"My name is Tara, and I'm allergic to shrimp." The blonde little girl said to the group of adults that gathered about her. Angel was just standing when she declared this, and missed this. He was rather confused when his colleagues laughed.
Wesley did not even know
why he was laughing. His spell, after all, backfired. They were trying
to restore Spike's body through Janus' Invocation. Fred had been worried,
which should have worried the former watcher in turn, but strangely, it
did not. When she had been assured that Angel was the only possible
one who could perform the spell, because they had the same blood running
through their veins, she quieted.
The vampire and ghost of
a former vampire walked into the room that had been prepared and closed
the door. Lorne, Gunn, Wesley, and Fred were left waiting in the small
atrium that lead from Wesley's leather padded office with oak. Still they
sat, waiting, and hoping for Angel, and of course Spike to come out. When
the four heard an explosion, Wesley, and Gunn did not even wait to see
if Angel was going to come out, they headed in. Lorne and Fred followed
after they saw the coast was clear.
Smoke was dispersing into the atrium, and then into Wes' office. Spike stood to the side; non-corporeal, while Angel lay sprawled off to the side. Between the two stood a blond little girl, her hair braided into pigtails and she wore a simple yellow sundress with little white flowers.
"What happened?" Fred asked, looking at Spike, who just rather stood there, his arms crossed over his chest.
"Don't rightly know, luv. Peaches finished saying the words and boom, the platelet was here," Spike nodded to the girl.
"You invoked Janus. Mommy said never to invoke a god, they have too much magic," the little girl nodded hastily. "We're just learning about magic. She said it'd be our secret." Her eyes widened, and her hands clapped over her mouth. "I wasn't supposed to say that, I'll get in trouble."
"We won't tell," Fred kneeled down. "Can you tell me who you are, and where you live?"
The girl nodded, "My name is Tara, and I'm allergic to shrimp."
The boy grinned, his dark
gray eyes flashing. "Wicked," he whispered to himself as he entered the
password. The name Wolfram and Hart flashed by briefly before taking him
to another page. A page with names of employees listed. Scrolling down
quickly, he clicked on the name he needed.
"Found ya," he said as he
quickly wrote down what he found before exiting and shutting down the computer.
Spike stood there, when he heard the little girl say her name. "Say that again pet?" he asked.
"My name is Tara Maclay," she said brightly.
"Glinda," he said softly. Nobody heard him because Harmony, followed by a Hispanic man with a slight beer belly, rushed in.
"Boss!" the blonde vampire, cried. "There's been a security breech!"
Angel whipped around, and focused his attention on the man behind Harmony. "What is it?"
"There's been a hacker sir," the man reported, wiping his hands upon his tan pants.
"Don't we have some kind of protection for that?" Fred asked Gunn off to the side. The black man nodded, but failed to say a thing.
Angel looked at the security guard. "And?"
The man was confused, "Sir?"
"There was a hacker," Angel spoke slowly, as if he was talking to a child, "What did they hack into, and why?"
Again, the Hispanic man wiped his hands upon his tan pants. "Well sir, they hacked into the main server through our website, specifically into personal records of our employees. We do not know why at this time."
"Well, get on it!" Angel
said quickly, wanting to get to the matter of the blonde little girl named
Tara Maclay. He had no idea why that name sounded so familiar.
Tara wondered around the plush office that led right out of the room where the entire grown up stood around asking silly questions about things she did not understand. She looked at the big desk and something shiny caught her eye.
"Pretty," she whispered to herself, because you always used an indoor voice while inside, which is what her Mommy always said.
She scrambled onto the chair and then reached for the object that caught her fancy. It was a photo of a child. It was Christmas, as there were scraps of wrapping paper about the boy, but he did not pay any attention of brand new toys around him, instead, it was all focused on the guitar in hand.
"Little girls must not touch things that are not theirs," Wesley said as he lifted the frame out of Tara's hands.
"Whose that?" she asked innocently.
"It's no one, no one at all," Wesley said as he opened a draw and slid it in, locking it after the drawer was fully closed.