37

Flirting With Disaster

"Hello, Rose." Angelus sat on her desk, leaned on the computer terminal. "Your Q'xlzr demon sent me another note."

Rose sighed. "How many times do I have to say that it's not my demon." She made to take the note, but ended up running her finger along the edge of the missive, earning her a paper cut. Bright red blood immediately welled up in the shallow wound.

Rose started groping for her box of tissues, only to find it empty. She stared helplessly at her finger, trying to figure out what to do before the blood started dripping on her work. Many a person would have automatically stuck the finger in their mouth, but after her brief bout with blood drinking during her pregnancy, she had acquired an extreme distaste for it. She looked up at Angel, eyes pleading for some sort of assistance.

Angelus fought back a smile. He raised her hand to his lips and ran the tip of his tongue over the cut, all the while keeping his eyes firmly fixed on hers. He watched her pupils dilate, heard her heart-rate increase. He reluctantly released her hand, since he wasn't ready to tip his just yet.

"Let's try this again," he suggested. He laid the paper on the keyboard in front of her so that she wouldn't be at risk of getting another cut, much as he had relished the small taste he'd had of her blood. Soon enough, he decided, he'd do a lot more than taste. Her blood and other things. Not only would those things in and of themselves amuse him, but there would be the added piquancy of knowing how it would affect Spike.

Rose looked down at the note, staring at it intently, not only to make out the odd script, but to hide the brilliant red blush on her face. She didn't know what had passed between them, but it didn't seem right. She resolved to tell Spike about it immediately as she got home, then remembered that she wouldn't be able to, they'd be having the meeting with the rest of the team. Later, then. No more keeping secrets from Spike. Especially secrets like this.

"It says that it's canceling your next meeting," she informed him without looking up. "It says that all of its sources have suddenly gone silent. Some of them seem to have died, abruptly and mysteriously." Curious now, she looked back up at him. "Do you think that means that Mr. Stenslow is aware that you're investigating him?"

Angelus shrugged. "I suppose that anything's possible," he replied. Then, deciding that it was necessary to remain in keeping with the role he was playing, he asked, "How are the kids taking to their lessons?"

Rose laughed, and it was from relief as much as amusement. Now, she felt that she was on familiar footing. "They think the lessons are boring," she answered. "I think Oz is planning to try to tailor the lessons to them a bit in an effort to hold their interest."

Ah yes, the werewolf. There were a lot of details that he was going to have to take into account when he was making his plans. "Well, I guess I'll let you get back to your work now," he commented. He got off her desk. "See you later, Rose."

"Yes, see you later," she echoed. For some reason, she felt compelled to watch his back until she was sure that he was well and truly gone.

&&&&&&

Gunn dropped the stack of files on Angel's desk.

"Here it is," he said. "Everything you ever wanted to know about Havoc & Associates, and Cariadoc Stenslow. And probably some things you didn't want to know."

"But I do want to know it all," Angelus replied. And he did. He wanted to know Cariadoc Stenslow inside and out. Until such a time as he turned him inside out. Or whatever happened to take his fancy at the moment. "Thanks, Gunn, I appreciate it." He did too, although having to be polite left a nasty taste in his mouth.

"No problem, man," Gunn rejoined. "If you need anything else, just give a yell." He exited the office.

Angelus started thumbing through the paperwork. There was a lot of it. There seemed to be some rather obvious drawbacks to being in the seat of power. He started sorting through the welter of paper. He put aside the information on Havoc & Associates. That stuff could wait. Right now, he wanted to know what made Stenslow tick. What he did, how he thought, what he ate for breakfast. All of it. Once he had that down, he could retrieve his soul and break his tenuous contact with the man. What kind of idiot was he that he thought he could actually make a deal with Angelus? A snort of laughter escaped him. Soon, he would be the same kind of idiot that all the other people who had thought they could make deals with him were.

A dead one.

&&&&&&

"Have you talked to Angel today, Fred?" Rose asked between bites.

"I haven't seen him since the staff meeting yesterday morning," Fred replied. She looked at Rose quizzically. "Why? Is something wrong?"

"I'm not sure," Rose admitted. "But he came to my office this morning with another note from the Q'xlzr demon for me to translate, and he was acting a little.., odd."

"Maybe it's just because he's worried about this whole soul-stealing deal," Fred mused. "I think he probably hates Angelus more than any of the rest of us. I mean, how can you like someone who's given you a hundred years of remorse to deal with?"

"I guess it could be that," Rose conceded grudgingly. She had doubts on the matter though, that was amply evident. She gave up and pushed the matter to the back of her mind. She shifted to a cheerier topic. "Have you and Wesley made any progress on finding a house?"

