In response, all I could do was grin stupidly. Way to be cool.

I ducked into the press secretary's outer office and sagged against the filing cabinet before my knees gave out completely. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I chanted as I banged my head repeatedly against the metal cabinet. Why does the very sight of that man reduce me to a blithering idiot?

A furtive glance to my right revealed that Carol was looking at me curiously. I stopped the muttering and head banging before she decided to call the guys in white coats. I’m pretty sure she thinks I’m in serious need of help. Then again, she’s right.

"Just remembered I forgot to do something for Toby," I offered weakly.

Carol gave me a smile of humoring the crazy but at least she was nice enough not to say anything. I dropped the file I'd been clutching on top of her in box, then fled the office as fast as I could and still retain a shred of dignity.

What did I do to deserve this curse? I love my job, but I am quite sure that working in the same building as Josh Lyman is going to be my undoing. The man is perfect: charming, attractive, smart, witty. And--oh God--when he smiles at you, it's like you're the most important person he's ever met. His eyes focus on you and he flashes those amazing dimples and the rest of the world just melts away. But then he walks off and shines that same smile on Fred the janitor and you realize it’s just a gimmick. You’re not really special to Josh Lyman; he just has this gift for instinctively making everyone feel like they are. It's part of the reason he's so good at his job.

It’s been torture, really. And since he works just down the hall from me, I get the pleasure of taking this emotional roller coaster ride several times a day. How can you be expected to spend your whole day dealing with this kind of pressure and still hang on to your sanity? You can't.

The man could at least have the decency to be aloof, or rude, or unfriendly. If he never gave me a second look, never stopped to chat, never made a point of always saying hi to me, it would really make my life much easier. Damn him and his evil perfectness.

I was so wrapped up in my unhealthy obsession with the deputy chief of staff that I never even saw Larry coming. The next thing I knew we were crashing into each other at top speed.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine. God, I'm sorry." Larry was a sweetie. Always pleasant, always friendly, always helpful. You couldn't help but like him. Larry was also desperately in love with Ginger and she didn't even have a clue. There was a lot of that going around.

"No, it's my fault," he said. "I shouldn't have come around that corner so fast."

"I should have been paying more attention and gotten out of your way."

He narrowed his eyes at me. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah, why?"

"You look kind of dazed."

I shrugged. "That's baseline for me lately."

"Anything wrong?"

"No, I'm fine. I should get back before Toby starts bellowing."

"Okay, I'll see you."

I hurried back to the safety of my desk, sank down into my chair and buried my face in my hands.

Bonnie glanced over. "What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing more than usual."

Ginger gave me a pitying look. "Salt and I were just about to go down to the mess." They'd given themselves the nicknames Salt 'n' Pepa--Ginger was Pepa and Bonnie was Salt. Very cute. "Wanna come?"

I sighed miserably. "Can't. I really need to finish this stuff for the East Asia meetings."

"Want us to bring you something?"

"Turkey sandwich?"

"You got it."

Once they were gone I was able to bury myself in work and forget a certain someone for a while. I really do love my job. I work in the White House Communications Office and aside from the obvious coolness of the White House and all, I love what I do. And most of the people around here are great.

Toby can be a challenging boss, but once you get used to him you realize he's all bark and no bite. Sam's constant cheerfulness pretty much counteracts Toby's grumpiness anyway. And I get to tell my mom that I know the president. He doesn't actually remember my name, of course, but then President Bartlet doesn't remember most people's names. But he's talked to me several times and always remembers that I'm from Texas.

Anyway, I was concentrating so hard on my notes for Sam's meeting that I completely failed to notice that Josh had wandered into the bullpen until he was right next to me.

"Is Toby still at lunch?" he asked. He was leaning against my desk. Practically sitting on it, actually.

I swallowed hard. "Yeah, but he should be back soon."

I tried to look like I was still concentrating on my work. At least I was sitting down so I didn't have to worry about my knees betraying me this time.

Josh's ass was perched mere inches from my hand. If I wanted to, I could reach right out and touch it.

Oh, how I wanted to.

"Sam showed me your outlines for the Medicare summit," he said. "Nice work."

I felt my face redden at the compliment and kept my eyes glued to my desk so Josh wouldn't notice. "Thanks," I said lamely.

"Don't tell Sam I said this," he said, leaning in closer, "but your version was cleaner than his."

Oh, god, I may actually die.

Fortunately, I was saved from that undignified fate by Mandy Hampton, who chose that moment to breeze into the bullpen. "Where's Toby?" she demanded.

"Lunch," I said. Mandy was a real nightmare in purple today. What was she thinking with that suit? She looked like an eggplant.

"When's he going to be back?"

"Probably not for a couple of hours," I replied. I saw Josh raise his eyebrows slightly, but he didn't say anything.

"How the hell long does it take him to eat lunch?"

She was in her usual fine form today. I smiled as pleasantly as I could. "He had some meetings lined up."

"Have him call me as soon as he gets back," Mandy said. "Can you do that?"

Arrogant bitch. "I'll give him the message," I managed levelly.

"Hi, Mandy," Josh piped up cheerily.

She glared at him. "I'll deal with you later." Then she turned on her heel and marched out of the room.

"Yeah, I'll be looking forward to that," Josh said as he watched her go. He turned back to me. "Why'd you have a different answer for Mandy than you did for me?"

"Toby left special instructions for her."

"Ahhh." He cocked his head in the direction Mandy had gone. "You don't like her very much."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Come on, it's okay. You can admit it."

I just smiled and shook my head. He was totally right, of course--I couldn't stand Mandy--but I didn’t think it was wise to be fessing up to something like that with senior staff. Not to mention a member of the senior staff who used to date her.

My distaste for Mandy exists on several levels. First all, she's Josh's ex and yes, I'll admit it, I'm a little jealous of their history together. I can't imagine how she could have let that man get away. She also treats him like crap, which gets my hackles up, and probably has something to do with the reason they're not together anymore. Then again, she sort of treats everyone like crap, which leads me to reason number three: the woman is just a bitch. She always manages to get under my skin. Kind of like a chigger.

Josh laughed, but before he could say anything further on the subject, Toby came back from lunch.

"You just missed Mandy," I said.

"Good." He focused on Josh. "You're on my list today. Quit flirting with my staff."

Josh gave me a sheepish look before following Toby into his office and shutting the door behind them.

It's a good thing, too, because they didn't see me trying very hard not to hyperventilate.

Flirting?

Had Josh really been flirting with me? No, don't get excited. This is Josh Lyman we're talking about, professional flirter extraordinaire. It's just a reflex with him. Doesn't mean a thing.

Besides, everyone knows Josh is secretly in love with Donna, who's also secretly in love with him, only neither of them have a clue. Remember how I said there's a lot of that going around? Don't even get me started on Toby and C.J. and the drama there.

No matter how many times Josh smiles at me or how much it sends my heart into palpitations, it doesn't mean a thing. It's just another day at the office and I'm going to do what I always do--bury myself in my work until the giddiness wears off. Office crushes are murder, people. No wonder we all work such long hours around here.

She was used to these parties by now, and usually she didn't mind them, but tonight for some reason she felt uncomfortable. She felt like her hair was too curly, that it made her look older. And she worried that her dress was all wrong--too couture, too West Coast for this crowd.

The room was headachingly noisy; there were a dozen conversations going on around her, high-pitched laughter, a piano player in the foyer.

"Olive is the prettiest dog you could imagine, and good papers, too, but I just had to ask myself if we really wanted those teeth in the Silversmith gene pool." The woman talking to C.J. was a breeder of springer spaniels. She was drinking a Bloody Mary and had lipstick on her teeth, or perhaps tomato juice. C.J. had an overwhelming urge to reach over and wipe it off.

C.J. excused herself at the first opportunity and made her way over to the bar where she ordered a gin and tonic.

"As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again!" Josh proclaimed, coming up beside her.

C.J. winced. "I thought we agreed you weren't going to do the accent anymore."

"I can't help myself. Come on, it's like we're actually standing in Tara."

"Tara was in Georgia--this is South Carolina."

Josh shrugged. "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

"Don't let our hosts hear you say that," C.J. said, reaching for her drink. "Somehow, I don't think they'd appreciate it." The plantation-style mansion they were in did look an awful lot like Tara, even down to the heavy drapes that were perfect for converting into an antebellum hoop skirt.

"What the hell are we doing here?" Josh said, keeping his voice pitched low so no one would overhear.

"It's a fundraiser," C.J. replied, trying to ignore the way his right hand was casually wrapped around her upper arm. "We're raising funds. Or did you not realize that?"

She'd only known Josh Lyman for about a month and she was still trying to figure him out. The man possessed flawless political instincts but he was cocky as hell. And he always seemed to be half-flirting with her. But C.J. was starting to get the sense that it was just a put-on, like that swagger of his. She had a strong suspicion that if she were to actually respond to any of his innuendos, he'd run for the hills. Whatever. She had a firm rule about men she worked with, anyway.

"I mean, in South Carolina," Josh said, leaning in even closer. "This state isn't a battlefield, it's a minefield."

"We've already had this conversation." They'd been in South Carolina two weeks; Josh had been itching to leave for the last week and a half.

"I'm not through complaining yet."

"Go complain at someone else. I'm here to mingle."

"So go mingle," Josh said. "No one's stopping you."

She looked pointedly down at his hand, which was still on her arm, then back up at him, her eyebrows raised.

He smirked in that way of his that always made her want to kick him in the shins and let go, holding the offending hand up in a mockingly placating gesture before dropping it to his side.

C.J. moved away from Josh, but instead of mingling, she made for the nearest washroom and shut the door behind her, seeking a few moments of peace and quiet before she once more faced the throngs of Democratic contributors.

She leaned over the sink and frowned at her reflection in the atrociously expensive gilt-edged mirror. Why did her lipstick look so much brighter in this light than it had in the hotel bathroom? The people they were supposed to be impressing down here probably thought she looked like some kind of Yankee harlot. She sighed and reapplied the too-bright lipstick. Better that than a California feminista who didn't even bother to wear lipstick.

Before leaving the bathroom she slipped a handful of the seashell-shaped guest soaps into her pocket. It was stupid, but it was a habit she'd had since high school--under her bed at home was a box filled with soaps from every city she'd ever traveled to since she was 15 years old. It was big box.

She smoothed her skirt and stepped out of the washroom--and right into a truckload of tall, dark and handsome, emphasis on the tall.

"I'm so sorry," she said, feeling typically klutzy.

Tall, dark and handsome beamed a thousand-watt smile on her. "Don't be. If I'd seen you coming I would have thrown myself into your path on purpose."

C.J. smiled back. Tall, good-looking and charming--a deadly combination. And C.J. was always on the lookout for men who didn't peer up into her nostrils.

He stuck out his hand. "I'm Jack."

Perhaps the night was starting to look up.

Jack's Ford Expedition pulled up in front of the Siesta Motor Lodge.

"Thanks for the ride," C.J. said, reaching for the door handle.

"You sure I can't walk you to your room?" he asked hopefully.

"Absolutely sure," C.J. said, not even a little bit tempted. "Goodnight."

She got out of the car and walked quickly through the fluorescent-lit lobby. So much for tall, dark and handsome.

As soon as she stepped out into the tiled courtyard she was assaulted by the sound of Josh's ranting.

"Black voters are a huge segment of the South Carolina Democratic coalition, we need to be focusing on them!"

He and Toby were sitting by the pool, arguing, a collection of beer bottles on the table between them.

She saw Toby shake his head. "Any attempt at race-baiting is going to alienate moderate, white Democrats."

"It's 1998!" Josh said. "If they're not on board the diversity train yet they can get the hell out of our party--and they can take their Confederate flags and shove 'em up their asses, while they're at it!"

"We should definitely use that as a campaign slogan," C.J. said, coming up behind Toby. "Liberal New England potty-mouths are amazingly popular in the most socially conservative state east of Utah."

"What happened to Rhett Butler?" Josh asked.

C.J. ignored him and snagged a beer off the table.

"Just help yourself to the beer, there," Toby groused.

"Why thank you, don't mind if I do," C.J. said, knocking the bottle cap off on the side of the table with a loud thwack. She was in a bad mood, and it was going to take more than lite beer to reverse it. But it was a start.

"Not the man of your dreams after all?" Josh said.

"Drop it," C.J. warned.

"What was it? Bad breath? Extra toe? Monkey-pox?"

She cocked her eyebrows. "Monkey-pox?"

"He was married," said Toby quietly.

C.J. looked over at him sharply. "How'd you know?"

Toby shrugged. "Married men can always tell other married men. When'd you figure it out?"

