Chapter Three
“You have GOT to be kidding me,” said Cordelia, glancing over the contract again, “My father… My father signed this thing and now I have to–“
“Comshuk,” supplied Wesley, his eyes wide, “With a-a Groosalugg. It’s all there in the small print.”
Cordelia almost slung the contract at his head. There it was alright, all sealed with blood and other things that Cordelia didn’t want to even know about. She was furious. Forget the fact that she’d been signed over to be some demon’s bitch because of the man who’d quite literally given her life.
There wasn’t even a way to get out of this, and God knows she’d tried.
Angel had killed the demon. Twice. Run it through with a sword and snapped its neck. Twice it had got up, dusted down its suit and levelled its blue eyes on Cordelia and told her that wasn’t the most polite of ways to handle their negotiations.
Then, it had handed her a contract.
Oh, it was all on the up and up. Her father had sealed it in blood six years before he’d even met her mother. In return for immeasurable wealth and success, he’d hand his firstborn daughter over on the day of her 21st birthday to comshuk with some demon.
And wouldn’t luck have it? Cordelia was 21. In one weeks time.
“Y’know, most girls look forward to getting hammered legally on their 21st,” she pointed out angrily, “And instead I get to comshuk with some demon? How unfair is that?”
Her fate had been sealed before she’d even been born! Of all the bone-headed, stupid things her father had ever done? This had taken the cake. He hadn’t even thought of some failsafe that would let him, oh, keep the money?
Instead he’d neglected to pay his taxes forever and then signed Cordelia over –signed her over – to have sex with a freakin’ demon.
“It’s not going to happen,” said Angel, the fifth time he’d repeated himself since the demon had left, “I’m not going to let it happen.”
“And what’re you gonna do?” She snapped, “You killed the guy twice, Angel. How much more dead can he be?”
Dead enough to walk out of here. Dead enough to tell her that it’d be back in a week to collect on his ‘debt’.
Cordelia sat down in the chair opposite Wesley’s desk as he poured over the contract, folding her arms across her chest. Why was it that the entire world and its demon dog were lining up to impregnate her? Why couldn’t her lot in life be different?
Why couldn’t they want to shower her with, like, many riches or something? Instead she got the shoddy end of the deal – the penis end of the deal – and Cordelia was pissed about it.
“Why me? Do I have ‘incubator for evil’ tattooed on my forehead or something?” She asked, glaring at the contract as if that alone would make the thing disappear, “Can’t I burn it?”
Wesley stared at it for a moment and shook his head, “I’m afraid not, Cordelia. It’s mystical… The contract would only appear again if we tried to destroy it. The only way to pay off the debt is for you to go ahead and–“
“I know, Wesley! Can we skip that part? If I hear that word again, I think I might hurl,” She murmured, “Why can’t my father pay off his own damn debt? It’s not like he wasn’t somebody’s bitch in prison…”
“Because the only way for your father to do that, is for him to give up his life.”
Cordelia balked at that, “Are you serious?”
“I’m sorry, Cordelia, I really am.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she said, her voice high, eyes shining, “Be fixing guy! Find me a freakin’ loophole!”
****
“Yes, Willow. I’ll pass that on, thanks for your help,” said Wesley; his shoulders slumped as he replaced the receiver.
Five days had passed since the revelations about Cordelia’s father and the deal he’d made with that demon had come to pass and Wesley was no closer to figuring out how to get Cordelia out of it.
They’d done everything they’d been able to think of. He’d phoned Giles with details of this contract, asked Willow to look into things that could make it null and void… Nothing.
Cordelia had even sung for Lorne at Caritas, who’d got all wide-eyed and panicked when he’d realized what, exactly, was in the brunette’s future. “Jumpin’ Judas on a unicycle, you are in a pickle,” he’d told her, souring Cordelia’s mood even further.
She hadn’t been able to get hold of her father for a week.
In a way, Wesley suspected the man had been fortunate in that respect. He wouldn’t like to be on the receiving end of Cordelia’s ire, especially not since he was the one who’d put her in that situation. No, Wesley would much rather prefer being on this side of the fence, even though it was still most awkward.
Angel was brooding. He’d looked into everything, ways to kill the Groosalugg, make it so that Cordelia wouldn’t have to pay off her father’s debt. At one point, he’d actually suggested that her father pay off his debt on his own, to which Cordelia had frowned.
“He might not be much of a father, but he’s still mine, Angel,” she said, trying to believe – despite everything – that somehow she’d get out of this.
Even Wesley was starting to lose hope. He’d visited friends and acquaintances, even bribed enemies in order to gain some insight into the workings of this Groosalugg and he’d come up with nothing. The dark circles under Cordelia’s eyes were starting to get to him.
She was Cordelia Chase and would absolutely not go down without a fight but with every moment that turned up nothing, that quality about her seemed to dim a little.
“Anything?”
There was another thing that was getting to him. Angel. He’d done as much as Wesley had, if not more. The strain of the last five days was showing on Angel who was determined not to lose Cordelia again. Something about that niggled at him.
