Subcontractor: Subcontractor
by Marcus Rowland
This is an Angel / Veronica Mars crossover. No major spoilers for Veronica Mars, spoilers for some of Angel S5. All characters belong to their respective creators and are used without any intention of damaging copyright; this story may not be distributed on a profit-making basis. I'm British, as is my spelling; live with it.

Thanks to Roz Kaveney for introducing me to Veronica Mars, to Booster for setting the pace with his excellent story California Screaming, and to numerous web sites especially Google Maps and various Veronica Mars fan sites for a lot of the details.


Subcontractor

by Marcus L. Rowland

I

I suppose I should begin by saying that I never met Cordelia Chase. Talked to her on the phone a few times, but we'd never actually met. I had an impression of someone older than me, maybe twenty or so, clever, with a snarky sense of humour. Once I put her name into Google, got hits on the name and pictures on a web site for aspiring actresses. One of the contact numbers was the same as Angel Investigations, so I know it was her. She was gorgeous, claimed to be twenty-two, and as far as I know was never on screen for more than a few seconds in any show, which was weird considering some of the bozos you see in daytime soaps. I think I saw her once in a sunblock ad and once in a crowd scene in Scrubs, that was about it.

Actually that doesn't really explain much. Let's go back a little.

When you're a detective agency with one detective (Dad) and one less-than-official under-age assistant / secretary (me) you're a little limited in what you can do, especially if what you want is well outside your own back yard. One of the ways to get around that is to build ties with other small agencies - the big ones generally charge too much - and get them to help you out. Sometimes it's done on a fee-paying basis, sometimes the entire job gets farmed out to another agency, but both of those cost money. If possible the preferred method is barter, a favour for a favour. Let's say, for example, that Mars Investigations in sunny Neptune wants information about someone who lives in slightly less sunny Malibu, Los Angeles, and can't find everything we need through credit agencies and our other usual sources. The less-than-official under-age assistant / secretary (me) looks in a directory of agencies and finds that the nearest one to that address is run by someone called Jim Rockford. She calls Rockford, flirts with him for a while while pretending to be a few years older, and hopefully talks him into finding out what she wants. Some time down the line Rockford needs info on someone in Neptune, phones us, and we try to help out. That's the simple method, but it can be a lot more complicated, with requests passed on from one agency to another until they reach someone who can help. Amazingly it works reasonably well, provided there isn't a conflict of interests.

Anyway, Jim Rockford is a fictional character and LA is a big city. In reality we had contacts with at least a dozen agencies there, and one was Angel Investigations, "we help the helpless." Never did quite understand what they meant by that. Their web site was truly bizarre, as well as the usual private eye stuff they had links to a couple of dozen New Age and occult sites. Oddly they never charged or asked for any help in return; when I asked Cordelia about that she did a pretty good Godfather impression and said "Some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me...."

Cordelia was always my contact there. I got the impression that we had things in common - for one thing she was from Sunnydale, a town that had been about the same size as Neptune - and she always seemed to have time to chat. About guys, TASERs (she used the same model as me), clothes, shoes, the importance of moisturising, and school. She'd soon worked out that I was younger than I pretended, and although she always treated me as an adult, she casually mentioned some awesome ideas on how to manipulate a school's faculty and students, some of which were adaptable to situations at Neptune High. Despite the chat she was incredibly efficient; more than once she sent me what I wanted while we were still talking. I won't say I was crushing on her, we didn't have enough contact and I'm not gay, but I certainly planned to meet up with her if I was ever in LA and had the time. In hindsight maybe I'm glad it never happened. In hindsight maybe I should have guessed that when she wanted her 'service' it would be a biggie.


II

It happened on a Tuesday night, about a year after Dad went into business. Dad was away on a skip-chasing job and wouldn't be back for a couple of days, and I was in the office after school to check mail and feed the fish when she phoned. I think that was the first time, usually I called her. I checked the Caller ID, Dad and I have more than our fair share of enemies and kooky nuisance callers, got the "Caller ID Blocked" sign, and said "Mars Investigations, how may I help you?"

"Hi Veronica, this is Cordelia Chase at Angel Investigations."

"Hi! What can I do for you?"

"I need to farm out some work your way."

"Go ahead."

"I'm going to e-mail you a list of names and approximate addresses. Our clients want as many as possible found and watched for the next week, up until midnight next Wednesday evening. Surveillance to begin as soon as possible. Reports are to be sent to you, I'll call every evening for an update. I won't be using traceable phones, so you'll have to recognise my voice."

"Are the subjects in this area?"

"No, you're probably going to have to subcontract it to local agencies. I'm transferring ten thousand dollars to your account, that ought to cover it. If not, more funds will be available. We'll pay 25% above your costs."

"Wait a second," I said cautiously, while thinking 'Money! YAY!', "if this is going to have to be subcontracted, why involve us at all?"

"We're being watched," said Cordelia. "Right now everything Angel and the rest of the guys do is under a lot of scrutiny. I've slipped off the radar for a while, but I can't run this kinda operation. You can."

While she was talking the computer bleeped for new mail from c.chase at angel investigations. I opened it and found a list of names and approximate locations, each with a photo attached. One was in Cleveland, and nearly all of them were US citizens, but after Cleveland the closest address was Brazil, others were in Italy, Britain, even one guy in Africa. And every one of them was either born in Sunnydale, California, or was listed as having spent time there.

"What is this, your class reunion?"

"Almost. You know what happened to Sunnydale?"

"Dad took me to see the crater a few months back, and I've read the government report," I said. "It looked kinda bogus, to be honest."

"They're the only witnesses we've got that aren't dead," said Cordelia.

"Wait a minute. Are you saying that someone caused the disaster?"

"No comment," Cordelia said flatly.

"So who's watching you?"

"Lawyers." She made it sound like a curse.

"And...?"

"Let's just say that they're not on the side of truth, justice, and the American way."

"Corporate liability?"

"No comment."

Sweet. I could do the math. Some time in the next few days the Sunnydale survivors were going to be hearing from whoever Angel Investigations were working for, if the lawyers didn't get wise first. Which meant that I was definitely on the side of the angels - sorry about that - especially if I could stick it to a bunch of lawyers... "Okay, let's say I can find all these people and have them watched, what then?"

"Nothing; you just keep me posted. I'll take care of the rest. But one word of advice, keep things simple and don't get involved, some of the people behind this play rough."

I thought for a moment, and said "Just a second." She wasn't asking anything illegal, and if I played my cards right we could do it for a hell of a lot less than ten thousand. "Okay... I guess we can do it. As soon as the money comes in we'll get started."

"Okay, I'll start the money transfer." I logged into Dad's account, refreshed it a couple of times, and saw $10,000 appear.

"Okay," I said, "Money's there, looks like we're on the case."

"Thanks," said Cordelia, "you're a life-saver," and hung off.


III

Cleveland was pretty easy, our contact there was a skip-tracing agency run by a guy called Kramer who knows Dad. I gave him the name and address, agreed a price, and he was ready to start about fifteen minutes later. Faith Lehane would be under the microscope the following morning. He put me onto a guy in London, who knew someone in Bristol, who knew someone in Bath... and that was Rupert Giles taken care of.

London also gave me a French agency who (just) understood what I wanted and put me on to some guys in Milan who in turn had a contact in Rome. Three for the price of one there, Buffy and Dawn Summers and their flatmate Andrew Wells.

Africa was a complete bust, I didn't even know what country Xander Harris was in, and the guys I tried either weren't interested or didn't speak any language I understand, so he was going to have to stay unfound and unwatched for now. Apart from that the tough one was Rio, Cordelia hadn't been able to give me an address, but how many red-heads called Rosenberg were there likely to be there? A Mexican agency that sometimes helps Dad with extradition cases put me onto some guys in Argentina, who put me onto... well, let's just say that I phoned in sick the next day, spent most of the morning making calls, and found myself a redhead and a subcontractor willing to watch her.

In the evening Cordelia called, and I gave her the first reports, a whole bunch of nothing. Don't know quite what I'd expected, but the major excitement was the Wells guy dating a couple of "belissima" girls, not the Summers sisters, in Rome. The rest of them seemed to be living boringly uneventful lives.

On Thursday the Rio guy had found Willow Rosenberg, but I was still getting nowhere with Xander Harris. I tried a few more numbers in Africa but came up empty again. I told Cordelia about it when she called, she told me the clients could manage without him. About eleven dad got back and I told him about the case. He wasn't sure he liked me taking it on without consulting him, but he agreed that the money was too good to turn down. When I went to bed he was looking at the list of names, and I had a feeling that he'd recognised at least one of them.

* * * * *

Friday morning began badly. I was just getting breakfast when Dad put a sheaf of papers on the table and said "Read."

"Dad?"

"Read it, tell me what you think."

Faith Lehane's record. Multiple assaults, murder, jailbreak, jumps through a window and down three stories and walks away from it... and an unprecedented 'get out of jail free' pardon from governor Terminator about a month after Sunnydale went down. "How the hell did that stay out of the news?"

"Damned if I know. I remember the case, about four years ago. She was in a coma, came round, then broke out of hospital and went on a rampage from Sunnydale to LA. Then she suddenly gave herself up, and said 'oh, by the way, I killed the deputy mayor of Sunnydale and a couple of other guys, you'd better charge me with that too.' When she escaped I was worried she'd show up here. Now she's got a pardon!"

"If she jumped three stories how the hell is she still walking? And why did the Terminator pardon her?"

"Good questions. Can't answer them, but they're good questions. When's what's-her-name calling, Cordelia?"

"This evening."

"Okay. Eat your breakfast, you'll be late for school. And get home before she calls, I want you to do the talking while I listen in."

* * * * *

The first thing Dad said that evening was "Sit down. I need to talk to you."

"If it's about school..." I began. Because things had not been entirely uneventful that day, but that's another story.

"Sit."

I sat. Dad sat down too, and said "I talked to some people in LA. Angel Investigations went out of business nearly a year ago and Cordelia Chase is dead."

"But..."

"For some reason the company still exists as a shell, and the web site is still on line, but that's all there is. You've never spoken to the real Chase. She was critically injured a month or so before they went out of business, she was unconscious on life support ever since, finally died three weeks ago."

"But we must have called them a dozen times in the last year. Who the hell was I talking to?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," said Dad. "When I tried it I got the disconnected signal."

"She said she was going to use untraceable phones. Are you sure that this isn't some kind of cover?"

"If it is, it's a weird one."

"Is the money real, at least?"

"It's real, but I'm having trouble tracing the account holder. Not Angel Investigations, if you were wondering."

"Was anything she told me true?"

"The people she wanted to trace really were passengers on the last bus out of Sunnydale. Most of them needed medical treatment, they were caught in the school when the quake started."

"Anyone else aboard?"

"Them and about a dozen others, most of them girls about your age plus the principal of the high school, he matches the description of the black guy seen with Lehane."

"But Cordelia... whoever... didn't ask about them, she was only interested in a few people."

"Maybe she didn't know them. The principal was a newcomer to Sunnydale, so were the other girls."

"That's a weird coincidence."

"This just gets more and more bizarre."

Over the next hour or so a couple of reports came in from the subcontractors in Rome and Rio. A whole load of nothing, with the Summers sisters visiting the Vatican, Wells shopping for food but otherwise staying close to their apartment, and Rosenberg spending the day on the beach with another girl. Guess they were looking for cute guys, but it sounded like they didn't find anyone they liked.

About nine the phone rang, and I picked up while Dad listened in through headphones. He had a voice stress analyzer plugged into the line. "Mars Investigations, how may I help you?"

"Hi, this is Cordelia. Any news?"

"Not really. I've got addresses for all of them apart from Harris, do you want me to send you the details?"

"That's okay, don't need them at the moment."

"But if you're going to be serving papers...."

"Did I say that?"

"You said that there were lawyers involved..."

"The worst kind."

Dad scrawled on a pad, showed it to me: "what firm?"

"Should we be watching out for them?" I asked. "Who do they work for?"

Cordelia, or whoever it was, hesitated then said "Wolfram and Hart. But stay well out of it if there's any sign of them becoming involved, they're really bad news." Dad was nodding hard, so I said "Uh.. okay. But what if they seem to be taking an interest in the subjects?"

"Look, if anything really odd seems to be going down, it might be a good idea for your subcontractors to call it in to the local cops. But I really wouldn't worry too much, I'm pretty sure that the subjects can take care of themselves."

Dad pointed at the picture of Faith, to remind me of the script we'd agreed, and I said "About that... we're a little concerned about one of them, Faith Lehane. Apparently she has a record of violent behaviour."

"And?" Cordelia asked.

"We're going to have to warn our subcontractors in Cleveland, maybe offer them hazard pay."

"Okay, I guess that's fair."

"It's likely to be expensive."

"Not a problem, within reason. Okay, is there anything else?"

Dad shook his head, and I said "I guess not."

"Okay then, I'll call again tomorrow." She hung off.

"What do you think," I asked Dad, who was playing back the tape and looking at the voice stress analyzer.

"It's odd. Not that I trust these things, but it thinks she was sincere when she said she was Cordelia Chase and about most of what she said. The odd part is that I got the same feeling."

"That's impossible, isn't it?"

"I'd say so, given the evidence."

"What about the lawyers?"

"Wolfram and Hart? Bad news. Very bad news. They're heavy hitters, completely unscrupulous, their clients range from big corporations to the Mob."

"So what do we do now?"

"Tomorrow I'm going to try to get hold of someone that knew Chase, make absolutely sure she's dead. What about you?"

"Nothing special planned," I said as innocently as I could.

Dad pretended to glance down at the voice stress analyzer, but it was still plugged in to the 'phone and he didn't need it; he knew I was lying. After a few seconds he said "Stay away from Wolfram and Hart. No 'innocent enquiries', no 'hello I'm looking for my old buddy', no sending potted plants with bugs or hacking into their computers or their phones. These are not nice people, and people who mess with them have a nasty habit of disappearing or finding themselves in serious trouble with the law."

"Um..."

"I mean it."

"Okay."

"Apart from that, have a nice time in LA."

Sometimes I think Dad knows me too well.


IV

I had Cordelia's home 'phone number from the wannabe actresses page, and that plus a quick search in last year's reverse lookup directory got me an address in Silverlake, about twenty minutes from the offices of Angel Investigations, formerly the Hyperion Hotel. I also found out where she was buried; the LA Tribune had carried an announcement of the funeral three weeks earlier. The Hollywood Forever cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard. Looking at their web site and prices I guessed that she was finally with the stars. And wondered who'd paid for it, of course.

I took Wallace with me for company and Backup for protection. Of course Wallace would like to think he was the protection, but really we both know better. He's useful, but not exactly Mr. Muscle; about my age, black, short and wiry, and his mom and my dad have the hots for each other. Backup's my dog, a pit bull.

"Where do we start?" Wallace asked, about half an hour out, when we were just starting to hit the first real LA traffic.

"The offices, I think. There might be a forwarding address, some way that we can get in touch with someone who worked for Angel Investigations."

"And we are totally not going to break in and search the place," he said sarcastically.

"Why, Wallace Fennel, whatever do you mean?"

"You heard."

"Of course, if a door or window should happen to be open..."

"Don't jive me, I saw you put the bolt-cutters and the pry bar in the trunk."