"In the car on the way here--saw the tan line on his ring finger. Amateur mistake, I should have caught it sooner." She took a swig of beer. Yep, she was definitely going to need something stronger.

"And on that note, I'm going to call my wife," Toby said, pulling himself to his feet.

"Night," C.J. said.

She wasn't ready to go back to her hotel room yet so she slipped off her shoes and sat on the edge of the pool, dangling her feet into the water. It was a nice night--warm for October, even in the South.

Josh's new assistant, Donna, came over and handed him a stack of pink phone messages. "You need anything before I turn in?" she asked.

"Nope, we're done for the day," Josh said. "See you in the morning."

"She seems to be working out well," C.J. observed after Donna had gone.

"Hmm?" Josh said absently as he flipped through the messages.

"Your new assistant. She seems to be working out."

"Yeah, she is. She's great, actually." He looked up and smirked. "Jealous?"

"That you have an assistant and I don't? You're damn right I am."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know what you meant," C.J. said, taking another swig of beer.

Josh dropped the messages, grabbed his beer and came over to sit next to C.J. He pulled off his shoes and stuck his feet in the pool, socks and all.

"I think your pants are a little wet, there," C.J. said.

"They'll dry." He looked over at her. Actually, it was more of a leer than a look. "You look really nice tonight, C.J."

She eyed him warily. Even in the dim light his cheeks displayed a tell-tale flush. "How many beers have you had?"

"Two." He seemed to consider. "Possibly four."

She took the beer out of his hand and set on the other side of her. "I think you've had enough."

While she was turned away from him she felt something tickling her neck. Good God, he was playing with her hair. She pulled away quickly. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing."

"Josh."

"What?" he said innocently.

"Stop it."

"Stop what?" He leaned towards her. "This?"

"Yes," C.J. said firmly. He was close enough that she could smell his Hugo Boss cologne. And she was pretty sure she caught a whiff of single-malt scotch on his breath, which probably explained his current behavior better than the four beers.

"I figured out what's wrong with you, C.J."

This should be rich. "Is that so?"

"You should be kissed, and often, and by someone who knows how." Great, he was back to Gone with the Wind again.

Josh leaned in even closer. Lord, he was actually going to try to kiss her.

C.J. reacted on instinct and did the only thing she could think of--she shoved him. Hard.

Josh, caught off-balance, went flailing into the motel pool with the grace of a balletic cow.

She glared down at him as he sputtered to the surface. "You need to cool off, Josh!" she said.

He wiped his face and shook the water out of his hair. "It's nice and warm in here. Sure you don't want to join me?" And then he smirked. In that way that made her want to kick him.

C.J.'s fist clenched on the tiny seashell soaps that were still in her pocket. The next thing she knew the soaps were hurling through the air, straight at Josh's head.

"Ow!" he yelped as one bounced off his forehead. "What was that for?"

"For being a dumbass," C.J. snapped. She snatched up her shoes and stormed back to her hotel room.

When she got inside she threw her shoes across the room and flopped down on the bed. Why did men have to be such jerks? It was almost enough to make a girl consider switching teams. Almost.

She wondered if Josh would even remember this tomorrow. The more she more she thought about it, the more she hoped he wouldn't. It would make working together way too awkward.

This was really shaping up to be a craptastic year. The campaign was floundering, the candidate was a pain in the ass, and C.J. wasn't at all sure what she was doing here. Maybe she shouldn't have left L.A. after all.

She rolled over on her side and moaned. To top it all off, she'd left her beer down by the pool. Stupid beer. Stupid men. Stupid night.

There was a knock on the door. C.J. sat up. "Who is it?"

"It's Josh."

Super. She hauled herself off the bed and opened the door.

He'd changed into dry clothes, but hadn't bothered to comb his wet hair, which was sticking up in amusing tufts around his head. On his face was his most pathetic guilty puppy expression and he was clutching a rumpled paper bag in one hand.

"I'm sorry," Josh said, sounding sincere for once. "I was out of line and I absolutely deserved to be shoved into the pool."

"Apology accepted," C.J. said grudgingly.

"The soap attack was maybe an overreaction, though."

"Don't push your luck."

"I'm just saying, they kinda hurt."

"What's in the bag?" C.J. asked.

"Peace offering." Josh held it out so she could see inside.

"Candy bars?"

"It was either the vending machine or something from my luggage, and I thought you'd prefer stale Milky Ways to dirty socks." He pulled something else from behind his back. "Also I got this from Toby." It was a mostly-full bottle of Jack Daniel's. Good old Toby.

"You really think you need more alcohol?" she asked.

"It's for you, not me."

"Trying to get me drunk so I'll forget what happened?"

"Something like that."

"Sir, you are no gentleman," said C.J. archly.

"And you, miss, are no lady," Josh retorted with a grin.

She stepped back and held the door open.

Josh came in and looked around the dingy motel room. "Your room's bigger than mine."

"Size queen." She grabbed the candy and the bottle of Jack and sat down on the bed. "No Reese's?"

"They were all out."

C.J. took a swig out of the bottle and smiled happily. This was a Jack that would never turn out to be married. She tore open a Kit Kat. "Want something?"

"M&M's?"

"Plain or peanut?"

"Peanut."

She tossed a bag of M&M's to Josh and leaned back against the headboard. "So a man walks into a bar, sits down and orders a beer--"

"What are you doing?" Josh interrupted.

"I'm telling a joke."

He stared at her disbelief. "Really?"

"Yes, and you're going to sit there and listen."

"This is my punishment, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Okay."

"As he sips his beer," C.J. continued, "the man hears someone say, 'Nice tie.' The man looks around, but there's no one in the bar but him and the bartender. A minute later another voice says, 'Beautiful shirt.' So the man calls the bartender over. 'I must be hearing things,' the man says. 'I keep hearing voices saying nice things to me, but there's no one here but us.' 'It's the peanuts,' says the bartender. 'They're complimentary.'"

"That's a terrible joke," Josh said.

C.J. grinned. "I've got a million of 'em." She poured some whiskey into a glass and passed it to him. "You're going to need this."

He accepted the glass hesitantly. "You sure?"

"Just... stay over there."

"Okay."

C.J. took another drink from the bottle and settled back on the bed. Her mood was finally beginning to improve. "So a cowboy moseys into a saloon and orders a whiskey..."

C.J. rolled over with a groan and grabbed the ringing phone.

"This is your 5 a.m. wake-up call," said the robotic voice on the other end.

She dropped the receiver back into its cradle and opened one bleary eye. On the bed next to her were a half-dozen candy wrappers and an empty Jack Daniel's bottle.

Bits and pieces of the night before slowly began to come back to her. The pool... seashell soaps... the whiskey... Josh.

She sat up suddenly and looked around her. Curled up in an undignified lump on the floor was Josh. And--oh God--he didn't appear to be wearing anything but the rumpled sheet that was--blessedly--wrapped around his waist.

C.J. looked down at herself. She was wearing a bathrobe. With nothing whatsoever underneath. Oh. God.

"Josh!"

"Whatimizzit?" he bleared.

"What did we do?" screeched C.J.

"Huh?" Josh sat up and rubbed his eyes. He looked around the room. Then he looked down at himself.

"Aaaah!" He leapt to his feet, holding the sheet carefully around his boy parts.

They stared at each, aghast.

"Did we...?" Josh finally managed.

"No," C.J. said. "We wouldn't. I wouldn't."

"Right," Josh said. "Um, do you know where my clothes are?"

C.J. looked around. She pointed to a pair of jeans wedged under the dresser.

Josh collected his clothes. "I'll just... get dressed in the bathroom," he said.

C.J. nodded mutely. This was not happening. She buried her face in her hands. Then she wondered why her hair was damp.

Josh came out of the bathroom, once more wearing pants, for which she was immensely grateful. "C.J.?"

"Yes?"

"There's, uh... the bathroom... It's..."

C.J. went into the bathroom. The floor was covered with water and the tub was half full. Floating on the surface of the water was a limp residue of bubbles and a couple of tiny seashell-shaped soaps.

"Are you sure we--"

"Nothing happened," C.J. said firmly. "Do you understand? Absolutely nothing happened last night."

Josh nodded. "Nothing happened."

The hotel bathroom was beginning to feel very small. "You should go," C.J. said.

"Okay." He hesitated. "C.J.--"

"Nothing happened," C.J. said, a little louder than she intended.

"Right," Josh said. He started edging towards the door. "We'll just act normal."

"Normal," C.J. repeated. "We can do that."

Yeah, there's no way we're going to be able to do that, she thought.

"I'll see you at the pancake breakfast." Josh grabbed his shoes and let himself out.

C.J. leaned over and let the water out of the tub. It funneled down the drain with a loud slurping sound.

Oh well, she thought, digging through her bag for some ibuprofen, tomorrow is another day.

Her lips are as soft and warm as the memory of sunlight on his skin. He wants this moment, this kiss, to go on forever. (And they lived happily ever after to the end of their days.) Maybe, if he closes his eyes and wishes with all his heart, maybe this time it will.

The phone rings. And rings. And rings.

Angel bolted upright in bed. His skin was unpleasantly clammy and a dull throbbing echoed inside his skull.

The phone beside his bed was ringing.

He reached over and grabbed it, more from a desire to stop the noise than to speak to whomever might be calling.

It was an effort to concentrate on Wesley's voice. Angel felt strangely detached, as if a part of him were still caught in the dreamworld.

"Okay," he replied finally. "I'm on my way."

He dropped the phone onto the bed beside him. For a moment he lay still, eyes closed, trying to will himself into action.

“Cordelia.” He said it out loud, trying to draw strength from the familiar feel of the word in his mouth.

There had been a time, not so long ago, when he'd said her name often. Now, he spoke it only rarely, and only when he was alone.

He would have liked to crawl back into bed and claim the rest of his night's sleep, but had to do this instead. The work was all he had left now.

"You scratch my back," purred Lorne into the cell phone, "and there's a part in the next Joel Schumacher movie with your name on it."

He strode through the abandoned sound stage, deftly avoiding the puddles of blood and the white coats from Wolfram & Hart swarming over the crime scene.

"No, that's not a threat!" said Lorne. "Okay, I guess a lot of people were scarred by those nipples. Forget about Schumacher, how do you feel about Soderbergh?" He listened to the voice on the other end.

"That's my girl!" he said when she had told him what he wanted to know. "And you're sure?" Lorne walked over to where Wes, Fred and Gunn were waiting for him. "You're a peach! I'll be in touch soon."

He snapped his cell phone shut and addressed the others. "Gates' maid says he's at a fat farm in Arizona."

"Maybe we shouldn't have called Angel about this one," said Fred. "We can probably handle--"

"And face his unholy vampire wrath when he finds out about this and we didn't call him?" said Gunn. "No, thank you."

"He has been rather short-tempered of late," said Wes.

"I don't think he's been sleeping well since Cordelia... you know," said Fred.

There was a momentary, uncomfortable silence.

Wes adjusted his glasses. "Yes, well, it was... difficult. For all of us, of course, but for Angel in particular."

"I just wish he'd talk to us about it," said Fred.

"Angelheart doesn't talk," said Lorne. "He broods."

"And occasionally yells, or, alternatively, dismembers," added Gunn.

"But did you see him this afternoon?" asked Fred. "He looked awful, like he was getting sick or something."

"Vampires don't get sick," said Wes.

A door slammed loudly at the far end of the sound stage, announcing Angel's arrival. Several members of the Wolfram & Hart forensics team paled visibly and buried their noses even further in their gory work.

"I thought we told Gates in no uncertain terms that he was not to traffic in human remains anymore!" Angel bellowed.

"We did," said Gunn.

"And yet, here we are in one of his sound stages and it's full of mutilated bodies!" Angel gestured at the ceiling.

The others cast an uneasy glance at the row of corpses hanging from the lighting grid above their heads.

"He has to do something with the place over summer hiatus," offered Lorne.

Wes cleared his throat. "He does seem to have altered his business model somewhat--"

"I don't care!" Angel snapped. "Gates was warned. And now he's finished."

Wes and Gunn shared a look. Fred was right, Angel did not look well. Not even for someone who had been dead for over two hundred years. His eyes were dark and hollow, his cheeks sunken, and, if possible, he was even paler than usual.

"Will you keep it down?" said Spike, who had wandered up behind Angel. "All that shouting is upsetting the minions." He looked over at Angel. "Geez, mate, you look like hell."

"Spike, what are you even doing here?" asked Angel.

He shrugged. "Nothing but reruns on the telly tonight."

"Angel, are you all right?" asked Wes carefully.

Angel grunted in irritation. "I'm fine."

He was quite obviously not fine, but no one dared to push him on the subject.

