A Union of Souls, Chapter Eleven
"Ami."
Angel remembered her. Ami didn't know why that surprised her so much or why she had expected him not to. After the dream revealed by the mind-merge, she could no longer buy into the thought that her encounter with Angel at Club Indigo had been mere coincidence, or that he was simply an overly shy and socially inept man trying to hit on the naïve college girl.
An uncomfortable moment of silence passed while they stared at one another. It was odd enough that the man was still in his office at this time of night, but he also seemed completely unsurprised to see her at his office this time of night.
"Come in," Angel motioned her inside the office, "Please."
Ami hesitated, giving a quick glance at Adam before crossing the threshold. Her eyes quickly took in the group in the office, an attractive brunette, a cute dark haired man and an older gentleman who was polishing his glasses. And none of them seemed at all surprised to see someone showing up at the office at nearly midnight.
Ami couldn't resist commenting on that. "You keep late hours."
Angel looked at her oddly and she sensed he was debating how to respond to that question. Finally, he said simply, "So do you." He indicated the empty sofa, dark eyes darting with unveiled curiosity towards Adam, although he said nothing. "Please, sit down."
"Coffee?" The brunette perked up, her voice so incredibly chipper that it had to be forced.
"No!" Three male voices answered the question before Ami or Adam could word an answer.
Angel gave her a half-smile, at least Ami thought it was a half-smile. "It's old. The coffee."
"Yeah, we haven't gotten around to makin' a fresh pot yet," the dark-haired man spoke with an Irish brogue.
"But we can. If you want coffee," Angel said.
[You were right,] Adam's mind brushed hers, his words echoing as her own thoughts. [He is a little on the odd side.]
[They all seem to be,] Ami sent the telepathic response as she gave Angel a strained smile. "No, that's all right. It's late, I really don't want to drink coffee this late."
"What about your friend?" The Irishman asked.
"No thank you, I'm fine," Adam responded.
Another moment of awkward silence passed. Ami couldn't shake the feeling that her and Adam's arrival had interrupted something – something important.
The brunette gave a delicate cough and noticeably elbowed the Irishman in the rib cage. He, in turn, gave her a quick glance and then coughed as well.
"Oh, yeah." Angel indicated them with a nod of his head as he leaned against the desk. "This is Doyle and Cordelia. They work here with me." He paused, waving his hand in the direction of the older man, "And that's Giles. He's – he's –"
"A researcher," Giles replied. Having returned his glasses to his face, he pushed them up on the bridge of his nose. Ami immediately noticed his accent, so similar to her own. "Angel and I exchange information and help one another from time to time. You would be?"
"Ami," Ami supplied her name politely, feeling like she had made a connection with someone for the first time since walking into the office. Maybe it was this researcher's attitude and bearing, or maybe it was simply hearing the familiar traces of home, but whatever it was, she responded to him. "And this is Adam. He's a friend."
Giles sank into a nearby chair, folding his arms across his chest. "I presume you are here because you're in need of Angel's help?"
"Wow, Giles all those years at Oxford really did –" The brunette, Cordelia, began speaking, but suddenly stopped in mid-sentence at a look from Angel. She held her hands up, turned and walked behind the desk, "Fine, I'll just type. Or something."
"How can I help you?" Angel asked. No preliminaries, he simply picked up the conversation where he wanted.
Again, Ami hesitated giving a quick glance at Adam – pleading for guidance. She knew that the elder Tomorrow Person wouldn't say or do anything unless she asked him to. He was going to allow her to take the lead, mostly because she was the person whom Angel had contacted. And she was the one who was having dreams about him.
[The card,] Adam prompted.
Reaching into her pocket, Ami produced the business card and flashed it at Angel. "Why did you give me this?"
"It's my business card."
"But what made you think that I would need your help?"
"So you are in trouble then?" The Irishman, Doyle, spoke up, his voice rising slightly in excitement. "Something's happened to you?"
The chill that crept down Ami's spine was beginning to become as familiar as an intimate friend. She felt Adam's ripple of surprise at the man's words and she looked from him to Angel and back again. "Why do you say that?"
"Because that's what we do here," Doyle responded without a pause. "We help people. And normally people who walk through those doors –" He nodded his dark head towards the open office door, " – aren't just stoppin' by to discuss the sports scores."
