16: The wrong crowd

The office was abandoned, boarded up. It looked as if no one had been there for years.

Erica had two theories about what was going on. Either she was in some kind of parallel dimension where she didn't live here and something had happened to make Cordy hurt and Wesley survive, or, just as weird, she was still in her own reality but she'd gone back to a time where, again, Cordy was hurt, Wesley hadn't died yet and therefore she couldn't have met Gunn at the funeral. Either way, it meant that everyone she had known here wouldn't know who she was.

Operating on the second theory – because she didn't know what else to do – Erica tracked down the office where Angel had said that he, Spike, Gunn and Wesley had worked at. She flexed her arm to make sure that it was working without pain and stepped through the entrance doors. It was nighttime, but there were still a few businessmen walking through the reception area, as well as one or two hooded people who Erica assumed must be less-than-human clients.

They had security personnel dotted around the room, and a couple of them gave her strange looks. Erica gave a nervous sigh. "You won't know until you ask," she muttered to herself. She walked over to the front desk, where a man in a grey suit, white shirt and green striped tie sat staring into a computer screen. He smiled brightly at her when she approached. There was something unnerving about the smile, but Erica forced herself to withhold comment.

"Welcome to Wolfram and Hart," the man said, "How can I help you?" His tone of voice sounded rehearsed and … off somehow. There was something about the way he sat, the way he moved and smiled, it just gave her the feeling that he wasn't quite normal.

"Hi," Erica said casually, "I'm looking for someone, and he … he mentioned this place, but I'm not sure if he was an employee or a client."

"I'm afraid we can't give out information on clients but I can give you his business number if he is an employee," the man said. "What is his name?"

"Angel," Erica said.

"Last name?"

"Actually, I don't know." Erica gave a weak chuckle. "I'm not even sure if he has a last name. He's kind of …. not normal, but I guess you understand that in a place like this." Erica took a chance and revealed that she knew that the law firm didn't just cater to human clients.

Something in the man's smile and in his eyes wavered, but in the next second he was smiling brightly again. "I'm sorry, but the name Angel is not listed as either a client or an employee."

"You didn't even look it up," Erica pointed out. The man kept smiling at her, but there was nothing in his eyes that indicated he had heard her. "Uhh," she said, wondering if he was really human, "thanks anyway." She took a few steps away.

There was a commotion outside of the door. Erica turned and saw that a couple of guards were escorting a man inside who was hissing and wheezing with pain. Erica felt a stab of compassion mixed with distress when she saw the blood dripping to the floor. He was cradling his right arm with his back hunched over his injury protectively, and his face was streaked with sweat from the agony.

"Wait!" she yelled out, running toward them. One of the guards went for his nightstick, but Erica quickly said, "I can help. Please, let me help."

The man looked up at her through a haze of hurt and suffering. One of the guards grabbed her shoulder as the man saw how distressed and concerned she looked. "Let her go," he said thickly, forcing out the words.

"Hold this," Erica ordered the guard who had grabbed her, handing him her lighter. "Light it, and hold it within my sight." She put a hand on the man's shoulder. "What's your name?" she asked as she waited for the guard to follow her instructions.

"Lindsey," he replied.

"This won't hurt, Lindsey" she said, as the flame flickered into life. She had found that the words she used to heal always soothed her when she thought of them, whether she was actually healing or not, so she whispered them aloud so that the man could hear her. "The fire represents life. Life began with fire, fire means life, and life means healing. Fire is the key to healing." She brushed his hair away from his face and kissed him on his left cheekbone.

A moment later Erica stumbled a little and Lindsey automatically reached out to grab her. His fingers closed over the cloth of her tracksuit top, and it seemed to take him a few seconds to fully register that he had grabbed her with both hands. He straightened up as the look of pain left his face.

"Are you all right?" he asked the girl, still holding onto her in case she should fall.

