Chapter Six

Angel couldn't even pretend to sleep that night. He sat in the dark sanctuary of his wooden apartment that seemed to soak up all excess noise and leave the space vibrating in silence. Somehow, the absence of other sounds made room for the clamoring thoughts in his head, allowed them to leak out where he could better see and make sense of them.

It had only just struck him that he had nothing of William or Calder's in his flat. A lingering scent perhaps, and some food in the kitchen, but it would be so easy to pretend that they never existed, and so impossible for any outsider to know about the two kids whose company he had unintentionally grown to appreciate over the past several years. Had he really thought that that would keep them safely enough at bay? Hadn't he already doomed them by letting them learn to fight? A part of him thought that they still had hope, and it was a part he wasn't quite ready to let go of. If there was any way out of the spiraling path they were on, he wanted to make sure they took it.

In the deepness of the silence, the electronic beep of the phone startled Angel like a light bulb to bare, night-adjusted eyes. Cursing silently under his breath and taking a few seconds to let his body dilute the adrenaline, he lifted his left hand and tapped the broad gold ring on his middle finger twice. The holographic image of his Palm screen projected onto his actual palm, the intensity of the light automatically reduced in the darkness of the room (although the tiny light on his ring shone brightly to iluminate his face, since apparently this was a video call and not just an audio call).

"Angel," Judith said in a harried voice, her throat husky and eyes wide and bloodshot with exhaustion. Their conversation only a few hours ago seemed forgotten in her hurry to speak to him. "Angel, William is missing."

Angel frowned. "What?"

"He's missing. Calder, too. I've talked to his parents and their friends' parents. No one has seen them."

"Are you sure they're not out patrolling?"

"If they did go, without telling me, they should have been back hours ago. Will has a doctor's appointment first thing in the morning; he promised he would be home early tonight. You know he's a good kid, Angel. If his plans changed, he would have told me."

Angel glanced at the clock. 2:45am. Time had passed faster than he thought, and now he had to make a quick decision on a matter that should not be decided quickly at all. Angel tapped his fingers on this chest, watching Judith's anxious, expectant face projected on his hand.

"Where were they last?" Angel asked.

"Calder's home, as far as I know."

Preliminary inspection would be alright, he decided. Just so long as he tread carefully and caught himself if he slipped down that slope. "I'll go and check it out," Angel said. "See if I can track them."

"I'll meet you there," Judith replied.

"So…" Calder said as he and William slowly made their way back down the stairs to the bustling Hyperion lobby. Frank was back behind the counter, staring so hard at his magazine that it looked more like he was trying to disappear into it than actually read it, and jumping at the slightest noises near him. "What now?"

William shrugged. "I guess we need a place to stay," he said. "It being night and all."

"Any ideas?"

"Short of sleeping outside because we have no money, you mean?"

"Yeah. We'd never get any sleep by the road—I can hear the traffic all the way in here!"

William sighed. "I don't know, Cal… I'm tired and I have no idea what's going on, or why we're here. Who were those people in your flat, and why would they send us back to 1952 Los Angeles?"

He sat down heavily at the foot of the stairs. On the other side of the railing a fuzzy voice emitted from the speaker of the television, asking a captured man if he was now or had ever been a member of the Communist party. One of the people standing around the set commented in a husky voice that the person most certainly was a Communist, because he just had "that look." Calder sat down beside William and rested his forehead against his hands.

Calder added, "And what's gotten Angel in such a bad mood? You don't suppose the Paranoia Demon is affecting him, do you?"

William nodded. "Yeah, I bet it is." He sighed. At least, he hoped it was.

"Hey, hey, hey," a nasal voice said, and they looked up. Frank was hurrying over to them, a new piece of gum soft in his mouth. "No loitering! You delivered your message, yeah? Come on," he nodded toward the door. "Time to…whatchacallit. Skidaddle. Run along home."

Without any other apparent options, William and Calder pushed themselves up and allowed Frank to shoo them toward the door. They passed another crowd of incoming guests on their way out, which diverted Frank's attention, so no sooner were William and Calder outside than they sat back down on the steps leading up to the entrance, though as off to the side as they could manage.