"Yeah. We help the hopeless," Cordelia added cheerfully. She glanced from Angel to Doyle, who were both staring at her with equally unreadable expressions, and back to Angel. "What? What?"
"Fine," she added with a dejected sigh and began to shuffle the papers on the desk. "Fine."
"What Doyle," Angel gave a final glance at the young woman behind the desk before turning his full attention to Ami, "Is trying to say is that people come to us with problems that they don't feel the police can handle. And we handle them. So?"
"So?" Ami aimed the question right back at him. She was only here to see if she could puzzle out the relationship between him, her dream and the woman who had violated her mind, but so far she was batting zero.
"Allow me." Giles leaned forward in his chair, folding his hands in his lap. "At the risk of sounding entirely mad, has anything particularly unusual happened to you since meeting with Angel last night? Anything out of the ordinary that might possibly be deemed as inexplicable or even supernatural in nature?"
Ami touched the man's mind before she could stop herself. Something about his question put her off and made her exceptionally wary. Unfortunately, as she quickly glanced his thoughts, she didn't know whether to be more wary or less wary. The man believed every word that he spoke – even more importantly, he accepted the supernatural with the ease that most people accepted that the sky was blue and that human beings breathe air to live.
[Ami--] Adam's words had a note of warning. He sensed what she was doing and chances were good that she would get a reprimand for her 'rudeness' later.
[He believes what he's saying, Adam.]
[I know that.] Ami detected the note of worry in Adam's 'voice' that she had not detected before. [But there's something more going on here, Ami. I felt what you felt from Angel and it's not – it's not normal. His friend, Doyle, doesn't feel normal either. I don't even think that they're human.]
[Alien then?] As she asked the question, Ami recalled a time when asking such a question not only wouldn't have occurred to her, but would have seemed ludicrous as well.
[I don't know.] The tone of his voice told her that Adam did not like not knowing.
"Well, I enjoy a good ballet as much as the next person, but this elaborate dance that you all are doing isn't going to add any cultural enrichment to my life. So, here's a better idea. Why don't we all just cut to the chase? Because I tell you what, friends, time grows short." The new voice and the words caused every head in the room to turn toward the doorway. A short stocky man leaned then, an ugly battered hat on his head and a bored look on his face. His eyes skipped from one face to the next, landing lastly on Adam and then Ami. "And don't you two realize how rude that is?"
Ami had been wary before. Now, she felt blind panic. Instinctively she clutched Adam's arm. She didn't know what was going on here and she wasn't sure that she wanted to know. But as this man's eyes met hers, she knew without a doubt that he knew precisely who she was and what she was; he knew that she and Adam had been speaking and he quite possibly had heard their conversation.
[Let's get out of here,] Adam kept his voice calm, but clutching his sleeve as she was, Ami could feel his trepidation as well.
"Whistler, I presume." Giles rose from his chair, and Ami detected the slightest hint of wariness from the researcher.
That was not a good sign.
[Let's go,] Ami agreed. She and Adam rose in unison, attracting everyone's attention.
"Stay put," the man said, "No one here is going to hurt you, but there's a pretty good chance that something out there will." When they made no move to sit back down, he shrugged. "Stand then, it's not bothering me any, but your legs might get tired after a while.
"I'm not your enemy though kids. Nobody here is. Check it out if you want to, but I'm giving you fair warning that you might not like what you see. By the way, Doyle, nice shirt."
"Great," Doyle muttered, "Now I have to burn it."
"I thought that from the first time I saw it on you," Cordelia remarked. Her eyes bounced from the man called Whistler to Doyle. "And what is it with the bad clothes anyway? Genetics?"
"We really need to go," Ami interjected, hedging towards the door. "I don't think that you can help me after all, Angel."
"Sorry to have disturbed you," Adam apologized, falling into step protectively behind her. "We'll just see ourselves out."
"You two kids think you can just walk away? You think you have a choice?" Whistler called after them. "You don't. This isn't about choice, this is about fate, destiny, whatever you want to call it. It's out of your hands, so don't fight it. Your dream had a meaning, little girl, and if you walk out that door you'll probably get killed before you figure out what that meaning is.
"Besides, you lot have been saving the world for a while now. What's one more night in the grand scheme of things?"