Chapter 4
Willow had called Buffy but from the sounds of it, there was big bad brewing evil in Sunnydale. Made her feel silly to even ask about the ghosts, but Buffy had said she'd ask Giles. In the end, Willow had told Buffy to not even worry about it. There was no point in taking the slayer away from whatever the Mayor was cooking up to do a little ghost busting. She looked down at the business card that Angel had left in the book after she had gone all bloodthirsty and creepy on him in Sunnydale. It wasn't that she didn't trust Angel, but it was herself that brought on doubt.
A simple business card made of a cheap plain paper with an obvious typo, it read "Angel Investigations - Helling the Hopeless."
Willow sighed and thought, well, if there was anyone who was 'helling and hopeless' at the moment, it was you, Rosenberg. She picked the phone back up off the cradle and dialed the number.
"Angel Investigations - Hoping the Helpless." A man with a Irish accent said. "Er, I meant, Helping the hopeless. Are you hopeless, by any chance?"
"Maybe. I think. I have a ghost." Willow said, uncertain, wondering who this was. "Is Angel in? I better just talk to him. I'm Willow Rosenberg by the way."
The man on the phone whistled low. "Oh, wow, you're Willow. The Willow." Then the phone immediately went to a hold message where the same voice said, "Angel is busy fighting the good fight, but will get to you soon. His rates are reasonable and he works late. Real late." The message went off, but no one answered for a moment and she could hear Angel and the other guy whispering to each other. "I didn't mean to call her hopeless, boss."
"Hello, Willow," Angel said, "you have a ghost, you're saying?"
"It went Poltergeist all over my parents last night and Buffy can't help. I've tried a cleansing and it didn't work. The other rituals I've seen seem to need more than one person. I wouldn't have called unless it was of the weird." Willow didn't mean to babble but the way she had acted before had made her embarrassed. She had practically drooled. "Could you come tonight while my parents are still freaked and not in denial yet?"
"I understand. Its no problem. Just give me your address and I'll come over with my assistant, Doyle."
"Okay. Oh, I'm going to fib and tell my parents that you're a paranormal investigator. Just play along with that." Willow rattled off her address before adding, "Its just past Horowitz Pizza."
"I'll be there thirty minutes after sun set." Angel paused before saying, "Thank you for trusting me."
"Thank you, Angel." Willow said before hanging up. Now, it was the hard part - convincing her parents. Back in Sunnydale, it had been so easy to go behind their backs and do a little bit of witchcraft. It almost made her nostalgic. There had been something to say for benign neglect and its benefits to a teenage demon hunter's extracurricular activities.
000
The white walls, with the oversized watercolor landscapes set an exact a half feet apart, seemed to be looming over her as she went up against her father's disapproval. They had been going around in circles one too many times. Ira Rosenberg was beyond being a Scully about this. Willow really wished that she had found a way to lure them both out of the house so the cleansing could be done in peace. The trouble was that they seemed to make sure that one was always around with her in the house. She figured that they could go through the ritual quick as possible before her dad kicked Angel out. Though, there was a part of her that wanted them to get a taste of her world. What they had left her to face by herself in Sunnydale.
Ira crossed his arms and shook his head. He turned off the television as he stood up from the recliner, giving up the last pretense of normalcy. "No, I'm not approving this."
Willow sighed as she leaned back on the couch and tried to pitch her idea again with one eye on the clock. Angel should be here soon. "I wasn't the only one who saw the coffee pot move, dad. And you two were attacked in your bedroom. Are we just going to act like it never happened?" She used to joke with the other scoobies about how the people of Sunnydale needed to be smacked in the face by the supernatural, but now she was wondering if even that would work.
They had been in their apartment for only a week and already they already had three ghostly experiences. It had only gotten worse as they had unpacked and her cleansing had been as useful as water against spray paint. Her parents had been attacked and they still didn't want to face the truth. Her father had been vocal about opposing the idea of a paranormal investigator but her mother hadn't said much.
"Ira, maybe she is right. It couldn't hurt." Sheila said voice mild, staring intently at her daughter, wheels turning in her mind. She always stared at Willow with an expression that held a thousand questions.
"Also, I kinda told them to come tonight." Willow shifted in her seat, still unnerved by her mother's scrutiny, while she bit her lip. "Soonish than later."