"Just a routine precaution."

"If we're stopped by the cops we are so dead."

"So let's not do anything to get stopped by the cops."

"Sure...." said Wallace, and sat low in his seat the rest of the way.

I'd expected the Hyperion to be small; instead it was a huge building that seemed to occupy most of a block. We did a drive-by first, and I spotted a loading bay in an alley round the back, with parking for several cars. All of the spaces were empty.

"What do you think?" asked Wallace.

"I think," I said, pulling into the least conspicuous parking space and making sure we had a clear route out if we needed to make a fast getaway, "that we need to get some pictures of this charming example of period architecture for art class." I grabbed my Nikon and a flashlight, and left Wallace holding Backup's lead, my laptop, and a little Fuji video camera. "C'mon, I think that there's a Japanese sand garden round on that side."

"Riiight," said Wallace, and followed me around the side. I took plenty of pictures as we went - if you're gonna make up an alibi you might as well live up to it - and by the time we'd reached the front entrance we were both really a little enthusiastic about the place. The landscaping was definitely cool, though a lot of the plants in the gardens were overgrown or dying from neglect and there were some signs of fire damage. One thing I noticed was that there were no hoboes around, which made me wonder if there was security there. Couldn't see any signs, but maybe there was a watchman or an alarm.

"Okay, that's the exterior," said Wallace, "Wonder how we get a look inside." We both looked at the door, and I took a couple of shots of a notice that said that all enquiries for Angel Investigations should be forwarded to this phone number or that post office box. The doors were glass and didn't seem to be chained, so I gave one a push. It was locked, but only by a Yale model I knew pretty well, and I was through it in about ten seconds.

"Guess it wasn't locked properly," I said loudly as we went inside.

"Holy...." Wallace was looking around the lobby with his mouth half-open, and I was finding it hard not to join him. The place was huge, with furniture covered in dust sheets, and open on three levels. It had an Art Deco look, don't know if it that was the original period or later re-modelling, and there was a vast chandelier overhead. Taped to one wall was a faded poster of a black woman called "Jasmine", nothing else to say who she was. I had a vague feeling I remembered the name, but couldn't remember why. Neither could Wallace when I asked him later.

Wallace was clicking his tongue and listening to the echoes, while I shot frame after frame with the Nikon. "If we can't get straight A's with this we aren't trying," I said.

"Let's get some pictures of some of the other rooms," Wallace said pointedly. "Art teacher's gonna want a full rundown on the place." From somewhere, I guessed one of the side rooms, there was a tinkling noise. We both froze, then I said "Hello? Is anyone there?"

I heard a noise like glass breaking, then one of the doors behind the counter swung open and a stranger came in, a blond guy, maybe twenty-five or so, wearing a black leather duster, a Billy Idol look-alike. He started to say "Buf..." then stopped as he saw us, and said "Who the hell are you?" He had a British accent, and a bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand. Remembering the list of names Cordelia had been trying to trace, I guessed that the word he'd started to say was 'Buffy', and wondered if my voice sounded like hers.

"Hi!" I said, my voice a little higher and squeakier than I liked, "We're art students from Neptune, here to get some pictures for our photography project."

"Neptune? Where did you park the flying saucer?"

"Neptune's up the coast," Wallace said tiredly. That joke and the others like it get old fast, like the one about 'Mars Attacks' I run into every now and again. "Near the border." Backup was growling softly.

"Oh yeah, remember the name now. That's what, a hundred and fifty miles from here, isn't it?"

"A hundred and twenty," I contributed.

"So tell me how the fame of this mighty establishment has penetrated to far-flung bloody Neptune." He sounded just a little drunk.

"Um..." I began, then decided to take a chance. "It's kinda a long story. I kinda know someone who used to work here, at least to talk to, she was always saying how great the architecture was so when the project came up I thought it'd be nice to come here and finally meet her and get a few photos, mister... uh..."

"Call me Spike. Meet who, exactly?" he asked.

"Cordelia. Cordelia Chase. We haven't talked in a long while, I didn't know they'd gone out of business. I should have guessed when I couldn't phone to warn her we were coming."

"Oh bollocks," Spike said, suddenly sounding tired. "Sit down. I've got some bad news for you."

"Bad news?"

"She's dead. The cheerleader's dead. I mean... Cordelia."

I sat down, hard, on one of the shrouded couches. I didn't have to fake it much, somehow it felt a lot more real hearing it from someone who knew her. Wallace patted my back, a little awkwardly, while Backup kept growling at Spike, who kept his distance.

Eventually I looked up and said "How did she die?"

"Don't really know the details," said Spike. "I wasn't in LA when she was hurt, but I heard she'd been injured in some sort of freak accident, must be a year ago now, put her in a coma. A few weeks ago she just.. well, just died, I suppose."

"Oh..."

"So how do you know her?"

I had a story ready, of course. It wasn't a good one, but I thought it had the right air of total cluelessness. "My mom wanted me to be an actress, and for a while I was on the books of a talent agency in LA. Trouble was that the only time I got a job offer they'd sent it to the wrong girl, it was meant for Cordelia. So I called to tell her, and Cordelia and I just got to talking, and we really like totally hit it off. But then I got into art, and my mom and dad divorced, and what with one thing and another we kinda lost contact. Then we were given the architecture assignment and I thought it'd be cool to come here and see Cordelia and get photos of the building. I just never..." I let it tail off into an awkward silence, apart from Backup's growls.

"Look," Spike said, more or less kindly, "You can't stop here. I've just dropped by to check that the place isn't over-run with va.. um.. vagrants, and it isn't very safe. Floors up above are as shaky as hell, there's a lot of earthquake damage."

"Oh... that's a shame," said Wallace, "we were hoping to get some photos. It really is pretty amazing."

"Don't know what'll happen to it now," said the blond guy, "Angel was only keeping the place because he thought that she might want to visit when she got out of her coma. He's a sentimental bastard sometimes, suppose it comes of being Irish. I suppose he'll sell it now."

"Angel? Angel's a person? I'd always figured the name was something to do with Los Angeles."

"No, he's a bog-trotter." He saw my puzzled look and said "Irish. Didn't she tell you?"

"No, she never really said much about the people she worked with."

"I wonder if we should send a condolence card or something," suggested Wallace.

"It's a bit late now," said Spike, "and I think he's trying to move on. Don't know about her family, they didn't even show up for the funeral. But she isn't buried far from here, wouldn't hurt if someone put a few flowers on the grave."

"Where is that?" I asked, pretending not to know.

"It's the Hollywood Forever cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard, can't remember the exact plot number. Funny thing," he said regretfully, "a lot of people I knew from Sunnydale have died, knew most of them better than her, but she was the only one where I managed to get to the funeral."

"Okay." I immediately wondered if he'd been one of the people on the bus out of Sunnydale, but couldn't think of a natural way to ask. "Um... could I at least get some photos of the places she worked?"

"It'd be out here and in the office I was in, I suppose. I was never actually here while they were in business. Only reason I'm here now is because Angel was busy and asked me to look the place over."

"What happened to the company?" I asked as casually as I could while I was taking photos. There wasn't much to see, the place seemed to have been pretty well stripped, with no papers visible, and gaps in the furniture that had probably once been filing cabinets. Spike seemed to be going out of his way to stay out of the viewfinder, but out of the corner of my eye I saw Wallace shooting video that would probably include him. There was a broken shot glass on one of the desks, I guessed he'd dropped it when he heard my voice. "Why did they go out of business?"

"Oh, someone made Angel an offer he couldn't refuse, he's CEO of another company now."

"What company's that?"

"Bunch of lawyers," he said with a sneer. "Place called Wolfram and Hart."


V


"What the hell was that about?" asked Wallace, once we were out of the hotel and driving towards Cordelia's address. "One minute you were getting on well with that guy Spike, the next minute you couldn't get away fast enough."

"Didn't you hear what he said? Angel runs Wolfram and Hart!"

"So?" I realised he hadn't been there for Dad's warning, and told him about it.

"So let me see if I've got this right," said Wallace. "Not only have you just been talking to a guy who knows the CEO of Wolfram and Hart well enough to do him favours, you told him more or less where you come from, and that you were talking to Cordelia."

"Um... yeah." I was furious with Wallace, and furious with myself. We'd been idiots... no, I'd been an idiot, it was my fault... not to go in with a better cover story.

"You'd better call your dad."

"If I do that he's likely to tell me to come home now, and I think we can do more good in LA. Besides," I said hopefully, "it didn't sound like that guy was a big fan of Wolfram and Hart, maybe he won't tell them we were there."

"You want to put money on that?"

"Not really. Okay..." I dialled Dad, got his voicemail and left a message summarising the situation, and ended "...so we'll take a quick look at the apartment, see if there's anything there, check out the cemetery, then head for home."

"And then your dad will ground you for life," said Wallace, watching the video footage he'd shot.

"Probably."

"Hey, pull over for a second."

"What's up?"

"Something weird on the tape, think it needs your magic touch."

I found a parking space and plugged the camera into the firewire socket of my laptop. "Where on the tape?"

"When I was filming in that office. There's a closet at the back, open just a little, and there was something gleaming inside it, just caught the light a couple of times from different angles. See if you can get a better look at whatever it is."

I ran through that part of the film and eventually spotted what he was talking about. Something metallic, long and shiny. "It'll probably turn out to be a vacuum cleaner nozzle."

"Maybe, but aren't you a little curious as to why they'd leave it behind? I think it's gonna be a gun, a big one."

"Well, I can try..." Despite anything you might see on CSI, there's only so much that you can do with a bad picture. Boost the contrast, stretch the highlights to exaggerate minor differences in shade, sharpen things a little, use the best parts of different shots, and so on. But sometimes you get lucky. "It looks like... hey, that is a little odd... a sword, a big one, in some kind of rack. Looks like a real one, not a toy. Weird."

"Now why," Wallace asked "would someone leave some seriously expensive cutlery in an abandoned building."

"Good question. Only thing I can think of is that the place isn't quite as abandoned as Spike said. But what sort of psycho keeps swords in the closet?"

* * * * *

Cordelia's apartment was a complete bust. An old lady was renting it, she'd only been there a couple of months and didn't know anything about the previous tenants, and wasn't about to let us in to see for ourselves. I called the management company with the same story that I'd given her; I was Cordelia's cousin and trying to catch up with her. All that they knew was that she had been hospitalized, couldn't even tell me which hospital. Her boss, presumably Angel, had paid off the lease and had her belongings put into storage, but they didn't have any details. Obviously they didn't know she was supposedly dead. All mail was being forwarded to the same post office box I'd seen mentioned on the sign at Angel Investigations.

"What now?" asked Wallace.

"Cemetery, I suppose. Maybe they'll have some records, tell us a little more about how she died."

The clerk in the cemetery office checked his files and said that the only records he had were for the sale of the plot, paid by a Mister Angel, everything else had been turned over to the lawyers handling the estate; Wolfram and Hart, of course. He printed out a little map of the cemetery, with a red star to show where Cordelia was buried.

Her grave was under a stylised marble statue of a weeping angel holding a book open to a bronze page with an engraved photograph, her birth and death dates (1980-2004), a list of roles (about as minor as I'd thought), and the phrase "Taken from us before her talent was truly recognised." Yes, it was really as sad and tacky as it sounds.

There were three bunches of flowers in vases at the base; one that was wilting, three or four days old, with an italic "In loving memory - Angel", another a little faded, maybe two days old, with a label reading "Rest in peace" and a squiggle that might have been "Leon" or "Loren", and a rather nice arrangement of roses, maybe a few hours old, labelled "Fondest memories - Xander".

"Xander?" I said.

"What?" said Wallace.

"These flowers came from one of the guys Cordelia - whoever - wanted watched, Xander Harris." I took the card and turned it over; there was a florist's address stuck to the label, and a pencilled 'Style F-12', which I thought looked like the same writing as the dedication inside the card. "Ordered from a local florist, but that doesn't mean much, he could 'phone it in from anywhere in the world."

"But it's a starting point," said Wallace.

* * * * *

"Hi, this is Veronica Chase," I told the florist. "I think you handled some of the floral arrangements for my cousin's funeral. Cordelia Chase, three weeks ago at the Hollywood Forever cemetery.... you did? They were really good, especially those... um... sorry, I'm not much with flowers, the yellowy-white ones... yes, I guess. Look, I was visiting the grave today and I noticed someone had left a fresh bunch of roses there, looks like it came from you, maybe yesterday or this morning. The thing is, the name on it is Xander, and if it's the guy I think it is he's mentioned in her will, and we haven't been able to locate him. Could you check? Oh.... oh, I see. Okay, that's great, maybe I can track him down." I closed the 'phone and said "Jackpot!"

"Yeah?" asked Wallace.

"Ordered through Interflora, the order was placed from a florist in Gibraltar."

"Gibraltar near Spain?"

"That's the one. Also near Africa, which is where we were looking for him."

"And?" asked Wallace.

"And they speak English there... I think. We ought to be able to locate him."

"You can't trace his credit card?"

"Not through Interflora. He would have paid the florist in Gibraltar, the florist transfers the payment to the USA, so there's no direct contact."

"What happens if we find him? The dead lady thanks him for the flowers he sent to her grave."

"When you put it that way... This is seriously weird."

He gave me a weird look that was his way of saying "No shit, Sherlock."



VI


"My guess," Wallace said as we came off the Interstate into Neptune that evening, "is that she's gone deep cover, like in Alias. They've told everyone that she's dead so that she's free to operate without the evil lawyer guys catching on." During the trip back I'd told him a little about the people Cordelia wanted watched, to see if he could come up with any fresh ideas. His main one was that Cordelia wanted to locate them to have them killed. I had a gut feeling he was wrong, but no real evidence either way.

"Nice idea," I said, "especially since the evil lawyers paid for the funeral. Besides, weren't the evil lawyers part of Cordelia's fiendish plot a few minutes ago?"

"Who says I can only think of one fiendish plot? Can't I have two?"

"Sure. But they have to use all the facts, not just the ones that seem convenient."

"Okay, then in this one most of the lawyers aren't in on the scam. Maybe it's just one or two people helping her."

"Wallace," I said, "people don't just come out of a long coma and organise complicated conspiracies. Unless they're really lucky they need weeks of therapy before they can even walk again."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"So how come that Faith Lahene chick went on the run as soon as she came out of her coma?"

"Umm...."

"Maybe they're mutants, like the X-Men. Or maybe... hey, I'll tell you one thing."

"What's that?"

"When you were telling me about this you must have spent twenty minutes talking about Faith Lahene, maybe five minutes for all of the rest put together. I've been doing pretty much the same thing, because whatever it is she is, she sure as hell attracts attention. But for all we know maybe she's the least important person of the bunch."

"Actually," I said, "you could have a point there. The list Cordelia gave me wasn't in alphabetical order, and Faith Lahene wasn't at the top."

"Who was?"

"Buffy Summers, with Dawn Summers noted as probably accompanying her. Then Rosenberg, Lahene, Giles, and Harris, in that order, with Andrew Wells at the bottom marked as 'possibly accompanying one of the above.'"

"So Wells was an afterthought," said Wallace, "Dawn Summers was there because of her sister, and two others had a higher priority than Faith Lahene. "

"Cordelia didn't say it that way."

