III

I spent a few hours in the club before Fred shooed me out; she wouldn't be happy letting Doyle leave until close to sunrise, so I could come back for him around then. That gave me enough time to start my work on the Summers case. Mrs. Summers' information had indicated that Spellbound was only open until eight, and it was close to eleven when I set out for it. Miss Summers, her roommate, and the Gileses would likely be asleep by the time I got there, but it couldn't hurt to scope the place out and check the surrounding area for vampires.

In daylight, I travel via the sewer and subway tunnels. At night, I take to the rooftops. I've seen Hell's Kitchen from just about every angle. I don't know that I'd call it home, but I've always felt connected to it. We're a well-matched pair, this shadowy city and I. Honest people struggle to make their livings beneath the combined weight of a greedy upper class, a corrupt government, and ruthless crime lords. Most of those honest people have more than enough to worry about without any knowledge of the demonic community living right under their noses. But for all the opposition facing them, they keep going. And if they can do it, then so can I. People like that deserve to have someone fighting for them.

One of those people was Elizabeth Anne Summers. Who, it turned out, was not sleeping peacefully in her apartment. I reached the rooftop of the building that neighbored Spellbound just in time to spot a petite young woman slipping out of one of the darkened second floor windows facing the alley and climbing down the fire escape. A strip of light from the nearest streetlamp briefly illuminated the blond curls peeking out beneath her cloche hat. It was her. Well, if Miss Summers was sneaking through dark alleys at night, then that would certainly explain how she had attracted the attention of a gang of vampires. Not that she wasn't careful. She moved through the shadows like a cat, barely making a sound. But someone other than me had definitely seen her. After she rounded the corner, I leapt down to the alley floor, just as the one pursuing her emerged from his hiding place.

Before he knew what hit him, I had him pinned to the brick wall by the throat. He didn't make a sound, but his eyes went wide, his heart hammered, and fear curled off him like tobacco smoke. "Why are you following Miss Summers?" I growled.

"I could ask you the same thing," he said. Despite the scent of fear, he managed a defiant expression. He plainly thought I was the threat, which meant he wasn't. I released him.

"You're the one her mother hired to keep tabs on her, aren't you?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said, straightening his jacket and cap. "What's it to you?"

"She hired me too. I'm a P.I. Name's Angelus."

"Then she believed me?" He scowled. "She coulda told me that."

"She said you quit working for her after you found out about the vampires."

The kid looked offended. "I didn't quit! They scared the hell out of me, sure, but I ain't about to let no sweet little dame like Miss Summers get killed by honest-to-God monsters if there's anything I can do about it." He spat on the pavement next to him. "When I gave Mrs. Summers that sketch of their faces, she said I was a lying lowlife and she wasn't paying me another red cent. Greedy old bag. Not like she couldn't afford it."

"Why'd she hire you in the first place?" I said.

He shrugged. "My paper route goes past this block, and I grew up in the same tenement as Willow—uh, as Miss Rosenberg, Miss Summers' roommate, so it wouldn't look weird if I was hanging around. Lady asked if I could keep an eye on her daughter. Wasn't gonna turn down a few extra bucks."

My eyes narrowed. "That wasn't it. You're sweet on her. That's why you took the job, and that's why you weren't scared off."

"Yeah, so?" he said, blushing in spite of the attitude.

"What's your name, kid?"

"Xander Harris, but I ain't no kid."

"Well, then, Mr. Harris, you see anything else, you let me know," I said. "But leave the actual following to me, or you'll get yourself killed."

"And how am I supposed to find you to deliver all this valuable information?"

"You won't. I'll find you." I left him standing there without another word, heading down the alley after Miss Summers. The door at the far end of the building opened as I passed it, and a slender, dark-haired woman in her early thirties emerged, her arms full of paper sacks of garbage. She was looking over her shoulder when she stepped outside, and she crashed right into me, sending the garbage tumbling to the alley floor, but I steadied her before she could go down too.

"Oh! I'm terribly sorry," she said. She had a hint of a Romanian accent.

"It's nothing." I bent down to help her put all the garbage back in the sacks, then carried them over to the dumpster for her. "Have a good night, ma'am," I said, tipping my hat to her. It was the first time we'd had a chance to get a good look at each other's faces. I guessed that this was Mrs. Giles, the Gypsy Mrs. Summers had so disapproved of when she told me about her daughter's situation. To my surprise, recognition flared in the woman's eyes, followed by fear. She retreated silently into the building, shutting the door without another word.

I stared at the closed door for a few seconds without moving. Had she merely sensed what I was? Plenty of people who had ancestral traditions in magic could identify vampires on sight. That was probably it. Surely it would be too big a coincidence for one of those Gypsies to be right here in my city, involved in my latest case. Still, I had to shake off a sense of uneasiness as I resumed my pursuit of Miss Summers.