Lorne peered up at the bodies. "Does it seem strange to anyone that only the right hands were cut off?"

"I imagine they were harvesting hands of glory," said Wes.

"What's a hand of glory?" asked Gunn.

"Traditionally, the right hand of a murderer, severed while the corpse is still hanging from the gallows and pickled for two weeks in an earthenware jar with long peppers and saltpeter."

Gunn rolled his eyes. "As long as it's not anything really stupid and obscure."

"They're a common ingredient in many magic spells and voodoo rituals."

Fred was still staring up at the bodies. "So all of those people were murderers?"

"Yes," said Wes, "which makes this something of a--"

"Don't say it," Angel warned.

"--gray area," finished Wes.

Angel groaned. "Why do I feel like we've had this conversation before?"

Gunn shook his head. "So Gates gave up killing innocent people and decided to start going after bad guys."

"For a profit," added Wes.

"Kinda like we used to do," said Fred.

"I helped people," said Angel. "I didn't sell their body parts." He frowned, and then put a hand to his head as if he were in pain.

Fred took a step toward him. "Angel?"

Angel waved her away. "I'm fine," he said. Just before his eyes rolled back in his head and he began to collapse towards the floor.

Wes and Gunn grabbed Angel before he could hit the floor and hauled him upright.

"He's burning up," said Wes.

Gunn cast a nervous eye around them to see if anyone else had noticed Angel's predicament. But the rest of the Wolfram & Hart team continued about their gruesome business, seemingly oblivious to their boss' distress.

Wes gestured to an office off to one side of the sound stage. "Over there."

Wes and Gunn hauled Angel, sagging between them, into the office and eased him down onto the couch.

Angel's eyes fluttered open and he looked around him in surprise.

"What happened?" asked Wes.

Angel shook his head weakly. "I don't know. I just felt dizzy and then I started to black out."

"Have you experienced any other symptoms?" asked Fred.

"I've been feeling kind of tired."

"For how long?"

"The last few days, I guess. I haven't been sleeping much."

Fred abruptly ripped open Angel's shirt.

"Hey!" Angel protested.

"Just checking for bugs," she said.

"That was a new shirt."

Fred examined Angel's torso carefully. "You're clean."

"I'm fine," Angel said again.

Wes frowned. "Angel, I don't think we should underestimate--"

"I just need some sleep." Angel tried to stand, teetered and fell back onto the couch.

"The last time you felt under the weather it was because Eve was trying to kill you," Wes reminded him.

"And there is that little matter of her swearing vengeance on you," said Lorne.

"Have you been experiencing any usual dreams?" asked Fred.

"What do my dreams have to do with anything?" said Angel.

"It might give us a clue what's wrong with you."

"No," said Angel.

"We need to get him back to the lab," said Fred, "so I can run some--

"No," said Angel.

"Angel--"

"If someone's out to get me what makes you think Wolfram & Hart's not behind it?"

"You think the senior partners did this?" asked Gunn.

"The giant monster in the basement revelation doesn't exactly make them appear more trustworthy," added Wesley.

"I think the senior partners are behind a lot of things we don't know about," said Angel. "Not to mention the fact that for all we know Eve still has allies there."

"Okay," said Gunn. "So if we don't go back to the office--where do we go?"

"All my equipment is there," said Fred.

"And all of my books," said Wes.

"If Wolfram & Hart is behind this, they'll be watching our apartments," said Gunn. "And the Hyperion, too."

"So we need somewhere safe we can hide Angel while we figure what's going on and who's responsible," said Wes. "Somewhere Wolfram & Hart doesn't know about."

"We don't even know what's wrong with him," said Gunn. "For all we know it's just some kind of vamp flu."

"No such thing," said Spike.

Wes shook his head. "No, I'm almost certain it's magical. It'd have to be, to weaken Angel to this extent."

"Could we not talk about me like I'm not here?" said Angel.

"Sorry," said Wes.

"There has to be somewhere we could go for help," said Fred. "A friend maybe?"

There was a silence.

Spike snorted. "Do you people even have friends?"

"Errr," said Wes.

"Uh," said Gunn.

"Hmmmm," said Fred.

Lorne raised his hand meekly. "I might know someone," he said. "But she's not gonna like it."

Agnes Belfleur was awake and she was annoyed about it. A bleary glance at the bedside clock told her it was just after 3:00 a.m.

Who could possibly be knocking on her front door at three o'clock in the morning? She lay still and waited, hoping whomever it was would lose interest and go away.

After a few minutes the knocking blessedly ceased. Aggie breathed a sigh of relief and rolled back over.

Knock knock knock knock KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK...

With a groan, Aggie tossed back the covers and wandered sleepily into the living room. On her way to the door she stubbed her toe on the coffee table and paused to issue a few choice curses.

"Somebody better be dead," she grumbled as she fumbled with the multiple deadbolts and threw the door open.

"Aggie!" cried the green-skinned demon standing before her in a burgundy leisure suit.

"Lorne," said Aggie, somewhat less warmly. She hadn't seen horn nor tail of him in over a year--not since he'd left the nightclub business and joined that evil law firm.

And now here he was, standing on her doorstep with an aura that positively screamed needy.

"I know, it's tres gauche to drop in like this," he said, "but I need just the eensiest of favors."

Aggie's gaze drifted to the people standing just behind him. She'd been right--someone was dead. Two someones, in fact.

"I'm sorry, I didn't order any vampires," she said.

Lorne laughed nervously. "I know what you're thinking, but these are friends of mine, the ones you sent on that illuminating little sojourn to home crap home with me. This is Fred, and Gunn, and that's Wesley, and this--" he gestured to the dark-haired vampire "--is Angel, the guy--"

"I know who he is," said Aggie. Who hadn't heard of the vampire with a soul? The other one was a bit of a surprise, though. She hadn't known there were two of them.

"Right, of course you do," said Lorne. "And our over-peroxided friend there is Spike."

Aggie pursed her lips impatiently. "Why did you bring them here, Lorne?"

"We need your help," said the woman Lorne had introduced as Fred. "Angel's sick."

"Vampires don't get sick," said Aggie. "Not even the ones with souls."

"Which is why we think it must be something magical," piped up Wesley in a prim British accent. "Some kind of curse."

"Then get one of the evil geniuses at your new place of employment to help the big boss man and let me get back to my beauty sleep."

"Great idea," said Lorne. "And we would, except there's just the smallest chance they're the ones behind this."

Aggie shrugged. "Hey, you lie down with dogs..."

Lorne's red eyes flashed angrily. "Swell, lambchop, lesson well learned. In the meantime, my friend Angel needs help."

"Please," added Fred.

Aggie was tempted to say no. The last thing she wanted to do was get mixed up with this circus, especially if Wolfram & Hart was involved. And she didn't want anything to do with vampires--ensouled or not, she didn't want them anywhere near her, much less inside her house.

But Lorne was a good guy, and her empathy wasn't picking up anything untrustworthy about any of them. All she was sensing was how scared they were, and how much they all seemed to care about this sick vampire they'd brought to her house. Except Spike, who mostly just seemed to want a cigarette.

Angel's eyes met Aggie's unflinchingly. His aura told her he was scared as hell and in a dozen kinds of pain, but outwardly he betrayed none of it. "Angel can come in," she said finally.

Wesley and Gunn helped Angel, who seemed to be having difficulty walking. Fred and Lorne followed, leaving only Spike. "You stay outside," Aggie said.

"Bloody nice to meet you, too," he said.

She smiled sweetly and closed the door on him.

Gunn and Wesley helped Angel onto the couch, where he settled back weakly.

"What exactly do you want me to do?" said Aggie.

"Are you getting anything off of Angel?" asked Lorne. "Can you tell what's wrong with him?"

Aggie gave Angel a quick psychic once-over. "Well, for starters, he's got some serious intimacy issues and a raging martyr complex."

"Hey," Angel protested weakly.

"Yes, of course, but has he been cursed?" asked Wesley.

Aggie cocked an eyebrow. "He didn't come by that soul at a rummage sale."

"We were looking for something slightly more recently acquired," Lorne prompted. "Whatever's making him sick, for instance."

Aggie studied Angel's aura a little more closely. It was messy, to say the least. "There's definitely something ugly going on in there. Some kind of magical mojo, but whatever it is it's way out of my league."

"Hmmm," said Wesley. "If we knew precisely what was afflicting him we might be able to counter it."

"How about you take a closer look and try to identify it for us?" said Lorne.

Aggie shook her head. "No. Also? Hell no."

"Yes," said Lorne.

"You're not seriously asking me to read a vampire?"

"I am seriously standing here asking you to do exactly that." Lorne wore a no-nonsense expression that gave Aggie the sinking feeling she wasn't going to win this one.

"You're the devil," she said.

"You know this is way more up your alley than mine," he said. "And you also know I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."

"I'm changing my address book right now--scratching out Lorne and writing Beelzebub."

"Come on, peaches. For old times sake and all that sentimental hooey. For bad Mexican food and one too many whiskey sours. For me."

He was really fighting dirty, now. "Fine," she said grudgingly. "But I want to make it clear that I hate you."

She looked down at Angel. "Hold out your hands. And try to relax, okay?" She knelt on the floor in front of him and tried to take her own advice about relaxing. She'd never touched a vampire before, much less tried to read one.

Aggie grasped Angel's wrists firmly and suppressed the urge to shudder at the odd coolness of his skin and the notable absence of a pulse where a pulse should have been.

It wasn't quite as bad as she'd expected, though. She'd thought it would be like touching a corpse, but it wasn't quite like that. It wasn't quite like touching a human, either, though.

She closed her eyes and concentrated, felt Angel's body tense in response. These kind of readings were no picnic--not for the subject and not for her. She needed to be careful, especially if someone had already been mucking around with Angel's subconscious. Wouldn't do to go stumbling into some kind of psychic booby trap.

It took her a moment to get her bearings. A couple hundred years of stored-up vampire angst was not a pretty thing to navigate. But after a little effort she finally found the traces of corruption she was looking for and followed them until she had identified the source.

She released Angel and he slumped back on the couch, weak and drained.

"What did you do to him?" asked Fred.

Wesley leaned over. "Angel, are you all right?"

Angel nodded weakly. "Fine."

"You keep saying that," said Gunn, "as if that's gonna make it true."

Lorne helped Aggie to her feet. She was still reeling a bit--it was definitely not the easiest reading she'd ever done. If she never saw the inside of a vampire's mind again it'd be way too soon.

She spared a sympathetic look at Angel. "Sorry 'bout that."

"Well?" asked Wesley. "Did you learn anything?"

She went to the bookcase and pulled down an old leather-bound volume. She knew what the curse was doing, and she knew it was... not Greek, but those other guys. Etruscan, that was it. She handed the book to Wesley and pointed to the appropriate passage.

"The Kiss of Ancaru," he read aloud.

"That doesn't sound so bad," said Fred.

"Ancaru was the Etruscan goddess of death," said Wesley.

"Oh. That's probably not good, then," said Fred.

"The afflicted shall be eaten from the inside out," read Wesley. "The result is a gradual, exquisitely torturous death."

"A death curse won't kill a vampire," said Fred.

"No, it can't," said Wesley, frowning. "Ah! Here we are. This particular curse preys on the victim's soul, which explains why it's affecting Angel."

"You mean he's gonna turn into Angelus if we don't fix him soon?" said Gunn.

"I don't believe there's any danger of that," said Wesley. "It doesn't remove the soul, just sort of poisons it."

"But it won't kill him," said Aggie.

"No, it won't," said Wesley. "Most likely it will merely cause the eventual and painful loss of all motor and possibly cognitive function. But he'll still be alive, in a manner of speaking."

"Kind of like an immortal vegetable," said Gunn.

"I really wish people would stop cursing me," said Angel.

"Maybe you should stop pissing them off," Aggie suggested.

Angel gave her a baleful look.

"Could you tell who cast the curse on Angel, or anything about them that might be helpful to us?" asked Wesley.

"It's a magus with some heavyweight spells in his arsenal," said Aggie. "Male, definitely human. I might recognize the magical energies if I ran into them again, but other than that I've got nothing."

"It's not Eve, then," said Fred.

"She could have outsourced," suggested Gunn.

"Who's Eve?" asked Aggie.

"Someone who tried to kill Angel recently," said Fred. "And then Angel got her boyfriend in big trouble and she swore vengeance on him. It's kind of a long story, really."

"He get that a lot?" asked Aggie. "People trying to kill him?"

Fred smiled. "Oh, just about all the time."

"Can you undo it, Wes?" asked Angel.

Wesley's nose was buried in the text. "Probably," he said.