"There's a lot of things she didn't say, starting with who she really is, if the real Cordelia is buried under that tacky angel. So... if Buffy Summers is the important one, who is she?"

"A high school counsellor until Sunnydale was destroyed, and that's what's on her passport. Other than that... well, she was a murder suspect in 1998, when she was a student at Sunnydale High, but she was never charged, witnesses cleared her. She was questioned again a few months later, but Faith Lahene eventually confessed to that one."

"Twice?" said Wallace, . "While she was still in high school?"

"It was a violent school. I saw a newspaper story blaming most of it on street gangs on PCP. Funny thing is that PCP is a tranquilliser."

I stopped at a light, and a motorcycle drew up alongside us. The rider opened his visor. Weevil, with a few of his friends coming up behind him. He said "Hey, Veronica Mars, you and flagpole boy on a date?"

"I'm working, Weevil."

"Well, I'm not going to diss a working girl, though I would have thought a fine looking woman like you could get a better class of clientele, but you might want to think carefully before you head back to the office. We drove by there earlier, there are some heavy-looking guys watching the place."

"Police?"

"Not from Neptune. You been pissing off the Feds?"

"Not that I know."

"Well, someone's taking an interest, better be real careful."

"Thanks. Oh, Weevil, did you see any sign of my dad there?"

"His car's outside, I didn't exactly want to walk in to take a closer look."

"Okay, I owe you one."

"You owe me plenty, but I'll put it on the tab."

I had a sudden thought and said "Weevil, do you know anything about Sunnydale?"

"Big hole in the ground." He slammed his visor closed and put his bike into gear as the lights changed. I thought about following, I had a hunch he knew more than that, then changed my mind and drove Wallace home. Before I left him I backed everything up to DVD and gave him a copy, just to be on the safe side.

* * * * *

There were a couple of guys in suits sitting on the couch in Dad's outer office, they looked like bodyguards or cops. When I came in both of them seemed to tense a little. I could hear Keith talking to someone in the inner office. "...I hear what you're saying, and if you can prove that the money is yours I'll be happy to have it transferred back to your account. But I can't discuss our clients affairs..."

I asked "Can I get you guys anything? Coffee?" One shrugged, the other shook his head. I put the cameras away, poured myself a cup and went to my desk and began to type a heavily censored account of my trip to LA, omitting all mention of Wallace, breaking and entering, and other crimes and misdemeanours. I could hear that Keith was talking to a woman, and as I typed I tried to listen in, but the voices didn't carry very well. A couple of times I was pretty sure I heard the words "Cordelia Chase" and "Wolfram and Hart," but I didn't get the context.

Eventually I heard a chair scrape and Dad came out with a woman, maybe in her thirties, with a scarf around her neck and an oddly stiff walk, like she had a back problem. She said "If this matter isn't resolved I can assure you that there will be consequences, Mister Mars." She swept out, the goons in tow, barely giving me a glance.

When they were gone I asked "Trouble?"

"Lawyer, from Wolfram and Hart. It appears that the money we were sent came out of one of their accounts. They aren't happy about it." As he was talking he got out a handheld bug detector (yes, that is the manufacturer's name for the thing) and began to sweep the room for little listeners. I made small talk until he'd finished and said that we were probably clean, then asked "Did you find out anything more about Cordelia before the lawyers showed up?"

"I spoke to someone who knew her, an ex-cop called Kate Lockley. She confirmed that Chase is dead; says she went to the funeral and saw the body. But there was something a little odd about the conversation. I told her a little about the calls, and she didn't seem as surprised as you'd expect. Just made a lame joke about checking that she has a reflection if she turns up here. How about you?"

"I saw the grave, and I met someone who knew her and said that she was dead. Guy named Spike, I didn't get his full name but he seemed sincere. He also said that the owner of Angel Investigations, turns out his name really is Angel, now runs Wolfram and Hart. I checked in the public library. Liam Angel became CEO of Wolfram and Hart about a year ago. Oh, and there were flowers from Xander Harris on the grave, the florist said they were ordered from Gibraltar. Do we know anyone there who can trace him?"

Dad rubbed his head, and looked about as puzzled as I felt. "We'll have to confront Chase, or whoever she really is. This can't go on."

"Don't you want to figure it out for yourself?"

"I'd love to, but we could be facing Federal charges if that money really came from Wolfram and Hart."

"I guess. She ought to be calling in a couple of hours. What about Harris?"

"Leave it until we've talked to her," said Dad.

"Any reports from the subcontractors?"

"I haven't had time to check."

I went on line and checked our e-mail. Nothing exciting from Cleveland, Faith Lahene and her boyfriend had hit a few clubs on Friday evening and lost their tail somewhere along the way, but they were back at home today. The guys in Rome had tailed Buffy and Dawn Summers to the Vatican again, and back to their apartment a few hours later. Wells was in Milan, and had spent the day visiting the Da Vinci gallery at their science museum and sketching some of his designs. And in Rio...

"They've lost track of Willow Rosenberg."

"How?"

"The guy they had trailing them fell asleep on the beach, when he woke she and her friend were gone. They haven't gone back to their hotel, and he thinks someone spiked his drink."

"More likely he drank too much and dozed off."

"Maybe, but the guy who runs the agency seems to think he's pretty reliable. He's going to have him tested for drugs."

"Okay. You'd better tell Chase, or whoever the hell it is, when she calls."


VII

"Hello, this is Mars Investigations."

"Hi, Veronica, this is Cordelia."

"Err... about that..." I said, "...are you sure? Everyone seems to think that Cordelia Chase is dead."

There was a pause, then she said "Okay, I guess you're a little mad at me." Dad was listening in on earphones, and rolled his eyes.

"Who are you?"

"Cordelia Chase. You have a problem with that?"

"But..."

"Come on, Veronica, do the math. Either I'm lying, and you have to ask yourself why I'd lie to you over a year or so when I could just hire you under another name, or I'm telling the truth. And if I'm telling the truth either the coma and funeral were faked, or I'm a ghost or a zombie or something. Which do you think is more likely?"

"Are you in the witness protection scheme or something?"

"Something."

"That's not much of an answer."

"It's all I can give you for now."

Dad beckoned to me, and I gave him the 'phone and took the headphones. "Miss Chase, this is Keith Mars. Kate Lockley gave me a couple of questions to ask you."

"How is she? Haven't seen her in a couple of years."

"She seemed well. What was the name of the murderer the papers called 'The Pope'"

"She told you about that?" Cordelia sounded surprised.

"Answer the question please. I know it isn't on the public record."

"Okay. Penn, can't remember his first name."

"And who killed him?"

"She told you that? Okay... she did."

Dad nodded to himself and said "What was your flatmate's name?"

"Dennis." Dad nodded again. I tried to remember if I'd heard anything about a flatmate. Maybe he'd left before she started to fake her illness.

"And the name of your high school principal?"

"Snyder. Where the hell did she get that from?"

"I'd imagine it's on record. Very well, Miss Chase, let's say that you are who you say you are. Wolfram and Hart claim that the money that you paid us was an illegal transfer from one of their accounts."

There was another pause, then she said "Who told you that?"

"We were visited by one of their lawyers this afternoon. A Lilah Morgan."

"Lilah?" said Cordelia. "She's a fine one to talk... Is she around somewhere?"

"She's staying at a hotel in Neptune. I could give you her number."

"Can you connect her on a conference call?"

"Yes."

"Get dialling."

Dad put Cordelia on hold, punched in the number, and said "Miss Morgan? I have Cordelia Chase on hold, she'd like to talk to you."

"Really? This ought to be interesting. Go ahead." Dad pushed a couple of buttons to connect her.

"Hello Lilah," said Cordelia.

"Cordelia," said Lilah. "Am I to understand that reports of your death have been... exaggerated?"

"Understand what you like, Lilah. This is a conference call so you might not want to get too specific."

"I see."

"You have a hell of a nerve saying that my money, from my savings account, belongs to Wolfram and Hart."

"All of Cordelia Chase's assets have been frozen pending settlement of her estate."

"Sure, and I'll bet that you're planning to release them to my heirs any decade now."

"It's in hand. If you want to change anything, all you need do is call in and sign a few forms."

"You know I can't do that, Lilah."

"What exactly is it you want from me?" asked Lilah.

"Back off. Leave the detectives alone, they're just doing the job I've paid them to do, which has nothing to do with Wolfram and Hart."

"And if I don't?"

"Billy."

"Billy?"

"Come on, Lilah, you know what I'm talking about. The Senior Partners get a full report on Billy. All the things you didn't tell them."

"Billy?" I thought, "Who the hell is Billy?"

"That might be... awkward," said Lilah.

"Awkward? Yeah, I guess that's one word for it. Look, just write it off as a debt owed by my estate. Lump it in with miscellaneous transactions at the end of the month, by then nobody will care. If I were you I wouldn't even mention it to anyone at the office, that might be a little unfortunate."

"And your business with Mars Investigations?"

"Has nothing to do with Wolfram and Hart, or anyone who has ever worked with Wolfram and Hart. Including Angel and everyone else who used to work for Angel Investigations. I'm just tying up a few loose ends."

There was a long pause, then Lilah said "Very well. Mister Mars, Miss Chase has assured me that her business with you has nothing to do with Wolfram and Hart. Can you confirm that?"

Dad thought for a second, then said "You know that I can't discuss the details of our business, but I can confirm that she's specifically told us to have nothing to do with you, not to get involved with your company in any way."

"Very well. Provided you follow those instructions Wolfram and Hart will take no further action. Agreed?"

"Agreed," said Dad, looking at me. I nodded half-heartedly.

There was a click, and Dad said "Okay, Miss Chase, she's gone. Now would you mind telling me what the hell this is really about?"

"I really just want to keep an eye on a few friends for a few days."

"And to do that you've faked your own death?"

"It's a lot more complicated than that. Look, I'm not asking you to do anything illegal or immoral, and I can promise you that I don't mean any harm to my friends. I just want to know what's happening to them."

"Miss Chase, are you in any danger?"

"No. But it's a complicated situation, and I really don't want to explain it right now."

"I'm going to put you on hold for a moment," said Dad, then said "What do you think, Veronica?"

"I think we should do it."

"I'm not so sure. There has to be more to it than that."

"Sure, but Cordelia really doesn't want to tell us. I've got a feeling that she's telling us as much of the truth as she can."

"The hell of it is," said Dad, "that I have the same feeling. Okay, let's do it."

I picked up the 'phone and said "Okay, we're in. First of all, I'd better tell you that we have a lead on Xander Harris. We're pretty sure he's in Gibraltar, or was yesterday. Do you want us to track him down?"

"Definitely." She sounded pleased.

"Okay, we'll get on it. Next, it's probably a coincidence, but I was in LA today and ran into someone who knows Angel. A guy called Spike. Do you know anything about him?"

"Spike? He's bad news. Stay as far away from him as you can. Where did you meet him?"

"Ah... At the Hyperion Hotel," I said sheepishly.

"Stay well away from there," said Cordelia. "I don't want you to have anything to do with Angel, Spike, or anyone else that works with them."

"Okay. I don't think he knows what we're doing, and I won't be going back."

"Make sure that you don't."

"Okay. I'm afraid that our guys in Rio have lost track of Willow Rosenberg. Any instructions?"

"Well," said Cordelia, "I guess they'd better try to find her again." For some reason she sounded amused.

"Okay. Any advice on how to do that?"

"Nope." She sounded way too cheerful. "How's the money holding out?"

"You're still good for three or four more days, but we'll probably need more on Wednesday or Thursday."

"No problem. Okay, anything else?"

"An explanation would be good."

"Ask me again when the job is done." I heard a click and the dialling tone.

"What do you make of that?" asked Dad.

"It sounds to me like she wanted us to lose Rosenberg."

"That's the impression I got too."

"You know," I said, "I don't think that this has ever been about watching those people. It's about her wanting them to be aware that they're being watched."

"And when they find out," said Dad, "if they're competent to trace it back, they'll want to ask us some questions."



VIII

Minor spoilers for Veronica Mars 1.12 onwards.

On Sunday morning there wasn't much happening; some more routine reports came in from our contractors, and I sent a query to the guy in England, who hadn't reported since Friday night. There was still no sign of Willow Rosenberg and Dad was still working on tracing Harris in Gibraltar, so I dug out some information on Sunnydale then started to research the murderer Dad had mentioned, the guy they called 'The Pope.' He was still on the LAPD wanted list, and seemed to have his own creepy fans on half a dozen web sites.

When Dad was between calls I said "Cordelia said Kate Lockley killed this Pope guy. According to the LAPD website he's still wanted, and they don't know who he is."

"I don't know the circumstances," said Dad, "She was very cagy, but she said that the body was never recovered so they left it open."

"Like Lynn Echols?"

"I don't know. From the little she said, and what I know about him, I really don't want to know."

"But Cordelia knew?"

"Apparently Angel Investigations were involved in the case."

I said "It's odd that there's nothing on the record."

"My guess would be that there was something off about the way they found him; maybe it was the result of an illegal search. With no body and no usable evidence they might just let it drop."

"Oh.. I guess that makes sense. Just hope she's right about him being dead, because some of this stuff is scary."

"I don't think you were his type," said Dad. "According to the reports he went after teenage boys."

"So I can't be worried about my friends?"

"Good point."

"Sunnydale..." I said.

"What about Sunnydale?" asked Dad.

"I wonder what really happened there. The government report reads like a whitewash; it says '...a hitherto-unknown cave system suddenly collapsed...,' but I checked a geological web site and they've had at least six earthquakes there this century, the last one only four years ago. Why didn't it happen before? My guess is damage from mining. But it'd have to be really recent, and there's nothing like that on record."

"I remember someone suggesting that there might have been a water dome under the town, like an oil well only filled with water. Sunnydale must have got its water somewhere. Pump out enough, without taking the right precautions, and eventually it collapses."

"Sounds plausible, I guess. Maybe Cordelia knows."

"You said that she'd said something about corporate liability."

"You know... I thought that she did, but she didn't. She let me make assumptions and didn't tell me that I was wrong. She does that a lot, drops hints and half-truths and leaves it to us to fill in the gaps. I wonder if there's anything else she's told us that we've completely misunderstood. Maybe she'll explain it some time."

"Maybe."

"Anything from Gibraltar?"

"It's late in the evening there, the florist is closed and so far Garcia's had no luck with hotels. It's possible that Harris was just passing though anyway."

"What do you want me to do then?"

"Go out and get some fresh air. Relax. Oh, and if you have time swing by the motel, make sure that Lilah Morgan and her flunkies have checked out. They had rooms 204 to 206. If they're still there I don't want their room bugged or anything else that might bring you to their attention. So far they aren't interested in you, I think, and I'd like it to stay that way."

"They've really got you freaked, haven't they?"

"If half the stories I've heard are true Wolfram and Hart are like something out of a John Grisham novel, only a lot worse. I don't want to have anything to do with them if I can help it."

"Okay. I'll be careful."