"What?" Her father bellowed, his hands seemed to be yelling along as he gestured upward with a sigh.
"They should be here in a few minutes, actually." Willow shrugged, smile taut, out of patience. "I knew you guys would be like this so I just hired them. I'll pay for it."
Ira shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose under his glasses. "Willow, you can't just do that. Money isn't the point. Its-" He was interrupted by a knock on the door. "We'll talk about this later."
Sheila went to answer it. She smoothed down her casual white blouse before opening the door, revealing Angel, and a shorter man with dark hair and a old sports coat on, in the outside hallway.
They didn't look like professional anything.
Angel did his best impression of a smile. "Hello, I'm Angel and this is my associate Doyle. We're the paranormal investigators." He wore his usual black on black yet there was more ease to his speech then when he had lurked around monosyllabic after Buffy in the library . Los Angeles must have been good for him.
"Oh, brother." Ira crossed his arms and rolled his eyes.
"Come in. Excuse my husband the skeptic." Sheila smiled. Her turquoise bracelets clinked together as she gestured them inside. "I'm more intrigued by your line of work. My daughter believes we have a ghost, how do you deal with such a thing?"
Angel stepped inside. "Well, we first try to determine if it was something caused by faulty wiring, weather, anything mundane."
"Like rats." Doyle added, Irish accent marking him as the one that Willow had talked to on the phone. He had a bag over one shoulder and a EMF reader in his hand. "They can make a lot of noise in the walls and the kind of damage to your wiring that can make your wallet cry."
Angel shot him a look.
Doyle shrugged. "My father was an electrician."
"What do you do when you decide we have a 'ghost problem?'" Ira snorted and made air quotes.
"It depends on the case. Some spirits just need to be pushed to the light and some need to be banished usually." Angel looked to Doyle who stood staring at the Rosenbergs. "Sometimes it is just a misunderstanding. We make sure exactly what it is that we are dealing with before we make a decision."
"Maybe you should use the EMF in the kitchen," Willow said, pointing to the small gadget that Doyle held.
"Eh, this contraption?" Doyle turned it on and walked towards the kitchen. "The buddy I got it off of swears by it."
"Got it off a buddy?" Ira arched an eyebrow.
"Doyle, kitchen." Angel frowned, brow furrowed, before regaining his professional air. "I heard some of the story from Willow but I would like to hear about your experience in your bedroom. As I understand, you were tossed from your beds."
Sheila nodded. "I was dead asleep before I tumbled to the floor then I hear Ira fall. I tried to go towards him but something stopped me."
Willow followed Doyle to the kitchen while Angel talked to her parents. The EMF reader reacted once they got into the small kitchen. The white tiled counters and green cabinets seemed innocent enough but something lurked within.
"Not a good reading for the heart of the home." Doyle mumbled as he got a crumpled up piece of paper from his pocket and read it. "Yeah, not a good sign according to the directions either."
"You really did get that off a buddy," Willow said with a smile.
"Angel Investigations doesn't even have a microwave yet let alone fancy ghost finders." Doyle put the paper back into his pocket before swinging the EMF around in wide circles experimentally.
"Could I pay you with a microwave?" Willow joked.
The EMF reader went off the charts as the little light turned red when Doyle pointed it towards the hallway and the bedrooms. "I got something in the rooms." He yelled out to Angel before walking towards the hall.
Willow looked behind her and saw the spice rack shake on the counter. Rosemary and oregano rattled against each other. She poked Doyle in the shoulder and pointed to it. "That's not good."
Doyle walked over to Angel and whispered in his ear.
"Do you mind if we set up a cleansing right away? In one of the bedrooms?" Angel asked, eyes darting from Doyle to Sheila and Ira.
"Mine has more space." Willow nodded. "You can do it there."
"That would be fine." Sheila raised her glasses from the chain around her neck to her eyes, "I'd like to observe."
"No. I'm not comfortable with this." Ira puffed up his mustache as he crossed his arms.
"Ira, lets just do it while they are here." Sheila waved them on. "Willow, show them your room and I will be there in a moment."
Willow led Angel though the white-walled hallway past the master bedroom and the office to her room at the end. She had her room set up simply with little clutter and large bright pieces of fabric pinned on the white walls in warm colors. The wood floor had a single circular rug and Willow lifted it up to reveal a pentagram made with black electrical tape. "Will you need a circle?" She dropped the rug down.