"Well?" Calder said after several minutes.

William shrugged. After several more minutes, he said, "You don't think they'd give us a room if we told them we know Angel, do you?"

Calder glanced sideways at William. "Why would they?"

William shrugged again. "Angel intimidates that one guy…"

"Well, the guy sure doesn't have any spine, but if I were him, I wouldn't do it without proof from Angel himself. And I don't think he's in the mood to come downstairs…"

They fell into silence again, leaning away from the door automatically as people came and went. Calder took to watching the flow at first in an unconscious way, and then with a bit more interest.

"A lot of people go in and out of this place," Calder said softly.

"Yeah?"

Calder shrugged. "They can't be watching the door the whole time, that's all."

"You think we should go back in? And do what? Loiter until we're noticed again?"

"Or hide…" Calder glanced at William. "We could steal a key."

William stared at Calder in part incredulity and part consideration. "That's...mad. And brilliant. And wrong. My mother-"

"-isn't here," Calder interrupted. "And even if she was, she wouldn't have any better ideas, either. Way I see it, it's this or make friends at the nearest hobo camp."

William glared at Calder, though not entirely unfriendly. "Alright, I'll hear out your plan. How do we steal a key?"

Calder turned back toward the door in thought, though he couldn't see through the frosted glass. After a moment, he shrugged. "Wait until no one's behind the front desk and grab one?"

William rolled his eyes. "Right. Because it's common practice to leave the front desk unmanned."

"A diversion," Calder whirled around to face William. "There are always diversions in the holos."

"This is real life," William reminded him.

"Doesn't mean diversions don't work. Here, can we still send messages between Palms?" Calder tapped his Palm Ring twice and the projection flashed to life in his hand.

"We should," William said, watching while Calder composed a test message. "They're connected to each other, not a satellite…" Not two seconds later, William's Palm Bracelet buzzed with Calder's message. He tapped the bracelet twice and the words, god i hope this works appeared over his skin.

"Perfect," Calder said. "Okay, here's what we'll do…"

Fifteen minutes after Judith had called, Angel stood with her in the doorway to Calder's room, having been let in by a robe-clad, sleepy-eyed, yet slightly frantic Mrs. Lauchley.

"I just don't know where he might have run off to," she was saying. "He's usually a good boy. Quiet. Nice. Not a lot of trouble from him. Oh, when his father gets home..."

Angel raised an eyebrow in her direction, but he didn't say anything.

"Did you call the Gilberts?" Mrs. Lauchley asked Judith suddenly.

Judith face both lightened and fell at the realization. "No," she breathed. "I forgot. Would you…?"

Mrs. Lauchley nodded and hurried off.

"So?" Judith asked as soon as it was safe, and followed Angel into the room.

"They were definitely here," Angel replied, "but no less than ten hours ago."

"Ten hours…?" Judith repeated faintly.

Angel walked around the room, glancing at the askew desk chair and the unmade bed-not unusual considering it was Calder's room, but Angel was interested in the faint scents hovering around the objects. He suddenly glanced at the doorway. "There were others, though." He heard Judith's heart skip a beat.

"Others?"

He nodded. "Three of them. Their scent is strongest by the door, but they came in here. Not for long, though."

"The boys have several mutual friends they're often with," Judith offered. "Perhaps they went out together."

Angel frowned and shook his head. "I don't think so. The boys' scent is too weak in the rest of the flat. And I didn't sense the other people outside at all. I..." He hesitated, not wanting to alarm Judith much more than she already was. But then Angel reminded himself that her son was missing-she could hardly be much more alarmed. And if...when...it had been him, he would have wanted to know everything.

"Judith..." Angel looked at her. "They weren't human."

Angel could almost see the cold barbed wire of fear coil up from her gut around her heart; he could almost hear the heart piercing itself against the sharp barbs with every beat. He swallowed, surprised at how clearly he could remember the feeling.

"What are you saying?" Judith demanded.

Angel didn't answer. He just looked at her another moment, and when he finally glanced away, he noticed a glint under Calder's dresser. Angel strode over and bent to have a closer look. It was one of Calder's daggers. Angel turned and narrowed his eyes in the corner of the room where Calder kept his weapons chest. The lid was open. Angel stood and made his way over to it, Judith close behind, and knelt down, taking quick stock of its contents.