"Oh, thank god," said Angel.

"But it's not going to be easy," Wesley added.

"Of course not, because where's all the fun if it's easy?" said Angel.

Wesley looked at Aggie. "How much time do we have?"

"It's pretty advanced. A few more hours--six at most--before he starts to turn into a vampire pumpkin."

Wesley nodded. "We're going to need to gather some ingredients for the counter-spell. Some of it's pretty basic: dove blood, Dead Sea salt, hand of glory."

"Ah, the sweet smell of irony in the morning," said Gunn.

"Do ya'll hear that?" asked Fred abruptly.

"What?" said Wesley.

"Listen," said Fred.

They listened. There was a sound like the roaring of a distant waterfall, or maybe far off thunder. It was getting louder by the second. In fact, it was not so much distant, actually, but more like right outside. The hair on Aggie's arms stood up as if the air around them was charged with static electricity... or magic.

I knew I shouldn't have invited them in, Aggie thought wearily, just before something crashed into the roof with a tremendous THUD.

Angel was in the throes of some kind of seizure. His arms and legs were shaking uncontrollably and his eyes had rolled back in his head.

"Move the coffee table!" Aggie shouted over the din. "And someone get me some cornmeal from the pantry."

Fred raced into the kitchen while Lorne and Wesley moved the coffee table against the wall. Aggie rolled back the rug, revealing the voodoo vever she'd painted on the floorboards.

Gunn leaned over to Lorne. "She's psychic and a witch?"

"Not a witch," said Lorne. "Her grandmother was some kind of voodoo priestess."

"Root doctor," corrected Aggie. "But I prefer to think of myself as a practical occultist. It's just a hobby, really."

"Hey, whatever," said Gunn. "Anyone who can put the gris-gris on me gets to call themselves whatever they want."

Everyone jumped as the house shook with another loud crash. This one sounded as though someone had dropped a smallish pachyderm on the roof. The roaring sound had by now grown to an ear-piercing howl.

"Here's the cornmeal." Fred thrust the bag at Aggie.

Aggie scooped out a handful and began carefully outlining the design on the floor as she chanted the warding spell her grandmother had taught her. At least, she hoped she was chanting a warding spell. It had been so long she wasn't entirely certain she wasn't reciting her Mamaw's recipe for callaloo.

"Now what?" shouted Wesley when Aggie had completed the spell.

"We wait."

"For what?"

"To see if it worked or if my house is going to go all Poltergeist on us."

"What, you mean like the end, where it all crumples up on itself?" said Gunn. "That would be very, very bad."

Fortunately, the noise outside had already begun to die down. The next crash was somewhat quieter than the last, and the one after that was downright half-hearted. Finally, Angel stopped shaking, blinked and looked around, weak but conscious once again.

"Welcome back," said Fred. The howling had faded to a depressed-sounding whistle in the distance.

"I miss anything good?" said Angel.

"Just the usual, apocalyptic displays of magic," said Gunn. "No big."

Wesley looked approvingly at Aggie. "Nicely done."

"What did you do?" asked Angel.

"A warding spell. Combined with the sanctorum spells I've already got set around the house I think our bad guy got discouraged."

"We have to assume he'll try again, however," said Wesley.

"A display like that over distance had to use up a lot of juice," said Aggie. "My guess is he'll need time to regroup before he tries anything else."

"I hate to imagine what your neighbors must think," said Lorne.

"Oh no," said Fred. "Spike!" She ran to the front door and threw it open.

Spike lay crumpled on the doormat, looking dazed. "Bugger this for a lark," he mumbled blearily.

Fred bent to help him up. "Are you all right?"

"Sure, pet, take more'n a few bumps in the night to keep ol' Spike down." He swayed precariously as Fred tried to keep him from falling down again.

Fred gave Aggie a pitiful, pleading look. She was quite good at it, with those big brown eyes of hers.

Aggie's formally steadfast resolve was no match for Fred's earnestness. "Oh, sure," she said. "Bring that vampire in, too."

Fred gave Aggie a grateful smile and led Spike into the house.

"Maybe while we're at it, we could check the nearby dark alleys to see if there are any more vampires we could invite into my house," Aggie grumbled.

"I think I know where to find most of these ingredients," said Wesley, who'd gone back to poring over the magical text. "Except maybe the vestal ritual oil, that's usually a special order."

"I've got some in the bedroom," said Aggie.

"I see. Well, all right, then," said Wesley.

Aggie realized everyone was looking at her. "It smells nice in a bubble bath."

"The real problem is the draconian shielding stone," continued Wesley. "There's only one that I know of in L.A."

"I don't suppose it's at the Ralph's on Pico?" said Gunn.

"Unfortunately, no. It's in the private collection of a man named Bernard Havelock."

"Lemme guess," said Gunn. "Well-armed guards, high-tech security systems, impenetrable solid-steel vaults?"

"Pretty much," said Wesley.

"So what now?" asked Aggie.

"Break in and steal it, of course," said Wesley.

"Just like that?"

"No problem," said Gunn. "We do this Ocean's Eleven type stuff all the time."

Aggie was just a tad skeptical. "Is that so?"

"Okay, two or three times, now. But it's cool. I'm like George Clooney and Brad Pitt all rolled into one. And Wes here's our Elliot Gould."

Wesley looked affronted in the way that only British men can. "Elliot Gould?"

"Okay, you can be the little Chinese guy," conceded Gunn.

"Clooney was the brains," said Wesley, "and if anyone fits that bill--"

"It's me," said Fred.

"You all realize Clooney doesn't hold a candle to Frank Sinatra, right?" said Angel.

"Not to rain on your macho heist fantasy or anything," continued Fred, "but you're going to have to do all the breaking and entering without Angel's help this time."

"I'm okay," said Angel. "I can do it." He made a valiant but spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to stand.

Aggie pushed him back onto the couch. "You're not going anywhere unless you want another magic-induced seizure."

Wesley frowned. "We do have Spike, he's as useful as Angel."

"You take that back right now!" said Angel.

Spike grinned smugly. "Guess I'm up for a good old-fashioned heist. What're we stealing, then?"

"Draconian shielding stone," said Wesley. "Pay attention."

"Right."

"It's settled, then," said Wesley, "Gunn, Spike and I will steal the stone. Fred and Lorne can go pick up the other ingredients we'll need. Angel will stay here under Aggie's protection."

Of course, thought Aggie sourly, I get to babysit the sick vampire.

"We'll need some specialized equipment for this job, yeah?" said Spike. "Abseiling gear, fancy headsets, maybe some of that nifty aerosol spray they use to identify laser sensors in the movies."

"Yeah, we don't have any of that stuff," said Gunn. "And I don't know where we'd get it this time of night."

Spike shrugged. "Kicking the front door in it is."

Aggie had a strange suspicion this was not going to end well. "Do you even know where Havelock keeps the stone?"

"Yes," said Wesley. "I attended a party once at his home. It's in a special display room, behind a false wall in his study."

"See," said Gunn. "My man Wes is large and in charge."

"We should gather some supplies," said Wesley. "Do you perhaps have any flashlights or weapons?"

"Flashlights, yes. Weapons, no."

Spike reached for the sword mounted above the couch. "What about this?"

"It's decorative," said Aggie. "It's just a replica of a sword from a movie."

"Which one?"

"Highlander. Friend of mine got it in Thailand. It's not even sharp."

"Still hurt if you're hit over the head with it, I'll wager. Plus, it looks cool." Spike swung the sword in a wide arc. "There can be only one!"

"One jackass," muttered Angel.

"I'll get those flashlights," said Aggie.

She and Wesley collected a few other potentially useful items for the imminent break-in including rope, bungie cords, a crow bar, and duct tape.

She also gave Wesley a small, ancient-looking glass bottle.

He looked at it uncertainly. "What's this?"

"Black cat spirits. It'll make you--"

"Invisible," finished Wesley, sounding impressed.

"Well, not invisible, exactly, but less noticeable."

"Thank you," said Wesley, tucking it safely in his pocket. "This will definitely come in handy."

"If you get caught, don't call me to come bail you out."

"Better yet," said Angel, "don't get caught."

Wesley handed Fred the list of ingredients needed for the counter-curse. "You know where to find them?"

She nodded. "The 24-hour magic shop on Melrose."

"Only in L.A.," said Gunn.

"Okay, then, we all know what to do," said Wesley.

"Be careful," said Fred.

"What she said," said Angel. "Don't do anything stupid. I mean it."

"Not to worry," said Wesley.

"Yeah," said Spike, tucking the sword into his belt. "Anyone gets in our way I'll chop their head off with my fake sword."

Aggie watched them walk out the door, full of bluster and bravado. She couldn't quite decide if they were brave or just the three biggest fools she'd ever seen.

Fred looked miserably at Angel. "They're totally going to get caught, aren't they?"

He shrugged. "Maybe not."

"Don't worry, Freddles," said Lorne. "Our boys always come through in a pinch. Or a large vise, even. In the meantime, though, our little shopping list isn't going to buy itself."

"I guess you're right," said Fred. She fixed Aggie with a surprisingly stern look. "Take good care of Angel for us, okay?"

"I'll love him and squeeze him and call him Spooky," promised Aggie.

She shut the door behind them and turned back to Angel. It was just the two of them now. Her and a vampire, albeit one with a soul. A soul that she'd just gotten a close-up view of, which somehow didn't serve to make things less awkward. She knew things about Angel now, things that she was sure he'd prefer to keep to himself.

"So," she said.

"So," he echoed.

"Here we are."

There was a pause. They stared at one another.

"I make you uncomfortable, don't I?" asked Angel.

"Little bit," said Aggie. "Nothing personal, though."

"It's okay. I get that a lot."

"Can't imagine why." It suddenly occurred to Aggie that she was still wearing her pajamas, which did little to improve her comfort level. She cast about for something normal to say.

"Would you like something to eat?" she said, and instantly regretted it. "I mean, I don't have any blood, except, you know, mine, which you can't have, obviously, but I could make you some eggs or something."

"Thanks, but I don't really eat food."

"Of course."

"I wouldn't say no to some coffee, though."

"Okay, coffee it is. Black?"

"Black is fine."

"Coming right up." Aggie dashed into the kitchen, grateful for something to do. While the coffee was brewing she took the opportunity to change into actual clothes and tame her long hair into a ponytail. When the coffee pot was full she poured two cups, took a deep, calming breath and went back into the living room.

Angel thanked her politely as he accepted his mug. Aggie sat down with her own coffee and tried to look relaxed. She was pretty sure that she was not doing a good job of it.

"So, you're a psychic," Angel said, after a lengthy and rather awkward pause.

"More of an empath, really. I don't foretell the future or anything."

"How does that work, exactly? Lorne reads people when they sing--"

"Yeah, that's some crazy Pylean thing," said Aggie. "I just look at their auras."

"Sounds kind of new-agey."

Aggie huffed indignantly. "I'm not some crystal-waving neo-pagan. Everyone's got energies--emotional, physical, spiritual, magical, whatever--I just happen to be able to see them. Or feel them. Whatever."

"That must be incredible."

"Incredibly annoying and intrusive, sure."

"So what do you see?"

"When?"

"When you look at someone and you see these energies. What kinds of things can you tell about them? Can you read their minds?"

"Not exactly. I just get vibes, mostly. Flashes of emotion, that sort of thing."

"Oh." Angel looked uncomfortable.

"Don't worry," she said, "I'm not sitting here sifting through your innermost thoughts and feelings."

"But you could if you wanted to."

"Most people's thoughts are actually not that interesting. Usually I'm just trying to tune everyone out rather than eavesdropping. Besides, I already rifled around in your head, remember? Got a pretty good eyeful already. More than I cared to, frankly."

"I'm sorry you had to do that."

She shrugged. "It's what I do, isn't it? It's like going to the doctor's office and showing your goodies. Pretty or not, the doc's gotta look."

If Angel had had a pulse, Aggie was certain he would have blushed. "For some reason that metaphor fails to make me feel any better."

"It's not meant to." Aggie glanced at the clock. There were still a few hours before dawn.

Angel leaned forward to set his empty coffee mug down and then settled back into the couch wearily.

"You doing okay?" she asked.

He cocked an eyebrow at her. "Do you need me to tell you the answer to that question?"

"Not really." She already knew that he was getting worse, and even more quickly than she'd expected.

Generally, Aggie adhered to a strict policy of butting the hell out of other people's problems. There was just too much pain in the world to let yourself get worked up every time you passed someone on the street.

The problem was, thanks to Lorne--who she was still ticked at--she'd gone and spent some time inside Angel's head. And once she'd done that, well, the policy became somewhat more difficult to enforce. You get that good of a look at someone's psyche and you start to feel a connection, like you're responsible for them or something. It was a feeling that Aggie detested.

