Cordelia gasped and flew backwards, holding a hand to her head. She hit the bookcase and sunk to the ground. Gunn stooped forward gracefully and caught the pair of books that were knocked loose from the blow while Wesley hurtled away to get some water. It was another long vision; Gunn held her head away from the bookshelf so she didn’t give herself a concussion for nearly two full minutes before the shaking ceased and she looked up tearfully.
“Milk girl again?” Gunn asked.
Cordy took the water and nodded. She drank some and then tried to clear her throat. “First it was milk girl, drinking milk and sitting at the same table, and then it was someone I didn’t know, but they were really cold and probably living in an igloo. Apparently that didn’t last very long, because next thing I know, it’s you in the picture.”
Long pause. “Me?” Gunn asked eventually. Cordy nodded. “Why the hell are you having a vision about milk girl, an eskimo, and then me? I don’t know any eskimos, and I don’t think I know milk girl.”
“There’s more,” she croaked. “Milk girl lives in Sunnydale. I recognized the atmosphere.”
Gunn frowned. “You can recognize atmosphere?”
Cordelia finished the water and nodded. “In visions. The igloo man was in northern Canada, not Antarctica, for example. In Sunnydale, the atmosphere is full of demon activity that I wouldn’t notice if I was standing in it.”
Gunn took the glass from her and chuckled. “That’s cool. I wish I could do that. Don’t you wish you could do that, Wes?” he asked, turning around to see Wesley on the other side of the room, leafing through books enthusiastically.
“Hm? Oh, yes, probably,” he replied, obviously not paying attention.
Cordy, feeling well enough to stand, let Gunn help her up and then raised an eyebrow and Wesley. “Channeling Giles much?”
“Yes, quite right,” he added distractedly.
Cordelia rolled her eyes and turned to Gunn, taking out paper and a pencil. “I’m writing down three numbers,” she said. “One’s for Buffy, one’s for Giles, and one’s for Willow. Try Buffy first; if she doesn’t answer, try Giles, and finally try Willow. I bet I have Xander’s number somewhere if none of those work, but I don’t particularly want to talk to him. I hear he’s dating the ex-vengeance demon, and I don’t want any part of that.”
Gunn took the numbers and nodded, disappearing into the back. Wesley cursed loudly and threw the book on the ground. “There’s nothing here!” he practically screamed. “There’s nothing here!” He turned to Cordelia. “Will you go to the Hyperion and steal more books?”
Cordelia rolled her eyes and then made a note not to do that right after a vision. “No.”
Wesley’s face crumpled and he stomped a foot like a little boy trying to look like a figure of authority. “Why not?”
“Because I’m not feeding that weird obsession of yours.”
He whined and threw his arms about. “Pleeeeease…”
“No, Wesley. You want to steal books, you can go face grumpy old Angel by yourself.”
“Fine!” the former Watcher yelled, and stomped out of the room.
Cordelia watched him go with a wrinkled brow. “That boy needs a hobby,” she said, picking up the feather duster and walking to the other side of their small office, starting to dust and trying to decide why she was having multiple people in her one vision.
***
“Angel…” Darla whispered, just coming to. She felt terrible, barely coherent. She remembered being burned almost to death, and then being beaten by… who? She couldn’t remember.
“Darla, you’re awake,” a soft voice said. Darla couldn’t place who it was and she tried to open her eyes to find out, but they seemed to be sealed shut. “It’s Lindsey,” the voice said anyway, and Darla relaxed and tensed at the same time. Wolfram and Hart. What a pain in the ass.
“How did you find me?” she managed between unnecessary gulps of air.
There was a long pause. “Drusilla came to me,” he lied. “Told me where you were. Then she left; said something about Sunnydale.”
“She’s not coming back for me, is she?”
“She… might be. She probably is.”
Darla nodded. “Where am I?”
“You’re at my apartment,” Lindsey divulged. “A new one. Angel found the old one and I made the mistake of inviting him in.”
Darla nodded again. She swallowed. “Why aren’t I hungry?”
“I’ve been feeding you blood every few hours. Human. Good stuff. I can already see the difference in your face.”
Darla nodded a third time and started to drift off. She had make a plan to get her revenge on Angel, and soon she’d execute it; just as soon as she could open her eyes and walk around.
