Nicole D'Armand passed a hand over her eyes. The capture hadn't been easy. Controlling Dawn like that was extraordinarily difficult, even though the girl's age had made it easier. Nicole was just glad the slumber she'd forced Dawn into didn't need to be actively maintained. The telepath relaxed into her seat and took advantage of the time it took to reach their destination to meditate.

Tonight, there was no room for failure.

***

"Time to wake up."

Dawn's eyes flew open as she was yanked out of sleep. She gasped in a breath, completely disoriented at awakening in a darkened car, and it took a moment for memory to set in.

Oh, yeah, she thought hazily. Been kidnapped again.

As that thought sank in, panic grasped at her, and she fought hard to keep it down. The same feeling of total helplessness that had enveloped her when Glory had taken her was simmering just under the surface of her mind, and she fought against it the same way she had before.

Buffy will save me, she told herself. She won't let anything hurt me.

The doors of the car were suddenly opening, and Dawn looked across at the woman sitting opposite her. Nicole, she remembered.

Nicole was beautiful, no other word for it. Very tall, with soft blond hair surrounding elegant features and cold blue eyes. She was all in white: white leather pants, white cashmere turtleneck, white jacket. As Dawn looked over Nicole, the Frenchwoman looked over Dawn. She didn't seem terribly impressed.

"Where am I?" demanded Dawn, voice tight with fear and growing anger.

Nicole smiled, perfectly at ease. "My employer wishes you to be kept in the dark for now, and he pays me very well to make his wishes come true." She opened her own door. "Come. He is most anxious to meet you." Dawn didn't move. "Unless, of course," Nicole went on offhandedly, "you would prefer that I move you. Did you like that feeling?"

The memory of being trapped, a prisoner while her body moved around her, was enough to make Dawn open her door. She stepped out into a dark carport and found herself face-to-face with the creature called Kogue before she could even begin to look for escape routes.

"I wouldn't recommend you irritate Mr. Kogue," said Nicole. "He's been known to make snacks out of little things like you. He will escort the two of us to meet my employer."

Seeing no alternative and having no idea if Nicole was telling the truth about Kogue's dining preferences, Dawn followed Nicole through a door, then up a staircase. There were no windows, and Dawn realized with alarm that she had no idea how long she'd been asleep. For all she knew, they could be in another state.

They came to a door, which Kogue opened, and Nicole ushered Dawn in. The room was small and cozy. The walls were paneled in wood, the carpet deep and lush, the lighting soft, and the furniture downright luxurious. Nicole spread herself out on an overstuffed couch as Kogue shut the door and positioned himself in front of it. Dawn, meanwhile, looked at the man sitting in an armchair in the middle of the room. Across from him was another armchair, with a coffee table between the chairs bearing a silver tea service, a pitcher of ice water, and a platter of cookies.

The man didn't seem too frightening at first glance. He was about Giles' age, not bad looking, with a little silver highlighting his dark hair. It was hard to judge his height in the chair, but he looked to be fairly tall. He was wearing a suit, probably an expensive one, and Dawn noticed he had a ring with a large ruby on his right hand, but nothing on his left.

"Hello, Dawn," said the man in a warm, rich baritone. "It's good to finally meet you."

"Who are you?" asked Dawn, trying not to let her voice shake.

"You can call me Lucas for now. Won't you sit?" He gestured at the seat opposite him.

"What if I don't want to?"

Lucas sighed. "Dawn, I realize this is difficult and, yes, frightening for you, but I really am trying to make things as pleasant as possible."

Dawn blinked, a little puzzled by his attitude. "Then let me go home."

Lucas shook his head almost regretfully. "I'm afraid that's not a possibility. You, Dawn, are the answer to a most difficult puzzle for me, and I'm going to need to keep you around for quite some time. Nicole, my dear, tell me what you see when you look at her."

Nicole cocked her head at Dawn. "I see energy. Bright energy surrounded by a flesh-and-blood shell."

Dawn's stomach clenched as a wave of panic hit her. Oh, God, she thought, they want the Key!

