Anam Cara

Part Three

By Gem

"Well, this has certainly been an...unusual evening."

Buffy smiled uncertainly at her father, trying to decide if there was anger beneath his carefully chosen words.

"Things didn't go exactly according to plan," she hedged, nervously twisting a lock of hair between her fingers.  "I know we were going to go over to Mom's and talk after dinner, but I'm just so wiped from all my packing.  I really think," she glanced up at Angel as he manipulated the key in the door, "that is we really think it would be better to have Mom come over here tomorrow for brunch.  We can talk then."

"Talk about what is what I'd like to know," her father grumbled, waving her into the apartment before him.  "None of you will tell me.  I know your mother doesn't like the idea of you two moving in together, but since she knows I'm behind it...or at least not against it," he amended in the interests of honesty, "I can't see how she could believe a conference is going to help.  There has to be more to it than that, but what?"

"Hank, there are a lot of things we need to discuss," Angel said slowly, "but none of it needs to be said tonight."  He tossed the keys on the coffee table.  "Buffy is right; we need to get some sleep.  It will all seem clearer in the morning."

"Including why you two were so panic-stricken at the idea of me staying at a hotel?" Hank asked dryly.  "And yet you were only too anxious to tell your sister to get a room.  Are you afraid we'd get the same one?"

"No, of course not," Angel lied.  "You're an adult, she's an adult...it's really none of our business what you do together."

"And we so do not want to know, either," Buffy hastily added.  "Besides, that was a nice hotel that we checked her into.  The thing with her staying here is..." she glanced quickly at Angel for direction, but he seemed equally stumped for a good excuse.  "Umm, well, Dru is kind of a bad houseguest.  I know you wouldn't think it to look at her, but she honestly eats everything in sight, and she leaves the place a mess and we..."

"Don't want to deal with it anymore," Angel finished firmly.  "We've had enough."

"Oh yeah," Buffy said with feeling.  "And once you invite, I mean let, her in, you're kind of stuck with her."

As they spoke, Buffy was slowly herding her father towards the guestroom, Angel following close behind.

"I had no idea there was this kind of animosity between you two."  Hank's brow wrinkled with concern.  "From the way she talked, I thought you were a very close family."

Angel looked away as the past came creeping over the borders of his mind.  "We were," he admitted softly, "once upon a time.  A very long time ago."

Buffy anxiously stroked his arm, trying to recall him to the present and away from the painful shroud of the past.  "Dad, can we just do this in the a.m.?"  She gestured to the open bedroom door behind Hank.  "It's been a really long day, and you know I just finished finals, and you guys have been playing moving men the past few days and...we're all tired."

Hank hovered indecisively in the doorway to the guestroom.  "I guess we can pick things up then," he gave in grudgingly.  "But I would like some answers, some good answers for all this strange behavior tonight, young lady.  So start thinking them up tonight." 

Hank backed quickly into his room and closed the door, trying not to imagine what else his daughter would be spending the night doing. Sometimes he envied the fathers of old, who could marry their daughters off before having to worry about their futures, or their virtue.  It wasn't easy being a modern, liberal father...unless of course your only daughter was a nun.

* * * * *

Buffy firmly closed their bedroom door and leaned against it, effectively barring Angel's escape.  Not that she thought he had the energy to go over the wall; he looked drained, and suddenly much older. 

She had grown used to his smiles in the past few months, familiar with his quiet chuckle; she had almost reached the point where she accepted them as the norm.  Earlier tonight, when they were intertwined on the dance floor, she had basked in the warmth of his contentment, despite all the chaos that surrounded them.

But the Angel before her now was the man she remembered from the old days, when guilt and remorse threatened to overwhelm even his love for her. 

He frightened her.  And if there was one emotion a Slayer refused to accept, it was fear.

"Okay Angel, it's share-time," she said briskly, trying to disguise the quaver in her voice. 

"I thought it was bedtime."  He tried to raise the ghost of a smile, and Buffy wanted to weep for the effort she could see behind it.