"Queasy," she said shortly, "but it'll be gone in a moment. You can let the flame go out now," she said to the guard. The guard quickly let go, staring in wonder at the lighter. Lindsey started flexing his new hand, and Erica smiled at him. "How does it feel?" she asked.

"After what I was just feeling, it's wonderful ," he said. "How did you do that?"

"You saw it." Erica said. "The fire represented life, which was a trigger to the healing, and the kiss was a sign of affection, which directed the healing to you. Can I have that back now?" she asked the guard.

"Wait," Lindsey said, "what else can you do with that lighter?"

"It's not the lighter; it's just fire," Erica said with a shrug, and she took a step away from Lindsey now that she was feeling better. He let go of her arms. "It triggers something inside me; something powerful that I can direct toward healing. But I don't know what else I can do."

"Really?" Lindsey asked.

"Uh huh," Erica lied. She didn't want to try and explain something she didn't understand herself. She instinctively wanted to keep the portals a secret anyway, even from the nice looking young man that she had helped.

"Lindsey, what is going on here?" An elevator had opened and an older man walked out followed by a young woman.

"Everything's fine, sir," Lindsey replied.

"But the call we got said that Angel cut off your hand," the man insisted, "and you're fine?"

Lindsey held up both hands for his boss to see. "That I am," he said with confidence, "and we may have a new client here; a healer." He looked to see that Erica was slowly starting to back away toward the doors. She looked troubled. "Hey, what's wrong?"

Erica swallowed. "I thought you did it in an accident … why would he cut off your hand?"

"Do you know him?" Lindsey asked her.

"I thought maybe he worked here," Erica said, before she thought about what she was admitting, "but I was mistaken. Excuse me." She tried to walk away. The older man signalled to a guard who grabbed her arm. "Let me go!" she said loudly. The guard's grip on her arm tightened painfully as the second guard approached her.

"Hold on," Lindsey said, "There's no problem here," he was saying to Erica to try and keep her calm. "We just want to offer you a job. Let go of her arm."

"I'm not interested, thanks" Erica said, as the guard holding her hesitated in letting go. "Look, you can keep the lighter, but take your hand off me or I'll remove it myself," she threatened the guard. She was acting tough, but the others could see that she had become nervous.

Lindsey tried a different approach. He took the guard's hand off her arm and waved the other guard back away from her. He put himself between the girl and the guards to try and make her feel less threatened. "Look, no one's going to hurt you. We just want to figure out a way to thank you for what you've done." He took one of her hands in his regenerated one, and gave it a light squeeze to emphasise his meaning. "Come up to the offices and we'll talk, but there's no pressure on you to do anything or sign anything. We'll just talk. Besides, you must have come here for a reason. You can start by just telling us your name."

Erica paused for a moment. "You didn't answer me," she quietly accused Lindsey. She looked down at the hand that held hers. "Why did he do it? What were you doing?" she looked back up at him and searched his face.

Lindsey hesitated so she tugged her hand away and tried to bolt past the guards. She ducked past the first but the other managed to grab her around the midsection. She elbowed him in the face and kicked at his knees. He let her go but the other one grabbed her arms and wrestled her to the floor. He was too heavy to shift off of her so after a brief struggle she lay still; conserving her energy. She closed her eyes for a moment and refused to even acknowledge her captors, let alone talk to them.

"Holding room," the boss instructed. The guards hauled the girl up to her feet and walked away with her pressed between them, each holding one of her arms. A third came up to walk behind them and make sure she didn't try anything. "So, Lindsey," the older man said once they were out of sight. "She really reattached your hand?"

"I don't know about reattached," Lindsey said, holding it up to show them that there wasn't a scratch or a reattachment line to be seen, "the other one could still be at the mausoleum, but this one completely regrew from the stump. It's just as strong as it ever was."

"A powerful healer," the man said.