* * * * *

After I'd checked the motel and found it lawyer-free I went over to Weevil's place. He wasn't there but his grandmother was. She still thinks she owes me one, so I thought I'd sound her out about Sunnydale. BIG mistake. She gave me nearly an hour of rapid-fire Spanish about "la Boca del Infierno", the town's old name, literally the Mouth of Hell, said that the Devil had sucked the whole town down, that nobody who knew anything about the place would have lived there, yadda yadda. When she'd calmed down a little she started to tell me stories about the place, mostly from when it was a Spanish colony. They ran heavily to massacres, mysterious deaths, and horrible disasters, from earthquakes to plague. It was all wild exaggeration, of course, but there was no denying that modern Sunnydale hadn't had a big Spanish community; according to the census statistics I'd seen it was one of the smallest in California. All sorts of oddness in those statistics, not least the violent crime rate. I had a feeling someone somewhere had mixed up the data for Sunnydale and a much larger town; say Los Angeles.

I managed to get away eventually, and finally caught up with Weevil at the junk yard, where he and some of the other bikers were doing something complicated to an old Harley, which looked like military surplus. I could tell because it was drab mottled green and had a couple of big fibreglass gun cases instead of pannier boxes.

"Hey, Veronica," said Weevil. "You come by to pay off your favour?" The other guys laughed, and Backup popped his head out the car window and glared at them. The laughing stopped. They've seen Backup in action, and it never hurts to remind them who has superior firepower.

"Hey, Weevil," I said. "Got a minute?"

"Why am I thinking that paying off debts isn't what you have in mind?"

"I asked you a question yesterday, you didn't answer it."

"You ask a lot of questions," he said, but he looked uneasy.

"About Sunnydale. Do you or any of the guys know anything about the place?"

"It's gone, chica," said one of the bikers, a guy I didn't recognise. "Fell back into hell where it belonged."

"And when exactly were you in Sunnydale?" asked Weevil, glaring at him. The guy shuffled his feet, didn't answer.

"Any of you ever actually been near the place?" I asked.

Eventually one of them stepped forward and said "I was through there once."

"And?"

"And it was a town, pretty much like any other."

"Did you stay the night?" asked Weevil.

"Do I look loco?" No way was I going to answer that one.

"Bunch of pussies," said Weevil.

"How about you?" I asked.

Weevil hesitated, then said "You promise you won't tell my grandmother? She knew I'd been in Sunnydale, she'd probably arrange for an exorcism."

"Sure. I promise."

"I was there twice, the second time I went to one of the clubs and stayed at a motel overnight. It was a few months before the place collapsed."

"And?"

"And nothing happened to me." It felt like I was missing the punch line of a joke.

"So?"

"So when I was checking out the police were in one of the other rooms, a couple of doors from me. Someone had killed a girl during the night, ripped her throat open, and no-one had heard a damned thing."

"How long did they hold you?"

"About five minutes."

"What?"

"Maybe ten. They took my name and address, checked my driving license, said they'd be in touch if they needed any information, then let me go. Never heard any more about it."

"That's crazy."

"Way I figure it, they knew who they were looking for. But I never heard anything about it on the news, and you can bet I was listening."

"Or they knew that the killer wouldn't be around in the daytime," said another biker. Most of them laughed, uneasily, and a couple of them crossed themselves.

"And that's it? None of you know any more?"

They didn't.

* * * * *

I got back to find Dad trying to get the laser printer to work. I had a look and couldn't find anything wrong with the hardware, then tried to print from my laptop. Nothing. After a few minutes I found the problem; the router wasn't passing data to the printer, and the queue was stuck. The error messages said that the printer was unknown.

I tried our usual password to log onto the router. Zilch, we were locked out. Dad said "Must have reset itself" and went looking for the instruction manual, while I tried a few obvious defaults and eventually got in as user 'admin' with the password 'password.' I hastily reset everything to something a lot less obvious - that router is our main firewall, amongst other things - re-installed the printer information, and re-started the print queue. Then I went looking for the cause.

"According to the print log you printed eighteen pages at two," I said eventually, "then around two-forty-five it jammed. Does that sound about right, dad?

"I guess."

"Were you into a lot of files around two-fifteen, two-twenty?"

"I don't think so... no, that would be when I went to the post box with the Jensen invoice."

"Then I think we've been hacked." I showed him the file list on his computer, sorted by time of access. A few earlier in the day, then dozens at around two-fifteen. And nearly all of them were related to one case.

Three guesses which one.



IX


"Okay," Mac said around a mouthful of pepperoni pizza, "who did you annoy? The NSA? CIA? Industrial Light and Magic?"

"Industrial Light and Magic?"

"They've got the computer power to mount an attack like this, no-one else around here does, except maybe Kane Software."

Officially Mac is just a student at Neptune High. Unofficially she keeps the school computer network up and running, since the guy allegedly in charge is a complete dickwad. I've never quite understood what Mac gets out of this, but knowing her it isn't pro bono; Mac likes money, and I was calling in serious favours to get her to the office on a Sunday. That and paying for pizza.

"You think it might be Kane?" asked Dad.

"Doubt it," I said, "they don't seem to have accessed anything related to Lilly Kane, and even if they were after something else I think they would have looked. So what's so special about the way they got in?"

"Well..." said Mac, and launched into an explanation involving microsecond timing of signals, buffer overflows, ports and firmware that left Dad and me little the wiser. I'm pretty much a computer geek, but I'm nowhere near Mac's level. I could feel my eyes glazing over by the time she wound down.

"So... if I'm getting this right," said Dad, "they tricked the router into downloading new firmware from the wrong address, and that gave them a back door into the network? Then when they were done made it download a new version of the firmware and flush everything they did?"

"Pretty much. I suppose it's always been theoretically possible, I've just never heard of it being done quite that way before. We're lucky your ISP was logging the local addresses."

"Why were they doing that?" I asked.

"They lost a lot of bandwidth this morning," said Mac. "Traffic slowed to a crawl from about eleven up to two in the afternoon. Now we know why. Someone was using it to hack your system."

"So why doesn't it happen all the time?" asked Dad.

"Because the router's designed to prevent things like that, they must have tried a couple of million combinations before they got in, and it'd be a total bitch to get the timing right."

"Can you trace it back?" I asked.

"Not a chance," said Mac, after swallowing another chunk of pizza. "They logged at least a dozen different routes for the traffic, all of them through LA ISPs that are pretty easy to hack if you know how, and beyond that the traces are pure fiction. Most of them show as coming from UCS!"

Like that meant something.

"UCS?" asked Dad.

"UC Sunnydale" said Mac, "Nothing there now but a hole in the ground." Dad and I exchanged glances.

"You know," I said "that isn't quite true. When Dad and I drove out there last year I remember noticing power and phone lines along the side of the road. Maybe they're dead, but maybe someone tapped into them, used them to hack us."

"Let me check something," said Mac, and logged onto a utilities web site. There was a map of California, and she zoomed in on Sunnydale. "Okay, here's the area today. No utilities, no phone, nada. The cables end at the next town on either side. But this site lets you compare areas at different times." She clicked a menu option, and suddenly there was a grid there, bright red and blue lines criss-crossing where the town used to be.

"Thought so," said Mac, "I remember looking at this about eighteen months ago, they had more fibre than half of Los Angeles. Broadband, phones, cable TV. And UCS had one hell of a big feed, must have been at least a gigabit line running straight back to LA. I was thinking of trying for a scholarship there until I saw the student droput and death rates."

"High?" asked Dad.

"Both the highest in California."

"How often is that site updated?" I asked. "Could someone be using the remains of the network without it showing up?"

"Sure. This thing only shows the known network status, if someone made a few unofficial changes they wouldn't be there."

"What would you need to do it?" asked Dad, "if all of the traffic was coming that way?"

"Access to some of the network switches and cable booster stations," said Mac, "but you could do that with lockpicks or the right combination if it's a push-button lock. Maybe they'd need to switch the power back on, but you could run the equipment for a few hours with a car battery and an alternator. Then at the end of it either a truck packed with computers or a satellite base station. My guess would be the truck full of computers, the time lag would be a lot less. What does it matter? They'll be long gone, It's been nearly three hours."

"If we were the only target," said Dad. "What if they had other fish to fry?"

"I could ping it, run a route trace, see if there was anything there," said Mac, and did something with her laptop. "Okay... the line's still showing as there, but... what the hell?" I could see the screen filling with numbers and names, scrolling up the screen. She watched them for a minute or so then pressed on the pad to pause the program.

"What happened?"

"They're playing with me. Bounced the trace to Dubai, then somewhere in Alaska then the University of London, um.. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Melbourne City Council, General Motors, the Sorbonne... it's just going on and on. My guess is that they're still there somewhere along the cable, unless they're sending the signal back along the cable and out somewhere else."

"Can you pin it down any closer than that?" I asked.

"Doubt it. Whoever is doing this is good. Better than me."

"Might as well forget it," said Dad, taking a slice of pizza, "nobody's going to check out the whole route just because we've been hacked." I grabbed the last piece before anyone else could take it.

"So why the interest in Sunnydale?" asked Mac. "Both of you seemed real interested when I mentioned the connection."

I said "The case we're working, the one that was hacked, involves people from Sunnydale."

"Are you sure about that?" asked Mac. "It's been a good place to put on fake ID the last year or so. All of the town records were lost."

"As sure as we can be."

"Wait a minute..." said Mac, "hackers and Sunnydale, why does that ring a bell? Hackers and Sunnydale... Let me think." She put her hands behind her head and leaned forward, deep in thought, eyes closed. I noticed that her hair was dangling in the remains of the pizza. It was kinda gross, but I didn't want to interrupt her. Suddenly she snapped her fingers and sat up, her hair leaving a smear of tomato sauce on her shirt. "Got it! Warren Meers!"

"Who?" I asked. Dad looked thoughtful, like he was trying to remember something.

"Warren Meers. Couple of years ago. He hacked some security companies in Sunnydale, used the information for some robberies. A couple of his pals were caught and he lost it completely, shot two girls then busted his friends out of jail and took off. They were on the FBI's ten most wanted list for a while. Don't think they ever caught up with him. Word is he's dead, even if he wasn't all of the evidence against him would have been lost when the town was destroyed, although I suppose the witnesses could still testify against him."

"I think I remember," said Dad, "we were on the lookout for them for a while, there was a rumour that they might be headed for the border."

While we were talking Mac had been searching Google, and turned the laptop round to show us the results. Warren Meers, wanted for two counts of murder, attempted murder, credit card and wire fraud, and a couple of dozen theft charges.

"Who did he kill?" asked Dad.

"Tara Maclay, student of Sunnydale California, and Katrina Silber, visitor to Sunnydale. Also shot and wounded Buffy Summers, resident of Sunnydale California."

"Buffy Summers?" said Dad. We both knew the name, of course.

"According to this," I said, "he was trying to kill Summers. Maclay was hit by a stray shot. They think he killed Silber a few weeks earlier, she was his old girlfriend, they thought it was an accident at first but some witnesses said he'd been seen with her the night she died, and after the shootings they re-opened the case. Witnesses to the shootings were Alexander Harris and Willow Rosenberg." A lot of familiar names there.

"Any reason why he shot Summers?"

"It says here that she's the one that caught his friends, interrupted one of their robberies and delayed them until the police arrived. Meers got away, the others didn't. Jonathan Levinson and Andrew Wells. Wait a minute, Andrew Wells?" I clicked on the link. He'd been caught at the time, but for some reason he'd never been charged. "Why wouldn't they throw the book at Wells?"

"Maybe there wasn't enough evidence," said Dad, "or there might be other reasons. Maybe he gave evidence against his friends, or helped the authorities some other way. Or just stayed out of the way until after the town was destroyed. It would be very difficult without the physical evidence, and he seems to have been more of an accessory than a major player."

"Let's see if I've got this right," I said. "Warren Meers shoots Buffy Summers and Tara Maclay, and two years later one of his sidekicks is living with Buffy Summers? That doesn't seem right."

"He's what?" asked Mac. I told her a little about the investigation. Soon she was as confused as we were, and I hadn't even told her about Cordelia's alleged death.

"What if Meers isn't dead?" said Dad. "What if he's behind all this? We don't really know much about the client, maybe she's working for him. For all we know someone's planning to kill them all."

"Holy crap," I said. "Rosenberg dropped out of sight just after we found her, and it's a couple of days since we heard anything about Giles, although he isn't listed as a witness. Maybe he saw something and Meers knows it and had him eliminated."

"Then why would Meers need to hack you?" asked Mac.

"Good point," I said. "Okay, so forget that one. Maybe it's the other way around. The client's after Meers, and he's found out somehow and that's why we were hacked."

Mac was shaking her head again. "I know I'm the one that mentioned Meers, but the more I think about it, the less I think he'd be up to the job. The stuff he was doing was all routine hacking, the kinda thing anyone could do with a little technical expertise. He had to steal most of his money the hard way, if he was this good he could have made millions without going in for armed robbery."

"We could come up with endless theories," said Dad. "I could make a reasonable case for the idea that they were all in it together, Meers and Summers and the rest of them. Maybe they had an argument during the robbery, Summers pretends she caught the others and grabs most of the take, and Meers shoots her to get his revenge."

"It's kinda plausible," I said. "Do you really think so?"

"No, but if I was trying to sell it to a DA I'd rate my chances at fifty-fifty. But it doesn't explain why we were hacked, or anything else that's happening now."

"What you really need to do now," said Mac, "is concentrate on improving your security, then maybe you'll stay in business long enough to figure this out. I've made sure that there aren't any more surprises in the router, so they'd have to do things the hard way if they wanted to get in again, and beefed up the firewall software on all your PCs. One suggestion... after I've gone change the passwords again, for all you know I'm working for the opposition."

"Are you?" I asked.

"Nope. But you don't know I'm not lying."

"Okay," said Dad. "We've taken about two hours of your time, I'd like to pay you for your services. Call it fifty dollars?"

"Would you expect to pay a professional at that rate? Make it a hundred," said Mac, "I had to change some plans. Ninety if it's cash."

"Done." Dad gave her the money, and Mac went on her way rejoicing. After she'd gone I changed the passwords, the user names, and the name of the network, just to be on the safe side, switched the wireless encryption to a 128-bit key, and talked Dad into promising to buy a different make of router.

* * * * *

Evening got closer, and we both started to listen for the 'phone to ring. It was about time for Cordelia, or whoever she was, to call. Instead there was a knock at the door, and a guy came in. Stocky, in his twenties, heavily tanned, with a patch over one eye.

"Can I help you?" I asked

"I hope so," he said. California accent. "Mars Investigations?"

"That's right."

"I understand you've been looking for me." I must have looked blank because he said "My name's Harris. Xander Harris."


X

Harris, if that's who he really was, came in and looked around warily. I tried to recognise him from my memory of Cordelia's pictures, and I suppose I could just about see it.. very distantly. He looked like someone out of a Hemingway book, tough and weather-beaten. Of course the eye was the big difference, but it wasn't something I could casually ask about.

"Do you have some identification?" asked Dad.

"Do you?" He asked, reaching into a pocket.

"Keith Mars," said Dad, and I said "Veronica Mars."

He eventually found a battered US passport and tossed it to Dad. His aim was a little off, I suppose because of the eye.

"Can I get you some coffee?" I asked.

"Could you make two cups? Both black, no sugar. I've got a friend with me, she's just parking the car."

"Sure." I made sure that the pot was full and poured him a cup.

"Okay," said Dad. "You're Alexander Harris."

"Call me Xander."

"Take a seat. What can I do for you?"