"Later.  Something Dru said has you freaked, or maybe it's just that she was here to say it in person; I don't know.  So tell me."   She crossed her arms over her chest and prepared for the blow.

Angel wandered restlessly around the room, removing his watch and slowly slipping off his jacket as he tried to compose an answer.  It was never easy for him to put his feelings into words, and now he must try to boil down two and a half centuries of emotional dysfunction into things as simple as names and dates. 

"It's partly that she's here, I guess, and partly why she's here."  He paused in his ramblings long enough to capture Buffy's eyes with his own.  "She's here for your father, Buffy."

"Well duh."  Buffy snorted; this was not news to her.  "It's obvious she's latched on to him as part of some plan to..." her voice trailed off as she saw Angel slowly, sadly, shaking his head.

"He is the plan," he corrected her gently.  "Him for me.  Your father...for Dru's."

She drew a deep breath and tried to control her suddenly racing heartbeat.  "Okay, so now we know why she's here.  We'll call the others, we'll make plans, we'll do what we always do...which is win.  We will win, Angel; don't worry." 

She felt strange being the one to do the reassuring, especially about her father's safety, but Angel seemed to be devastated by the danger Dru presented.

Angel was on the move again, prowling around the bedroom like an animal inspecting the limits of his cage.  "We have to win, Buffy; that's not the issue.  It's just that...this is my fault. I made her what she is."

"No, he did."  Buffy swiftly crossed the room and grabbed Angel's arm, forcing him to stop pacing.  "We've been over this, Angel; just because you and your evil Siamese twin are joined at the memory engram does not make you responsible for what he did.  He killed Dru, not you."

"But I trained her, Buffy."  His voice was barely a whisper, yet the anguish rang through loud and clear.  "I guided her, and I praised her, and I encouraged her all the way, no matter what."  He paused, trying to find the words to convey the true measure of his shame.  "I was exactly the kind of 'father' that I always wanted to have, and this is the result."

"It wasn't you," she insisted. "As much as I love what you can do with this body, the truth is it's just a shell that the demon used to drive around town."  She clung to his arm with one hand and moved the other to his chest, flattening her palm to encompass the breadth of his heart.  "This is you, the real you."

He shook his head, stubbornly resisting the comfort she offered so freely.  "It's not that simple.  I know the demon is the one that killed her and her family.  I know that the demon is the one that turned her, and I'll even grant you that the demon is the one who taught her how to kill.  But he, it, whatever, was using my memories of my father, the remnants of my feelings about him.  He did it because I wanted it."  He wrenched free of her grasp and spun away; he couldn't face her right now. 

Suddenly old conversations began shuffling through Buffy's brain, words and phrases coming back with painful clarity and significance.

"You mean the demon used the problems you had with your dad against you, I mean her."

He dropped heavily on to the edge of the bed, still not looking at her.  "Pretty much," he agreed bleakly.  "All my life, when I was alive that is, I wanted to prove myself to my father.  First it was to be the son he wanted me to be, and then, when I finally realized that was never going to happen, I wanted to do him one better."

Buffy cautiously sat down next to him on the bed, but made no further moves to touch him just yet.  She wasn't sure he would accept her comfort, and to touch him and have him push her away...that she could not bear.

"Go on, Angel," she said steadily.  "I can take anything but lies."

"I wanted to be exactly the kind of son he thought I was, and then some.  It felt like the only control that I had over my own life...until Darla changed me." He laughed harshly and met her eyes at last.   "Suddenly I had the power."

"And you used it." 

This, at least, was familiar territory for her.  She knew what had happened to Angel's family and she accepted it.  There was nothing else to do but accept; it was done.

"I used it against him, and the rest of my family, but it still wasn't enough to show him up."  Angel paused for a moment.  "And then I found Dru."

"I don't understand." 

Buffy could hear how small her voice had become against the vastness of history and emotions he was spreading out before her.  She wanted to be there for Angel, as he had always been there for her, but she was suddenly beginning to realize the enormity of her task.