"She uses it for healing," Lindsey corrected with a shake of his head, "but it's possible she can direct it to other things. The feeling I got when she did it; it was amazing. Not only did it stop hurting altogether, but I also felt powerful myself until she broke contact. I could tell that she's got a lot in her that she doesn't know how to use yet. That's why I thought we should make her a client or an employee."

"She obviously wasn't happy about that, especially after she heard Angel's name." The woman spoke up.

"Yes," the man agreed. "Lindsey, find out what she knows, and who she is. Find out why she came here. Use the mind readers if you need to. We might be able to use her against Angel. See if you can't fabricate some story that makes him the bad guy."

Lindsey nodded and walked away.

"Big night," the woman said, "First we get a weapon to use against Angel, and then an ally of his walks right through our doors and reverses what he did to one of us, and in doing so she makes herself vulnerable to being used against him."

The older man smiled.

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Lindsey nodded to the guard outside the girl's door. The guard entered a code into the security device on the door and swiped his ID card through it. Lindsey noticed that the guard had scratches on his face and a cut lip.

"Be careful," the man said. "She's still got some fight in her."

"Did you hurt her?" Lindsey asked.

"No," the guard said, "we just shut her in there real fast."

"Make sure you don't hurt her," Lindsey said warningly, "we need to try and gain her trust."

The door opened and it was closed quickly behind him when he stepped into the room. It was fairly bare. It had a single bed pushed into the corner with grey covers and a white pillow on it. Near the bed was a metal chair that was bolted to the floor. The worst she could do was throw pillows at him, but she sat quietly on the bed with her back against the wall and her knees drawn up to her chest. The look she gave him when she saw that it was him was a mix of pity, betrayal and confusion.

He paused for a moment, trying to think of something plausible and comforting that he could say. "Look, I'm really sorry about this."

"I'm sure you are," Erica said quietly, looking away.

"I mean it," Lindsey said, "but this is out of my hands."

"So that's what you came in here for?" Erica asked bitterly, "To say that you're sorry, but there's nothing you can do to help me?"

"I didn't say I couldn't do anything," Lindsey said, "and I can promise you that this is only a short-term thing. We just need to find out a few things before we can let you go. And I'm still serious about the job offer."

Erica sighed. "All right, what can you do for me?"

Lindsey shrugged. "Well, what do you like to drink, for a start? Whatever you want."

"Coke when I'm out, and Sprite when I'm not; it makes me less hyper." Erica said. "But don't bother bringing me anything that's already been opened because I won't drink it."

Lindsey frowned sympathetically as he caught her meaning. "Even if my employers would stoop to that," he said, "they don't need to. If I can't tell them that you're being co-operative they'll be forced to bring in mind-readers. They need to know that you're not a threat, and that anything you know can't harm us."

"Do I look like a threat to you?" Erica asked incredulously.

"I don't think you're a threat to us," Lindsey said as soothingly as he could without sounding condescending, "but my superiors might believe otherwise. You did something amazing tonight – for which I'm very thankful by the way – and you mentioned that you knew someone who has caused a lot of trouble for us."

"If he did then I'm sure there was a good reason."

Lindsey pounced on the uncertainty in her expression. "I don't know how long ago you knew him, or what you heard about him, but he is a vampire, and they're generally not nice people. He's been plaguing our company for a long time. You saw it yourself; he cut off my hand tonight."

"But you didn't tell me why," Erica pointed out.

"It's difficult to explain," Lindsey reasoned, "he was trying to stop me from doing a ritual. All we wanted to do was bring a woman out of hell. She wasn't supposed to be there, and she had useful information for us. Does it sound so bad to want to save a woman's life?"

"No," Erica admitted. "I mean, not unless you had to do human sacrifice or something like that." She quickly checked his expression. "You didn't, did you?"

"No, there was no human sacrifice." Lindsey assured her with a little smile. Erica nodded slowly as though she were trying to make a decision. "Now, what's your name?" he asked.

"I'm Erica," she replied.

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