Tracking her was harder than I would've expected. Her scent was faint; she was moving quickly. I picked up my own pace and followed the scent for three blocks. Just when it started getting a little stronger, I heard the sounds of a fight, so I broke into a run. I found Miss Summers being attacked by three vampires. Feeling profoundly grateful that I'd decided not to wait another night to scope out her place, I pulled a stake out of my coat pocket and lunged at the nearest of her attackers. He was dust before he noticed I was there, and something white dropped from where his hand had been and landed with a plop on the pavement. I moved on to the next one, but there was no next one. The other two vampires were gone.

Before I could so much as look around to see if they'd dragged Miss Summers off somewhere, something slammed into me from behind, sending me sprawling on the ground. The stake flew out of my hand and clattered away into the shadows. When I rolled over, I found myself pinned, hard, by my quarry. She was glaring at me, and her right hand was clenched around a wooden stake and poised to strike.

I struggled to comprehend what was happening. Based on the stake and what Spike had said earlier, only one thing made sense. The Slayer was my case. She must have killed her other two assailants while I was taking care of the first one. "Is there a problem, miss?" I said.

"Yeah there's a problem," said Miss Summers. "Why were you and your buddies following me? Usually I'm the one doing the hunting."

"Those weren't my buddies. You didn't see me stake one of them?"

She frowned. "I guess I should be thanking you, then. But you were following me."

"You're Elizabeth Anne Summers, correct?" I said, very cautiously reaching a hand into my coat and pulling out my P.I. license for her to see.

"Yes, that's me," she said. She still looked hostile, though it was a different flavor of hostility. I got slowly to my feet. She made no move to stop me, so under cover of retrieving my hat, I picked up the white cloth the first vampire had dropped and straightened the rest of the way up. "Who hired you? My parents or my ex?"

"Your mother," I said, slipping the cloth into my coat pocket, then dusting my hat off and putting it back on. The comment about the ex had me curious. Mrs. Summers had said her daughter had broken off an engagement. The ex had already been on my list of people to investigate if there ended up being more to this than a gang of hungry vampires. But those vampires might just be after her because she was the Slayer. "She believes your life is in danger."

"Mister, my life's been in danger every night since I was seventeen," she said, beginning to turn around as if I was no longer worth her time. "And my mother is well aware of it."

"Because you're the Slayer."

That stopped her in her tracks. She glanced back at me with narrowed eyes. "Now, what kind of P.I. can kill vampires and knows what a Slayer is?"

"The kind who doesn't bury his head in the sand when he's working cases in a city crawling with demons," I said. She seemed to accept that, so I pressed a little further. "Any idea why your mother would suddenly be concerned enough for your safety to hire me if she hasn't before?"

"Not a clue," she said. "I thought my nights would get a lot rougher when I moved to Hell's Kitchen after everything I'd heard about it, but there are actually fewer demons around here than in the Upper East Side. It's quite the life of luxury."

She had the Sunset Club and the rules I was imposing on Spike and Drusilla to thank for that. I pulled out one of my cards. "It's possible we just killed the vampires your mother was worried about, but just in case we didn't, if you notice anything strange...well, stranger than you're used to, drop by or call this number. I just got a private line installed."

She eyed me, head tilted to the side. Her gaze flicked down to my feet, then slowly moved back up to my face before she finally glanced at the card. Her body language changed very abruptly from tense to alluring, and she took a step closer. For better or worse (usually worse), most of the women I meet are very attracted to me, but I make a point of keeping my ego under enough control that I can tell the difference between a woman who wants me and a woman who wants something else and thinks I can get it for her. Miss Summers was the latter, or trying to be. "Well, Mr. Angelus, what if I told you I think you should drop the case before it gets you killed, but I'd like to give you a call if I ever feel like getting a drink? A girl can appreciate the idea of a white knight, even if she's the one better equipped to do the fighting."

"If you were to ask me that, I'd have to answer that you'll need to speak to your mother about dropping the case, not me," I said, smirking at the flash of annoyance she couldn't quite keep out of her eyes as I said it, "and I'd have to remind you that the sale and production of alcohol are currently illegal." I touched the brim of my hat while backing a few steps towards the main street. "Don't let concern for my safety stop you from making contact if anything comes up." I turned and strode away between the tall buildings before she could get in another word, my smirk broadening at the sound of her foot stamping down against the bricks.

Angel finally meets Buffy! Also Xander, who has a Brooklyn accent because I couldn't help myself. One of my favorite Buffy character traits is how adorably terrible she is at subterfuge. I figured in a noir, that would translate to her being adorably terrible at acting like a femme fatale.