Angel looked away again, but before he did he reached out and clutched Buffy's hand.  The further into the ocean of his past he wandered, the more desperate his need for a lifeline. 

For Angel, that would always be Buffy.

"I wasn't exactly Mr. Introspective when I was human," he began, "and losing my soul didn't really improve the situation.  You know that I destroyed Dru's family, and her sanity, before she was turned.  At the time, I thought I was just doing it for...fun."  His hand tightened reflexively around Buffy's, and to his overwhelming gratitude, she did not try to remove it. 

"But I've had a lot of time to look back on it since then.  I needed to reduce her to nothing; take away everything that defined her so that she was completely mine to mold."  He drew a deep breath.  "I made her into the equivalent of an infant, so I could be the one to 'raise' her."

"Angel..."

"She calls me Daddy," he continued, desperate to complete his confession, "because that was what I made myself, so that I could prove I could do it better than my father."

"Oh wow." 

Buffy could think of little else to say.  He needed her reassurance; he needed it desperately, but what was the right thing to say?  Was she supposed to belittle his efforts to make him think he wasn't responsible, or tell him he did a great job...according to vampire lights?

Angel quirked his old sad half-smile at her.  "Exactly.  So, now that Dr. Frankenstein has done such a bang-up job of creating a monster, what's the encore?"

Buffy was shaken from her self-absorption by the bitter tone in his voice.  No matter what she said, it had to be better than silence; a silence he would interpret as condemnation. 

"I'm thinking that Kenneth Branagh killed the monster," she answered slowly.  She squeezed his hand as she rested her head against his shoulder.  "But can we skip the part where we sail away and get stuck on an iceberg?  It looked way too cold for this California girl."

"This isn't a joke, Buffy."

"I didn't say it was.  But we can't change what happened, and the why's don't matter anymore."  Buffy tried to keep her voice calm and level; she needed to talk Angel down.  "The past is beyond your control, honey, superpowers or not.  But I am not letting Dru exchange you for my dad like a wrong-sized sweater.  And I am not losing you to her, or to the scenic guilt trip she's trying to book you on.  I won't; end of discussion." 

Angel heard the determination in her tone, and the fear that lay beneath.  Too many times he had let his guilt come between them; no wonder Buffy dreaded Dru's effect on him more than the danger to her father.  Vampires she could face without a qualm, but the past had claws and teeth made all the more deadly for being invisible.

* * * * *

Hank paused outside of his daughter's bedroom door, his hand poised to knock.  He could hear voices inside, so he knew they were up, but he was a little leery of disturbing them.  Knowing that they were living together, even helping them to move in, was not the same as being confronted with the reality of it as a houseguest.  He could be walking into an intimate situation, and for all that he had come to like Angel, he wasn't sure if the phrase "Get your hands off my daughter!" wasn't a matter of paternal hard-wiring he would be helpless to suppress.

This was ridiculous; he knew that.  He was a grown man, afraid to confront his grown daughter for fear of having to face her being altogether too grown-up.  She has a right to live her own life, Hank reminded himself sternly.  And he had the right to sleep on a bed with little amenities such as a pillow and blankets, things the guestroom seemed to be sorely lacking.  He had a perfectly reasonable excuse; no, make that reason, to disturb them.

Still his hand hovered millimeters away from the door.

* * * * *

Buffy reluctantly lifted her head from Angel's shoulder.  "Did you hear something?"  Her eyes narrowed as she focused on the closed bedroom door.  "Something in the hallway, maybe?"

Angel had been too preoccupied to hear anything but his own thoughts, but he respected Buffy's keen senses.  "Could be your dad."  He frowned.  "Did we make up the guestroom yet?"

Buffy puzzled for a moment, debating the probabilities and whether they merited further investigation.  Investigation that would take her away, albeit briefly, from Angel's side. 

"Nah, he'd just knock if he needed something," she finally decided.  "And anyone else we know wouldn't bother to knock...so I must have been imagining things."  She laid her head back down on Angel's shoulder, and relaxed into the arm he slid around her waist.  "Too much coffee at the restaurant," was her final diagnosis.