"That's a good question," said Xander, sitting so that he could see both of us. I got an impression that he wasn't the trusting sort. "You've been taking an interest in my movements, I was kinda wondering why."

"What makes you think we're interested in your movements?" asked Dad.

"I could tell you," said Xander, "but then I'd have to shoot you." We both stared at him. He sighed and said "Nobody appreciates my sense of humour. Look, you've been sending messages about me all over Africa, and I've got friends there who watch out for that kinda thing. Admittedly they're mostly watching to see if there's a way to make a fast buck from it, but they let me know you were looking for me. By the way, if you get any emails from Nigeria saying I've died and left you forty million dollars just ignore them."

There was a knock then a woman came in. She was black, gorgeous, about eighteen, and said something to Harris in a language I didn't recognise. He smiled and said something back, she looked a little confused until he repeated it, then she smiled and sat down. I gave her a cup of coffee and she smiled again, said "Ngiyabonga," which I guessed meant "thank you," and sipped it.

"This is Harriet Nyembe," said Harris, "She's going to be a student in the USA for a few months, I'm escorting her to the school. Which is a fancy way to say that I do the talking for both of us and she pretends to understand me when I try to speak Zulu." He said something to her, and I could hear our names in it, she nodded politely and smiled again.

"I hope I just introduced you and told her this'll take a while," said Harris, "but I may have just told her you're going to marry us or something." He smiled again, then said "So why were you looking for me?"

"One of our clients asked us to locate you," said Dad.

"And that client would be?"

"I'm sorry, that's confidential."

"Why you?" asked Xander. "It's not like I've ever lived or worked here, or have any family in the area. Is it someone from Sunnydale looking for me? Not my parents, I hope."

"I don't believe so," said Dad.

"Are we going to sit here playing twenty questions?" asked Xander, "or should I be threatening you or something?"

"You could try," said Dad.

"Naah, I'm too tired. I suppose I could ask Harriet to beat you up," she looked up as he said her name, while Xander watched our faces, "but I think that you're almost as much in the dark as I am."

"What gives you that idea?" asked Dad.

"The fact that you aren't taking me seriously." He had us both confused now. "Whatever this is about, you haven't been told much."

"Perhaps not. Would you like to enlighten us?"

"Let me make this simple. I know that you've been hired to find me and some of my friends. What I don't understand is why."

"Some of your friends?" said Dad, raising his eyebrows.

Xander held up a hand and counted on his fingers as he said "Buffy and Dawn, Willow and Kennedy, Faith and Robin, Giles, and me. Did I miss anyone?"

"Andrew Wells," I said distractedly. I was still trying to work out who Kennedy was. I already knew that Robin was the guy Faith Lehene lived with.

"Someone wants Andrew followed?" he asked incredulously. I nodded.

"Okay... and nobody told you why?"

"It sounds like you have a better idea than we do," said Dad.

"You must have made some guesses."

"The name that comes to mind is Warren Meers."

"Huh?"

"Warren Meers. He murdered Tara Maclay and shot Buffy Summers, crimes witnessed by you and Willow Rosenberg. Andrew Wells was one of his accomplices."

"Well yeah," said Xander, looking slightly stunned, "I suppose you could make that connection, maybe, but I'm pretty sure that Warren's long gone. He took off after he killed Tara, nobody's heard of him in a couple of years. What made you think he might be involved?"

"It seems rather odd that you should be friends with Wells after all that happened. We were wondering if there was more to it than met the eye."

"You know," Xander said slowly, "I can't really give you a good reason why we ended up even talking to Andrew. He's an idiot, and he's easily led, but... you know, I can't give you a reason at all, it just kinda happened."

"What happened to the money Meers stole?" I asked.

"I think the police recovered it and accounted for the rest. Look, I'm sure you've got some sort of elaborate theory you're just dying to explain, but Warren's gone and Andrew's clean these days. He's still an idiot, but he's clean. Believe me we've checked. Now, what's this really about?"

"Someone hired us to watch you and report your movements," said Dad. "That's really all that I can tell you."

"Okay... so... Wolfram and Hart?"

"We don't believe so," said Dad, "but they do seem to be interested."

"I'll bet," said Xander. "Has to be Angel then."

"Angel?"

"Used to run Angel Investigations, now he's CEO of Wolfram and Hart. What the hell are they up to?"

Dad looked at me, and I tried to guess what he was thinking. Xander seemed to be watching both of us. Eventually Dad said "The situation is a little confused. There seems to be some doubt as to the identity of our client, but we aren't yet sure what's going on. If it turns out that we've been lied to I'll consider answering your questions."

"When will you know?" asked Xander.

"When the client contacts us again we'll request clarification. If we don't get it I'll answer your questions."

"Are you expecting to be contacted in the next... oh... twenty-four hours?"

"It's likely."

"Okay.. does this town run to a decent hotel?"

"The Sunset Regent is good," I said, "but it's kinda expensive."

"That's okay," said Xander. "I'm getting expenses." Cordelia's dossier had described him as a construction worker, I wondered how he'd paid for his African vacation, and who was paying expenses. "Call me if you want to tell me anything." He said something to Harriet and she nodded to us and followed him out.

"What did you make of that?" Dad asked once we were sure they'd gone.

"He's hard to read, with the eye patch and everything, but..." I hesitated, trying to sort my impressions.

"Go on."

"He mentioned someone called Kennedy. First I've heard of him."

"Her. Willow Rosenberg's friend." There was something about the way he said 'friend' that made me realise I'd missed something pretty obvious. They'd spent a lot of time on the beach, but maybe they hadn't been looking for guys.

"Oh... right. Where did you get that?"

"Lopez faxed us a copy of the hotel register, remember? Her signature was immediately after Rosenberg's, her writing isn't clear but it's the same room number if you looked closely."

"Oh, I saw they were sharing a room, I just read the name as Ramsey."

"Anything else?"

"He immediately thought of Wolfram and Hart, then of Angel Investigations. They've got some sort of history. On the other hand he was genuinely surprised when we mentioned Meers, and immediately denied he could be involved. I think that was sincere."

"Very good. I think you're right on both counts, especially since we already know that there's some sort of connection between Angel Investigations and Sunnydale. Cordelia Chase came from Sunnydale, and your mystery man Spike had friends there."

"And Meers?"

"I think he knows more about Meers than he says. He seemed certain that he couldn't be involved, and the only reason for that certainty would be knowledge."

"You think he knows where Meers is?"

"It's possible. Or he knows where he's buried."

"Do you think he killed him?"

"It's a theory. He's strong, he works construction which means he probably had access to digging machinery, and Meers shot two of his friends then dropped out of sight the same day. Someone like Meers doesn't just vanish, he leaves a trail. Of course, if the body was in Sunnydale there's probably no hope of proving anything."

"I don't think I'll lose any sleep over it," I said, "it sounds like we're well rid of him."

"I don't like vigilantes, no matter how good the reason," said Dad.

"Did you spot anything else I missed?"

"Only the obvious. He never mentioned Cordelia Chase, never even suggested she might be our client, unless he was including her with Angel Investigations. He thinks she's dead."

"And for all we know he's right." I shivered, even though it was a warm evening. If she wasn't Cordelia, who the hell was she?

"I wonder how he lost the eye," said Dad. "It's on his passport photograph and mentioned in the description, but that's less than a year old. And you don't see many one-eyed construction workers, it's a job that needs depth perception."

"It was normal on the picture Cordelia sent me, but he looked a lot younger. Maybe it was an industrial accident. Did you get anything else from the passport? A US address? Next of kin?"

"I was wondering when you'd ask. No next of kin listed, and the address is care of an apartment in Cleveland."

"Cleveland? Near Faith Lehene?"

"Same address. She's probably holding mail for him, or forwarding it to wherever he really lives."

"She couldn't be involved in the Meers case," I pointed out, "she was still in jail then, didn't break out for nearly a year. So whatever's going on is about more than that."

"Or she joined some sort of conspiracy later," said Dad. "I don't think we'll get the answer by guesswork. Isn't it about time that Miss Chase called?"

"Past time," I said. And right on cue the 'phone rang. I picked it up and said "Mars Investigations, how may I help you?"

"Hi, it's Cordelia. Any news for me?"

"Yeah, quite a bit. But I think Dad wants a word, I'll put you onto the speaker."

"Miss Chase," said Dad, "Are you familiar with a Warren Meers?"

"No, don't think so..." said Cordelia / whoever, then "...oh, wasn't he the guy that shot Buffy and killed Willow's girlfriend?" Okay, scratch one 'maybe'.

"Tara Maclay?"

"That's right, Willow's girlfriend. What about him?"

"Someone hacked our computers, it occurred to us to wonder if he might have been responsible."

"Why him?"

"He's a computer hacker, a known associate of Andrew Wells, and most of the other people you asked us to watch were witnesses to the shooting."

"Andrew knew him?" asked Cordelia

"Didn't you know?"

"No. Why should I?"

"Then why ask us to watch him?" asked Dad.

"Because he's kinda important right now. But it doesn't have anything to do with Warren Meers."

"Very well. Would you have any idea who might have hacked us?"

"Oh yeah." She sounded amused.

"One of the people you've asked us to watch?" We waited, but she didn't reply. Eventually Dad said "Leaving that for the moment, we've been visited by Alexander Harris..."

"Xander?" she interrupted, "How is he?"

"He seemed well. Were you aware that he has lost an eye?"

"Yeah, word gets around."

"Mister Harris wants some answers," said Dad, "and from what he's told me I'd imagine that the other subjects are also aware of our interest. What are your instructions?"

"Yeah," said a voice from the doorway. "I'm kinda curious about that too." Without either of us noticing the door had opened again - and I was pretty sure I'd locked the outer office - and Xander was standing there, with Harriet and another girl. They came forward into the light, and I recognised Willow Rosenberg.


XI

Dad was probably going to say something but the 'phone interrupted him. "Xander, is that you?"

Xander looked at it the way you might look at a dangerous snake. "Uh.. yeah. Who's this?"

"Don't tell me my voice has changed that much, Xander. It's me, Cordy."

"Um, aren't you supposed to be dead?"

"Phttt. Like you've never talked to a dead person before."

I thought "Huh?"

"That's what's bothering me," said Xander. "What are you these days? A vampire? The First?"

"First what?" I asked. Xander made a 'shhh' gesture.

"C'mon, Xander, you know me better than that. You really think I'm gonna let someone turn me and start drinking blood slurpies? You think Angel was going to let someone do that to me?"

"If this is some sort of sick joke..." Dad began, Xander gestured for silence again, and somehow got it.

"Xander," said the 'phone, "you bought me my prom dress after my dad lost his money. Now I never told anyone that, so unless you did I think it oughta be kinda convincing."

Willow looked at him, a little startled, and he nodded. I was beginning to feel a little freaked out. "Okay," said Xander. "The trouble is that The First knew stuff like that too."

"Well yeah, but could it phone you? Kinda technophobic from what I've heard."

"Okaaay," said Xander. "So. You're not a vampire, and you're not The First. You're.. what.. a ghost?"

"Try 'Higher Being.'" I could hear the capitals, somehow.

"Higher being?" Willow said incredulously.

"That Willow?" said the 'phone. "Thought you might be around."

"If you're a 'Higher Being' how come you don't know?" said Willow, making little quote marks with her hands as she said 'Higher Being.'

"Higher, Willow, not the highest. Not omnipotent, or I wouldn't have to use the goddamned phone."

Dad was going to say something, I think, but somehow Harriet was by his side, holding two fingers to his lips. I hadn't even seen her move. He reached up to brush her hand away, but somehow couldn't move it. And he was trying pretty hard. I said "let him go!" and jumped to my feet, Xander tried to stop me, and things got a little confused until we all heard Cordelia shouting "Guys! Knock it off!" I didn't know the phone could go that loud. Xander let go of me and said something to Harriet, who let go of Dad.

"Okay," said Cordelia. "That's better. Xander, Willow, apologise to Veronica and her dad. They don't know this stuff, and it's a kinda steep learning curve."

"Okay," said Xander. "Sorry." Willow mumbled something.

Dad said "I think it might be better if everone shut up and sat down. This is my office, and Miss Chase is my client."

"I'm sorry," said Willow. "But..."

"I'd like to talk to my client," said Dad, "and you're interrupting." Sometimes I forget how intimidating Dad can be when he puts on his 'Sheriff' personality. Willow looked at him, and for a second her eyes seemed to darken, then she shrugged and sat down. Xander moved a chair out and gave it to Harriet, then sat on another.

"Miss Chase," said Dad, in his best 'humour her' tones, "Let me see if I understand you correctly. You're claiming to be... what.. a higher being? An angel, or something of the sort?"

Cordelia said "Yeah, sort of. It's kinda complicated."

"Simplify it."

"Okay... the Cliff's Notes version is that the world is a lot weirder than most people think. Supernatural stuff exists. You've got a lot of the bad stuff out of legend out there, including demons. Then you've got people fighting them, Xander and Willow and their friends, and the guys I used to work for."

"Angel Investigations?" asked Dad. I uneasily remembered all of the occult links from their web site.

"Yeah. We were kinda supernatural specialists. And I was their link to the Higher Powers, the girl who got the visions that told them what they needed to do."

"Visions?" I asked.

"Yeah. Prophetic visions in sensurround, with stereo sound, smell, and crippling pain to go with them."

"Go on," said Dad.

"About three years ago I learned that the visions were killing me." Xander gave a start and I think he was going to say something, but Willow gestured for him to be quiet. "Every time I had one it took out a chunk of my brain, kinda like mad cow disease."

"Is that how you..." began Dad, then trailed off as the strangeness of the question sank in.

"Died? Not exactly. I died because someone offered me a cure and I believed him. Cut a very long story short, about two years ago my body was taken over by a demon, and my soul was thrown into... well, I guess you'd call it limbo. Eventually the changes to my body put her... well, I suppose you could say me... into a coma, and that's how I eventually died."

"But I saw you in LA much more recently than that," said Willow. "Can't have been much more than a year ago, not long before you were taken ill."

"You saw my body," said Cordelia. "It wasn't my soul in the driving seat. Who did you think was blocking your spell?"

"Spell?" Dad and I said, more or less at the same time.

"Magic's real," said Cordelia. "Willow, show them something or we're gonna be here all night, and we don't have time for that."

Willow seemed to concentrate, and her eyes definitely did darken slightly. The music box on my desk in the outer office opened by itself and began to play, and a pair of scissors and a letter-opened leaped out of the pot on Dad's desk and began to waltz on the blotter.

I said "Holy crap!" and grabbed the scissors, feeling for wires or anything else that could make them do that. There weren't any. They sat in my hand, then somehow bent at the middle and bowed to me, straightened up again, and stopped moving.

"That's... impressive," said Dad. He looked like he'd seen a ghost. Both of us were just starting to believe that we'd been talking to one.

"Okay," said Cordelia. "Magic exists, I'm dead, and nobody's playing games."

There was a long silence, and eventually I said "So why did you hire us? Couldn't you just watch your friends from the afterlife or whatever?"

"Sure, no problem."

"And if you could call us couldn't you call them?"

"Not so much, actually. There are rules and ways of doing things."

"I don't get it."

