hurried to look in over his shoulder, making sure his body was between her and whatever was in the room. As it turned out, though, she didn't have to use him as a human shield. Except for a bed, and a worn, faded armchair, the room was empty.
"Guess we know why it's not so stinky anymore," she said. "Just in case, you want to check under the bed?"
He glared at her again, but he did what she asked. He poked under the bed with the axe first, and then crouched and, resting his elbow on the floor, peered under.
"Oh, oh!" She jumped in excitement. "Don't forget to check inside the mattress! People are always putting bodies in hotel mattresses."
He gave her his own are-you-kidding? look, which was a lot meaner than hers. "If there was a body here, Cordelia, it's gone."
"Yeah. Let's get out of here." She graciously stood aside to let him leave first. Once he was in the hallway, she said absently, "You know, for a room that hasn't been opened in fifty years, this place sure smells lemony-fresh."
His eyes went to hers.
She smiled at him and waited.
Finally he said, "You think -- ?"
"Oh, yeah," she said. Actually, she would've given money to have seen Angel on his hands and knees with a sponge and a bucket, scrubbing away the funk. "Let's stop tip-toeing around the bastard and find out what he did with the body."
Wesley, still working on the cool, knocked on the office door with the hilt of the axe. No one answered, and he tapped the door open with it.
Inside, Angel was sitting at the desk. With all the lights off, of course. Cordelia fake-sympathy smiled. "Oh, I'm sorry. We should've known you were busy staring into the moral wasteland of your sinalicious past." She turned, ushering Wesley ahead of her. "We'll come back later."
"What is it?" Angel bit out.
Wesley turned to him, pushing Cordelia into the room. "I'm afraid we think you haven't been entirely honest with us, Angel. We have questions about, about -- "
Cordelia took up position across the desk from Angel, arms crossed. "We want you to tell us why the upstairs reeks of death."
"Yes, that."
Angel was looking back and forth between them. "It's not what you think --"
Oh, no, he did not just say that. Cordelia looked at Wesley in alarm and whispered, "That means it's exactly what we think!" She looked back at Angel. "You had a body stashed upstairs, didn't you? And you knew we were on to you and now it's buried it in the backyard!"
"No. I mean, yes, but I didn't bury it in the backyard -- "
She gasped. "Oh God, you did go all Rear Window on us! That bag you were mailing, you chopped this guy up and mail his femur to his family -- "
"Why a femur?" murmured Wesley.
"No, I didn't!" said Angel. "And it was a she -- "
"That's even worse!"
He looked confused. "Why is it worse if it's a she?"
"I'm sorry," she dripped at him. "Obviously you're a equal opportunity killer."
"I always have been. But I didn't kill her! Well, I kind of did -- "
She buried her face in her hands. "Oh my God."
"No, it's not like that. I was the cause of her death. I never meant her to die, but I didn't stop it, either -- " Cordelia parted her fingers to peer out at him, and he seemed slightly encouraged. "The Thesulac, before we killed it, it was feeding off her. She was the reason he was able to stay in the Hyperion for so long. The woman died of old age."
She threw her hands up. "It's an Angel guilt thing. I should've known."
"Yes, you should have," Wesley agreed. "But, Angel, that doesn't change the fact that you have a lot to explain. Why did you leave this woman there, and not tell us what was going on? Those aren't the actions of a healthy person." Cordelia snorted.
"I didn't want to upset you," said Angel, and Cordelia wished she had saved her snort of derision for that. "And she was finally at rest." He looked between them with an expression like he was truly surprised that they didn't understand. "I didn't want to move her."
Not unnaturally, Wesley gaped. "If she's been here for the past fifty years I imagine she would like to leave now!"
"More importantly, I think all the living people around here would like her to leave now."
Angel put his hands up in an aborted gesture, letting them fall immediately to the desk. "Don't worry, she's not here anymore."
"Yeah, and how'd accomplish that little miracle? Oh my God, you hacked her up, didn't you?"
"No, no. She's in one piece. And she'll be buried properly."
She had absolutely no desire to ask for further information on that topic. Wesley looked like he did, though, so she said quickly, "Then what was in the bag?"
"The bag had something in it that the woman, the dead woman..."
"Judy?" said Wesley.
Angel glanced at him. "Yes, Judy. She had some unfinished business connected to that bag. When you said you may have seen a ghost, I thought it might be her. I thought that returning the bag's contents might put her spirit at ease, if it was her."
"And the bag's contents were...?"
"Don't ask. It would just depress you."
"Oh, come on."
He met her eyes, unblinking. "Believe me, Cordelia, you do not want to know." He leaned back. "Are you done?"
"For now," she said, irritated by his tone. Like they didn't have a right to ask about the bodies their occasionally-homicidal boss had stashed at their place of business. "And I would like to say, I think you're insane."
Angel shook his head. "I know it wasn't the most normal thing to do, but it honestly didn't seem that terrible to me."
"That's what makes it insane," she said.
* * *
She liked the moments of deceptive calm the best. It wasn't that she didn't know what was burning beneath the surface -- it was because she did. It was nice not to have your attention drawn to it every five minutes. And it didn't get much more deceptively calm than right now. She was settled on the couch, no one around, leafing through a three-month-old magazine, since she'd exhausted the new one.
"Cordelia." She let out a little gasp of surprise, and looked up to see Angel standing in front of her. That's what she got for thinking she was alone. "Where did those come from?"
"Which?" she said, using her finger to mark where she was in a Cameron Diaz interview.
"The -- um, throw pillows."
She looked proudly at the objects in question. Gorgeous colors, and hand-beaded to boot. "A lady in Santa Monica made them. It's my monthly treat to me." Her weekly treats to herself were far less expensive. Also, edible. "I put them at my place first, but, who'm I kidding? My place is beautiful. You need them more here."
Angel reached down to touch one of the throw pillows, and said, "I used to do that."
"Do what?" She looked at the pillow. "Bead things?"
"No." He drew his hand away. "Try to surround myself with nice things. Beautiful things."
She thought of the dead woman formerly known as the smell upstairs and said dryly, "Like corpses?"
"Sometimes," said Angel.
She focused eye beams of hate on him. "Just because I gave you that one, didn't mean you had to take it."
"Sorry."
She looked past him at the figure coming down the stairs. "Hey, Wes. How goes it?"
"I have finished conducting an exhaustive survey of the hotel," the twelve-year-old-chess-club-geek-trapped-in-man's-body said proudly. "And I can say with reasonable certainty that there are no demons or ghosts on the premises. Well, at least not flamboyant ghosts. Obviously I can't speak for the quiet, withdrawing ones."
"I told you, there aren't any ghosts," said Angel. "There really can't be."
"Of course not," Cordelia soothed. "If you say so." Angel gave her a sardonic look, but moved on towards his office instead of rising to the bait.
"And I don't mind even if there are!" she called after him. He stopped, and she saw his shoulders shiver, but then he kept on walking. She grinned to herself, and said to Wesley, "He really doesn't pay me enough for all the services I provide."
Wesley looked at her in consternation. "That was a service?"
"One of many."
Wesley walked away, shaking his head. She tucked her feet under her, and settled back into Cameron Diaz's life three months ago.
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