"We didn't have to stay there so late," he reminded her gently.  "The idea was to go back to your mom's and play Truth and Consequences."

"Don't you mean Truth or...no, you probably don't."  She sighed, turning her head to press a kiss on the side of his neck.  "I know we should have gotten it over with, but there was no way to explain you and me without explaining your so-called sister too, and I don't think either of us was up for explaining her tonight.  For right now we're good; Dad is safe with us, and Mom is not about to invite his new girlfriend in for a late night cup of cocoa."  She paused.  "I think."

"So we wait for morning then."

"Hey, maybe we can ask Giles to bring some of his books for Dad tomorrow.  You know, for a little Slayer 101.  I'm sure once he sees this isn't just some trendy new Southern Cal invention, he'll be on board." 

Angel didn't say anything at first, but she could sense his skepticism.  She really couldn't blame him.  Even to a former cheerleader, that sounded a little too optimistic.

"I think we'd better tell your dad without an audience," Angel finally replied.   "It won't be easy for him to face all that he's been denying." He slipped his other arm around Buffy's waist, holding her firmly against his side as proof against his past and hers.  "Trust me on that one."

"I trust you on everything." 

The simple words shot deep into his soul.  They had been uttered not with coy charm or seductiveness, but only a devastating sincerity.  He looked into her eyes, and saw the best part of himself reflected back. 

"You make up for it all, you know," he said softly, his lips edging ever closer to hers.  "Everything that's been, and everything that's to come; you make it all worthwhile."

A slow smile spread across her face, not only at his words, but also at the lightening tone of his voice.  He had come close to the abyss tonight, yet together they had talked it through until the danger had passed.  There was still more talking yet to be done, but they were finally learning to make the words work for them instead of against them.

She slid her hand across his chest and around to his back, flattening herself against him as she slid onto his lap. 

"No, we make it worthwhile," she corrected him, proving her point with her lips until he could have no further doubts on the subject.

Suddenly Angel broke the kiss and stood up, still cradling Buffy in his arms.  "Dance with me," he whispered as he gently set her on her feet.

"What?" 

She couldn't help the low giggle that escaped her lips, any more than she could help the way her body melted against his.  Both were inevitable: like the tides, and the triumph of true love.

"Dance with me," Angel repeated, twining a length of her long blonde hair around his finger as he spoke.  "Tonight, when we were on that dance floor, you made everything else in the world disappear.  All I knew was the feeling of you in my arms."

She rose quickly to her toes, pressing a kiss on the side of his chin.  "But there isn't any music," she murmured against his cool skin.

He shook his head, still smiling tenderly at her.  "Your heartbeat is all the music I'll ever need."

Without further protest, she wound her arms around his waist and rested her head on his chest.  His hands glided up and down her back, starting small fires under her skin with his cool fingertips.  Slowly they moved as one around the bedroom, guided by a rhythm only lovers can hear.

* * * * *

Hank lowered his hand.  The voices had grown softer and less distinct, and then he heard a throaty feminine laugh. 

He quickly backed up. 

The man in Hank knew what that sound meant, and it made the parent in him want to run away whimpering.  No father should ever have to hear that laugh coming from his own daughter.

Suddenly blankets and a pillow seemed like a very bad idea.  They were things that went on a bed, and the last thing Hank Summers wanted to think about right now was a bed.

He couldn't go to sleep now; that much was obvious.  Maybe he could use the computer he'd noticed in the guest room.  He'd received e-mails from Buffy, so he knew that they were online.  That was it: he'd check his mail and then do a little harmless surfing to pass the time.  Nothing like the Internet to keep his mind off of sex.

A moment later, as his brain fully absorbed the puddle at the end of his stream of consciousness, the whimper got the best of him.

* * * * *

"Angel, did you hear..."

"No."

She sighed blissfully.  "Me either."