Angel shook his head. "No, it shouldn't come to that."
Doyle raised his hand as he looked at the EMF reader go off with all its lights blinking red. "Could I stand in it?"
"Didn't you say you had an experience in here?" Angel asked, looking around, before taking the bag from Doyle and putting it on her desk. He pulled out a book from the bag.
"Yes, the first time that I experienced anything, I was alone in here trying to preform a routine cleansing on the apartment." Willow pointed to the bed. "The blanket was thrown on me but I left the room before anything else happened." She shivered as the room got colder. "I've never experienced anything like what I felt when I did the cleansing... it felt-"
"Like it was waiting for you?" Doyle nodded. "Sounds like a poltergeist to me."
"They feed on the energy of teenagers and a magical one would draw it in." Angel's gaze drew away from hers. While to the average layman, he would appear to be solemn-looking man, there seemed to be less of a hunch to his shoulder's in Los Angeles. He didn't seem comfortable with her but he was practically Joe Sociable for him. She wondered how long that his agency had been open.
"Did I miss anything?" Her mom asked when she walked in.
Doyle shook his head. "No, ma'am, we're still assessing the situation."
A book slid out of its place on a bookshelf to fly to the floor.
"We've decided that we should begin." Angel pulled a lighter out of his pocket while Doyle set the reader on Willow's desk and started to pull out magical supplies.
Willow could recognize the bile and sage but her mother drew her attention away from the men. She began to feel tense as the men started to work. They had already agreed that she wouldn't participate given that her parents didn't know how much of a Nancy Drew of the weird that she had grown into. She found herself doing better at civilian act as a cold feeling washed over her like waves lapping against an iceberg. Her spine froze up as the emotions seemed to build in her throat.
It was here.
Her mother turned pale and she said, "Willow, maybe you should leave."
"Mom, I can handle this." Willow put her hand up. Fear suddenly gone in the rush of annoyance. The patronizing tones in her mother's absentminded professor voice was too much for Willow to brush off. Out of the two of them, only Willow had gone into battle with the slayer. Her mother had been out of town for the apocalypses.
"Can't you listen to me for once and just let me protect you?" She crossed her arms, doing her best impression of a parent, as she pleaded.
Willow felt like she couldn't stop the words that came out of her mouth next. "Oh, like you've done a bang up job with that." It was the truth, but it felt like ashes on her tongue. The real truth was that her parents couldn't save her from the demonic dangers in the world.
The fabric on the walls began to wave and her pencil cup shook on her desk. Tension increased, as if alive and thriving, in the room.
Angel and Doyle traded glances but tried to ignore the women as they performed their tasks.
Doyle mixed together the ingredients while he sat on the ground, shredding sage and pouring sulfur into a bowl before topping it with dried bile and setting it aflame with Angel's lighter.
Angel held a old leather book in his hand and chanted in Latin.
The energy in the room seemed to crackle as the papers on Willow's desk swept onto the floor and her pencil cup fell over.
Her mother looked like she had been slapped. "Now that isn't fair, Willow. You should know that I would have given my life to have stopped you from being harmed."
"But, you weren't there that night or the night before or even for that whole month!" Willow shook her head, headache growing in the center of her forehead, and she could barely hear Angel's chanting over the sound of her own pain. "I didn't want you to be there because you would have been killed. I wanted you to be around for my science fairs and when I had a crush on a boy and wanted advice about it or when someone bullied me. I just wanted someone there at dinner time so I wasn't eating alone."
The papers and pencils flew up in the air along with the paperbacks on Willow's shelf to circle the group. Fabric flapped as if in a windstorm on the walls yet there wasn't a single breeze in the room. The furniture shook.
"This is getting dicey, Angel." Doyle said as he huddled over the burning herbs to prevent the flames from sputtering out.
Angel shrugged, his chant unbroken, as he turned another page.
"You're right." Her mother began to cry which Willow had never seen before. Mascara dripped and her face turned blotchy. A book hit her side but she didn't even flinch. "I never hated myself more than when you were gone. I woke up crying every day and I beat myself up every night, but I can't change the past. No matter how much I want to."