Fred gave a little sniff. "I think we're going to be stuck in his bachelor apartment forever," she replied. "The affordable stuff is invariably in the wrong part of town. And the prices on the rest are not to be believed."

&&&&&&&

The Q'xlzr demon moved silently through the shadows. It should see its contact soon. In the past day or so, they'd been disappearing at an alarming rate. And the little blue gray demon was becoming alarmed. If Havoc & Associates were working their way down its sources of information, eventually, they'd reach it. It wasn't quite ready to die yet. The only thought that cheered it at all was the thought of the hazard pay it would be able to extract from the boss vampire. That is, if it were still around to collect. It glanced around nervously. The contact should be here already. The Q'xlzr itself had had a small snag in the transportation department, and had arrived late. But no sign of the contact. Its ears were even busier than its eyes, turning this way and that, listening for things as yet unseen. It halted a moment. Had there been a sound some yards distant? It turned its ear in the direction the sound had come from. There it was again. The sound of a footfall. Not good, because it was not the contact. The demon's hearing was a finely tuned instrument, and it recognized those known to it by the sound of their tread as readily, if not more so, as their faces. The footsteps were drawing nearer. It decided that discretion was the better part of being around the collect its fee, and ducked into a shadowed niche between buildings in the dark, dank alleyway.

And still the sound of a large man's tread came nearer and ever nearer. It stopped almost right where the Q'xlzr had been standing, only a few feet away from where the little demon was trying to become even smaller.

The man looked around, but apparently missed the quivering, blue gray figure huddled into a small ball nearby. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, extracted one and lit it. He stood there, puffing at it until there was nothing left but the filter, then flipped it away with a practiced flick of his fingers. He waited a few moments more, then sighed and moved on.

The Q'xlzr remained where it was until some time after the footsteps had passed beyond the range of even its excellent hearing. When the man had reached inside his jacket to get his cigarettes, it had seen the, to its eyes at least, very large gun that also resided there. The vampire's fee was going to increase by an order of magnitude.

&&&&&&

Oz shuffled the flash cards again. He seemed to be making progress on the math front now, at any rate. He'd turned it into a sort of game, and the children were picking up on the basics out of sheer competitiveness. He flipped up a card.

"Four," said Alaric smugly.

Oz didn't need to see the equation on the front of the card, since the answer was printed on the back. He turned it up anyway. 1 plus 3. "Very good, Alaric," he remarked. He held up another card.

"Nine," Ariel jumped in quickly to forestall her brother. She sounded, if it were possible, even more smug than her brother had. Oz again looked at the card and saw 4 plus 5. "Excellent," he praised. Now, if he could just find a way to get them to take this much of an interest in the rest of their subjects, they would be home free. He turned up the next card.

&&&&&&

"Here now," Spike protested. "The idea is to keep us both sharp and in practice, not to mention trying to keep you from succumbing to that swivel-chair spread. Not to dust me."

"Sorry, Spike," Angelus said, without the slightest hint of remorse. But that was all right, he reflected, since Angel wouldn't have put a great deal of sincerity into it either. "I just got carried away."

"Well you want to be more careful with that thing," Spike shot back, far from mollified. "Remember, if you end up staking me, you'll kill Rose as well. Stupid git."

"I said I was sorry," Angelus replied, putting a hint of a whine in his voice. "Maybe if you didn't suck so bad at this, you wouldn't have come so close to ending your career."

"Me suck?" Spike seemed to be unable to absorb the concept. "I'll show you who sucks, mate, and it ain't me. Leastways not when it comes to fighting."

"Can we leave your love-life out of it?" Angelus suggested. Given the preceding comment, the remark could be taken either of two ways. He was banking on the one that would piss Spike off. And it was safe money.

"You're jealous, aren't you?" Spike snarled. "I always knew you were, you big ponce. You just can't stand the fact that I'm happy. And getting some, which is more than you can say."

Angelus slipped in under Spike's guard and stopped with the stake just barely touching his chest. He didn't want to kill Spike. At least, not yet. But right now, he was enjoying himself immensely.

&&&&&&&

Later in the day, as Angelus continued to read up on the life of one Cariadoc Stenslow, he had a rare visit from Eve. "What brings you here?" he asked abruptly. Hot looking little number, he thought. But Angel didn't like her, didn't trust her, well, there at least, they had some common ground, unpalatable as the fact was to him. He didn't trust anyone. Part of the whole demon/no soul thing.