* * * * *

A single floor lamp glowed in the corner, softly illuminating the sofa, and casting the rest of the living room into the shadows. The only sound came from the page of a book being repeatedly turned, and then turned back again, as the reader attempted to make sense of a fictional world with no vampires, or demons, or Slayers.

Suddenly a knock disturbed the fragile serenity of the quiet living room.

Joyce put down her book and hurried to the door.  Few people stopped by the Summers house so late without good reason.  Few people in Sunnydale were actually out so late without good reason...or a death wish. 

She pulled open the door, fully expecting it to be Giles in search of Buffy, or perhaps

Hank looking for a private conference.  Instead, she beheld literally the last person she was expecting to see that night.

"Drusilla, how on earth did you get here?"  Joyce poked her head outside, searching for Hank's car, or Angel's.  "I don't see a cab.  Goodness, did you walk here from the hotel?"

"It was such a lovely night.  The stars were calling to me." 

Too late Dru realized her error, but a quick glance reassured her that Joyce didn't know she'd meant that literally.  Thank the stars for feeble human hearing, she thought, and then giggled.

Joyce frowned.  "You really shouldn't be out by yourself, and on foot too; it's not safe."

"I know, and it's so terribly late as well.  I shouldn't have bothered you." Drusilla said in a rush.  She dropped her chin towards her chest, peering up at Joyce through her lashes.  "It's terribly rude, I know, but I just had to apologize.  I shouldn't have intruded on your lovely dinner tonight."

At the moment the only apology Joyce thought due from her unannounced guest was for this late night visit itself.  She was curious, though, to know what transgression the girl thought required forgiveness.  She was even more curious about the girl herself; who she really was, what her true relationship to Angel was, and exactly what she thought was awaiting her in a relationship with Hank Summers.

"You don't need to apologize for that; Hank invited you.  If anything we should be apologizing to you for it dragging you into a family quarrel."  Joyce's eyes narrowed slightly as she attempted some subtle prying.  "Of course since Angel is your family, I guess maybe it was your business too, wasn't it?"

Drusilla fought the urge to whine in frustration; this game was taking too long, and it just wasn't as much fun anymore.  She longed to snatch the nasty Slayer's nosy mother by her brittle blonde hair and sink her teeth right into that little freckle winking at her from the juncture of Joyce's shoulder and neck.  Now that would be fun.  One quick taste and then...and then all her plans would be ruined.  The demon within her abruptly recalled her ultimate goal, and enforced a suitably docile code of behavior.

"I didn't mean to cause any trouble." 

"You didn't, not at all." 

A sudden breeze rattled the leaves on the trees, and Joyce noticed Drusilla shiver in the aftermath.  Putting aside any doubts about a girl who apparently found both Hank and Angel irresistible, the mother in Joyce responded to a child in need.  She reached out to Drusilla as she said, "Please, won't you come in so we can talk?"

"What was that?"  Drusilla pivoted slightly on her heel, stepping away just before Joyce's hand touched her cold flesh.  "Oh, silly me, just a car door."  She turned back to Joyce with a tremulous smile.  "I really can't stay, but thank you so much for the invitation."

"Are you sure?  I was only reading a book; you won't be disturbing me at all.  And we can get to know each other a little better." 

"I really can't."  The regret in Drusilla's voice was almost palpable.  Her last decent meal had been simply hours ago.  "A friend of mine lent me his portable computer, and I must send him something, an e-mail I think they call it, to show that I'm trying to learn to use it."  She shook her head and laughed delicately.  "It will take me half the night."

"You must let me drive you back to the hotel at least," Joyce said firmly.  "You can't walk back; I won't allow it."

"If...if you insist."  You silly old cow, Drusilla continued silently. 

* * * * *

The morning sun shone weakly through the slightly streaky windowpanes, highlighting the dust motes in the air, and the scowl on Cordelia's face.

"Yes, yes, a thousand times yes," she snapped into the phone. 

