“You’re not my lawyer,” Harry Sims narrowed his gaze upon the man in the Armani suit. The business card said it all. The firm of Wolfram and Hart was all too familiar to him. “Holland Manners is my lawyer. Not that I’ve seen his ugly mug for a while.”
Jake Devries tried not to smile. “He has moved up in the firm. I’m handling your case now.”
“That no good sonofabitch promised me freedom if I followed his lead. Instead, he left me in here to rot.”
Sims obviously thought he was a fool. It was all there in the file. The firm had a long relationship with the man. When they lost his case it was actually a victory of sorts. It was damn difficult to put your own client in federal prison without tipping anyone off.
Almost as difficult as it was going to be to get him out again.
“You’re a level three precog, Mr. Sims. Don’t pretend you weren’t aware that I was coming.”
“Maybe I was. Maybe I wasn’t.” He smiled again in a knowing way that would have given anyone who didn’t work for Wolfram & Hart the creeps. Devries had seen and heard too much to let it bother him.
The firm employed a number of psychics and precogs. Sims had been one of them. Technically, he was still getting paid. Someone of Sims’ qualifications did not usually get into this kind of situation. You’d think the ability to predict the future would keep you safe, warn you before you got into something you couldn’t escape.
Apparently self-preservation didn’t apply when your employers were Wolfram and Hart.
It wasn’t Sims’ lack of skills. The firm acted to block certain thoughts from his mind. No matter how many visions came to him about why he was in prison or the purpose of this meeting, they scrambled their meaning. Holland Manners kept him in the dark for good reason: he was a pawn in a very important game.
Long aware of the Prophecy of Septarius the firm had maneuvered itself to come out of this with a position of power. The Senior Partners weren’t worshippers of Amolon, but were all too aware that it was better to be on his side should his effort to come to Earth succeed. They hoped it didn’t. After all, the Senior Partners had their own goals. That’s where Devries came in acting as the firm’s representative to Amolon’s high priestess, Kalesh, to insure they maintained a foothold in the new Earth regime.
For the moment they were considered the equals of the two key groups that would form a triumvirate of power. Nicolau Cibran’s vampires and The Undertaker’s gang were nothing compared to the combined might of the firm. The Senior Partners of Wolfram and Hart deserved a bigger take and they planned to get it.
Controlling one of the five Pure Ones would allow them to maintain a hold over the others. Their pawn could be used as leverage. Without the bone relic mentioned in the prophecy it had taken the vast resources of the firm and a dozen bloody rituals to link someone of their choosing to the events to come. Holland Manners had made it happen and now it was Devries job to seal the deal.
As of tonight they would have someone else on the inside, one whose abilities would allow Devries to play the right cards at the right time. Win, lose or draw. The firm played to win and it didn’t matter whether Amolon succeeded so much as the Senior Partners got what they wanted.
Even now the web was closing tighter and tighter around him Sims remained calm and unaware that his life was about to take a turn for the worst. “I’m here to send you home.”
“Back to Sunnydale?” That surprised him and things rarely did.
Devries opened up the hidden compartment in his leather briefcase and removed a preloaded syringe. It was the only way to get something like this past the guards without putting a sizable hole in your monthly allowance of petty cash.
“What the fuck are you doing?” The cuffs scraped noisily against the table as Sims pulled as far back as he could. “What is that shit? I hate needles.”
“Trust me, Mr. Sims. If you want to get out of prison tonight this is the only way short of a body bag.”
Taking hold of his arm, he jabbed the needle through the orange jumpsuit straight through to his deltoid muscle and pushed 0.5cc of the potent, virtually untraceable drug. While Sims was still reeling from the initial hit, Devries put the syringe back into the secret compartment and closed his briefcase.
“Where are you going? I thought you were taking me home.”
“No, Mr. Sims, not quite yet. These things take time and I can’t be around when it happens.” He headed for the door, but paused when the woozy prisoner called out a final question. “When you wake up Kalesh will be waiting.”
“Who’s Kalesh?”
Devries promised, “You’ll find out soon enough.”
A void of darkness stretched before her. Black, black, black. Hopelessness weighed heavily as it settled into her chest as she ran a finger along the clothes in Angel’s closet. “One more reason why I so need to go shopping.”
“Not until we get this situation resolved,” Angel said beside her. “I agreed to take you out tonight, not let you endanger yourself by running all over town on some shopping spree.”