***
“Called Buffy, didn’t get an answer. I called that Giles guy and he was very understanding about the whole thing, but he seemed really distracted. I now understand that comment you made about Wesley channeling Giles.” Gunn frowned. “Where is that scoundrel, anyway?”
“Went to go steal more books from Angel,” Cordy said shortly. “So, what did Giles say?”
“That he’d ‘inform Buffy and keep a close lookout, for there might be something much more terrible’ and that we should ‘continue to try to figure out from whence the girl came’ because ‘it might be vital to our investigation’.” Gunn shivered. “He’s a very precisely-speaking British guy, isn’t he?”
Cordelia grinned. “More than you know.”
Gunn wandered around the office as Cordelia continued to dust and ran into the uncharacteristically splattered pattern of books on the floor. Usually, if Gunn left a book open and upside-down so he didn’t lose his page, Wesley threw a fit about it; now his own books were suffering every possible torturous method a book might experience. “He’s gone to steal more books?”
Cordy nodded. “Yep.”
Gunn stared at the books more. “Why?”
Cordelia shrugged. “I don’t know. Didn’t ask. He was acting really first-grade about it, so I told him that he could do it himself if he wanted more books so badly. I was being sarcastic, but he yelled, ‘Fine!’ and left the building.”
Gunn shook his head. “Weird guy.”
“I know! He was never like that in Sunnydale. Kinda sexy, actually. He was a big dork, a lot more so than now, but…” Cordelia looked over and saw the look of absolute terror on Gunn’s face.
“If you ever say that Wesley’s sexy again, I will launch myself off the top of this building.”
Cordelia grinned. “Well, he was. I thought he was sexy, he thought I was sexy…”
Gunn looked away from Cordy in disgust. “I am not hearing this.”
“…and when we finally kissed in the library before graduation…”
“LALALALALA,” Gunn yelled, putting his hands over his ears.
“…it was the worst thing ever. So awkward. He really wasn’t good at kissing at all.”
Gunn finally looked at her. “Thank God for that.”
“But then, when he came to L. A., I was trying to give someone else the visions the same way Doyle gave the visions to me, and he was much better. I mean, wow. He was probably better than Xander was, and that’s saying something.”
Gunn stared, and then turned to leave the room. “I can’t be hearing this. It’s not possible. I’m just going to totally forget this conversation ever happened.”
Cordelia’s grin turned to laughter, and she promptly resumed dusting, waiting for Wesley to come back with his hoard of books.
***
Angel stepped downstairs and saw that there was a message on his machine. He grabbed his jacket and was about to leave, but he thought better of it and pressed the message button.
“Hello, Angel, it’s, er, Rupert Giles here,” sputtered the machine. “I got a call from your associate, a mister… Charles Gunn, and he told me that Cordelia had been having visions about a girl drinking milk followed by a series of other people, and that the girl lived in Sunnydale… well, I believe I’ve located her. Her name is Lia Walkin; she’s about eighteen and is a freshman at UCSunnydale. They’re about to go on Spring Break, so I’ve paid for a ticket for her to come see you next week. I don’t know why exactly the Powers That Be want Cordelia to help this girl; she seemed very happy and eager to take a trip to L. A. Well, in any case, she’ll be coming to the Hyperion on Monday. Er… I suppose that’s all. Take care,” he added politely before hanging up. Angel knew Giles didn’t mean it, and disregarded the entire message as he opened a metal chest on the floor to reveal Wesley squatting uncomfortably in it.
“What are you doing?” asked the vampire.
“I… er… was looking for some… books.”
“I see that,” Angel responded, beckoning to the pile of books beside the chest that Wesley had conveniently forgotten to hide. He pulled Wesley out of the chest and escorted him firmly to the door. “I trust you heard that message,” Angel said.
“Most of it, yes.”
“Great. Then you’ll be here on Monday to greet this girl, and then you’ll both get the hell away from my hotel.”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“And if I catch you or Cordelia or Gunn or anyone else here again in the interim,” Angel said fiercely, pulling Wesley hard enough to make him stumble out the door and fall onto the hard cement, “I won’t be quite so polite in escorting you out.” The vampire slammed the door and decided against going out in the first place, folding his duster nicely and placing it on a chair before walking noiselessly back up the stairs.
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