"Okay, Cliff's Notes version again. You're mortal, and that means you have free will. There are checks and balances, I'm not allowed to do anything that messes with anyone's free will, like calling you or telling you what's happening or what you need to do."

"But you did. You called me and asked us to trace them!"

"Well yeah, but by then you kinda owed me one, and that changes the rules a little. All the times you invoked me, that builds up a little on the debit side."

"Invoked you?" asked Dad. "Veronica, have you been.. invoking people?"

I could see that Willow was trying hard not to laugh. Cordelia said "Okay, I may have bent the rules just a little. You were calling Angel Investigations, you got me."

"How is that possible?" asked Dad.

"Simple. Angel investigations still exists as a company, but everyone else signed contracts with Wolfram and Hart. Officially I was still an employee, the only employee, so if you wanted to talk to Angel Investigations the only way to do it was to talk to me."

"So when I called you," I said, "the call got switched to... to heaven, or limbo or whatever?"

"That's right. So I did you a favour, and a while later you called again and I did you another favour, and... well, at first it was just nice to have someone to talk to that wasn't dead, then when I could see that things were going sour for Angel I worked up a couple of plans. One of them was a one-shot deal; I appeared to him the day I died, hit him with the clue hammer. Trouble was that Giles messed things up when Angel needed help a while back, and that's stopped him from calling in the cavalry when he really needs it for his Samson act."

"And we're your back-up plan?" asked Dad.

"Sure. I must have helped you five or six times, and you never paid for it. That meant that you owed me one, gave me the power to call in a favour."

"But you paid us," I said.

"Sure. Using my own money, which was still sitting in Wolfram and Hart's bank account. Wasn't easy, but I managed it."

"I still don't get it," said Xander. "What was the point?"

"Hello? What part of free will are you having trouble with?"

"I think I get it," said Willow. "You couldn't call us, or ask us to help, but you got our attention."

"Told you so," I said to Dad.

"Jackpot!" said Cordelia, "You got it."

"So what do you want us to do?" asked Xander.

"Free will, Xander. Use it." There was a click and the line went dead.

"Oh poot!" said Willow. "That means we have to do this the hard way."


XII

“Just what the hell is going on here?” asked Dad. “Who are you?”

“You ought to know,” said Willow, “you’ve had people following us for days.”

“C’mon,” said Xander, “give them a break. You know how difficult this stuff is the first time you run into it.”

Willow looked oddly at him for a few seconds then said “I guess. It’s been so long I kinda forget sometimes. Okay, you saw magic. I can show you something else if you like, but it’s not a good idea to use it unnecessarily.”

“I’ll pass,” said Dad, “it was reasonably convincing. So you fight... demons, did she say?”

“Yeah… we kinda fell into it in high school, found out what’s really going on in the world. Once you really know you can pretend it isn’t really there, like most of the people in Sunnydale, but…”

“Why Sunnydale?” interrupted Dad, “Ever since Cordelia hired us we’ve been hearing odd stories about the place.”

“Sunnydale was the Hellmouth. I suppose you could call it a… a weak point,” said Xander, “a place where the barriers between our world and the places demons come from are weak. Magic was more powerful there, a lot of weird things happen and it kinda draws demons in even if they started out somewhere else.”

“What do demons do?” I asked. “Does it have anything to do with the death rate in Sunnydale?”

“That’s right,” said Xander. “Some demons are okay, they look odd but try to get along with people, but most are monsters. Vampires are about the worst, because they can pass for human and spread like a disease, but there are others that are nearly as bad.”

“So what happened there?” asked Dad, “and why is it so important now?”

“I don’t think it is,” said Xander, “I think Cordy was using it as an excuse for watching us.”

“That doesn’t really answer Dad’s question,” I said. “What really destroyed the town?”

Xander gave me an odd appraising look and seemed to think for a second before he said “We did. It wasn’t intentional, it was kinda like lancing a boil. We closed the connection to hell, but for a few minutes it was wide open, and the whole town was sucked into it.”

“Holy…”

“If we hadn’t done it… well, the word that’s usually used is apocalypse, and that pretty much describes it. The end of the world, more or less.”

“Are you saying that something like that could happen to Los Angeles?” asked Dad.

“I hope not,” said Xander, “but it’s possible. We need to find out exactly what’s going on, exactly why Cordy wanted us involved.”

“Can’t you warn someone? The government? LAPD?”

“When we know the score, if there’s anything they can do. But Wolfram and Hart will know as soon as we tell anyone, they have connections everywhere. If they’re involved…”

"Why Wolfram and Hart?" I asked. "What makes them so special?"

Xander shrugged and said "They're a front for some of the major demonic entities, their foothold into our world. They subsidise that by being the middle-men for every possible kind of evil operation, human as well as demonic, everything from corporate crime to slave trading. Oh, and a big side-line in politics and influence peddling, which is why we have to be kinda careful who we talk to."

"Xander,” said Willow, “We need to get on here. Whatever this is about, the clock’s ticking. Call Buffy and get her to ask Andrew a few questions. Better yet, get Dawn to talk to him, she's not going to lose her temper quite so easily. Cordy thinks he's important, and I want to know why.”

"Okay," said Xander, pulling out a mobile phone. "Harriet, get Vi and Rhona, check out the neighbourhood, make sure we aren't gonna get any unpleasant surprises."

"Okay," said Harriet, "and you owe me ten dollars." She spoke with an odd accent, which I thought was South African. Xander swore.

"Hey!" I said, "I thought you didn't speak English?"

"He's learning Zulu," said Harriet. "He isn't supposed to use English when he talks to me. I bet ten dollars he couldn't keep it up all day." She went out, and I heard voices outside. How many of these people were there?

"Okay," said Willow. "Mr. Mars, Veronica, we need to know everything Cordy said, anything you’ve learned about the situation in LA."

Dad said "Weren't you listening? Miss Chase couldn't have made it much clearer."

"What?"

"Practically the last thing she said was that Angel was planning a Samson act. To me that means he's planning to destroy something from within, bring it down around him."

"And the only thing he's inside right now," said Xander, with a sudden look of comprehension, "is Wolfram and Hart."

* * * * *

Andrew's big secret turned out to be something I could have told them if I'd been asked; Spike's presence in LA. Apparently he was supposed to be dead, which appears to be an occupational hazard for monster hunters. Or in Spike's case more dead, because he's a vampire, a friendly one. Seems that Xander really had been giving us the Cliff's Notes version, and things aren't always as simple and clear-cut as he'd said. Anyway, he was supposed to have been killed when Sunnydale was destroyed, instead he'd allegedly turned up as a ghost, haunting the offices of Wolfram and Hart in LA, then turned back into a vampire after a couple of months. It was about this point that Dad started wondering out loud if everyone in the room was insane, and I can't say I blame him.

They got very quiet when Dad told them about Lilah Morgan's visit, and Xander began to fret that Wolfram and Hart might be tapping our phones or bugging the office. Willow did something weird to the phone, it glowed for a few seconds while she was touching it, then told us that there was nothing to worry about; Cordelia hadn't sent her calls through the usual lines. Not surprising, given the circumstances.

It was about eleven-thirty by the time the Sunnydale inquisition left, Dad insisted we finish because I had school the next day, and by then they had a few answers. Starting with a time frame - Cordelia had said that we had to watch her friends until midnight on Wednesday evening, which might mean that something was going to go down that night. They went off to the Sunset Regent, where I suppose they kept on trying to figure things out, we went home to get a late supper, microwaved lasagne and salad.

"You know," Dad said while we were eating, "I can't help wondering what would have happened if we'd asked her about the Kane case, if she knows who killed Lilly."

"Want to try phoning her?"

For a minute Dad look tempted, then he said "Even if someone answered, she couldn't tell us anything we could use in court. And even if she could, I'm not sure I'd want to be in her debt."

"Yeah, I see what you mean. Your turn to wash up." Dad stacked the dishes in the washer, I headed for bed.

* * * * *

"You know," said Lilly, "I kinda like this dress." She pirouetted around like a ballerina, and stopped facing me, curtsied, and gave me a big smile. I wondered how she'd got into my bedroom without waking anyone.

"Yeah, I like it too," I said, trying to figure out why it looked familiar. "When did you get it?"

"Oh, I was buried in it."

"Oh yeah. Knew I'd seen it before."

Lilly pouted, and said "Well, I think it makes me look hot, so does Cordelia."

"That's good," I said. "Where is she anyway?"

"Oh, who's worried about her?" said Lilly, sitting next to me, "We've got things to do which are a lot more fun."

"Such as?"

Lilly put her arm around my shoulder and turned me to face her. She smiled again, and her teeth seemed to be getting longer as she said "Immortality." She grabbed my other shoulder, pushed my head to one side, and bit into my neck. There was no pain, just a languid, drowsy feeling and something beeping. What..? It was the alarm. I woke, alone, my heart pounding like I'd just run a couple of blocks. I caught myself checking for bite marks when I showered but there weren't any, of course.

* * * * *

School was school, same old same old. At lunch Wallace caught up with me and asked if there'd been any developments. I tried to think what to tell him, and eventually gave him a version of the truth; we'd located Harris, who was back in the USA, but we were still waiting to hear from Cordelia. I wasn't worried about Wallace and Mac comparing notes, so I didn't mention the hacking. Wallace had some theories about what was going on, all of them way wide of the mark though I didn't tell him that. Eventually he asked me what was wrong, and I told him I was just feeling a little tired and cranky, with an unstated 'time of the month' overtone. He got the message and split.

A couple of minutes later someone sat down next to me, and I turned, expecting it to be Wallace again, or maybe Weevil or one of the other guys. Instead it was a stranger, a mousy-looking girl I couldn't remember seeing before, maybe a year or two older than me. I said "Did I say you could sit here?"

"Nope. Why are you so mean to people? Your friend was trying to help you."

"I... how do you know what I said to him?"

"Good hearing. I'm Vi, we didn't quite meet last night."

"Oh..." I thought I remembered the name, one of the people Xander had mentioned when he was giving Harriet her instructions. "What's the problem?"

"No problem. Xander sent me to keep an eye on things, just to be sure that Wolfram and Hart aren't up to anything."

"And if they are?"

"I'll make sure you're safe."

"You'll make sure I'm safe? You look like a breeze could knock you over."

"I'm stronger than I look."

"So what's the deal, you're planning to follow me around all day? Don't you think people might wonder who you are?"

"I was in every class you went to this morning," she said. "Didn't you notice?"

"You were what?" I couldn't recall seeing her at all, and I'm usually pretty good at spotting that sort of thing. But as I said it I had a vague memory of her in history class, sitting at the back and reading a book.

"You must have looked right past me a dozen times, you just didn't notice. It's something Willow came up with. Just have to be careful when I'm crossing the road, drivers don't notice me either."

"Magic?"

"Magic," Vi confirmed.

"Okay, so why blow it now? People'll notice me talking to you."

"And in about two minutes they'll forget. Willow's thorough."

"So why talk to me now?"

"I got bored, and you look even bored-er, if that's a real word. And I was wondering if you wanted to swap sandwiches, I've had about as much tuna as I can stand."

"Like some pastrami and rye?" I asked.

"Sure." I gave her a couple of segments of pastrami, and she gave me some tuna salad, from a bag with the Sunset Regent logo. It was okay, but for the kind of money they charge I would have expected a little onion in the mix and better mayonnaise. We chatted for a while, neither of us really saying much, then she went off again, saying she wanted to burn off some carbs before school started. Within a couple of minutes I'd forgotten she'd been there, and I was trying to figure out how I'd ended up with tuna salad when I was sure I'd made pastrami.

Towards the end of lunch I noticed Assistant Principal Van Clemmons and Sheriff Lamb, for once without the usual sniffer dog and handler. With them was a good-looking blond guy in some sort of dark uniform. It looked military, but it wasn't anything I recognised. I was carrying a small camera, as usual, and got a couple of shots that showed his insignia. They were walking towards the football field and I followed, trying to look casual and get close without any of them noticing. They stood there for a while, talking, then turned back. I pretended to be interested in a lizard that was getting some sun on one of the walls, and took a couple of pictures of it. For once Clemmons didn't get on my case, he was too busy listening to military guy. Military guy was saying "... exercise assumes a major terrorist attack on San Diego Naval Base, with casualties airlifted out from improvised landing fields outside the contaminated area..." About then the bell for afternoon school rang and I had to head in to class, which meant that I missed anything else they said.

In journalism class I magnified the guy's insignia as much as I could - it was the Presidential seal with what looked like blue waves - and went looking for a match. I found something on the Coast Guard web site that was similar, it turned out to be a specialist's badge for Homeland Security operations. Not quite the same, but similar. That made sense, I suppose. There was a dark rank insignia underneath, I wasn't sure because I couldn't find a picture of a camouflage version but I think it made him a major. Putting them together I guessed at a Marine unit attached to Homeland Security.

There was something about what I'd heard that was bugging me, but I couldn't figure out what it was, apart from the idea that there might be terrorists with biological or chemical weapons somewhere near Neptune. I put it on the back burner while I got the lizard pictures, identified it as a Cope's Leopard Lizard, and wrote it up as a filler article for the school paper. While I was researching it I looked at some maps for the area, and realised what was wrong. We're a few miles down-wind from San Diego Naval Base, and any contamination was going to be blowing in our direction. Maybe Major Blond was confused, or I'd misunderstood what he was saying, but I had a feeling that there was more to it than met the eye.

* * * * *

My last surprise of the day came when I was getting ready to go home, and found that my car had a puncture. For once it didn't look like someone was getting at me, there was a sharp stone stuck between the treads. I was getting the jack out when a stranger came over. She said "Need a hand?" and I remembered that she was Vi.

"Sure. Help me to crank this up."

Vi looked around and said "anyone watching?"

"No, why?"

She reached down, put a hand under the fender, and lifted that side until the wheel was off the ground. I said "Holy crap!"

"Get the jack fitted, I can't keep this up forever."

"Oh, right." I released the catch on the jack and pulled up the hook until it was at the right height, then shoved it into the lifting point and cranked until it was taking the weight. Vi relaxed, while I got out the wrench and set to work. "How the hell did you do that?"

"I told you, I'm stronger than I look." I was having trouble with one of the nuts, and she put a hand on the shaft of the wrench and twisted. There was a creak and it started to spin.

"Nobody's that strong."

"I am. Comes in useful sometimes."

"For fighting demons?"

"Pretty much."

"So how do you get that way?"

"Mystic destiny. You have to be born with the potential, then if you're really unlucky someone like me gets killed and you inherit the power. I don't recommend it."

"How many... um... demon fighters are there?" I asked, tightening the wheel nuts.

"The official term is vampire slayer. A couple of hundred, we think. About fifty we're sure of."

I let down the jack and she put the wheel and tools away. Last time I'd changed a wheel it took nearly half an hour, this time I doubt we'd been ten minutes. I asked "Need a lift?"

"It'll save having to follow you on foot."

"On foot. Riiiight."

"Want to bet I can't beat you?"

"What makes me think it'd be a sucker bet?" Vi smiled at me, and I opened the passenger door and drove us back to Dad's office.


XIII

"What's wrong with this picture?" Xander asked a couple of hours later. He and Willow had turned up a few minutes after we got to Dad's office, I guess Rona and Harriet were somewhere outside. Every now and again I noticed Vi, but the spell was stiill screwing that up a little.