Subtle changes, like the way Angel acted around her, had all put Wesley on the highest alert. This was getting to Angel as much as it was Cordelia.
“No,” he sighed, “Willow couldn’t help. She told me that whoever had ‘worked the mojo on that contract thingy’ was more powerful than she’d ever dream of becoming. More than she’d want to. its dark magick, Angel, and the price of messing with something like that is often too high.”
“So we’ve got nothing again,” said Angel, deadpan.
It actually pained Wesley to see his friend like this, despite what’d happened in earlier weeks. “Nothing again, Angel,” he shook his head, “But I’ll keep looking.”
Angel just frowned at that and slipped back into the shadows, his mood dark.
“Maybe it won’t be so bad,” Cordelia had tried on him last night, when she’d been down in the basement watching him pound the punching bag in frustration, “I mean… He wasn’t that ugly. And he was kind of polite, all things considered.”
Angel could feel something burning inside his gut and as he’d watched Cordelia, her tone glib despite the look on her face, he’d realized what it was.
He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed Cordelia until he was back in the hotel again. The scraps she’d thrown him after he’d bought her clothes and agreed to take the crappy little desk that was just an extension on the hotel counter were enough to keep Angel going because Cordelia was talking to him.
She wasn’t looking at him properly yet. There was too much hurt behind her eyes and she couldn’t trust him with that yet but that was okay because he was willing to do whatever it took to make it up to her again, no matter how long it took…
But this had cut it short and Angel was angry. Angel was jealous. Angel was a lot of things, but mostly? Angel was stupid.
He didn’t know how it was possible to have spent so much time around Cordelia and to not have known how he really felt. It hadn’t been a quick, startling revelation. Just the slow burn of anger that had eaten away at him with the thoughts that he might lose her again.
Angel wasn’t willing to let that happen but right now, it seemed like he didn’t have much of a choice.
He’d sat down beside her on the stairs of the basement, placing his hand awkwardly over hers. It was testimony to how truly miserable Cordelia was when she didn’t yank it away and tell Angel he hadn’t earned that right yet. That he wasn’t allowed to comfort her because he’d fucked up and he wasn’t done paying.
“Cordelia…” He’d started.
“Don’t, Angel,” she frowned, shuddering as though it would pain her to hear him trying to make this right too,
“Just don’t, okay? I’m not happy with this. I’m never going to be happy with this, but since my Dad has decided to take the cowards way out and let me pay off his little debt? It’s not like I get a choice in the matter. I just… God, this is fucked up. I don’t even have words for how fucked up this is. Or how pissed off I am that the Powers don’t have some kind of loophole… I mean, I’m their visionary for God’s sake. I can’t help save the world if I’m being impregnated by it!”
Angel sighed. She was right. “I could try the Oracles?”
“The Oracles are dead, remember? When Vocah got all scythe-wieldy and mind-twisty and made me go into a vision-induced coma for a couple of days?”
He remembered only too well but Angel, like Wesley, was clutching at straws. He wanted to help. He needed to help. After all, that was what Angel did and it was frustrating him to no end to realize that he couldn’t help the one person who’d come to mean so much to him.
“I’ll find something,” he said finally, squeezing the hand that was clasped in his. It surprised him that the move didn’t seem awkward and, emboldened by this; he wrapped his arm around her shoulder, pulling her to him.
She didn’t move for a long moment and Angel felt the fluttering of panic as he wondered if he’d been too forward. Then Cordelia reached up and pressed her lips to his cheek,
“Thanks for trying, Broody,” she whispered softly. Before he could think anything of it, Cordelia was up off the stairs and away, wrapping her button down sweater closer around her as she stepped out of the basement and into the lobby.
Angel had only nodded, more determined than ever to get her out of this mess.
****
On the eve of Cordelia’s 21st birthday, she’d located her father. While other girls were out planning parties and ways to celebrate their being legal for almost everything now, Cordelia was helping her friends find a way for her not to become some demon’s bitch and the frustration was only growing on that front.
Six times she’d called her mother that morning. Six times and her mother still hadn’t heard from him since their little ‘disagreement’ a week ago in which her father had apparently flipped, gone into one of his huffs and moved out for the week.
Cordelia hadn’t explained. It was bad enough that her father knew about demons and hadn’t lifted a finger to help in the entire time he’d known – explaining to her mother would just make Cordelia twice as cranky and twice as tired. Plus, it wasn’t like time was on her side or anything.
In her defence, and Cordelia wasn’t sure how much of a defence this was, her mother seemed blissfully ignorant about the whole thing. Stupid enough to still believe that what’d happened with the whole ‘getting money’ deal was blind luck and the losing it just the opposite. Cordelia knew different. Cordelia knew karma.
She’d been a bitch in Sunnydale, no doubt about that. Three years later and she was still paying, only this time, she was paying for somebody else’s mistakes too and he wasn’t even around to take the rap for it. Not, of course, that Cordelia wanted her father to die but a little in the way of explanation would have been nice.
In the end it had been incredibly easy to locate him. Incredibly easy because since Angel had been away they’d developed contacts in high places and a locator spell was just the thing they needed to find her skulking asshole of a father.