"Listen," she said, sitting up a little straighter, "about that girl..."

Angel looked at her sharply. "What girl?"

"The dead one."

"There've been a lot of dead girls," he said flatly. "You'll have to be more specific." Something in his expression sent a tendril of ice down her spine.

He was trying to scare her, she knew. It was how he protected himself. But Aggie wasn't going to have any of it, even if she had seen enough of what was inside of him to know there was good reason to be scared.

The Bellefleur women could be scary, too, when they wanted to be.

She folded her arms resolutely and matched his look with one of her own. "Cordelia. That was her name, wasn't it?"

Angel didn't say anything and his expression didn't change. But Aggie didn't need to see his expression to know what he was feeling.

"You have to let her go," she said.

He looked away. "I'm not talking about this."

"I know it, and that's the problem. You're trying to bury your grief and it's eating you up inside--just as surely as that curse is."

"Anyone ever tell you to mind your own business?"

Aggie smiled. "All the time. People don't like to hear the truth."

"People don't like sharing their private thoughts and feelings with strangers."

"Hey, you're the one who showed up in the middle of the night and dumped your problems on my doorstep."

"Not this one."

"I'm having a two-for-one sale."

Angel retreated into a sulky silence.

Sensing the conversational portion of their evening had come to an end, Aggie reached for the remote. "Mind if I turn on the TV?"

Angel made an indistinct, noncommittal kind of noise that she decided to take as assent.

The television universe, unfortunately, seemed unlikely to provide much in the way of diversion this time of night. Infomercials, religious shows, more infomercials. Finally she managed to find an old episode of "Fantasy Island."

The show had just started; Mr. Roarke and Tatoo were greeting guest stars Arte Johnson and Judy Landers. Out of the corner of her eye, Aggie caught Angel watching with somewhat more than feigned interest.

"That Mr. Roarke was one smooth guy," she said.

"Excellent taste in suits," conceded Angel. "Although white's never really been my color."

Wesley wiped the sweat from his brow and looked down at the two security guards who lay unconscious on the floor.

"That wasn't so tough," said Gunn.

Getting inside Havelock's mansion had merely been a matter of scaling the fence, overpowering a guard, and then taking his access card to allow them to sneak in through the kitchen.

They'd encountered two more guards in the hallway, but thanks to the Black Cat Spirits they hadn't even been noticed by the guards before they'd clubbed them unconscious.

"Told ya it'd make a good blunt instrument," said Spike, brandishing his fake sword triumphantly.

"I doubt this is the last obstacle we'll encounter," said Wesley. "We'd better get them tied up and out of the way so we can move on."

They stowed the two guards in a broom closet, after covering their mouths and tying their hands and feet with duct tape.

Wesley led them up the stairs and, after a moment's deliberation, chose the door he thought he remembered as leading to Havelock's private study. It was locked.

"Try the access card," Gunn suggested.

Wesley swiped the card through the reader beside the doorknob and waited tensely for alarms to start going off. Instead, a small green light gave him the all clear. He turned the knob and opened the door.

Everything was dark inside the room. They shut the door behind them and switched on their flashlights.

Gunn whistled. "Donald Trump would kill for this office."

"Donald Trump hasn't a third of Bernard Havelock's money," said Wesley. "Nor his taste."

In the middle of the room was an ornately-carved mahogany desk with a polished marble top. The far wall was covered floor-to-ceiling with equally impressive carved bookcases, while the wall behind them boasted a stunning collection of oil paintings, one of which, Wesley was nearly certain, was an original Vermeer. The room did not, however, boast anything whatsoever that hinted at the occult, which was unusual only in that its owner was one of the foremost collectors of mystical artifacts in the state of California.

Wesley approached one of the bookcases on the far wall and stared at it, trying to conjure a memory.

"I know the professor here's fond of books and all," said Spike, "but perhaps now's not the best time to browse."

"I'm looking for the trigger," said Wesley. "One of these books opens the secret panel." Somewhere on the third shelf, he remembered, towards the right side. He briefly considered Rorty's Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, but dismissed it as too thin.

"Cool," said Gunn. "What happens if you choose the wrong book?"

"I don't know," said Wesley. "Possibly nothing. Or possibly something very bad indeed."

"Do you know which one is the right one?" asked Gunn.

Wesley frowned. "I'm working on it."

Spike and Gunn watched nervously while Wesley ran his finger over the spines of the books. He stopped on M. Merlaeau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception and slid it out a few inches.

There was click, and then the bookcase swung open, revealing a large, elegantly-lit room filled with pedestals and museum cases containing an impressive collection of rare magical artifacts.

"Way to go, Indy!" said Gunn, slapping Wesley on the back. They stepped into the hidden room.

As soon as they were all inside, the bookcase slid back into place behind them with an ominous-sounding clank. At the same time, another panel opened in the wall across the room. Beyond it was a very dark space.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," said Spike.

"Why am I suddenly worried that a Rancor's about to come tearing out of there?" said Gunn.

"What's a Rancor?" asked Wesley.

There was a low, vaguely feline growl from the darkness.

"Oh, hell," said Spike, sniffing the air. "I bloody hate Arioch demons. All those teeth and claws. But it's the slime that really gets me."

Gunn had the crowbar so Wesley held up the only weapon he had--his flashlight--and prepared to defend himself as best he could.

"I never understood why people kept going to that island," said Aggie when Billy Mays interrupted "Fantasy Island" to talk to them about Space Bags.

She and Angel had fallen into a somewhat companionable silence as they watched Mr. Roarke battle the devil for possession of his immortal soul.

"Imagine the customer testimonials," she continued. "I just wanted to talk to my dead husband and he tried to kill me! Or, I wanted to be popular and instead I broke both my legs playing varsity football. I mean, who hears about that and says, 'Cool, where do I sign up?'"

She glanced at Angel and noted with some alarm that he'd gotten significantly weaker in the just the last twenty minutes.

"Can I get you anything?" she said.

Angel shook his head.

If his little posse didn't get back with those spell ingredients pretty damned soon there wasn't going to be much point.

Shortly before the big Mephistopheles vs. Roarke showdown came to a head, the front door banged open and Fred and Lorne bustled in carrying several paper sacks.

"Who knew brimstone smelled so bad?" complained Lorne, holding his bag away from his face. "Don't suppose you've got a hermetically-sealed safe we can put this stuff in?"

"We'll open a window," said Aggie, ushering them into the kitchen.

"Any word from the others, yet?" asked Fred.

"Not yet," said Aggie. "But I'm sure they're fine," she felt compelled to add, though she was sure of no such thing.

"Of course they are," said Fred, sounding like she was trying to convince herself. "They always manage to come through, right?"

"Think there'll be any madder root left over?" asked Lorne, rifling through the bags. "It makes a creme rinse that's just to die for."

The two women stared at him.

"What? Hair this silky doesn't come from a bottle of Pantene, you know."

"How's Angel doing?" asked Fred.

"About the same," lied Aggie. "We've been watching 'Fantasy Island.'"

"Seventies or nineties?" asked Lorne.

"Seventies," said Aggie. "The one where Mr. Roarke faces the devil."

"Talk about jumping the shark," said Lorne. "That episode jumped the whole Mariana Trench. And poor Roddy McDowell--he was cursed by a shaman, you know."

"I'm gonna go check on Angel," said Fred, and disappeared into the living room.

Lorne looked over at Aggie. "So how's our patient really doing?"

"Not well," admitted Aggie. "He's doing a decent job of hiding it, though."

"If there's one thing Angelcakes is good at, it's hiding," clucked Lorne. He gave her another appraising look. "What about you? Still wanting to scratch my eyes out?"

"Yes."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "You are not."

"I am!" Aggie tried her best to sound indignant.

"Don't even try to lie to me, sweets, I'm not having any of what you're serving. I knew you'd like him once you got to know him."

"I don't like him. He's creepy. And way too broody."

"I won't argue with that," said Lorne. "But don't pretend you can't see it. I don't know what it is, but there's definitely something about our Angel."

"Sure there is," conceded Aggie. "It's called... what's that phrase again? Oh yeah. Eternal damnation. And in case you hadn't noticed, I'm not one of those eyeliner-happy, Anne Rice-loving, goth head cases who finds that a turn-on."

They heard the front door open again, and went into the living room to find Spike, Wesley and Gunn newly arrived, looking tired and rather chewed on. Spike seemed to be covered with some kind of oozy yellow goo.

"What happened?" asked Angel, trying to sit up.

"For future reference, black cat spirits do not work against attack dogs," said Wesley.

"Or Arioch demons," added Spike.

"But did you get the shielding stone?" asked Fred, apparently disinterested in further details of their travails.

Wesley held up a dark crimson stone roughly the size of a baseball.

"That's great!" exclaimed Fred.

Wesley and Gunn beamed with triumph. Spike dripped demon mucus on Aggie's floor.

"I admire your dedication to looking all menacing," she said, "but that's just gross."

Spike glared at her. "Funny girl. Where's your loo so I can wash this muck off?"

Aggie pointed the way and Spike stalked off.

"That is one gorgeous bauble," said Lorne, taking the stone from Wesley and holding it up admiringly. "What it's made of?"

"It's essentially a dragon's... er, kidney stone."

Lorne curled his lip. "You mean it--"

"Was excreted through a dragon's urinary tract, yes."

Lorne gave the stone back to Wesley. "'Kay, that's something you tell a guy before he starts fondling the dragon excrement."

"Were you able to get all of the other ingredients?" asked Wesley.

"Every one," said Fred.

Wesley glanced over Angel, who had sunk back into the couch with his eyes closed. "Angel?"

"I'm okay, Wes. Just do your thing." His shirt was soaked with sweat and it was clear that even talking had become a great effort.

"Come on," said Aggie, leading them all back into the kitchen. Wesley looked over the spell ingredients while Aggie ran some cold water over a towel. She handed it to Fred. "For Angel."

Fred gave her a grateful look and disappeared back into the living room.

Under Wesley's supervision, Aggie and Lorne worked on the preparations for the counter-curse. It was a complex ritual, and there was a great deal of work that needed to happen before the actual spell could be performed.

While they did that, Wesley translated the text of the spell. It was--naturally--in ancient Etruscan and he had decided it would be best to work from a phonetic copy of the text rather than try to read aloud from the original Etruscan glyphs.

They had just about finished when Gunn popped his head into the kitchen. "Guys? Sooner would be better than later."

"Is the elixir done?" Wesley asked.

"Yep." Aggie was already pouring the hot liquid, which had filled the kitchen with a sulfurous stink, into a mug. Lorne took the mug while Aggie gathered up the other spell components and some matches. Wesley followed them into the living room with the spell book, his notes and the shielding stone.

Fred looked up when they walked in. Beside her, Angel was twisting restlessly on the couch and muttering.

"How is he?" Wesley asked.

"He's delirious." Fred looked pained. "I think he's talking to Cordelia."

Wesley frowned. "We'd best hurry."

Lorne and Fred forced the smelly elixir down Angel's throat while Aggie set the Hand of Glory on the floor and carefully tucked a Dead Man's Candle between each of the fingers. She looked up at Wesley. "Ready?"

He nodded, doing a fair job of disguising his nervousness.

Aggie lit the candles. When the last one was burning Wesley began to recite the spell.

"Ita tmia icac heramashva vtiexe... Unialastres themiasa mex thuta thefaiei vlianas sal cluvenias..."

Aggie glanced nervously at Angel, but could detect no change yet. She hoped it was working. There were only about a million ways they could have screwed up the spell and so far she wasn't feeling any juice being generated by their efforts.

"Turuce munistas thuvas tameresca ilacve ulerase. Nac ci avil xurvar teshiameitale..."

Wesley was holding the shielding stone in his right hand, arm extended towards Angel. As Aggie stared at it she realized that she could feel something after all. There was an odd prickling on the back of her neck. It was a boding, an emptiness that occurred just before something happened, like the space before a lightning strike.

The front window crashed in, sending a shower of glass spraying all over the room. A dozen dark-robed figures rushed into the house.

Aggie was knocked aside in the initial onslaught and bounced painfully into the bookcase. She crumpled to the floor and peered dazedly at the chaos that had erupted around her.

The intruders were incredibly fast-moving and wore hoods that somehow kept their faces in perpetual shadow. From the wooden stakes they carried it was obvious who the intended target was.

Fred, Gunn and Lorne were desperately trying to keep them away from Angel, who remained immobilized and seemingly oblivious to the fighting around him. Spike had emerged from the back of the house and was trying to fight his way over to the others. She saw Wesley by the door, grappling with one of the hooded figures. Blood dripped from a gash on his forehead.