"Then change the future!" Willow threw her hands up. "Stop acting like we're a happy family that plays boardgames. We have all these issues and you guys act like I'm the way I am only because I was kidnapped. I was hurting way before I was abducted."
"I'm sorry, baby." Sheila's voice was ragged from her sobs.
"Sorry? Why? Because Katie Couric called you out on your parenting and your book fell from the best seller's list? You guys act like moving will make everything better." Willow fell to her knees and cried. "It doesn't feel like a new start, just a new set of lies."
The fabric on the walls flapped harder in the spectral wind.
Her mother followed her to the ground. "We moved because we wanted to protect you. Willow, I love you more than anyone or any thing in this world. I'm so sorry that you were harmed and if I could take it back, take in all that pain that you are feeling, then I would. I would a thousand times over. You must know that I love you."
Angel kept chanting as Doyle, using his coat as a wind block, kept the herbs lit .
Willow shrugged her off, trying to will the feeling of dread out of her chest.
"I should have been there and listened." Her mother pulled her into a hug. " I love you. I love you."
Willow gave into the hug and buried her eyes in her mother's shoulder. "I just wanted to feel that."
Ira burst into the door. "What are you doing in here?"
All the debris in the air dropped with thuds and crashes.
Ira's eyes grew round as he took in the chaotic scene. He took a step back.
000
His shoulders relaxed a jot as Angel felt the spirit retreat and watched the knickknacks fall to the floor. The banishment had worked but he knew that Willow and her mom were the real reason the spirit fled. After they broke down that emotional wall, the poltergeist couldn't feed off Willow's energy any longer. He and Doyle mostly just kicked it out the door. Angel didn't let himself rest, he looked to back from Willow to Ira Rosenberg.
Willow pulled away from her mother as her father captured the room's attention with his questions.
"Veritas." Angel said the final word and closed the book. Was this another successful case for Angel Investigations? Or would he get chased out by an irate father? "Nothing anymore."
Ira strode to Doyle. A vein bulged in his forehead. "Are you people doing a spell in here?"
Sheila shook her head, pulling on her glasses, as she stepped to her husband. "Ira, don't you berate them."
Doyle stumbled over his words as Ira and Sheila began to argue with him and each other. The Rosenbergs both had steely eyes and shared snapping words while Doyle looked helpless between them.
Angel didn't know how to extract his associate or if he even wanted to get in the middle of that one. Looking the Rosenbergs in the eyes before had been difficult when he had been distracted by the threat of a poltergeist, now, he didn't know how to look at them without all the guilt and shame showing through his gaze. When he had been invited it, it took all his willpower not to make his apologizes for what he had done to their only child and to their family. He only felt relief when Willow drew his attention.
Willow wiped her eyes before motioning to Angel for a private word with a shaking hand.
He nodded before walking from the room and leaving poor Doyle, who watched them in horror, to talk to her parents.
She led him to the balcony and opened the door before stepping out into the warm night air.
Angel couldn't help but notice the goosebumps still lingering on her skin. The adrenaline still made her heart race, he could hear, but she tried to stay calm. One of the few virtues he had forced on Willow had been the art of composure. Before he had kidnapped her, every emotion had lit onto her face as soon as she felt it. Now, the unobservant would hardly have known that she had just battled a poltergeist and engaged in a screaming match with her mother. Only her windswept hair showed any hint of the banishing.
"That was intense." She made a nervous giggle. "Do you think its gone?"
Angel leaned on the railing. "I believe so, but you'll have to try that cleansing again to be sure." He looked at her with his best inscrutable expression, hoping he wouldn't offend her. "Have you thought that it might have been fueled by you and your anger with your mother?"
"Loaded question." Willow nodded, gazing ahead, as she took a deep breath. "You may be right. Poltergeists do love the kind of vibes that I was giving off. I figured it was something that I had brought with me. Or my luck." She shrugged, trying to sound jovial, uneasy curve to her lips.
Angel looked down and he wished he had said something else. He should have said that less accusatory, of course there was tension in the Rosenberg house, Angel had been the catalyst. It had been harder than expected to act normal around the people who he had terrorized. Sheila and Ira didn't know it but he had been the one to uncover all the grim emotions in their household. Shattering their illusions. He hoped they didn't try to pay him to clean up his own mistakes.