"Words I've always dreamed of hearing you say to me."  Doyle couldn't resist teasing his ladylove as he walked into Cordelia's apartment, and the tail end of her conversation.

Cordelia glared at him over her shoulder, but continued speaking to her mysterious caller.  "I said I will, and I will, as long as you do what you promised.  Now go away.  I mean, stop calling."  She banged the phone down onto the desk without waiting for a reply.

"Are we getting obscene phone calls at," Doyle glanced at the clock on the mantel, "eight a.m. now?  A deviant who gets out of bed that early on a Sunday morning can't be all bad."  He grinned as he tossed Cordelia a bag of crullers and settled himself on the sofa, balancing the cardboard tray of coffee cups on a pile of magazines on the glass table in front of him.

"Yeah, and if it was that kind of creep, don't you think bed is exactly where he would be calling from?  That was Angel.  Again." 

She sat down next to Doyle, though not as close as he would have liked.  Deviants weren't the only ones who could get ideas at eight a.m. 

"So you told him about the package."  Doyle nodded his head at the small parcel on Cordelia's desk.  "Must have been some relief to him." 

He fiddled with the plastic lid on his coffee, at first attributing Cordelia's silence to a mouthful of cruller.  When he raised his head and discovered the bag still unopened on the cushion between them, he looked more closely at his goddess.

She was wincing slightly, presumably not at his choice of breakfast food.  Doyle wasn't quite sure whether to mark the expression as guilt or trepidation, but neither was a good sign.

"You did tell him, didn't you?"

She sighed gustily.  Better to get the shouting over with now, so she could enjoy her breakfast before the coffee got cold.

"No, I didn't tell him," she held up her hand to silence Doyle before he could protest, "because you and I both know he would have been brooding about it all day, and then as soon as it got dark he would have been driving back to get it."

"And that would be wrong because?"

"He can't leave Sunnydale right now.  I don't know exactly what's going on, because he couldn't tell me since Hank was sleeping in the next room, but..."

"Hank?" Doyle interrupted her.  "Buffy's dad was sleeping there?  What is he even doing in Sunnydale?"

"I don't know," she repeated carefully, a slight edge in her tone indicating Doyle should start paying closer attention.  "Angel said he'd call back later and explain, after they talked with Hank, but I don't want to wait." 

To that end, she opened the lid on her coffee and reached into the paper bag for a cruller.  Doyle seized her wrist, stopping her hand in mid-grope.

"Cordelia, me darlin', what is it that you're planning?" 

The words were soft, the tone beguiling, but his eyes meant business.  Cordelia bowed to the inevitable:  confession before crullers.

"We're going to Sunnydale ourselves, just as soon as you let me eat my breakfast."  She tugged her wrist free, abandoning half of said breakfast in the process.  "Great, now see what you made me do," she complained, waving the mangled pastry under his nose.

"Why do we need to go to Sunnydale?  So we can deliver a package Angel would have picked up himself if you hadn't lied to him? You, who gave me the grand lecture on lying, I might remind you."

She carefully placed the cruller on a napkin on her lap and met his eyes squarely for the first time that morning.  "He needs us there." 

"And did he say..."

"No he didn't say.  He couldn't say, and even if he could, he wouldn't say."  She smacked her forehead.  "Gee, thanks for making me sound like the Cat in the Hat."  Her fingers delicately explored her hairline.  "And for making me get powdered sugar in my hair."  This time it was Doyle's forehead she smacked. 

"Hey!" he yelped, more in surprise than pain.  "I'm just trying to find out what we're supposed to be rescuing the man from.  Are we talking garden-variety evil, or did the forces of darkness come up with something really clever this time?"

"Parents," she said flatly.  "In-laws, I guess would be a better word. I mean words. I mean...does the hyphen make it one word or two?"  She paused only long enough for Doyle to open his mouth before she barreled on ahead.  "No matter.  What I'm trying to say is that Buffy and Angel ended up staying there unexpectedly, and Hank showed up unexpectedly, and Joyce still doesn't like Angel...is any of this registering with you?"

