Impressions (12 page)

In the doorway stood a man, or what was mostly a man. Draped over his head and shoulders like a flexible living cloak—a nearly invisible one at that—something pulsed and breathed; below it, the man’s eyes held a maniacal look, unrestrained fervor and intent. “Where’s Angel?” he bellowed. “I’m going to kill him!”

Angel looked at the man and his unusual fashion accessory, looked at the door, and made a disapproving noise at both. “It’s a bad week for doors.”

“It’s quiet,” Fred said. She ran a finger along the brass inlays of the stair railing, frowning slightly. “I like it when it’s quiet.”

“You don’t look like you like it,” Cordelia observed. She was scouring the L.A. news sites, marking down the unusual incidents, plotting them on a map. So far, the majority of them had been in Westlake.

“Well, the other thing is that when it’s quiet, my head feels noisy,” Fred admitted. “Thoughts forget to take their turn. Unlike, say, if Angel is here, and he’s talking, then thoughts about what he’s saying get to come first, before all those thoughts on how to open a portal and get back home.”

Cordelia looked up, discovering it was her turn to frown. She quickly schooled away the bumpy brow effect. “But…you
are
home.”

“Oh, I know that,” Fred responded, casually self-assured in a strangely normal moment. “But you know, when you’ve been thinking about one thing so hard for so long, it doesn’t just go away.”

“Maybe you should write it down,” Cordelia offered. “All your…well, calculations and stuff. Maybe that would help.”

“Oh, I write them down,” Fred said. “Or not
down
exactly…”

Cordelia gave her a sharp glance, once again getting the feeling that Fred meant something slightly different from the obvious—but Fred had gone vague again, and Cordelia left her to it. The question was, were all these incidents along Alvarado coincidental—the flock of Slith in MacArthur Park among them—or did the pattern mean something?

“Cordelia,” Fred said, and her voice was not vague in the least. More like wary.

Cordelia couldn’t help her exasperation, anyway. “Fred, I’m trying to—oh, hello.”

For there in the lobby stood their faux Angel. He’d obviously come in down below, through what Cordelia thought as
their
Angel’s private entrance. He gave a little wave.

She put her hands on her cocked hips and said, “I sure hope you don’t have any bad guys dogging your tail, because I’m fresh out of save-the-day coupons.”

“Not as far as I know. Anyway, they’re after Lutkin, not me.”

“Yeah, that makes a whole lot of difference to us when they’re breaking down our doors to get here. Which you
will
pay for, by the way. This hotel is a historical landmark, not your own personal trouble palace!”

“As if you people needed any help in
that
department,” he snorted.

“Just what do you know about it?” she shot back at him.

He took a step back, and seemed suddenly startled…more by himself, she would have said, than by any comment of her own. “Enough,” he said. “I know enough.”

“Enough to set yourself up as Angel Investigations, undercutting our business and luring God knows how many unsuspecting people into placing their confidence in you? This is serious work, you know. We’re not just playing games here.” She swept her gaze up and down his body. Still in basic black, although he’d loosened his belt enough so his jeans were no longer cinched up around his waist. “You know, even Angel varies the look. Last week I caught him in a cranberry sweater.”

“Dark cranberry,” Fred offered.

“Even so.” She waved a hand at him, indicating the clothes, the hair. “The black, the duster, way too much hair gel…and have you got
eyeliner
on? Going for the dramatic look?”

“No, of course not,” he said. He didn’t sound convincing, and she wasn’t convinced.

“So what’s this all about, anyway?” She nodded at him. “The look. The business. Don’t you have your own life? You have to use someone else’s?”

Fred stood up, wrapping her hands around the railing as she looked down at him. “That’s it, isn’t it? You just wanted to leave your old life behind.”

Caught between them, he hesitated, mouth open.

“I’ve done that, by the way,” Fred added. “It doesn’t really work out like you think it will.”

“You’re wrong there,” he said, finding his voice again. With emphasis. “It’s working out just fine. People know I’m
someone
now—not something to be ignored. They look
at
me, not through me. Or away from me, like they’re too embarrassed to even see me. I’ve got power, now. People are afraid of me.”