"I don't understand," said Dad.

"Me neither," said Willow.

"Who thinks that Cordelia left everything to chance?" asked Xander, "That Veronica just happened to see Spike in LA? That this was really the only detective agency she could contact?" Nobody raised a hand.

"If Cordelia is a.. a higher being," I asked, "couldn't she just change things to be the way she wants?"

"It's a very good point," said Willow, giving me the odd appraising look I'd noticed once or twice before, from her and Xander. Of course in both cases I had to separate it from the 'checking out the pretty girl' look I'd noticed a couple of times. "What you have to remember is that the Powers that Be, the guys Cordelia seems to be working for now, aren't big on helping humans directly. They seem to think that we ought to be able to handle things on our own, with the help of the champions they give us. What makes it really difficult is that Angel is supposed to be one of their champions, and a really major player."

"I got that," I said. They'd mentioned it enough times the previous night. "So if the stakes are that high, couldn't they bend the rules a little more to bail him out of his mess... wait a minute, I'm being stupid."

"Why?" asked Dad. "It was making sense to me."

"We've all been assuming that things have gone wrong in LA, that Cordelia wanted them different. But she never actually said that. She said that things were going sour, and that she had to 'hit Angel with a clue hammer.' To me that implies that they wanted him to do something then, something that would put things back on track. Then she said that things went sour again when 'Giles messed things up,' presumably that was more recent?"

"A few days after Cordelia died," said Willow. "Only we didn't even know she was dead then, nobody bothered to tell us. Maybe if we'd known Giles would have taken things more seriously."

"What exactly happened?" asked Dad.

"He told Giles that Fred was infected with some sort of demonic disease, wanted my help, but I wasn't there and Giles couldn't reach me without using some serious mojo. We never heard anything more about it, so I guess she recovered without our help."

"We don't know that for sure," said Vi.

"Okay," I said, deciding not to ask why 'Fred' was a 'She'. "So Angel was still working for Wolfram and Hart then, and Cordelia had him going the way she wanted, until this disease business came up. So he's still on course, still working towards bringing them down, except that he doesn't have all of the help he needs, which is where you guys come in. So I'm guessing that now he's still trying to do it, and Cordelia has you in place to help him. Except that you're all here, not in Los Angeles. Why would she do that?"

Before anyone could answer I heard something that jogged a memory. A helicopter, flying low overhead. There was a crash, and something came in through the window, a black thing that burst open and filled the room with choking gas. My last thought was "Gas grenade."

* * * * *

I was at a party with Lilly, Logan and Duncan, dancing to a slow beat. It was hot, and there were fans overhead. Someone walked across the floor, a woman in a long white dress. Cordelia. She tapped Duncan on the shoulder and said "Mind if I cut in?"

I said "Hi, Cordy," and let her take his place. She was a good dancer, and we waltzed for a while before she said anything.

Eventually she said "You know this is a dream, don't you?"

"I guess."

"When you wake up things are gonna be bad."

"Bad?"

"Don't worry, I got you and your dad into this, you'll get out okay."

"And Dad?"

"Yes, him too. But you've got to be ready to make your move. And don't be afraid to let go."

"Move? Let go?"

"You'll know when the time comes," said Cordelia. "So will he."

"But.." I tried to ask another question but the fans were making a weird noise, a 'thwop-thwop-thwop' beat that seemed to fill the room. Then for a while there was nothing but the noise, and the pounding of my head.

* * * * *

"...taking heavy casualties," someone was shouting. I could barely hear it over the noise of rotor blades. I was lying on something, it felt like a stretcher, but I couldn't move my arms or legs. I felt sick. I blearily opened an eye and saw what I'd half expected, the interior of a plane... no, a helicopter, the kind they use to transport troops. It was lit by dim red lights. Something was holding me to the stretcher, plastic straps that looked like extra thick cable ties that held my arms by my side, and a canvas strap around my waist. There were half a dozen guys moving around, dressed like the soldier I'd seen at school in the afternoon, and some more stretchers. Wait a minute... not just guys, one of them was Lilah Morgan, still implausibly wearing a business suit and neck scarf.

"Pull the rest of the men out," she shouted, "We've got Rosenberg and Harris, without them the Slayers will be like chickens with their heads cut off."

"Chopper two's off, three didn't make it," someone shouted from the front of the thing, a couple of minutes later.

"Regrettable," shouted Lilah, "but they were paid to take risks. Keep to the flight plan, we'll be down and off the radar before the Slayers can contact their friends in the military." She looked around the helicopter, and seemed to notice that I was watching her. She came over, and said "Miss Mars, I presume."

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

She smiled and said "It's called a pre-emptive strike."

"Huh?"

She grabbed me by the flesh under my chin and pulled my head up. It hurt a hell of a lot. "I suppose you think that this is where the villain explains her fiendish plot and you press the red button that saves the world. Well, it doesn't work like that. Tell me everything you know, everything you think you know, or I'll have you killed."

"Drop dead."

"That isn't an answer. Too bad." She dug her nails in harder and forced my head back, and one of the soldiers, or whatever the hell they were, passed her a knife. "We have Rosenberg and Harris sedated, so don't expect them to help you. Now talk, or I start cutting."

"You'll ruin your suit."

Lilah laughed and let go of my chin, and said "You're quite right." She turned to the soldier and said "Open the rear hatch, and bring this little bitch and her father."

He rolled me towards the back, and I could see a line of light where the rear ramp was opening. Things got a lot louder. "Hold them upright," Lilah shouted. Someone tilted the stretcher until I was upright, held on by the straps around my arms and legs, and another around my waist. My feet weren't touching the floor, and my wrists and especially my ankles were hurting. We were out over the sea, flying low. There were lights off to the left, and I guessed we were flying along the coast, somewhere between Neptune and Los Angeles. It wasn't quite dark, so it couldn't have been more than an hour or so since they raided the office. Lilah stood in front of me, casually holding on to a strap near the ramp. They put Dad up beside me on another stretcher. It looked like he was still unconscious.

"So," shouted Lilah, "At this altitude and speed your father will probably split like an egg when he hits the water, if not the weight of the stretcher will drag him under. Would you like to reconsider?"

"I really don't know anything," I shouted. "I think Cordelia was playing us."

She seemed to consider it, then shouted "Not enough. What did she tell you about Angel's plans?"

I spilled my guts. Literally. I was going to say something, maybe give away the part about Wednesday evening, but suddenly everything caught up with me, and I began to throw up. I've heard the expression projectile vomit, but I'd never really seen it until now. And as it was coming up some crazy impulse made me hurl it all towards Lilah. It went everywhere, turning her Armani suit into a disaster area, and the wind caught some of it and threw it into her face. Her expression turned to murderous rage and she came towards me, the knife in her hand, and grabbed my chin again. Beside me Dad suddenly jack-knifed forward, his forehead smashing into hers. She staggered back... but there wasn't much back for her to stagger, and she was wearing heels. They caught in something and she pitched over backwards. Before anyone could do anything she was gone.

"What the hell do we do now?" shouted one of the soldiers holding us upright.

"Get rid of them," shouted another, "then call in for..." There was a gurgling cough and he fell onto the deck, leaving Dad's stretcher teetering on end. I could see blood pouring from his throat. Then Dad's stretcher was rock steady, as someone else took hold.

"Do exactly what I say," said a woman's voice, "and you might get out of this alive. Close the ramp then cut both of them free. Do anything else, try anything else, and you'll be the next one to die."

I craned my head round as far as I could and said "Hi, Vi."

XIV

I washed my mouth out with some water from a canteen Vi had found, rubbed my wrists, and looked round the helicopter. There were more bodies than Hamlet on the floor... sorry, the deck. "What the hell happened?" shouted Dad.

"I guess Willow's spell was still working," said Vi, cold-cocking the last soldier, who fell to the deck. "They must have brought me aboard then forgotten before they got round to sedating me again. Slayers recover fast. So I took the soldiers out while they were looking the other way, I was just finishing when you got rid of the zombie."

"Zombie?" I asked.

"That woman. She was some sort of zombie, not quite sure what kind." I hoped that it was true, and that she wasn't just trying to make us feel a little better about killing Lilah. "Whatever she was, she was probably pretty tough. Don't count on the fall finishing her off, and if she comes back mad don't blame me." Okay, not trying to make us feel better.

"What about Willow and Xander?" I asked.

"They're out of it," said Vi. "Unless one of you knows enough to identify an antidote, it could be hours before they come round." I took a look, tried pinching Xander, and it was pretty clear she was right. "Broke their medic's neck before I realised who he was."

Dad took a big pistol from one of the soldiers and checked it was loaded. I followed his example. Dad frowned but didn't say anything, and helped himself to an assault rifle, some clips of ammo, and some grenades. Vi took grenades and some belt knives, searched a couple of the bodies, and eventually found a cell phone and began dialling. "What about the pilot?" asked Dad.

"Still flying this thing," said Vi, "I hope he didn't hear anything." There was a door separating the hold from the cockpit, I just hoped it was soundproof, though with the noise the thing made it wasn't likely he'd heard much. She listened for a second, then said "Rona? Everyone okay in Neptune?" She listened intently for a minute, then said "Helicopter, a big mother..."

"A Chinook, I think," interrupted Dad.

"...Veronica's dad says it's a Chinook, coming in to Los Angeles. Willow and Xander are sedated, I'm free, so are Veronica and her Dad. We've got weapons." She turned to us and said "Lot of property damage in Neptune, a couple of cops and some civilians were hurt, two fatalities, and there's a wrecked helicopter on your football field."

"Any idea where we are?" asked Vi. I took a look out of one of the side windows and could see a lot more lights below us now, and a big blaze of light ahead. It was hard to make out details, rain was running down the window.

I said "We must be pretty close to Los Angeles. I think I can see the business district up ahead, maybe five or ten miles." She relayed the information and listend again, then said "Okay... yeah, I get that. Can't be helped. Get Riley on it, warn him we haven't got much time."

The engine note changed, and there was a sinking feeling, like an elevator going down. Vi said "We're landing, talk to you later."

"What do we do now?" shouted Dad.

"We're on our own, nobody near enough to help for a while. Soon as we land we'll try to get away. Rona says there's another helicopter, a small one, about five minutes behind us, it has a machine gun and she thinks maybe a rocket launcher. We need to be under cover before it shows up."

"Wonderful."

"Hey, if this stuff was easy everyone would be doing it."

* * * * *

The second we landed and the rotors started to slow Vi was into the cockpit. I didn't see what she did there, my guess is it was fast and violent. Dad went out one of the side doors, rolling and firing, and I followed a couple of seconds later. Whatever they were, they weren't human; they had yellow skin, and a ridge of spikes instead of hair. But they weren't bulletproof, and the survivors scattered for cover as Dad went Rambo on them with the assault rifle, then threw a grenade after some of the stragglers. I think I hit a couple, but it was hard to tell in the rain and the dark. It looked like we'd landed on the roof of a big building, maybe some sort of factory. Vi came out, dragging Xander with Willow on her shoulder, and threw one of her knives at another of the creatures with her free hand. It went down screaming. "Which way?" shouted Vi, and it sounded unnaturally loud without the engine noise.

"There's a door over there," said Dad, pointing to a square structure that stuck out of the roof, then firing at another of the creatures as it looked out from behind a ventilator duct, pointing a shotgun in our direction. It went down. "All we have to do is get past these things."

"No problem," said Vi, lowering Willow to the roof. She raced off to one side, took an incredible leap into the air, and threw a couple more knives at the survivors, landing between them and the exit, and rolling behind another ventilator. After that we had them pinned from two sides, and after a few more shots the last eight surrendered.

"What the hell are they?" asked Dad, once Vi had taken their guns and pitched them over the edge of the roof.

"Miquot demons. Mercenaries. Watch out, they can pull spikes from their wrists and throw them like knives." The demon chattered something in a language none of us understood, and Vi said "Speak English, I only got about three words."

"We surrender honourable," said the demon, "We quit and go. Or pay us, we fight for you."

"You tell us what we want to know and I'll consider it," said Vi. "Where's the other helicopter going to land?"

"Not know. Only expecting one."

"They must have another landing field," said Dad.

"Figures," said Vi, "this is probably some kinda containment facility."

"What would they want to contain?" I asked.

"Willow."

"Yes, Willow," said the spokesdemon. "Witch, want her bad."

As if she'd heard her name Willow jerked, and came awake gasping "Wesley!"

I knelt by her and said "What?" which was probably not the brightest comment I've ever made.

"Wesley's dead," said Willow. "I felt him die. Whatever it is that's going down is happening tonight, not Wednesday. Help me up." I grabbed and heaved, as gently as I could, and she looked around, taking in Vi, Dad, me, and the demons, her eyes and hair darkening as she stared at them. They knelt, and every one of them pulled a spikes from its wrist and held it out to her in the palms of its hands.

"They've surrendered," Vi said quickly, "think they realised they were backing the wrong side."

"Well good for them," said Willow. "How's Xander?"

"Drugged."

"Okay. Just let me recharge a little and I'll take care of him." She shook off my hand and moved back a few yards, saying something that sounded a little like Latin, and held her hand up. A bolt of lightning came down to meet it and sparked around her. She glowed, pure white, and floated into the air.

"Holy crap," said Vi.

"Is that good or bad?" asked Dad.

"Damned if I know. Last time she used that much power she took out Sunnydale."

Something flew past me, and I turned to see the spikes leaving the demon's hands. They were orbiting around Willow's head as she floated back down to the asphalt and strode back towards us. She was still covered in little flashes of lightning, like St. Elmo's fire, and her hair was rippling white fire. "Are you okay?" asked Vi.

"Think so. Don't worry, I'm not going over to the dark side, not yet." She touched Xander, and he jerked and came awake, looked around, and saw the demons.

"It's okay," Vi said again, "they've surrendered."

"Usual terms?" asked Xander.

The spokesdemon nodded "You go, we quit. Or pay us, we fight for you."

Xander dug into a pocket and pulled out a handful of coins, small gold ones. "Krugerrands. Acceptable?"

"Very yes. Eight of us, cost eight Krugerrands."

"Get real. Four."

"Six," said the demon.

"Five."

"Done." Xander handed it the coins, and it pocketed them. I looked it up later, that was five ounces of gold, about $2200.

"Okay," said Xander. "Let's get moving. Willow, got any idea which way we ought to be heading?" He looked at her and for the first time seemed to take in her current appearance. "Whoa! You feeling okay?"

"Don't worry, you'll know if Darth Willow comes out to play." I was beginning to feel seriously freaked. What the hell were they all so scared of? "I can feel a disturbance in the force," she went on, "okay, some major mojo going down, it feels like it's ten or so miles or so away, due North from here, in the direction of most of the lightning. Where are we anyway?"

"Compton," said one of the demons.

"That's the business district then," said Willow. "Wolfram and Hart's offices, or somewhere pretty close. Wesley died somewhere in that direction, about ten minutes ago."

"Wes?" said Xander. "What about the others?"

Willow stood for a moment, her eyes unfocussed, then said "Can't feel anything from Angel or Fred... Gunn's hurt, feels like he's fighting something... Can't get details."

"Try Spike."

"Oh... yeah, right. He's... he's fighting too, doesn't think he's gonna make it."

"Can you talk to them?"