"Aggie!" he gasped as he dodged another blow aimed for his head. "The spell... you have to finish--" The robed figure landed a solid blow to Wesley's gut, and he doubled over.

The shielding stone had rolled into the corner not far from where Aggie crouched. She reached out and snagged it. Now she just needed the piece of paper Wesley had written the spell on. She looked around.

It had fluttered to the floor near Angel's feet. No one seemed to be paying much attention to her; she might be able to make it over there. She crawled across the floor, trying to think invisible thoughts.

No one seemed to have noticed her. Unfortunately, one of the hooded figures was now standing on the paper.

She took a deep breath. One... two... three... She grabbed the figure's ankles and heaved as hard as she could. He fell to the floor with a thud and Fred took the opportunity of his indisposition to hit him with a lamp.

Aggie grabbed the note and scanned the nonsensical words. Where the hell had Wesley left off? She picked a place more or less at random and started reading, the stone held aloft in her right hand.

"Ilacve... alshase... nac atranes..." She felt very much like a baboon attempting to recite the Gettysburg Address. "Zilacal... seleitala acnashvers... itan--"

Something hit her in the side and she flew onto her back, just barely holding onto the stone and paper.

She leaped to her feet, faced her attacker and--suddenly grateful for the Tae Bo craze that had swept L.A.--landed a solid roundhouse kick to his solar plexus. Assuming, of course, that he had a solar plexus. She wasn't entirely convinced the things were human.

She looked down at Wesley's notes again and tried to rush through the last few words. "Itanim... heramve avil--"

This time someone grabbed her from behind. Aggie struggled to hold onto the stone, which had begun to feel warm in her hand. She had to keep going.

"Eniaca--" she gasped, trying to squirm away from her attacker. "Pulumxva!" She managed to spit out the last word just before a hand closed around her throat. She dropped the stone and struggled with both hands, trying to break free, but he was so much stronger. He was cutting off her airway, choking her--

Out of the corner of her eye Aggie saw Angel came roaring off the couch, sending a trio of dark-robed figures flying as he lunged towards Aggie. With one quick motion he snapped the neck of the man choking her and moved on to someone else.

Aggie crumpled to the floor, lungs heaving, and watched Angel in amazement. So this is what he's like on his good days, she thought. She was grateful, of course, that he'd saved her, but she couldn't quell a feeling of revulsion as she watched Angel dispatch the last of their attackers with a terrifyingly feral grace.

Beside her on the floor was a heap of what should have been the body of the man who'd nearly strangled her. There was nothing there but an empty robe. She looked around the room--eleven similar piles of cloth lay on the floor where surely a moment ago there had been bodies.

Wesley prodded a robe with the toe of his shoe. "Order of Orthon," he said. "Hired assassins."

"What happened to the bodies?" asked Spike.

"They dissipate into the ether upon death," said Wesley.

"For easy clean-up post-bloodbath," said Gunn.

Angel came over and helped Aggie to her feet. "Are you all right?" He was gentlemanly, she had to give him that.

She managed an achy nod. "Fine."

"Sorry about..." Angel looked guiltily at the destruction around them "... all of this."

Aggie stared glumly at her devastated living room and the broken front window.

And then she noticed the black van parked across the street from her house. And the familiar magical aura coming from inside it. "He's in there," she said.

Angel followed her gaze to the van. Like a flash he was out the window and racing across the yard.

By the time they caught up with him, Angel was standing in front of the van, glaring menacingly at the black tinted glass of the windshield. "You've got until the count of five to come out of there," he said.

"One." Pause. "Two." Everyone waited tensely.

Angel grabbed a metal garbage can conveniently sitting by the curb and slammed it into the windshield hard enough to shatter the glass. He reached into the large hole where the windshield had been and pulled out a skinny man in a gaudy velvet cloak.

The maneuver reminded Aggie of retrieving a toy prize from a box of cereal, only in this case the prize was a greasy-haired man with thick glasses and unusually poor fashion sense.

"This is the guy?" said Angel somewhat skeptically.

"That's him," said Aggie. "I'm sure of it." He was not exactly what she'd been expecting, either.

"Do I know you?" demanded Angel. The man stared back defiantly and refused to speak.

With a look of impatience Angel lifted him by the throat and shook him like a rag doll. "Let's try that again. Do I know you?"

"No," squeaked the man.

"You work for Wolfram & Hart?"

"Wolfram & Hart? No."

"Then why are you trying to kill me? Did I outbid you on eBay or something?"

"You killed my father," said the man.

Angel rolled his eyes. "I kill a lot of people, Inigo. You'll have to be more specific."

"Magnus Hainsley."

Angel looked offended. "He was a necromancer! And he tried to kill me first!"

"You didn't just kill him, you ruined him--and me! All our family's money, our house, our reputation, all gone because of you!"

"Wait," said Fred. "This is our super-powerful sorcerer?"

"Looks more like a wanker with a wand, to me," said Spike. "'Cept he doesn't actually seem to have a wand, does he?"

Wesley, meanwhile, had been exploring the contents of the van and held up a large magical tome. "I believe he was getting his spells from here. Most likely he has little or no innate power of his own."

"And when his spells didn't finish the job fast enough he hired those Orthon guys to do it for him," said Gunn.

Angel set the man back down on the ground with a thump. "I don't have the energy for this crap."

"What'll we do with him?" asked Fred.

"Let Wolfram & Hart deal with him," said Angel. "I'm sure they can arrange suitable accommodations for the boy wizard."

"I'll call in the troops," said Gunn, pulling out his cell phone.

"And until they get here?" asked Wesley.

"He's not coming into my house," said Aggie. "That is definitely where I put my foot down."

"I've got a better idea," said Spike, pulling a pair of handcuffs out of his back pocket and cuffing the man to the bumper of the van.

"Wherever did you get those?" asked Wesley.

"The witch's knickers drawer."

Wesley coughed politely. Aggie opened her mouth to say something, then thought better of it and snapped it shut again.

"He is a sorcerer of some sort," said Fred, tactfully steering the conversation another direction. "He might be able to magic his way out of those."

"No problem," said Angel. He grabbed Hainsley Jr.'s head and gave it a good solid slam against the hood of the van. The man crumpled to the ground in an unconscious heap.

"Spellcasters," said Angel disdainfully, "once you lay hands on them they fold like a house of cards."

"I'll stay and keep an eye on him," said Gunn. "The cleanup team should be here in a few minutes."

The notion of a Wolfram & Hart cleanup team made Aggie feel vaguely nauseated. She turned away and walked back to her house.

Standing amidst the rubble previously known as her living room, she suddenly felt very tired. She heard the others walk in behind her.

Lorne whistled. "The things she does for strangers."

Wesley began collecting the robes of the Orthon assassins while Fred knelt and tried futilely to fit the broken pieces of the coffee table back together.

"Just leave it," said Aggie.

"I'm really sorry," said Angel.

"You will be, because I'm sending the bill to your office."

"I could get my people in here this morning--"

"Uh uh. No more Wolfram & Hart people in my house. Or in my life," she added, giving Lorne a dark look.

"Independent contractors," promised Angel. "We really should get that window fixed today. It's not safe like that."

Aggie didn't bother to argue. Arguing would simply mean that Angel and his merry men remained in her house, and she was, by now, exceptionally anxious that this not be the case.

"Well, this has been fun and all," said Aggie, ushering them towards the door, "but now that Angel's better I'm sure you've got lots of places to be that aren't here."

"Thanks for all your help," said Angel. "If there's anything you ever need--"

"Just go," said Aggie.

"I owe you big for this one, sweet cheeks," said Lorne, squeezing her arm on the way out.

"Lorne?" she said.

"Yes, beautiful?"

"The next time you're in trouble? Ask someone else for help."

He smiled and blew her a kiss. "You betcha."

Aggie closed and locked the door, a futile gesture in light of the gaping hole where the window used to be. She walked straight into the bedroom, ignoring the splinters of wood and broken glass littering her path, and crawled into bed.

That'll teach me to answer the door at three o'clock in the morning, she thought as she pulled the covers over her head.

"That was fun," said Spike. "'Cept for the bit with the Arioch demon."

A shiny black Wolfram & Hart van had pulled up in front of Aggie's house and several men in uniform were attempting to detach the unconscious Hainsley from the bumper of his van.

"I don't think Aggie liked us very much," said Fred.

"Can't imagine why," said Wes. "Could it have been that we woke her up in the middle of the night, nearly got her killed, and had her house wrecked by demonic assassins?"

"I thought she was nice," said Angel. "You know, considering."

"Um, not to be the guy who always brings up work," said Gunn, "but you never decided what to do about Gates."

Angel had forgotten all about the sound stage full of mutilated bodies. It felt like years ago rather than a few hours. He looked at Gunn. "Do whatever you think is right. I leave it to your discretion."

"You sure?" said Gunn skeptically.

Angel nodded.

"I'm hungry," said Fred.

"Raise your hand if you're surprised by that," said Lorne.

"I'm thinking about waffles," continued Fred, ignoring him.

"Waffles do sound rather good," said Wesley.

Angel stopped walking. It took the others a moment to notice he'd fallen behind. They turned at looked at him.

"Angel, what is it?" said Wesley.

"Cordelia," said Angel. It was the first time he'd said her name in front of anyone since... since he'd stopped having a reason to say her name.

Everyone was staring at him. But it had felt good, saying it like that. Their expressions had changed when he said it, and for the first time he considered that maybe there was some comfort to be found in sharing your grief, in seeing it mirrored in the eyes of your friends.

"I miss Cordelia," said Angel. "And I'm pissed at her for leaving us."

Wesley smiled sadly. "Me too."

"Remember that restaurant she liked to eat breakfast at, the one with the terrible waffles?" said Fred.

"Mimi's," supplied Gunn.

"A bunch of Hollywood types eat there," said Angel, smiling faintly at the memory. "That's why she liked it."

"She was so happy when we let her drag us there," said Gunn. "It made the food go down a little easier."

"It wasn't so bad," said Fred.

Angel gazed at the eastern horizon and smiled. "We've still got an hour until the sun rises. Let's go watch Fred eat some bad waffles."

No one thought about him on that first, horrible day. Nor on the second, or the third. In fact, it was a full week—seven numb, unrelenting days—before anyone thought of Angel at all.

It was Willow who remembered in the end. Because it was always Willow who remembered the little things, the things that are so easily forgotten yet matter so very much.

She was in Buffy's room, looking at her friend's things. Just looking, or sometimes touching or even smelling them. There on the bookcase, stuck between the high school yearbook and an unread copy of The Great Gatsby, was a spiral notebook. Willow recognized it as one she'd seen Buffy stuff into her backpack countless times during their senior year. And because Willow loved and missed everything about school almost as much as she loved and missed Buffy, she took it off the shelf.

And there it was, right on the cover, doodled in Buffy's round, girlish script:

Buffy & Angel 4 Ever!

Something reached into Willow's chest and squeezed its cold fingers around her heart. It was the innocence in that exclamation point that nearly undid her.

She closed her eyes. Counted to ten. Then counted another ten. When she was sure she wasn't going to cry she put the notebook away, carefully, exactly where she'd found it, and walked downstairs. Everyone was in the kitchen. They were here most of the time now, since... well, where else was there to be? Dawn needed them. That's what they all said, anyway. Though of course the real reason was that they all needed each other.

Tara was making lunch—grilled cheese sandwiches—with Anya's enthusiastic but unhelpful assistance, while Xander sat perched on the counter. Giles sat at the breakfast bar beside Dawn, quietly sipping a mug of tea.

They must have seen something on Willow's face when she walked in, because they all went quiet. Xander slipped quietly off the counter and moved a little closer to Anya.

"Angel," said Willow. "We forgot about Angel."

"Dear God," said Giles.

Xander looked at his shoes. Dawn looked like she was in danger of crying again, and Tara instinctively reached for her hand.

"Someone should call him," said Anya. As if it was as simple as that. Probably to her, it was.

Giles shook his head. "News like this should be given in person. He deserves that much from us, at the very least."

"I guess he does," conceded Xander, not unkindly.

"I'll go this afternoon," said Giles. "I can be in Los Angeles—"

"No," said Willow. "I'll go."

Tara was looking at her, her eyes so full of love and compassion that Willow had to look away.

"Are you certain?" said Giles.

Xander shifted nervously. "Yeah, Will, have you thought about how Angel's likely to take news like this?"