She turned and ran to the door, heedless of Kogue's presence. It was locked. Frantically, heart in her throat, she searched the room for any other way out. None presented itself.

Lucas called her name several times, but Dawn was too far gone to even hear him. Finally, he turned to Nicole. "My dear, would you . . . ?"

Nicole turned her gaze to Dawn.

Stop.

Dawn stopped, right where she was. She felt like she'd been hit with a powerful tranquilizer. All the fear left along with her other emotions.

"That's better," said Lucas. "Now, come here and have a seat." Numbly, Dawn obeyed. "Would you like something?" asked Lucas, indicating the coffee table.

"Water," Dawn murmured.

Lucas poured her a glass, and she sipped at it until her throat felt somewhat less like sandpaper. She was still feeling detached from her emotions, but whatever Nicole had done seemed to be abating. "What do you want?" she asked.

"All in good time, Dawn. You're a special girl, with special friends, and I'm going to err on the side of caution for now with what I tell you. Nicole, you are keeping an eye out, aren't you?"

"Of course," said the Frenchwoman. Her eyes were distant.

"Good. As I was saying, Dawn, you're a special girl, and I need you for a project I've been developing. Now don't worry; you won't be hurt. In fact, you'll be treated very well while you're here. Just cooperate, and we'll all get what we want."

"I want to go home," Dawn said bluntly. "You should let me go. When my sister finds out where I am, she's going to kick your ass into next week."

Lucas smiled and shook his head. "I'm afraid your sister won't be able to find you. The truth is, Dawn, that no one else knows what we're doing, or even where we are."

Before Dawn could reply to that, Nicole cried out, clutching her head.

***

"Cordelia!"

Cordelia had been sitting at her desk, eating dinner and pawing through a backlog of paperwork, when she screamed and began to thrash in her chair. Angel was closest - he ran and caught the chosen messenger of the Powers That Be just before she could fall face-first into her tuna salad.

Within seconds, Wesley, Gunn, and Fred all surrounded her. Wesley grabbed a note pad as the others held Cordelia in place to keep her from hurting herself in her vision-induced convulsions.

Suddenly, it was over. Cordelia opened her eyes. Immediately, she began tilting to the left, and Angel only just caught her before she fell out of her chair. As the vampire straightened Cordelia back up, Wesley looked at her face. Her eyes were strangely distant, as though she were watching something on the other side of the room. Wesley looked behind him but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

"Cordelia," he said, "what are you looking at?"

"The staircase," she said.

"Why?"

"Because it's what's right in front of me, and I think I'm-" She paused, blinking hard. "-going to hurl if I take my eyes off it."

"Tell us what's happening," Angel said.

"It's Dawn," Cordelia said queasily, never moving her eyes.

"Actually, it won't be dawn for another eight hours and forty-three minutes," Fred said helpfully.

"No - DAWN," Cordelia explained, "as in Buffy's little sister. She's here in L.A., and she's in trouble. But..."

"What?" Angel said.

"I...I don't know. I'm all dizzy, like I'm on a Tilt-a-Whirl. But without the fun."

"Did you see anything that made sense?" Wesley asked.

"A little house in Malibu." She grabbed the pen and pad out of Wesley's hands and began writing in awkward, diagonal lines across the paper. "Here's the address," she said, thrusting the pad back at Wesley.

"And now," Cordelia said with detached calm, "I have to go throw up." She rose from her chair, took one step, and immediately fell forward. Angel and Gunn caught her and carried her to the nearest bathroom with amazing speed. Within moments, Wesley could hear the echo of retching sounds off the bathroom tile.

A minute later, the three emerged from the washroom. Cordelia seemed to have regained her balance, although Angel and Gunn walked close to her sides, like spotters with a gymnast.

"What happened?" Wesley asked with both curiosity and concern.

"It was weird," Cordelia said. "It was like...having two visions at once. You know how, on a bad TV, you can be watching one channel, but see a little bit of another one at the same time? It was like that, if the TV were spinning at ninety miles per hour and driving a big ice pick into my brain."