“I’m not.” Fred had that earnest, honest little voice, one that said she was trying to be helpful even when she said exactly the wrong thing. It took the faux Angel aback a moment.

“I’m not either,” Cordelia said, with no intent to be helpful at all. “And you’re all wrong, imitating Angel so you can feel
powerful
. So people will be afraid of you. That’s not what he’s about at all.”

“You don’t think so?” Faux Angel snorted. “I’ve got plenty of evidence to the contrary.”

“Angel
helps
people,” Fred said. “Boy, you really
are
messed up. Try writing things down. It helps.”

Frustrated, he crossed his arms across his chest in a most defiant posture and scowled at them. “You don’t know anything about me, and you must not know much about other people, if you think this whole demon-hunting gig is about
helping
people. It’s about what it makes
you
. And that’s
not
what I came here to talk about!”

They exchanged scowls for a moment, and then Cordelia realized, “You knew he wouldn’t be here. You knew it would just be me.” She glanced at the stairs and added hastily, “Me and Fred. So what is it you want? Because you’re wasting my time, and I’m busy.”

“It’s only fair, really,” Fred said. “Considering the guys are at his place right now.”

“Fred!”

“So they found it,” Faux Angel said, a little grimly. “It was bound to happen. It doesn’t matter. You can’t stop me from being who I am.”

“And we’re not trying to,” Cordelia said, with the sudden impression she was being way too reasonable with a madman. “We want you to stop being who
Angel
is.”

“We’re indistinguishable at this point.”

“Oh,” Cordelia said, as pointedly as possible. “I wouldn’t go that far.” She straightened abruptly, waving him off with a shooing motion. “Well, this has been fun, but like I said, I’m busy. Go away now. Go rinse that dye out of your hair, and contemplate the bright cheerful colors brought to us by fall fashions.”

He shrugged, and turned to go…but hesitated, looking over his shoulder with a calculating glance that made Cordelia wary.

And rightly so.

He said, “Then I guess you don’t want to know what has the demons in this city all stirred up.”

From the back entry came another voice. Smooth. Dark and low. Full of the power and influence Faux Angel coveted so badly.

“Actually,” Angel said, “I guess we do.”

•  •  •

The imposter almost bolted. Again. But as he hesitated, even as Angel prepared himself for a chase, Cordelia put herself before the remains of the front door, and Gunn, having parked his truck, came in through the courtyard entrance. Angel detected Fred sitting quietly on the stairs, being not-noticed.

From behind Angel, Wesley said, “No—wait—”

The demon-draped man pushed up behind Angel, who put a casual hand against the wall just in time to block him. “That’s him!” the man said. “You didn’t tell me you had him here! I’m going to—”

“Wait quietly,” Angel said, his voice full of meaning. “Because if Wes is too busy saving that man’s butt, he won’t be able to help
you,
will he?”

“But that fake deserves to—”

“I have no doubt,” Wes muttered. “Come along. You can wait in my office. Would you like a soda?”

“Cherry cola would be nice,” the man admitted. “Or a root beer.”

Watching the demon-draped man settle meekly into Wesley’s office, Faux Angel finally found his voice. “What’s this all about?” he asked. “I’ve never seen that man before.”

“Sure you have,” Angel said, keeping all intensity out of his voice. He felt better now, the Slith poison washed out of his quick-healing system, the anger creeping back in. But now was not the time for anger.

Maybe in a few moments.

“The thing is, Dave—can I call you Dave, by the way?—the thing is, ‘that man’ came to you as a customer of what he thought was Angel Investigations. But he looks a little different from when you saw him.”

“How’s that?” the faux Angel—David Arnnette—asked warily.

“The thing
is,
” Wesley said, rummaging in the refrigerator and straightening with two soda cans in his hands, “the man had a demon problem. Something living in the tree in his backyard? Teasing his dog, leaving droppings everywhere, ripping clothes off the line…is this sounding familiar yet?”

A puzzled look settled on Faux Angel’s thin features. “But I took care of that.”

Angel prowled closer to his imitator. “Well, no,” he said, sounding what he thought was fairly reasonable. He wasn’t sure why the man flinched. “In fact, you didn’t. What you did was to rush out to his yard—”

“Having done no research whatsoever,” Wesley inserted, putting the soda cans on the counter. Neither one was cherry cola or root beer.