"He loves her," said Willow. "It should be me." Not Giles. Not Xander. There were too many things that lay between Angel and the other men in Buffy's life. Hard things. Painful things. It wouldn't be right. Willow had to go, because Willow was the only one who had always been able to see Angel through Buffy's eyes. She'd believed in his love for Buffy, as purely and—yes—as naively as Buffy herself. Willow knew, with grim certainty, that Buffy would want her to break the news to Angel.

And so she boarded a bus to L.A. that same day. The journey passed in a blur. Willow stared out the window at the highway and the passing landscape, without really seeing any of it. She might have slept a little, but she didn't think so. When the bus finally pulled into the station and the driver opened the door, Willow was startled. She didn't expect to be there so soon.

The smoggy Los Angeles air felt thick and powdery in her throat as she stepped out of the bus station. She found a cab and gave the driver the address. She'd looked it up on the internet before she left. There it was, right there in Yahoo! Yellow Pages, under "Professional Services > Private Investigation." Go figure. Cordelia had told her the last time they'd talked on the phone (two months ago? six? who could remember?) about Angel Investigations' new office, in some old abandoned hotel.

Abandoned was the word for it, as Willow found out when she got out of the cab and walked into the lobby. Nobody home. Nobody at all. It took a little while to determine that fact, of course.

She'd called out a few times, knowing all the while that if Angel were there he'd have heard her the first time. She poked her head into the office behind the front desk and even wandered around upstairs, past door after door, until she reached one that was open. Angel's suite, from the look of it, as neat and tasteful as Angel himself. She walked into the room, not wanting to snoop, but hoping for some sign that he'd be back soon. She paused in front of a bookcase and read through the titles on the bindings. When she saw a lovingly worn copy of The Great Gatsby, she pulled it down from the shelf. She'd need something to pass the time until Angel got back.

She went downstairs, sat down on a couch in the lobby and opened the book. She read the whole thing straight through cover to cover and set it down with a sigh. In retrospect, she probably could have chosen something a little cheerier to pass the time.

It was getting close to dawn and still no sign of Angel. She wondered what she'd do if he didn't come back. Try to call Cordelia, she supposed, or maybe even Wesley. Strange, to think of them all out here together, living their lives. It was easy to forget that there was a world outside of Sunnydale. That the people who left the Hellmouth behind them didn't actually cease to exist.

And then she heard the voices outside. They sounded so happy and carefree. Willow's first instinct was to run away, to hide, so that they'd never know she'd been here, never know what she had to tell them. She wished she was invisible.

She heard Angel's voice, just outside the door. "Okay," he said. "Can I say it? I wanna say it."

"Say what?" That was Wesley.

The lobby doors opened and Angel stepped in. With him were Wesley, Cordelia, and a black man and a skinny girl that Willow didn't know.

That's funny, she thought, it looks like Angel, but it's smiling. She'd hardly ever seen him smile in Sunnydale. He looked like another person altogether: a stranger, a normal man surrounded by normal friends. Except for Cordelia, who was, for some reason, dressed up in a ridiculous belly-dancer outfit. You could almost laugh. Almost.

Angel spread his arms wide and said, "There's no place like—" And then his gaze found Willow and he froze, the last word stuck in his throat. She watched all the laughter fade from his eyes and just like that he looked like the old Angel, the one she remembered. "Willow?" he said uncertainly.

"What's…" stammered Cordelia, her gold bikini jingling faintly.

Willow stood up slowly, never taking her eyes off Angel. Now that he was here, she didn't have any idea how to say what she had come here to say. But she didn't need to, apparently, because she could tell from Angel's face that he had already figured it out. He knew why she was here alone, unannounced, in the middle of the night. There was only one possible reason, really.

"It's Buffy," he said quietly.

Willow wanted to say something but her mouth suddenly felt as if it was full of ashes. She couldn't seem to speak; couldn't move, couldn't even nod. Couldn't look away from Angel as he struggled so fiercely to contain what he was feeling. It was as if his soul was straining to escape through the windows of his eyes, and he, being what he was, felt the need to hide it.

"Cordy, take Fred upstairs," he said.

Cordelia crossed her arms defiantly. "No."

Angel turned a black stare on her but Cordelia didn't back down. Willow saw something unspoken—and vaguely familiar—pass between them. It was absurd—seriously absurb—but something about it reminded her of the way Xander and Cordelia used to look at each other, back when their fighting had disguised a different kind of fire.

"I'll do it," said the bald black man. Willow remembered Cordelia mentioning him once. He had a weird name… Gunn, that was it. He took the other girl gently by the arm and led her up the staircase, quietly promising her something to do with tacos, of all things.

Just the Sunnydale folks now. Just like old times. Except that it would never be like old times again.

Angel walked over to Willow. He took her gently by the shoulders and sat her back down on to the couch, then pulled up a chair across from her for himself. Cordelia came and sat beside Willow; Wesley hovered nervously just behind Angel.

"Tell me," said Angel. His expression was dull, cold, void of any emotion.

Willow closed her eyes—because she'd never be able to get through this if she had to look at Angel's face—and told them everything, every sad, awful detail. Well, not every detail. She left out some of the stuff about Spike—because she wanted to be truthful, not hurtful—and something else as well. But she told them everything that was important, everything they needed to know to understand what had happened, and why. At some point she felt Cordelia take her hand and squeeze it, which was something of a surprise, but not an unwelcome one.

When she was done, Willow opened her eyes. Angel's face was perfectly empty. A blank slate, a stone wall, a frozen rocky place where love had died.

"Yeah, right," said Cordelia.

Willow gaped at her. "What?"

"That's it? I don't think so."

Willow didn't even know what to say. Neither, apparently, did Angel.

"This is Buffy we're talking about," said Cordelia authoritatively. "She doesn't just die. Not in the permanent sense of the word, anyway."

"Cordelia—" said Wesley quietly.

"No," she insisted. "Buffy's not dead. Tell him, Willow. Tell him the part where Buffy comes back and kicks the bad guy's ass, like she always does."

Willow shook her head sadly.

Cordelia turned on Angel. "Buffy can't be dead, because I'd know. I'd have had a vision and then you would have gone and saved her and—okay—you'd be all extra-broody for a while, which would be beyond annoying, but eventually you 'd get over it and everything would be fine. Fine."

Somewhere in the middle of her speech Cordelia's voice lost the strident, "Queen C" tone and became small and shaky. Tears were rolling down her cheeks.

Angel and Willow stared at her helplessly. It was Wesley who stepped forward, his own eyes rimmed with tears. He took Cordelia by the hand and led her away. "Why don't I drive you home?" he said gently.

It was just Angel and Willow now. They looked at one another: dry-eyed, both of them. Willow didn't know what she'd expected. That he'd cry like Spike had? That he'd fall into her arms sobbing? Rend his clothes and wail his grief into the night like a banshee? Hardly.

"You must be tired," he said finally.

"A little," Willow admitted.

Angel stared off into space, his eyes strangely unfocused. "His dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him."

"What?"

He pointed to the book lying on the table beside her. "Gatsby."

"Oh," said Willow. "Right."

He stood up. "Come on, I'll find you a place to sleep."

Willow followed him up the stairs and down the long hallway, trying not to think about how much this place reminded her of The Shining. He opened a door across from his suite and turned on the light. The wallpaper was peeling, which was actually an improvement, considering the pattern, and the room smelled vaguely musty, but it was clean and it had a bed, for which Willow was profoundly grateful.

She walked into the room and sat tentatively on the edge of the bed. The springs creaked dispiritedly under her weight.

Angel lingered by the door, reluctant to stay, yet unwilling to leave, apparently. He cleared his throat. "What about Dawn?"

"We're taking care of her," said Willow. As best they could, anyway. How do you take care of someone who's lost everything?

"And… her dad?"

"Doesn't even know," said Willow.

Angel was staring intently at the lamp, as if any moment it might sprout legs and try to run away.

"Angel?"

"Hmm?" he said distantly.

"Are you okay?" It was a stupid question, but she felt compelled to ask it anyway. It was what people did.

He looked at her and smiled. Not the pure, joyful smile she'd seen earlier, but that wry, bitter smile that was so achingly familiar. "No," he said. "I am definitely not okay."

"Me neither," said Willow.

And then she swallowed hard and told him the thing she'd left out before, about Buffy's last words to Dawn. They were precious, those words, not meant for just anyone. Not for Cordelia or Wesley, who'd been allies but never family. But Angel—Angel should hear them. It was why Willow had come. Of all of them, she suspected that he needed to hear Buffy's words the most.

"Be brave," Buffy had said. "Live." Willow still didn't know how she was going to manage it.

And then she did begin to cry, even though she'd promised herself she wouldn't. Not anymore. "I'm sorry," she gasped in between sobs. "I didn't mean to come here and go all Meryl Streep-y on you."

Angel sat down beside her and she felt his arms wrap her up and pull her into his chest. She sobbed even harder then, because he of all people shouldn't have to comfort her. She couldn't help it. She'd been trying so hard to be strong over the last week, for Dawn and Xander and Giles and even for Tara, because Willow hated to see Tara worry. But Willow didn't feel strong, especially not now, not in front of Angel, who really was strong, and whose presence had always reminded her of exactly how young and insecure—and vulnerable—she really was.

Eventually her sobs quieted to hiccups and the hiccups gave way to a case of the sniffles and a grinding headache.

"I'm sorry," she said again, extracting herself from Angel's arms.

"Don't be," he said.

"I got snot on your shirt."

"I have other shirts." He went into the bathroom and came out with a roll of toilet paper which he handed over to her. She tore off a long strip and blew her nose noisily.

"Feel better now?" he asked.

"Not even remotely," said Willow. "I'm so tired of crying. I just want to be done with the crying part."

"It'll get better," he said. "You'll be okay. You should get some sleep, though." He was backing towards the door, getting ready to make his escape from the crazy crying girl with the overactive snot glands.

"Angel," she said, stopping him, because she wasn't quite ready to let him go yet.

He paused in the doorway and waited, somewhat warily.

"Will you be okay?" she asked. Again with the stupid question, but she had to ask.

He didn't answer. Just said "Goodnight, Willow," and closed the door quietly.

Willow lay down on the bed and pulled her knees to her chest. She didn't even bother to turn out the light, because she was too tired and because she wasn't exactly wild about being in the dark in this creepy old hotel. She stared at a vaguely bunny-shaped stain on the wallpaper until she drifted off to sleep.

She was awakened a few hours later by the sound of yelling. Screeching, really. Cordelia's screeching, and from the sound of it right across the hall.

Willow got up and went to the door, only mildly surprised to discover that she'd fallen asleep in her shoes.

"What the hell is it with you?" Cordelia was yelling. "As soon as things start to get a little emo you run for the hills like some kind of big dumb… running-away thing!"

Willow opened the door quietly and peeked out. Cordelia was in Angel's room, berating him while he silently gathered his belongings and packed them neatly in a bag. She wasn't wearing the gold bikini number any more.

While Willow watched, Cordelia stormed over to the closet and ripped a shirt off the rack. "Don't forget this one! Nothing says 'I'm an evil, soulless monster' like black suede!" She threw the shirt at him. Angel caught it without even looking up, and laid it gingerly on the bed.

Willow glanced down the hall and saw Wesley and Gunn standing at the top of the stairs, listening. They smiled nervously at Willow. She slipped out of her room and down the hall to join them.

"Did our local production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf awaken you?" Wesley asked quietly.

"What's going on?" Willow asked.

"Angel's taking off," said Gunn. He stuck out his hand. "I'm Charles Gunn, by the way."

"Willow Rosenberg."

"You're the witch, right?"

She nodded. "Taking off—like, for good?"

Gunn shrugged. Wesley continued to stare down the hall, his face surprisingly hard. It occurred to Willow that Wesley had changed since his Sunnydale days, and she wasn't sure if it was necessarily for the better.

Another door opened and the girl came out, the one Angel had called Fred. She looked scared, and maybe just a little low in the marble department.

Wesley went over to her. "It's all right, Fred. Angel and Cordelia are just having a little disagreement."

She nodded knowingly. "Mommy and Daddy are fighting."

Yep, definitely short one bag o' marbles. Also, the mommy and daddy thing? Not an image that sat comfortably in Willow's brain. Not as applied to Cordelia and Angel.

Cordelia had resorted to pleading now. "We're your friends, you need to let us help you. You can't go through this alone. Remember what happens when you try to go through stuff like this alone? Bad things, Angel. Bad things happen."

"He's going away, isn't he?" said Fred sadly.

"Yes," said Wesley. "I'm afraid he is."

Angel stepped out into the hall, Cordelia hot on his heels. "Don't you dare just walk away from me!" she shouted. "Don't you dare leave without even a word! Say something!"