"But this address you wrote down," Wesley asked. "Is it accurate?"

"I think so," Cordelia said.

"You're not sure?" Gunn asked. "Powers aren't usually wrong about that stuff."

"No, it's just..." Cordelia started. "I can't explain it. But I saw Dawn, and I know she's scared. Especially of a short-haired blonde woman, and some kind of big demon. And there was this smell...roses, I think. I also got a vague feeling that you should hurry."

"Okay," Angel said. "Fred, stay here with Cordy, see if you can find any information on this address."

"Standard weapons for everyone else," Wesley added. "Let's go."

***

"So what do you think is the deal?" Gunn asked, frowning. He was in the back seat of the convertible, leaning forward to talk to Angel in the passenger's seat. "These guys tryin' to get to the Slayer through her little sis?"

"Maybe," Angel said. "Unless they took her because she's the Key."

"Another hell-god trying to go home, like that Willow girl told us about?" Gunn said. "'Cause if it is, I kinda wish I'd brought a bigger axe."

"That seems unlikely," Wesley interjected from the driver's seat. "A very particular alignment of stars and planets is needed to use Dawn to create a dimensional gateway. That isn't due to happen again for another thirty years or so."

"Whatever they want, we're not going to let them have it," Angel said. He patted the Viking short sword under his coat as Wesley turned into the driveway of a small, two-story house. It was a tasteful little residence, with a white stucco exterior and a Spanish tile roof. There was no garage, just a carport next to the house.

"No car," Gunn noted as he lifted his homemade battle axe out of the back seat.

"Maybe they don't get out much," Angel responded. He walked up to the front door and, with no hesitation, kicked it open. Flicking his eyes side to side, he walked in, Wesley and Gunn close behind.

"Someone was here," Angel commented while the other men fanned out. "I can smell a man's cologne, and something...I don't know, something familiar."

"Well, it's not food going bad," Gunn called from the kitchen, just off to the right of the doorway. He was peering into the fridge. "Everything in here is fresh. I think somebody left here in a big hurry."

"And they're not coming back," Wesley said. "Or Angel couldn't have entered uninvited. Nonetheless, we should check upstairs."

With Angel in the lead, they went up the stairs to the second floor. There were four doors, all closed. One had a lock rather conspicuously fixed to the outside of the door. Angel twisted the small knob on the lock and shoved the door open. Inside the room was a small bedroom with a single twin bed and a desk, on which sat a 12" television. There was also an empty dresser.

Gunn and Wesley checked the other three doors, revealing two more bedrooms, a bathroom, and what looked like a study or parlor of sorts with a few chairs and a coffee table. The first bedroom contained a queen-size bed, neatly made, with a smooth, satiny blue coverlet. Otherwise, however, the room was a mess. The drawers were pulled out from the dresser, and the closet door stood open with the light still on. The drawers and closet were all empty.

The other bedroom was in similar condition, the closet and dresser empty. Even the bed, also queen-sized, was bare, with no sheets, blankets or pillows. A strong smell hung in the air.

Gunn sniffed. "That's nasty," he said, grimacing. "Like somebody started a goat farm in a greasy old garage."

"That's the smell I recognize," Angel said. "I still can't place it, though. Something demonic."

"It certainly isn't roses," Wesley noted.

Wesley glanced about the room and spied something in the wastebasket. It was a brown glass bottle, unlabeled, with an oily residue coating the inside.

"What is that?" Gunn asked.

"I'm not certain," Wesley replied. "We'd best take it back to the hotel for analysis."

They made a thorough search of the rest of the house and met up again downstairs, in the front hall. Gunn carried a yellow legal pad.

"This doesn't make any sense," Angel said. "Cordelia said Dawn was here, but Dawn's never even been in that bedroom upstairs."

"How can you tell?" Wesley asked.

"She smells a lot like Buffy," Angel answered. "I'd know it if she was staying in there."

"Ah," Wesley said.

"And she would never have made the bed, unless they put a gun to her head." He chuckled. "And then she'd have to think about it for a while."

"What else did those vampire nostrils tell you?" Gunn asked.

