Chapter Two - Phone Home

I've begged and pleaded but alas, the characters are still not mine, except for Spike. What? Oh. It appears that he's not mine either *grumbles* Oh well, at least I get to play with them :)

Gaining entrance to the house turned out to be a bit harder than they'd anticipated.

"May we use your phone, ma'am? I think we're lost," had barely left Angel's mouth when the three normal sized adults all seemed to go on alert.

"Anita, don't," came from a man with eyes a color Angel had never seen on a human, while the second man said, "Don't invite them in, Anita!"

At the same time, the woman, Anita apparently, drew a gun and aimed it in Angel and Spike's direction. Holding the gun in one hand she used the other to pull a cross from under the collar of her dark blue shirt. The two vampires each took an involuntary step back, fighting the urge to go into game-face, knowing instinctively that such a move would only exacerbate things. Anita's eyes flicked from the cross to Spike and Angel and back again, like she was waiting for the holy object to do something. After a moment she seemed satisfied enough to put up her gun but kept the cross outside of her shirt.

"Please, miss," Spike said in his best little-boy-lost voice as his baby-blues grew impossibly wide. "We won't hurt you. We really do just want to use the telephone."

They had both agreed to pretend to be the ages they appeared but Angel still fought the urge to laugh at Spike. The woman did it for him and it wasn't a nice laugh, more a disbelieving snort, but she did ease from her defensive posture.

"Forgive my skepticism," she said. "But usually, when vamps come knocking on my door, they never wanna 'just' anything. And you two can drop the cute act, I know that you're both over a century old."

"Necromancer?" Spike asked and grimaced when Anita nodded.

"I didn't think child vamps would last a century on their own?" the long-haired man asked from his place by an open drawer. Probably reaching for a weapon, Angel decided.

"They don't," he said, implying that they weren't alone now. "But we do need to use the phone. You're a necromancer, we all know that you can stop any funny business on our end with a word, not that we're gonna try anything.

"Right, Spike," it wasn't a question. The small blond was silent, watching Angel with an innocent expression on his face, his arms crossed over his small chest, hands lost in the depths of the duster's sleeves.

"Right, Spike," Angel prompted again, putting a bit of sire-growl into his voice.

Spike sighed and rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, yeah. Heard ya the first time," he grumbled, then continued under his breath. "Pillock."

Somewhat satisfied, Angel turned his attention to Anita once again. She rolled her eyes at the harmless puppy-dog look she received from the brown-eyed boy, then, against her better judgment, invited the two inside.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"What do you mean, 'you don't know who I am'?" Angel demanded into the phone, his shrill little boys' voice sounding less than threatening to whoever was on the other end. "I'm Angel! C.E.O. of the L.A. offices of Wolfram and Hart and I want to speak to Winifred Burkle, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, or Charles Gunn right now!"

"Look, kid," the irritated secretary responded. "I've been all through our records and none of those people work here or at any other branch of Wolfram and Hart, and our C.E.O.'s name is Lindsey McDonald. Now, why don't you get to bed before your parents find out you're prank-calling people halfway across the country in the middle of the night?"

With that, she hung up. Angel stared at the receiver in his tiny hand, fighting the urge to throw the thing across the room, or possibly at Spike who was seated at the kitchen table, kicking his short legs as he devoured his second piece of lasagna and smirking at his grand-sire. Angel settled for kicking the wall, a move he instantly regretted.

"Fuck!" he yelled, grabbing his bare, injured, foot with both hands and hopping around the kitchen on his good leg while Spike almost fell out of his chair for laughing so hard.

(Anita POV)

In the living room, we were discussing what to do with the two vampires, because, judging from the amount of cursing coming from the dark haired one, Angel, I didn't think that anyone was coming for them anytime soon.

"Do you think that someone kidnapped them?" Nathaniel asked.

"Maybe," I said. "But why child vamps? They're usually pretty far down in the pecking order unless they're the favorite of their Master."

Thoughts of Valentina and the reason she had been turned flashed through my mind. Was that what had happened to these two?

"Maybe someone wanted to get them away from their Master," I said. "What if they're like Valentina?"

Nathaniel shuddered and Micah looked ill.

"If they are," he said. "Then their minds have held up really well over the years. You said that the one was almost three hundred?"

I nodded. Micah looked thoughtful for a moment then raked a hand through his hair.

"I don't know what to tell you, Anita," he said at length. "If they were shifters I'd have a better clue on how to handle this but..."

"But they're not shifters," I finished. "They're vampires and there's only one person in this city to go to about vamps."

"Jean-Claude," Nathaniel said and I nodded.

"Jean-Claude."

"We need to get to the Circus."

I sighed. So much for my night off.