She sighed looking out onto the gardened courtyard of the small apartment complex. "Thank you, by the way, for your help. Its good to know that there is someone in this city that I can call when weirdness ensues."
"You know you're always welcome to my help." Angel nodded. That was the least he could do for her.
'Oh, and Angel, I just want to say I'm sorry about what happened in the library." Willow looked down. "I shouldn't have lost-"
"Don't apologize." Angel wanted to cringe. All he could think about on the drive in the trunk after was what he had done to her. She tried to keep it under control but he could see the craving in her eyes before they had walked into Giles' office. It haunted him, that look in her eye, in the darkness of the trunk. It then drove him to pick up his charcoal pencil when he got back to the office only to fling it away in disgust at himself. "None of that was your fault."
"But-."
"No." Angel locked eyes with her. "I won't hear you say sorry for what I did to you."
The balcony door opened behind them and Ira said, "Willow, get inside."
Willow sighed and walked in with a apologetic look on her face. "Dad..."
"No, I don't care what kind of show that they put on for you two, but I refuse to have some stranger come into my home and feed my child fairy tales." Ira crossed his arms. His face was mottled by anger.
Willow walked over to her mother and gave her a hug. "I'm sorry."
Angel's awkwardness ricocheted up as he took in the domestic scene.
"Don't be." Her mother said while stroking her hair.
"I'm going to have to ask you two to leave." Ira blustered under his mustache and crossed his arms.
"I'll send the check to your office." Sheila wrapped an arm around Willow's shoulders and smiled. "I apologize for my husband. Thank you for your time, Mr. Angel, Mr. Doyle."
"You're welcome." Angel nodded. He walked to the door with Doyle who lugged the supply bag.
"Yeah, it was... something." Doyle nodded, eyes darting from Ira and Sheila as if he expected them to start yelling again, before a sour look came onto his face when he turned to Angel.
Willow broke away from her mother to escort them to the door. "Thanks again." She smiled at Angel as she shyly brushed a lock of dark hair behind her ear. .
"Anytime, Willow."
"Well, at least those charlatans got you two to make up." Ira shook his head before locking the balcony. "I'm heading to bed. Maybe you ghost busters should do the same."
Willow and her mother rolled their eyes. "Good night, guys." Willow closed the door with one last smile.
Doyle glared at him. "Thanks for sticking me with her folks, mate." He shrugged the bag higher on his shoulder before grumbling. "Next time we fight a snot demon, I'll step back and let the big hero handle it."
Angel laughed. He'd take a snot demon over Ira and Sheila Rosenberg any day. "Fair enough, Doyle."
000
Lawson tapped his fingers against the conference table as he gave Pieterzoon the side-eye. Corporate tasteful, the meeting room felt sterile and dead as the non-controversial abstracts that hung on the walls. The necro-treated glass was the best feature. He hadn't seen the daytime world in decades; it was a shame his first glimpse had to be Los Angeles. He liked it well enough back in '41 during his Christmas honeymoon before he shipped out to fight in the Battle of the Atlantic, but what an eye sore of a city it had become.
Of all the places that Lawson wanted to be in the world, Los Angeles was at the end of the list. It made sense then that he hit rock bottom there. Lawson knew he should have taken his existential crisis to a cabin in the wilderness where he could pick off hikers and been out of the range of the vampiric grapevine. Despite his good sense screaming at him, he couldn't care if some piss-ant still stinking of formaldehyde ran off and gabbed to his buddies about the crazy vamp at the bar. His reputation had been something he used to protect and maintain with the hungry only a maker-less vampire could have. Now, he could barely summon the will to care about their reindeer games. It made him seem weak in the eyes of Pieterzoon.
Lawson had started out with nothing and no one and it had taken him decades to gain a measure of respect and power. It had drove him for so long, but that spark, dim and cold, was gone. Maybe it was because he had seen into what he had been missing without a sire. If he were honest then he'd admit that he'd been listless in Toronto, bored in Detroit before that, and always restless since he emerged undead from the sea. In any case, only the hope of reigniting that fire kept him in his seat. Lawson hoped that this law firm would have the right answers or else he would light his own flames starting with Pieterzoon using lighter fluid and a ragged matchbook.