Eve perched on the front of the desk and leaned towards him, giving him an excellent view of her cleavage. "You can drop the act, Angelus," she said in matter-of-fact tones. "Did you honestly think that the senior partners wouldn't notice?"

Angelus blinked in surprise. Since Angel didn't know much of anything about the senior partners, neither did he. "So what do the senior partners think of it?" he asked cautiously, actually admitting to nothing.

Eve shrugged, and in the position she was in, it did wonders for the sightseeing aspects of things. "As far as they're concerned, it's business as usual," she replied. "They put you in charge, they didn't stipulate that the soul had to be along for the ride."

Angelus grinned, both from relief and from the peep show he was enjoying. He'd been half afraid that the senior partners might take unpleasant steps. He knew they were evil, but they must have had some reason for putting Angel in charge of things, and Angelus might not fit into their plans. "That's good to know," he conceded. "Was there anything else you wanted to tell me? Or was the whole purpose of your visit just to let me know that the senior partners know? That, and be a tease."

"Who's teasing?" Eve asked softly. "I'm not Fred, or Rose, or even Harmony. And I find the thought of making it with the infamous Angelus very exciting."

Angelus decided that he'd show her a thing or two about teasing. First. He turned his gaze back down at the papers in front of him and pretended to concentrate on what was written there for all he was worth. In truth, though, his mind was already racing to the conquest. He listened intently as Eve slid down off the desk and made her way to the door. Just as her hand was reaching for the doorknob, he said, "Eve?"

She turned to look at him, hand still on the door.

"Lock it," Angelus ordered, starting to unbutton his shirt.

Eve smiled and locked the door.

&&&&&&

Several voices were raised in an unintelligible cacophony. And tempers were rising along with the voices.

Lorne sighed and took a sip from the brandy that he'd cadged out of Spike. He glanced at Rose and they both shook their heads. Even the twins were adding to the clamor. Aside from the two of them, the only one who wasn't adding to the decibel level was Oz. He decided it was time to do something about breaking it up before it turned into an out and out brawl. He opened his mouth and let out a sustained note, just pitched so that it wouldn't start trashing the breakables, including, most importantly of all, his glass.

It did the trick, though. Everyone shut up and turned to look at the empath, faces in various expressions of anger.

"Do you think we could be just a teensy bit adult about this?" Lorne suggested mildly. "Venting your frustrations is one thing, boys and girls. But it isn't going to come up with a plan."

"Well the Watcher's plan for everyone to carry a trank gun about with them won't work," Spike stated flatly. "I can tuck one away in me jacket easy enough, and him'n Charlie are always packing something, so no big. But people are going to talk if the girls start carrying them around. 'Sides, Rose has never handled one. Chances are she'd shoot her own foot, and then wouldn't we all be in a pretty mess?"

"Have you got a better idea, Spike?" Wesley shot back. "Considering that it would likely be at fairly close quarters, I can take Rose down to the practice range tomorrow and have her proficient enough not to shoot herself inside of an hour."

"You still have to figure out a way for them to keep them under cover," Gunn pointed out. "Fred might get by with putting one in the pocket of her lab coat, although the weight would make it a little conspicuous. But Rose and Harmony tend towards.., well-fitting clothes. There's no way they could hide one."

"If you can give me a little time," Fred remarked, now that the furor had died down far enough that she could be heard. "Then just give me a few hours in the lab. I can design and build a much smaller model. Something easily concealed, even for us, 'girls'."

"If you make the gun that much smaller, won't that make it impossible to get a large enough dose of the tranquilizer in the cartridge?" Oz asked sensibly. It was the first time since they'd gathered in the senior partner's suite that he'd spoken.

Fred shook her head. "Not a problem," she promised. "The array of tranquilizers that Wolfram and Hart has on hand is not to be believed. And they've developed quite a few that never hit the market, even the black market. There's one that's powerful enough that a couple of drops would stop a charging rhino. I think it ought to do just fine in putting a vampire to sleep."

Spike winced at the thought, but he really needed the information for his own peace of mind. "Have you tested it, Fred, pet?" he asked. "Because if you haven't, I'll guinea pig it for you. When it's Angelus we're talking about, I don't want to take any chances."

"Spike, if that stuff works like I think it will, you'll be out for the better part of the day," Fred protested. "What if something happens and we need you?"

Spike shrugged. "I'm not the only well-trained fighter around here," he admitted. A grin broke over his features. "Just the best looking."

&&&&&&&&

By the time they were curled up in bed, spooned tightly together, it had completely slipped Rose's mind to tell Spike about Angel's strange behavior.