Disclaimer: I don't own Angel or the place from which I filched a character to play Cordy's mentor.

A/N: A teensy-weensy crossover here. See if you can guess where I stole Cordy's mentor from. A cookie and a mention if you guess correctly in your review.

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Cordelia teleported into the Hall. This was the home of the lesser Higher Powers, a demon dimension annexed by the forces of good when they ran out of office space Upstairs. It also served as a way station for the dead, where they could be categorized, sorted, and sent on their merry way.

Physically, the Hall could use some improving. Tacky white linoleum and sterile white walls broken only by white office doors stretched on for as far as the eye could see. Ick. She could understand the why behind the PTBs' white theme, but this was taking it a little too far.

Luckily, traveling in the Hall was simply a matter of picturing your destination and willing yourself there. No special powers required. It was just the nature of the place.

Pausing for a moment, Cordy first checked to make sure her skirt wasn't rumpled and then conjured up the image of room number 1481 in her mind. For a split second, the world seemed to bend in on itself, and then she was standing in front of that particular office. She wasn't sure if she had moved to the office or if the office had come to her, but in the end, did it matter?

She let herself into the office. Employees were allowed to customize their own workspaces, thank God, and the one she shared with her mentor was decked out with classy antiques and plenty of color.

Speaking of mentor, he was in-house, hunched over his computer's keyboard, prodding away at the keys with his pointer fingers. He hadn't been happy when the PTB had computerized the entire Human Resources Department back in the mid-'90s. Her mentor had died back in like World War II or something.

"Hey, Leo, how's the paperwork coming?" she asked with an annoyingly cheerful smile. Cordy pulled out her desk chair and took a seat. They'd pushed their desk together to make conversation easier.

He looked up from the monitor and glowered. "Don't ask me that."

"Sorry…but it wouldn't be me if I didn't try to get a rise out of you, now would it?" She made a pretense of straightening the mounds of paper that had built up on her desk in her absence. Her in-box had runneth over and was starting to encroach on Leo's space.

"So, how is the Angel case coming along?"

Cordy stopped pushing the papers around and sat back in her chair. "I'm confused," she admitted.

Leo rolled his chair away from the computer so he could look directly at her, giving her all of his attention. She'd lucked out when she'd been assigned to him during her training. The training had started as soon as she'd died, after her brief visit to Wolfram & Hart. Going from Evil Lawyers, Inc. to the HR Department had been uncomfortably easy. She'd known that bureaucracy had infected the side of the angels from her time as an observer before Jasmine had hijacked her body, but she hadn't realized the extent of the corporate culture until she'd asked to be transferred to HR as a Lady of White Light. The PTB had noticed how well the Wolfram & Hart company-structure was working back in the 1980s and decided to reorganize the powers of good in a similar way. It left a bad taste in Cordelia's mouth, but the decision had been made long before her time.

Leo, though, had taken some of that bad taste away.

"It's just not making sense," Cordy told him. "Illyria brings him back to life; I restore his soul; everything's peachy until this morning when Connor shows up covered in blood. I think, ok, this is going to be one of Angel's consequences for signing a deal with evil, but then another Higher Power shows up and says Connor's her case."

"Another Higher Power?"

"Another card-carrying Lady of White Light. Cass the Oracle."

Leo frowned. "I know most of the field agents, but I haven't heard that name before."

"She said she was new."

The frown deepened. "I've been working with all the newbies lately. Gabriel's been under a lot of pressure to get this department in order. We lost a lot of good people—witches, Champions, Higher Powers and the like—when Angel attacked the Circle of the Black Thorn."

Cordelia had to look away then. She hadn't told him yet just how many people his little kamikaze attack had hurt, how much devastation it had done to the city. He wasn't ready. "An impostor maybe?"

"Maybe—keep an eye on her." He leaned back in his chair and stretched. "So, how are things going with Angel?"

"Well, when I left, he was on the phone with Buffy Summers, the Slayer."

Leo winced sympathetically. "You okay with that?"

Technically, she wasn't supposed to get involved with any of her charges. The department brochure offered a hundred different logical reasons as to why not. Mostly that an intimate relationship would cloud her judgment. But Cordy had never been very good at playing by the PTB's rules. "He was calling on Spike's behalf," she murmured, pushing a paperclip around on the top of her desk. "It's Spike, which just makes it weird. I know, I know, he's a Champion and all that, but it's still not hard to think of him as the guy who kidnapped my boyfriend back in high school—which directly led to me getting a piece of rebar through my gut, I'll have you know." She let out a little bitter laugh. "I can see what you're thinking: avoidant much? No, I believe the man when he says he's in love with me. It's just…he and Buffy have all this drama between them. I'm not looking forward to her coming to LA."

"I don't blame you." He held up a stack of paperwork. "Wanna trade?"

"Oh, hell, no!" Cordy answered with a laugh. She pushed the chair back and rose, stretching. "I'd better get back to the hotel and break up the inevitable brood-fest."

Leo got up to see her to the door, pausing with it half open. Cordelia looked up at him expectantly. "Hey, if it gets to be too much for you, don't hesitate to call for me."

She gave him a grateful smile. "Thanks for the offer, Leo, but if I can't handle Angel, then nobody can."