Rolling her eyes, Cordelia huffed. “Like I could afford it. Besides, who said anything about Sunnydale? L.A. is only a couple of hours away and I don’t think anyone there is out to sacrifice me. If I was really going shopping it wouldn’t be at the Sunnydale Mall.”
Lowering her lashes, she felt a little misty-eyed over the memory of endless hours of buying whatever she wanted. It hurt that she didn’t have that anymore, but at the same time it seemed kind of silly now. She sniffed and followed it up with a laugh, her eyes twinkling as she looked up at Angel who seemed to be at a loss for words.
“Don’t worry about it, broody boy. We’ll find something in here for you to wear on our date.”
“Uh, Cordy… I’ve been dressing myself for quite a while now.”
Her eyes dropped down from his black shirt to his black pants. “Yes, and isn’t that obvious. Not that I don’t like that Dark Knight thing you have going on because it’s sexy, too, but every now and then you’ve got to lighten up a little. Wear something that doesn’t make you blend into the shadows.”
His voice was quiet as he said, “I’m a vampire. That’s what I do.” As if it might be akin to sacrilege to wear something other than black.
“Just like our resident Billy Idol wannabe? Real blendy. Not.” With that platinum blonde hair and his colorful ratty t-shirts, Spike was hardly the type to fade into the background.
Angel leaned back against the wall next to the closet, relaxing back against it and crossing his arms over his chest. “Maybe I’ll borrow something from him, then. That t-shirt from the Grateful Dead concert…”
He was having a hard time keeping a straight face. Cordelia jabbed a finger into his stomach. “Good thing I know you actually have some taste. If you take me out on our first date dressed like that I’ll stake you myself. I want to go somewhere classy, not to the Doublemeat Palace.”
“First date?”
“Okay, so we skipped a few steps,” Cordelia had to admit that it wasn’t his fault, “but when did you ever take me out on a date?”
It wasn’t exactly a trick question, but Angel couldn’t seem to come up with the right answer. “Ah ha! Gotcha there, buddy. Technically, we haven’t had one yet.”
Standing straight again, he pointed out, “There was the picnic at Shady Hill.”
“The one I set up? The one where I ended up in the hospital after practically being hit by a meteor and, might I add, getting picked as the next Miss Future Sacrifice?”
“Yeah.”
Cordelia pressed her lips together and shook her head. “Doesn’t count.”
“We went to the movies,” he tried again.
“That doesn’t count either. That was before,” she reminded him. That didn’t count as a date. “It’s different when you’re together.”
“We were together. You sat next to me. I bought popcorn.”
Remembering that he’d given in to her desire for a bag of buttery goodness stating that a movie wasn’t a movie without it, Cordelia grinned. That had been a great two hours and not because of the movie itself. They’d become friends. Real friends. Good friends.
But it wasn’t a date. “We were just friends then. That was Team Chase taking up pre-patrol time.”
“Technically, that’s what we’re doing tonight. Pre-patrol. We can’t forget the dangers that are out there. Not for a minute.”
Cordelia sighed. “We won’t. Please, Angel, this date is important to me. We can still dress up, have a good time and be careful.”
“It’s just that I don’t—date. With you, yes, I will, I want to, but before, not really.”
“Oh, c’mon, you dated Buffy, right?” she asked while contemplating the black shirt with the thin white stripes or the black shirt with the silver buttons. “I know you two used to meet up at the Bronze.”
“That was different.”
“How so? A guy and a girl sitting together, talking…okay, with you back then maybe not so much of the talking and way, way less of the dancing—we’ll have to work on that.” She put both shirts back in the closet and moved on to the next. “Maybe the Bronze was a bad example. You two had to do something fun.”
He paused for a moment as if wondering whether he should be telling her. Cordelia raised an eyebrow and waited. Finally, he said, “We went ice skating.”
Jaw dropping, she gasped, “You skated?”
“No, not exactly. She was skating alone at the rink. I, uh, was following her.”
Cordelia chortled and went back to browsing through his clothes. Pointing out to him, “Broody stalker mode is different than date mode.”
Wryly, Angel added, “And then we were attacked.”
“Oh, God, as if I needed a reminder of how pathetic you two could be. Please tell me that you had one decent date. I almost feel sorry for Buffy.”
“We went for coffee once.”
That settled it. Buffy deserved her little pity party. “Oookay. I’m sure that was…nice. Let’s start with Dating 101. Lesson One: Clothes. It’s all about the clothes.”