“And use perfectly ordinary means—what was it, a twenty-two rifle? Had to have been something small, or the neighbors would have reacted—to take care of the thing in the tree.”

In the office, the man quit playing with the chopsticks and yelled, “I was better off with the thing in the tree! You charlatan!”

Wesley quickly gathered the soda. “I think I’d better just—”

“You might want to close the door,” Cordelia advised him, still standing guard by the front entrance, arms crossed and hip cocked and not looking at all like someone who was only just starting self-defense work in the basement. “Because really, I think we’re still getting over the last cleaning job, don’t you?”

“I killed the thing,” Faux Angel said defiantly to Angel. “What’s the big deal?”

Gunn, standing solidly by the courtyard door and looking very much like someone who’s done self-defense work in the basement all his life, said, “The big deal is that it wasn’t
one
creature, it was
two
. And unless you kill it with electricity, you’re better off spraying the tree with dogz-be-gone.”

“That would work?” Faux Angel asked suspiciously. “Dogz-be-gone?”

“The creature has a highly developed sense of smell,” Angel said. “But since you didn’t do your research and you didn’t use electricity to kill it and you didn’t just drive it away, you left its companion alive. And its companion found a new friend.”

“Wonder what that was like,” Gunn said. He moved toward the center of the lobby, where their visitor shifted uncomfortably. “Can you imagine, sleeping all nice and cozy in your own bed, thinking your yard is clear and your house is safe, and then from out of
nowhere—
” He nodded at Wesley’s office.

Beyond the big glass window, the man sat uncomfortably, the jellyfish of a demon hugging his shoulders, oozing slightly around his neck. Every now and then he shrugged, an unconscious effort to dislodge the creature; it only clung tighter.

The faux Angel made a face, wrinkling his nose in disgust—then caught himself and schooled his features to the remote interest of someone who couldn’t possibly be to blame. “What’s it doing?”

“Absorbing nutrients of some sort, I would think,” Fred said from the stairs, breaking her long silence. “But what the normal host demon provided as nutrient may be something it’s not a good thing for that man to lose.”

“Can you get it off before it—” Faux Angel couldn’t quite bring himself to say it.

“Before it kills him?” Gunn said, and Faux Angel winced.

“Wes is good,” Cordelia said simply.

“And you,” Angel said, moving close, “are not. You’re not me. You’re not
us
. You wanna play with demons? Fine. But do it under your own name,
Dave
.”

Faux Angel looked at the floor. “David,” he said. “I prefer David.”

Cordelia eased in from the entrance, apparently deciding the flight risk moment was over. “So,” she said casually, “you were going to tell us what has everything all stirred up.”

The reminder wasn’t a welcome one to Angel; fresh awareness made for a fresh assault on emotions grown raw. Nor did it help his mood when Faux Ang—
David
—put on his well-practiced sullen look. David said, “You’re the ones who’re so good at research. Maybe you should just figure it out.”

Angel said instantly, “Or maybe I should just—”

Gunn narrowed his eyes. It was enough. Angel subsided.

Cordelia ignored them both. She said to David, “Just stop with the attitude. Trust me, we’ve seen enough of the real thing that you’re just boring us. And you know, we might actually
have
things figured out by now—if we didn’t keep getting interrupted by Tuingas demons.”

“Tuingas?” David repeated as Wesley reemerged from the office; this time he was careful to close the door behind him. “I mean, of course, the Tuingas.”

Pushing past Angel and Gunn, Cordelia moved right up on David, poking him in the chest, driving him backward until one of the roundchairs caught him behind the knees and he abruptly sat into it. “Yes, the Tuingas. And let me tell you something, bud…between the Tuingas and the mysterious
whatever
that has every demon within shouting distance of downtown looking for trouble, I’ve been nonstop Vision Girl. And I’m taking that
really personally,
if you get my drift. So whatever you know about either of them, fess up!”

At this, David did look truly confused. “But they’re pretty much the same thing. Didn’t you know that?”

“What part of
not know
did you not understand?” she asked him.