"Aye.  You think Buffy's mum bushwhacked Angel, and he needs some back-up."

"He needs family."  The correction was swift and automatic, surprising even Cordelia.  "We're all he has, except Buffy of course, and right now she's what they're fighting over."

"And this wouldn't have anything at all to do with wanting to see what's in that package?"  He smirked at her, the more so when he caught the first signs of a blush creep across her cheeks.

"You and I both know what's in it, though I don't know why he's so all-fired anxious to have it right now."  She frowned at the puzzle, but then recalled herself to the subject at hand.  "Anyway, what I really want to see is audience reaction.  Especially Mommy Joycest."

"Not nice."  Doyle waggled his finger at her and tried to look stern.

"Not caring," she loftily informed him, reaching in to the bag to retrieve the remainder of her cruller.

"So the package just gives us an excuse to poke our noses in uninvited," he summarized.

"Doyle, if I have learned one thing the past few years of demon dodgeball, it's that you have to play to your strengths.  Ours is that, unlike a perfectly nice vampire we know, we don't have to be invited."

He decided to play his own trump card.  "You realize we'll have to close up shop for a few days.  No employees equals no new cases, and that means no money coming in."  He leaned back on the sofa and began to whistle, just waiting to see how long before Cordelia would cave.

Her triumphant hoot was not the reaction he was expecting.

"As if!"  She took a final bite of her cruller before she rose, and walked over to pick the phone up off of her desk.  "Watch and learn, my naive friend.  No clients may equal no money, but no employees just means you have to be creative."  

* * * * *

Angel couldn't help grinning, even after Cordelia rather abruptly ended their conversation.  He had known he risked her wrath by calling at such an hour, but a small part of him couldn't resist yanking her chain now and again.  By all rights, he could have blamed his behavior on the demon within him, but he was pretty sure it was more a matter of brotherly payback for the hair gel comments. 

As expected, Cordelia had not been any more receptive to an early morning phone call than the late night one, and she had let him know this in no uncertain terms.  Apparently the going rate for such sins was a new cappuccino maker for the office, since the current one was "defective."  Defective, of course, meaning even Cordelia couldn't stand her own coffee anymore.

Of far more concern to Angel than the expense of the call was lack of news she had for him.  No packages, big or small, arrived yesterday, and today was Sunday.  It was unlikely it would come to the office today, and every day he had to wait only added to his anxiety.  There were arrangements to be made, and he was too far away to make them, and he didn't even have the necessary ingredients for a back-up plan.

And of course, any plans were subject to change by Drusilla, anyway.

The smile slowly faded from his face as the ramifications of last night began to sink in.  He had so much already invested in the next few days, but he couldn't afford to consider any of it until Dru was taken care of, and Hank was much the wiser in the ways of the real world.  Deep inside, he still held on to a tiny hope that Hank's education would not be at the expense of Dru's existence, but if it came down to a choice, he knew without fail where his loyalties lay. 

The sudden whir of the clock ticking off another lost minute brought him back from the future and reminded him of his present obligations.  Defending Buffy's father with his life was not the extent of his responsibility; there was also breakfast to consider.

Angel padded quietly through the living room to the kitchen, careful not to make any unnecessary noise that might disturb their guest.  Before he could make any plans for the future, romantic or battle, he had to make the coffee.  He wasn't sure about Hank's early morning persona, but Hank's daughter qualified as an unexploded missile before her daily caffeine infusion. 

Everything appeared to be in good order in the kitchen when he flicked on the light; all the dishes were put away; the food, such as it was, was stacked in the pantry; the chairs were all tidily arranged around the cherry table.  The only sign of a human presence was the small square of paper trapped beneath the edge of the sugar bowl.

Angel crossed the room and picked up the note, trying to quell the feeling of dread clenching his gut.  He knew it couldn't be from Buffy; he had left her sleeping soundly in the bedroom not ten minutes ago.  That only left Hank.

He had barely opened the note before the doorbell chimed. 

* * * * *

To Be Continued