"Not without distracting them."

"We've got to get to them," said Xander, looking around the roof and settling on the helicopter. "That thing still got a pilot?"

"He's out," said Vi, "but Willow could revive him."

"Come on then! Move it, we've got work to do."

Xander ran towards the helicopter, followed by the demons, Willow, and Vi. I turned to Dad and said "We'd better go with them. No telling what's waiting downstairs."

"But..."

"Dad, I think the odds are a hell of a lot better with Willow and Vi, don't you?"

He stared blankly at me for a second, then said "Okay. But try to stay out of trouble."

By the time we reached the helicopter we were both laughing so much that we had trouble getting aboard.



XV

I was fine until we sat down inside the helicopter again, to get out of the way of the yellow demons who were unloading the bodies, dead and unconscious, then my laughter turned to sobs. Dad hugged me, and Xander squatted on the deck near us and said "reaction catching up with you?"

"I guess."

"It's never easy. You're not the only one, Vi's covering pretty well but she's going to need a lot of help when we're done."

"Vi? But I thought she was a vampire slayer. Isn't it what she does?"

"Vampires yes. Demons yes. But people... the whole Slayer thing is about protecting them and the world, and Slayers who kill people don't usually take it well, even when it's unavoidable. She had to kill five of those fake soldiers to save us, surprised it wasn't more. You know about Faith?" He didn't wait for an answer. "That started with an accidental killing. Drove her over the edge, though the guy who was supposed to be her Watcher was an idiot and didn't help."

"Watcher?" asked Dad.

"What I do these days. It's a support organisation. Basically a Watcher is supposed to be a trainer and research guy, though I'm more a talent scout. I find Slayers and get them to someone who can train them properly, if there isn't someone local."

"Like Harriet?" I asked.

"Yeah, she's one of mine." There was a coughing roar and the rotor blades started to turn, slow at first then faster. The demons threw out the last body and slammed the side door, and began to help themselves to assault rifles from a rack near the door. Xander grabbed onto a strap as we slowly rose into the air. "I'd better get forward, I know a little about how these things work, might be able to spot if the pilot tries to pull a fast one."

"What do we do?"

"Reload your guns, keep an eye on the yellow guys, they've taken our money and they're scared of Willow so we should be okay, but I wouldn't put it past them to sell us out if someone made another offer. If you see any of them using a cellphone let me know."

Xander went forward, and a minute or so later Vi came back and said "There's something nasty going on up ahead. Willow thinks someone's done a major spell, brought something really big through from another dimension. We'll try to set you down somewhere safe as soon as we can."

"Try the police frequency," said Dad, and gave her a radio setting. "If something big's going down LAPD are probably on it."

"Okay." She went back forward. Almost at once one of the demons, who had been peering out of a window on the other side of the helicopter, gave a shout in whatever language they spoke. The others crowded to take a look, then backed away and started to point their guns at the windows on that side. "What the hell is it?" I shouted.

"Regy'k!" shouted the demon.

"What?"

"Dragon!"

"You have got..." I said, then that side of the helicopter was covered in a sheet of yellow flame, and all the demons started firing out of the windows, which shattered. Good thing they weren't armoured glass. The helicopter lurched to one side then straightened, and for a fraction of a second I saw it outside. Big, dark, and breathing fire. "Holy crap!" I'll never know why we didn't start burning, maybe Willow was protecting us somehow.

The thing flew away again, and I heard a loud engine roar, even above the noise we were making. Another helicopter overtook us, this one with Army markings, and fired some sort of missile as it passed us. I guess it was aiming at the dragon, we must have been too close for it to take a shot before. A few seconds later there was a massive explosion, and I guessed that we were now minus one dragon. Or maybe minus a skyscraper, of course, because by now we were flying between buildings. The helicopter was descending and we could see fires out the windows on both sides. Xander came back, and shouted "Give me a hand with the door." A couple of the demons helped him slide it open. I looked out, hanging on for dear life, and saw we were about a hundred feet up, cautiously heading down towards a big intersection. There wasn't any traffic, and I could see a car on its side below. Whatever was happening was big. Xander went forward again.

Vi and Willow came back, with Vi carrying an odd-looking weapon, like an axe with an ornate blade and a stake sticking out of the end of the handle. Don't know where it came from. She went to the door, looked down, then dropped into the night holding it above her head. Willow said something to the demons I didn't understand. She was still glittering with little sparks, but now the blades they'd given her were hovering by her shoulder, pointing wherever she looked. I had a feeling they'd fly wherever she looked if she let them loose. The demons followed her out of the helicopter as soon as we were down, and took up guard postitions around the helicopter. We went to follow Willow, but the demons pushed us back, reasonably gently. As the engine noise died I suddenly realised where we were, about two blocks from the Hyperion Hotel. It was still raining heavily, and every now and again I saw a bolt of lightning flash down towards the flames behind the hotel.

"What the hell do we do now?" I asked.

"Stay here," said Dad, "Maybe Xander knows what's going on."

We went forward. The pilot was unconscious, and Xander was talking into his cellphone, saying "...Willow's on the ground, she'll be the one with the lightning. Vi's covering her with the scythe. Warn your pilots, Riley, don't screw up."

"What do we do now?" asked Dad. Xander covered the microphone and said "Wait, and get ready for casualties."

"Can't we help?"

"Not this time. We wouldn't last a minute out there."

I could hear shrieks and roars, like feeding time at some sort of monstrous zoo, with an occasional boom of thunder and flash of lightning. Twice helicopters flew overhead, the second one was firing tracer bullets at something huge that was looming above an intervening building. Dad and I went back and started setting up the stretchers. It felt odd, after the way they'd been used before.

About five minutes later I heard some shouts from outside, and looked out to see the demon guys sprawled on the ground, with a woman with blue skin and hair, wearing something that looked like leather armour, standing over them carrying an unconscious black guy. A dozen or so of the yellow knives the demons made were scattered around her, mostly broken. She came in, dumped him on one of the stretchers, said "Repair him," and left so fast I couldn't see her go.

"Looks like an abdominal bleeder," said Dad, who saw his share of traffic accidents when he was Sheriff. "Maybe a punctured lung. We might be able to keep him stable for a while, ease the pain a little, but I'm not up to stopping it. See if Xander can get help."

I went forward and told Xander, and he relayed it to the guy he was talking to. Outside the demons were picking themselves up, apparently unharmed, so I guessed she was on our side. Eventually Xander said "There's a medevac team trying to get through, but it might take a while. It's a war zone out there, Wolfram and Hart have magical barriers and demons blocking all the routes into this area. They're waiting on a National Guard tank unit." For the first time the sheer scale of what was going on was beginning to sink in.

Another helicopter flew over, with the CNN logo, and I wondered what the hell they were making of it. Later on I found out; the news archive for that night includes a shot of our helicopter with eight Miquot demons around it, all waving at the camera. Their faces are pretty clear.

I went back to help dad, and between us we did our best to keep the guy alive. He was failing fast when another helicopter landed nearby, a small one with Red Cross markings from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. We ran the stretcher out to them, stooping low to avoid the rotor blades, and the guys inside hooked him up to a drip feed and flew him out.

Just after it left there was a final burst of noise, roars and screams, and I saw what must have been a dozen bolts of lightning stab down in a few seconds. After that it was eerily quiet, and I began to hear sirens, shots, and an occasional explosion in the distance.

"Think it's over?" asked Dad.

"Sounds like this part of it is."

We went to the doorway and watched. Eventually Vi came into view, supporting Willow and holding the axe in her other hand, with the blue woman and a dark-haired guy I didn't recognise by her side, carrying a big sword. Trailing along behind them was someone I did know - Spike, carrying a huge battle-axe.

Xander came back to join us, and said "You guys okay?"

"Willow's mojo'd out," said Vi. "I've got a few cuts, same for Spike and Angel, but we all heal pretty fast."

"How's Gunn?" asked the tall guy; by now I'd remembered his picture from the business news, and knew he was Angel.

"The black guy?" I asked. "Hospital helicopter evacuated him a few minutes ago. He's hurt pretty bad."

"Where'd they take him?" asked Spike.

"Cedars-Sinai." The blue-haired woman tilted her head oddly and Spike said "It's a hospital. Cedars-Sinai Hospital."

"I will guard him." She took off again, so fast I almost expected to hear a sonic boom, and disappeared into the night.

"I know you," said Spike. "You were prowling around the Hyperion last week." He turned to Vi. "One of your lot?"

"No," said Willow. "She's working for Cordy."

"The cheerleader?" said Spike "But..."

"Cordelia's dead," Angel interrupted, moving towards me and grabbing my arm. "I don't know what sort of sick game you're playing, but..."

I'll never know what he planned to say next, because it turns out that a knee to the groin hurts a vampire about as much as it does a human. While he was lying on the ground I boarded the helicopter, while Spike laughed himself silly.

"What happens now?" Dad asked.

"We get out of here," said Willow. "Riley and his guys can find a way to explain this."

"Not this time," said Xander, still listening to the 'phone. "It's too big, too public. There's still half-a-dozen firefights going on, about a hundred thousand people saw the dragon, and every network's carrying the story. The President's decided to come clean."

"You're kidding!" said Willow.

"Nope. Prepare to be famous." Willow went white and sat down hard. I think she was having a panic attack.

"What about us?" Dad asked.

Xander listened again, and said "Riley wants us clear of the area until they've finished mopping up. Think you can wake the pilot again? Might as well head back to Neptune."

Willow nodded and went forward with Vi, while Dad broke out more medical supplies for the wounded. Xander went to speak to the demons, and I tagged along. He said "Your contract expires at midnight. My instructions to you are to stay the hell out of trouble and get out of the area if you can. And no looting, okay? By morning there'll be a dozen Slayers in town, so I really wouldn't recommend hanging about."

"We go," said the spokesdemon. "No work now, no Wolfram and Hart."

"And no looting," Xander repeated.

He looked at Xander appraisingly and seemed to decide that he really meant it. "No looting."

"So what'll you guys do?" I asked.

"Find other job."

"But you said..."

He grinned, showing pointed teeth. "Give it a month, more work we can handle. President's giving publicity." They started to walk away. I wondered if I should say anything about the assault rifles they were still carrying, then decided to let it be.

"They're right, of course," shouted Xander, as the helicopter lurched into the air again a few minutes later. I was beginning to worry that the pilot might be a little punch-drunk.

"How do you mean?"

"I can think of ten governments that'll want demons in their armies, not to mention every crime family from here to Boston. There was already a little of that, now everyone'll be doing it." He sounded discouraged.

"So what was that about the cheerleader?" shouted Spike, after Dad had finished bandaging his ribs a little later. Angel was sulking on one of the stretchers.

"Cordelia? She called us, hired us to watch a few of her friends."

"And you'd be...?" asked Angel, finally taking an interest.

"Mars Investigations," said Dad, fishing into a pocket and giving him a business card.

I heard something buzz, and Xander reached into his pocket and pulled out the cellphone he'd been using. He listened for a second, looked a little odd, and said "It's for you." He gave me the phone.

"Hi," said Cordelia. "Everyone okay?"

"As if you didn't know."

"Okay, yeah, I kinda do. Doesn't mean I know all the details. Told you, I'm a higher being, not the highest."

Angel said "Give me that!" and took the 'phone from my hand, so fast I didn't have time to react. "Cordy, is that really you?" He listened for about thirty seconds, and seemed to wilt. Even over the helicopter noise I could hear the angry buzz of her voice. A couble of times he tried to interrupt, but didn't get past the first couple of words. Eventually he shouted "Okay. I'm sorry!" and gave it back to me.

"Hi, Veronica, sorry about the interruption. By the way, nice knee work! You have questions?"

"You going to answer them?"

"Maybe."

"Okay. What was that really about? Why did you involve us?"

"Honest answer?"

"Please."

"You won't like it."

"I guessed that."

"Some things are kinda obvious from my perspective. One of them was that Lilah would stop Angel doing what he had to do if I couldn't get her out of the way, she was about the smartest person working for Wolfram and Hart when she was alive, and I didn't think death would change that. So I had to find a way to keep her distracted for a few days, preferably somewhere away from LA."

"So you didn't want Willow and the others involved?"

"I didn't really expect them to take it so seriously. I'm glad that they did, the guys would be dead if they hadn't taken a hand, but I wasn't relying on it. The essential part was to get Lilah's attention, draw her away from LA."

"So all that stuff about Billy..?"

"Pfffft. Like the Senior Partners didn't know what she'd done. I was a little surprised she didn't call me on it, but once she caved in I knew that she'd taken the bait. The only reason she'd pretend to give up on you was if she was planning something."

"The bait? You were using us as bait?

"'Fraid so."

"Wait a minute..." I said. "Did you just tell me you expected your friends to be killed?"

"It was pretty much a certainty. I'm kinda amazed they made it. Pleased, but amazed."

"Do you care?"

"I have to care about the world, kid. Friends are a bonus."

"I can't think that way."

"I know," said Cordelia. "Most people can't."

"What happens now?"

"Go home, get back to normal, find the guy that killed your friend."

"Lilly?"

"Sure. Don't sweat it, you'll soon get some answers."

"From you?"

"No. That's one I can't help you with, you're too closely involved. But maybe another time..."

"Maybe. I'm not sure we can afford your prices."

"Okay," said Cordelia, laughing. "Maybe one day you'll think differently. Let me talk to your dad, we need to work out how much money I owe you."

I gave him the phone and sat down next to Vi, wondering how Cordelia planned to pay. I guessed she'd work it out somehow. Within a few minutes I was asleep again. This time I didn't dream.

Epilogue

Any other night the raid on Neptune would have been headline news all over America. With the situation in Los Angeles it was just part of that night's general weirdness, a paragraph or two on page six. It got a little more coverage in Neptune, of course, but as Xander had predicted Willow and Vi got most of the attention, we were just listed in paragraphs that usually began "amongst the other victims were..." Dad got another $5000 from Cordelia, somehow transferred to us in the hours before Wolfram and Hart's bank accounts were frozen. I'm inclined to think we earned it.

Incredible as it might sound, everything blew over pretty fast, and within a few days things were more or less back to normal. School reopened once the crime scene guys, FBI, and agents from about ten other organisations were through with it. Our office was open again in two days. A small army of workmen helped repair it, apparently arranged by Xander's friend Riley.

Eventually, as Cordelia had predicted, we found out who killed Lilly Kane. No doubts whatever. And as she'd also predicted, I was closely involved. Any closer and I'd be another victim. Right now Dad and I are talking to film companies about the rights to that story, though they won't be able to make the movie until after the trial is over.

I haven't seen Xander, Willow, the Slayers or Angel and his friends since that night, not in person, though they're on the news often enough. One hell of a lot of stuff has come out since then, not least the real story on Warren Meers. Willow got a Presidential pardon for that, though dad doubts any jury would have convicted.

So that's that, or should be. Except that when I checked my voicemail at lunch there was a message from Cordelia, saying that she'll call us back tonight. I've no idea what she wants, but I've got a feeling it's going to be interesting.

End

Note: As with my earlier story Slayers / CSI - VI - Cold Cases I've based my ideas of the aftermath of Not Fade Away on some ideas mentioned in Roz Kaveney's story Dawn In Rome, which is VERY strongly recommended.



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