"The man who whose cologne I smelled wasn't staying here. There was a woman in the third bedroom, though; I could smell Evyan skin cream on the sheets."

"Coming from anybody else, that would sound creepy," Gunn commented.

"Creepier still is the fact that Cordelia's vision was wrong," Wesley said.

"That's never happened before," Angel said. "Except-"

"-when someone was messing with her mind," Gunn finished.

"But someone WAS here," Wesley said. "A woman and a demon, who intended to keep somebody locked in that room upstairs. All of that is consistent with Cordelia's vision."

"Right," Gunn said, "it's just twenty minutes out of date. But I did find this." He held up the yellow legal pad. "It was in a desk drawer up in the study."

"It's blank," Angel said.

Gunn leaned in. "Yeah, but look -- somebody wrote on the page before this one and then tore it off."

"Quite so," Wesley agreed. He took a pencil out of his shirt pocket and began rubbing the point lightly over the surface of the pad. Sure enough, it was soon possible to see that a long string of numbers had been written on the previous page. At the top of the page was written, "Tesorieri, p. 23".

"Mean anything to you?" Gunn asked his two companions. They both shook their heads.

"We'd better get back to the hotel," Angel said. "Maybe Cordy and Fred have found something useful about the house."

"And we can check out Wes' bottle of demon grease," Gunn added.

***

Later, standing in the makeshift forensic laboratory that Wesley and Fred had assembled in one of the rooms of the Hyperion, Wesley held up the bottle and pronounced, "It's naftegha."

"Well, that clears up everything," Gunn said.

"It's a kind of polish for organic metals," Fred said, gazing into a heavy volume in the far corner of the lab. "Demons that have metal parts use it. Prevents oxidation."

"So what kind of demons would be Simonizing themselves with this stuff?" Gunn asked.

Just then, Angel walked into the room and said, "A Sch'sek."

"Is that the name of the demon, or are you just trying to hock one?" Gunn said.

"I finally remembered where I know that smell from," Angel answered. "Boone."

"Who?" Wesley asked.

"A demon I fought a couple of times. The last time was back when...when we weren't working together."

"You fought a Sch'sek and survived?" Wesley said, eyebrows raised.

"Not exactly. Boone was a half-breed - part human. And I barely beat him. If this thing that has Dawn is a full-blooded Sch'sek, we could be in for a hell of a fight."

Gunn started towards the door. "That's it," he said. "I'm getting a bigger axe."

"We did discover one other thing," Wesley said, causing Gunn to turn around. "Tesorieri is an Italian surname. A look through our library revealed that there was a Fausto Tesorieri who was an alchemist in the sixteenth century. A rather secretive fellow, he was known to keep his most important notes in a numerical code."

"What was he keeping notes on?" Angel asked as Cordelia came in through the door behind him.

"It seems he was quite ambitious," Wesley said. "He tried to do what dozens of his predecessors had failed to accomplish in lifetimes of research."

Angel nodded, understanding. "He tried to turn lead into gold." Fred, still sitting in the corner, looked down at the floor pensively, but said nothing.

"Precisely. Cordelia," Wesley said, noticing her by the door. "Any news on the house?"

"That depends on your definition of 'news'," Cordelia replied. "The house is owned by Trans-Oceanic Imports, a company that doesn't import anything because it doesn't exist. Whoever bought the house used the dummy corporation to cover their tracks, leaving us with a big steaming pile of nothing."

"Not nothing," Wesley said. "We know that someone out there has Buffy's sister, that they are interested in the work of Fausto Tesorieri, and that they have at least one Sch'sek demon in their employ. Therefore, I suggest that Fred and I attempt to decipher these numbers, while Angel and Gunn use their contacts to find out who in the area might have hired the Sch'sek. And Cordelia, you have the most important task."

Cordelia raised her eyebrows slightly and looked askance at Wesley.

"You must call Buffy."

"She deserves to know that Dawn is alive," Angel said.

"And," Wesley added, "it would do no harm to have the assistance of a Slayer."

END CHAPTER 3