Pieterzoon seemed more like a statue than flesh in his chair next to Lawson. He gave no indication that he noticed the other vampire's impatience. More mum than usual, Pieterzoon hadn't said more than a few sentences since he can met Lawson in the lobby.
Lilah Morgan opened the door with a black folder in her hand. She had a half smile on her face. "The test results are in, Mr. Lawson. We have interesting news." She walked to the table and set the folder down in front of him before taking a seat. "All vampires have their own quirks, but I've never seen one so extreme." Locking her fingers, she met Lawson's gaze. "Your sensitivity to your sire is beyond the normal ability to sense his presence and broader emotions. You're intuitively connected to his moods and with his soul in place, it means that you're going to be as depressed as he is."
"What about the curse? Is it true that he has been re-ensouled?" Pieterzoon kept his hands on the table but they lay with a rattlesnake's casualness.
Lilah nodded and shrugged as if there was no accounting for taste. "He's gotten back into the demon killing business as well. Except now he does his heroics for a fee."
Lawson rubbed his temples and growled. He should have known. His sire had used him to save a submarine and had left him dead inside and out. Angel made him just as much of a freak as himself in another imaginative display of cosmic irony. "So, if I kill him will it stop?"
"Wolfram & Hart's official policy on Angel is that he can't be killed so I'm unable to advise that course of action. There is also the possibility that due to your sensitivity staking your sire will only worsen your condition." She tilted her head and kept eye contact, but it still felt like an act.
"Horseshit. You just want to keep Angel safe." Lawson stated. At least he hoped so. Though, with his luck, the broad was probably right.
Lilah shrugged, a red smile tugging at her lips, teasing glimpses of her jugular were revealed under the high collar of her black blouse in the dismissive move. "The Senior Partners are aware of your possible position in the Order of Aurelius which has a long history with our firm. If you decline to kill Angel, we can offer our support in your bid to power and in removing the curse from Angel."
"So, I should help you release Angelus is what you're saying. Don't try to play me, little girl. I don't know what you want Angelus for but its clear that you do. I'm a step to that." Lawson crossed his arms and scratched at the stubble on his chin. "I doubt that all you need is my mercy in exchange for this sweet deal. What do you want? Someone to distract him while you scheme your schemes? Someone to warm the seat on the Order's council until Angelus is back at the wheel?"
"Our plans for Angelus are far beyond the Order, they're apocalyptic and that is all I'm allowed to know." Lilah opened up the black folder again and separated the test results from a picture of a picturesque old Hollywood townhouse with a rock slab walkway. It had a post-it note stuck to it with the address. "If you agree to spare Angel and become a client, you can look forward to being settled into this house with every convenience that a vampire of your stature needs. You can start over again with a haunt that even Matilda would approve of."
Lawson snorted before pulling the picture towards him. "Does this place come with vampire-proof chains?"
Lilah nodded. "As well as soundproofing and discrete demonic neighbors on either side."
"Throw in a car and I guess we have a deal." He put out his hand and Lilah shook it. "I'll move in today."
"I'll have it arranged." Lilah smiled, poured a cup of blood from a carafe, and set it before him. "Go down to the garage and pick one out."
Lawson took it, stood up, and chugged it before dropping the cup on the floor. "Pieterzoon, Morgan, always a pleasure." He walked to the door.
"Apologies." Pieterzoon tried to smooth over the situation as if the human lawyer mattered. He smiled and shook Lilah's hand before pouring her a cup of tea and himself a cup of blood. "My thanks for all your work."
Lawson stepped out of the room before making his way to the elevator, planning to head to the sewers. The emptiness hadn't faded but a kernel of hope had taken to ground inside him with just enough anger to make it grow. He had a purpose and at the moment, it kept him moving his feet. It might even push him to shave. He hadn't gotten a solution but tormenting Angel from a mansion with corporate funding was better than anything he had found at the bottom of a bottle.
Maybe they were right, he thought as he pushed the elevator button to go down to the underground parking lot. Perhaps he was hasty in wanting to kill Angel right away.
That would be over too quickly.
He wanted to make Angel suffer. Sure, he'd play by the rules, learn what Pieterzoon's angle was, as he made Angel miserable in the meantime.
Lawson wouldn't be under the thumb of Wolfram & Hart forever.
000
A/N: What do you think so far? Please read and review.