She’d rapped on the door of his crappy motel room, managing to save some shred of her dignity even though Angel wanted to knock it down, and relished in the look on her father’s face when he found his only child standing on the other side of the door.
“Cordelia, what are you doing here?” He asked, his mouth forming a soft ‘o’ of surprise.
“Well, I’d say it was a social call but I’d be lying,” said Cordelia, darkly, “I’ve come to see why the hell you offered me to a freakin’ demon on the night of my 21st birthday.”
The moment the words left her lips, her father paled. He stood there for a moment, looking from Cordelia and then back to Angel again, risking her ire with every second he didn’t speak.
“You’d better come in,” he said finally, once the shock had worn off a little.
He led them further into a little room that kind of reminded Cordelia of his study back home, if his study had been tiny little, with a black and white portable TV and a cooler right at the end of it.
He offered them a drink, perplexed when Cordelia seemed all business and sank down on one of the crappy little chairs as Angel shut the door behind them, deflating somewhat. “You spoke to your mother?”
“Not about this,” she shook her head, “That demon sent one of its little flunkies after me but my friends killed it. I called Mom once I found out what you’d done and she said you’d had a… Disagreement?”
She watched as he ran a tired hand over his face. He’d aged ten years in the two months since she’d seen him last and that was kind of weird actually, seeing him like that. Her father had always seemed taller somehow.
“I’ve… I’ve known this was coming for a while now,” he explained softly, not even trying to meet Cordelia’s gaze, “The week of your 21st birthday. My baby’s all grown up… And I’m sacrificing you ’cause of a stupid deal I made with a demon when I was 18 years old.”
He risked a look at her then, his head tilting for just a second, “You don’t seem all that surprised about the demon side of things…”
“I work for a vampire,” said Cordelia snippily, feeling the need to instantly defend Angel, even though she wasn’t sure he’d actually earned the title again, “A good one, anyway, and I grew up on the mouth of hell. It’d be a little weird for me not to figure out something was going on, don’t you think?”
“You always were smarter than I gave you credit for, huh?”
She gave a little ‘duh’ scoff and sat down opposite her father, folding her arms across her chest, “You really think flattery is gonna get you off the hook? Start explaining.”
Her father sighed. He’d been going over this in his head so many times this past week – getting it out in the open actually seemed like a relief.
“Anything I say is going to sound like an excuse, Cordelia, and you didn’t come here for that.”
“No,” she shook her head, “But I did come here for answers. You owe me that much, Dad.”
“I’ve told you what it was like, Cordelia,” he started, “Growing up where I did, with our family… Before we had the money. I had nothing,” he said, his gaze dropping. Cordelia honestly couldn’t believe the gall of the man – sitting defending what he’d done, but she let him continue.
“I was teased mercilessly at school – you know how it was, how it used to be. I swore that it wasn’t going to be like that for me, that I wasn’t always going to be the underdog… And then the demon showed up.”
She could feel Angel’s temper straining against its already incredibly short leash and she shot him a warning look, trying to calm him down in case he got up and totally whaled on her father. Hell, it was nothing short of what she wanted to do herself – Angel had more evil tendencies living inside him than her any day.
“So, what, you were a giant geek and you figured making a deal with a demon was the answer?” Harsh, perhaps, but true enough.
“Cordelia, it wasn’t like that–“
“Then how was it?” She yelled, “Because of you I have to mate with some freakin’ demon which, by the way? Is getting REALLY old.”
“You’ve had to mate with a demon?” Her father questioned sharply.
“SO not the issue here! You sold me to one before I was even born!”
He at least had the common decency to look awkward at this fact. His jaw tensed and he sighed and he looked kind of old which was as much of a shock to Cordelia as it was to anyone because even after a couple of years in prison, her Dad hadn’t looked old.
He’d just looked harder, kind of… Like prison had opened him up to a world full of new experiences. “I was young, Cordelia. And stupid–“
“You got that right.” She interjected her voice full of venom.
“And if I could take it back now, I would.”
Cordelia frowned, “Because you know that if I don’t do it, you’ll die?”
“No,” he shook his head, “I made this deal when I didn’t know you, Cordelia, when I didn’t know your mother. When I thought I needed money more than the important things. And I’ve made mistakes in my time but this… This has to be my worst.”
“Again with the right,” she breathed out, but this time she felt old. If she didn’t do this her Dad – the very man who’d given her everything she’d ever asked for, short of actual affection – would die because of this demon.
Die. And aside from the fact that she loved her father (even though he was a giant kind of idiot), she really could not stand having yet another death she was too late to prevent on her conscience. No, sir.
“Look, we’ll figure something out,” she sighed, “It’s… It’s kind of what I do now. It’s what Angel does.” She paused for a second and fixed him with a glare,
“But do not, for one second, think that this means you’re off the hook. You were stupid – real stupid – and you apologizing and being all doting father ’cause you think you’re gonna die if I don’t comshuk with a Groosalugg doesn’t exactly change things.”
“I know, baby,” he said awkwardly, “And I really am sorry.”
“Yeah,” Cordelia sighed, “Me too.”