"Anything missing?" Judith asked anxiously.

"They took two daggers," Angel replied, holding up the one in his hand. "They knew someone was here."

The air around Judith contracted so strongly that Angel practically felt the pull of it toward her. He wanted both to reach out and comfort her, and draw away lest by his own memories he be pulled in, too. He settled for doing neither.

Judith seemed to be about to say something, but at that moment, Mrs. Lauchley returned. "The Gilberts haven't seen them since Sunday," she said, in her own fear hardly noticing Angel swiftly return the dagger and close the weapon chest as he stood up.

"I have a contact who might know something, Mrs. Lauchley," Angel said. "I'll see if she can help."

Mrs. Lauchley nodded as Angel swept out of the room, closely followed by Judith. "Just so long as you don't charge extra, the more people you bring in," she said. Judith had introduced Angel as a private investigator who happened to be a friend of the family, at which point it struck Angel as how odd it was for this to be his first meeting with Calder's mother, after eight years of knowing him.

Angel hesitated at the door and turned, trying to mask his incredulity. "He's your son, Mrs. Lauchley."

"Yes, I know that," she said. "That's why you better find him!"

Angel stared at her a second, then shook his head. "I don't charge, anyway," he muttered, and they left.

They were silent until they reached the bottom of the stairs outside, where Angel stopped.

"Cordelia is staying at the Hotel Callaghan, room 328," he said. "She won't mind if you wake her up now."

"Excuse me?" Judith said, frowning at Angel and circling to face him. "You're not coming?"

Angel's eyes fell to the ground as he shifted his weight. "This is what Cordy's here to do," he said. "And you know why I can't be a part of that." He glanced up. "You're in good hands with Cordy; she'll know how to find them."

Judith's mouth opened and closed several times around silent words of confusion. Angel turned abruptly and headed off down the street, tapping a button on the cab column by the curb to call a taxi for Judith on his way. A small part of him hoped that the darkness of the night would seep into him and alleviate some of the guilt that was festering. Darkness was good at getting rid of guilt.

A moment later, Judith seemed to have found her words and she called after him, hurrying to catch up. He could so easily slip away from her, if he really wanted to…

She caught hold of his arm in firm grip and pulled him around. "That's it? You're just leaving?"

"What part of 'I can't be a part of this' didn't you understand?"

"Everything!" she cried. "Angel, I know there's a whole complicated, extremely morally questionable—no, morally wrong—backstory to this, but we're talking about William."

"I know," Angel replied sharply. "I know it's William, and that's why I can't. If it were anyone else…"

Releasing her grip on Angel's arm, Judith folded her own hands in front of herself in stern, hardly-controlled patience. In that moment, the clear blue of her eyes reminded Angel strongly of ice over a deep lake. He could almost see the ice becoming thinner with each step he took.

"You cannot gain my trust as a mentor for my son and then break it for some centuries-old vendetta, Angel," Judith said coldly. "There must be more to this 'moral dilemma' of yours than you let on, because, I'm sorry, I just can't believe that you're taking the so-called moral high ground in this case. I can't believe you care that little about William."

A red taxi cab appeared around the corner and stopped by the cab column several meters away, the driver glancing curiously at them.

Angel took a slow, deep breath. "You're right," he said finally. "I don't care that little about William. I care that much about him. The instant the Powers That Be know that, they'll use him to get to me. It'd be different if it were just about Cordy: they already know how much she means to me. But they can't know that about William, or Calder, or even you."

Judith bit her lip to stop its trembling; her heart hammered, though the rest of her body managed a statue-like stoicism. Angel shifted his weight again and continued.

"The fact that Cordy's been sent to get them back means that the Powers want them on their side. Helping you is directly helping them and their cause. I can't do that, Judith. It kills me to sit by and do nothing, but I promised to protect your son, and this time, nothing is the best I can do."

Angel turned, and started walking away again. He turned his head so she could hear him as he walked. "Take the cab to the Hotel Callaghan. Room 328," he repeated. Then he slipped into the first alley he could and let the darkness swallow him.