Angel stopped and slowly turned around to face her. "I'll come back, Cordy. I promise. I just have to be—somewhere else for a while."

"Yeah, well what makes you think we'll still be here when you get back, huh? Maybe we won't wait for you. Maybe this time we'll take off, or pick up and move to Paris while you're gone. Or Montreal, or maybe Abilene! You ever consider that?"

Angel didn't say anything, just turned away. Willow could see the anguish written in his face, how much Cordelia's words had cut him. It didn't stop him from walking away from her, though.

He stopped in front of Gunn, held out his hand. Gunn grasped it. "You know where you're going, man?"

Angel shook his head.

"Always been partial to Vegas, myself."

Angel gave him a sort of half-smile and turned to Wesley. "Make sure Willow gets back to Sunnydale safely."

Wesley nodded. "Of course."

"And look after… things for me."

"You can rely on me."

"I do." The men shared a long look between them, and a firm handshake goodbye.

"Angel?" said Fred uncertainly.

"You're gonna be fine now, Fred," he said. "It's safe here, you're with friends."

"Safe here," she echoed. She didn't exactly look convinced. "It's safe here with me. Don't go."

"I have to. I'm sorry."

Angel turned his dark, sorrowful gaze on Willow last. "Good luck," he said.

Her eyes were trying to fill with tears again; she blinked them back, refusing to give in this time. "Angel—" she began, but realized there was nothing to say really. So she hugged him, afraid suddenly that this might be the last time she would ever see him—and surprised by how sad she was at the thought. He tolerated her embrace, but stepped away quickly as soon as she let go.

They all watched him walk away, shoulders slumped, carrying his sad little bag. Willow wondered if he really planned to come back, or if he'd just said that to pacify Cordelia.

She turned and looked back at Cordelia. A single tear glimmered on her cheek and her mouth was set in a hard frown. She was so beautiful, thought Willow, even when she was sad and angry—especially when she was sad and angry. Cordelia reached up and wiped the tear away, then turned and walked back into Angel's room, slamming the door loudly behind her.

"You really think he'll come back?" Gunn asked.

"One can only hope so," said Wesley.

"I remember what hope is," said Fred. "It's something soft and cuddly that you hug against your chest, and the next thing you know, its teeth are in your throat, its claws are raking your belly, and your guts are in a steaming heap on the floor." She giggled.

Willow took a wary step away from the Crazy.

"Well," said Wesley, looking at Willow, "I imagine you're quite eager to be getting back home now."

"You have no idea," she said.

She thought of Tara then, waiting for her at home. Tara, whose touch was like oxygen to her, whose voice was rain in the desert, and whose smile was like a ray of sunlight bursting forth out of the storm clouds. What would she do if she ever lost Tara the way Angel had lost Buffy?

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
—_{F. Scott Fitzgerald}, The Great Gatsby

Except for the small fact that she couldn't sleep. The night before a field op she should be bagging Z's instead of lying here studying the rust stains above her bunk. She was going to pay for her insomnia tomorrow when they were humping it across Kobol.

She'd tried to sleep, she really had. But whenever she closed her eyes she saw Lee's face looking back at her. So she'd quit closing her eyes.

It hadn't helped, though, because even with her eyes open she could clearly hear Lee's voice in her head, echoing the things he'd said earlier in the day. Gods, he'd sounded so frakking brotherly.

"Lee Adama loves me," she'd teased, but only to disguise her disappointment. Because he hadn't meant it the way she'd wanted him to mean it. Or had he? There had, after all, been The Kiss when she'd first stepped onto the Astral Queen--that hadn't been brotherly at all.

Her mind wandered all the way back to Colonial Day--it felt like a million years ago, now--and how Lee had looked at her in her blue dress and how perfectly their bodies had fit together when they danced. But then he'd walked away from her to dance with Dee and Kara had ended up leaving the shindig with Baltar.

Wow, had that been a mistake. But she'd wanted Lee so badly that night she'd had to do something--or someone.

And then there'd been the fight, after he'd found out about her and the Vice President. She could still feel the impact of Lee's fist against her jaw. It hadn't been the first time she'd felt it--not by a long haul--but that one had hurt more than all the others put together.

Her fingers drummed impatiently on the thin mattress. When she realized she was doing it she balled her hand into a fist and tucked it into an armpit.

The hatch to the crew quarters she'd been assigned to opened with a clank. Kara held her breath and listened. She had the curtain drawn across her bunk but she'd know that precise, measured tread anywhere. Lee walked quietly to his locker and snapped it open. There was a rustle of cloth and shoe leather as he shed his uniform and boots. Then he walked off in the direction of the head.

When he was gone, Kara sat up and drew the curtain back. Took a deep breath, counted to five, and dropped down off her bunk. The deck was cold under her bare feet. She shivered once and padded off after him.

The water was running in one of the showers, a cloud of steam rising from behind the opaque vinyl curtain. Otherwise the bathroom was empty; the rest of evening watch had long since gone off duty and were dreaming sweet dreams in their racks.

Like I should be doing, thought Kara. It's not too late yet, I can still go back to bed.

But she didn't go back.

Quiet as a mouse, she edged closer to the showers, her eyes fixed on Lee's feet beneath the bottom of the curtain as the water streamed over his ankles and circled down the drain.

She still wasn't sure what she was doing here or what she wanted to say. No, that wasn't true. She knew exactly what she wanted to say, she just didn't know if she had the nerve to actually say it.

If only she knew for sure what was going on inside that head of his. In some ways she knew him so well, but in other ways--ways that mattered--she didn't know a Gods damned thing about him.

Frak this. She was Starbuck: tentative wasn't in her vocabulary. She reached up, yanked aside the shower curtain separating them--and promptly forgot everything she'd been about to say.

Lee started--his soapy fist jerking guiltily behind his back--and colored a deep red to the roots of his close-cropped hair.

Kara's eyebrows arched dramatically. "Well, well, Captain Adama." Guess she knew what was going on in his head now.

"Gods dammit, Kara!" barked Lee. "Ever learn to knock?"

"On a curtain?" She was smiling so broadly her cheeks hurt. She'd seen Lee in the buff plenty of times--between the communal bunks and communal bathrooms, modesty was a thing of the distant past--but never in his full glory, so to speak.

"Did you want something?" He made no effort to cover up or turn away from her, his pride taking precedence over his embarrassment. That was Lee for you.

Her gaze moved slowly up the length of his body to settle on his face. "Yes," she said. "I did."

"Well?" he said impatiently.

She stepped all the way into the shower with him. The water poured over her, drenching her tank top and the ends of her hair.

Lee's eyes widened in surprise. "Kara, what--"

"Shut up, Lee." She reached up and pulled his mouth against hers.

For a second he was paralyzed, but then he grabbed her and pulled her tightly against his wet, bare chest and there was nothing brotherly about the way he kissed her back. Nothing at all.

Her hand trailed down the slick skin of his arm, lingering indulgently over the muscular bicep. When she reached his palm she wrapped her fingers around the bar of soap he'd been clutching.

Their lips parted and he furrowed his brow in that way she loved so much, the way that was nothing at all like Zak.

She smiled slyly up at him. "I think you missed a spot."

He reached around her and pulled the shower curtain shut behind them.

It was very late at night, on what was once again shaping up to be the end of the world. Or more precisely, thought Angel, the end of his world. The rest of Los Angeles would probably go on much as it always had after this night was over.

Angel stared in disbelief at the approaching horde. Hundreds of demons--of all imaginable shapes and sizes--were bearing down on them. Above the masses, a giant dragon flapped its wings menacingly.

If Wesley were here... But Wesley was not here anymore. Would never be here again. Then again, the way things were falling out, neither would Angel. Or the others now standing beside him. At least Lorne got away clean, Angel hoped.

The rain fell heavily, washing the blood from Angel's face and hands. Like a baptism, he thought wryly. But he had a feeling it wasn't the pearly gates of heaven that were going to be swinging open for him in a few minutes.

He pushed past the others to get a better look at the titanic demon hit squad bearing down on them. Seemed kind of like overkill, really.

"Okay," he heard Gunn say weakly, "you take the 30,000 on the left..."

"You're fading. You'll last ten minutes at best." That was Illyria, her voice eerily like Fred's and yet so very much not Fred's.

"Then let's make 'em memorable," said Gunn.

Gunn deserved better than this, but it was too late for what ifs now. The cards had been dealt.

Angel took another step toward the army that had been mustered against them. He could sense Spike's presence at his side, and for once he was grateful for it. Illyria and Gunn had his back. It wasn't quite the last stand he had envisioned, but it was what he had brought them to.

He gazed out on the advancing shadow, trying to calculate how many of the monsters he'd be able to take out before they brought him down.

"In terms of a plan?" Spike said.

"We fight," said Angel.

"Bit more specific?"

Angel took another step forward. "Well, personally, I kind of want to slay the dragon."

In that last moment, before the demon horde bore down on them, Angel conjured an image in his mind of all the friends he had lost over the last few years--Wes, Fred, Cordy, Doyle.

And then he thought of Connor, his son. Here at the very end, it came back to Connor. "Let's go to work," he said darkly.

He would not hesitate or pause to bid farewell to anyone. It was far too late for that now.

He swung his sword at the nearest monster--

--but instead of biting into muscle and bone, the sword passed through empty air and the world exploded in a flash of blinding light. He experienced a momentary, disorienting bout of vertigo, and then the rain stopped.

Was he dead? He looked around him in disbelief.

He was--unbelievably--standing in a living room. A living room he recognized. The sword fell from his hand and hit the wooden floor with a clang.

Two women sat cross-legged on the floor, a cloudy black orb between them. He recognized one of them.

"Aggie?" Angel wiped the rain from his eyes, as though it would somehow help this make sense.

"What the bloody hell?" he heard Spike say beside him. Gunn was there, too, in a heap on the floor.

Aggie Belfleur slipped the black orb into her pocket and stood up. "How's everybody doing?"

"Gunn's hurt," said Angel automatically, still not quite believing that he was actually here.

Aggie moved quickly to Gunn's side. "Summer, do Angel first," she said over her shoulder. "Then the others."

"What just happened?" Angel asked.

"We pulled you out of there," said Aggie, frowning down at Gunn's injuries.

"You can do that?"

"Hey, I know you," said Spike. "You're that witch who doesn't like me."

"Practical occultist," corrected Aggie. She grabbed a towel from a laundry basket shoved behind the couch and pressed it into Gunn's wounded side.

The other woman--Summer, apparently--stepped in front of Angel. "Open your shirt."

"What?"

She ripped his shirt open herself, popping the top few buttons off and exposing his chest. "This might hurt a little." She pressed her palm flat against the skin just above his heart. "Isa tyr algiz."

Angel's chest suddenly erupted in pain. "Ow!"

Summer took her hand away. Above his heart was the dark imprint of several magical symbols. They looked a lot like the symbols Lindsey and Eve had used to hide from the Senior Partners.

"What did you just do to me?" asked Angel, rubbing his sore chest.

"Protective runes," said Summer, moving on to Spike. "They'll keep you hidden from the bad stuff that's looking for you."

"Why did you do all this?" Angel asked Aggie. "I mean, how did you know?"

"Lorne," she said. "One last favor for the green guy."

Spike looked around the room as he unbuttoned his shirt for Summer. "Hey, where's the Blue Meanie?"

"Illyria," Angel remembered. "What happened to her?"

"It--she wouldn't let me teleport her," said Summer, sounding a bit freaked at the mention of Illyria. "She was too strong."

"You mean we just left her back there on her own?" said Spike.

"It was her choice," said Angel. "She never belonged in this dimension. And without Wesley..." he trailed off.

"What happened to Wesley?" asked Aggie sharply.

"He's dead," said Angel. It hadn't quite sunk in yet, the reality of those words. He tried to push it out of his mind. He couldn't deal with that now.

Summer moved on to Gunn. When she'd imprinted his blood-streaked chest with the same dark symbols as Angel and Spike she stood up and brushed herself off. "Well, this has been fun, but there's a really cranky demon army out there and I don't want to be seen with any of you people. No offense."

"Thanks, hon," said Aggie. "Keep your head down."

"You too," said Summer before letting herself out.

Angel stared down at Gunn. The towel Aggie was holding against his side was already crimson with blood. He handed her a fresh towel from the basket. "Is he going to be okay?"

"We need to get him to a hospital," she said. "Now."

Angel and Spike hauled Gunn out of the house and into the back of Aggie's car--an ancient orange VW van. Angel stayed in the back with Gunn, applying pressure to the wound in his gut. Spike climbed into the front with Aggie and they headed for the nearest emergency room.

Gunn moaned as the car turned a sharp corner.

"You're going to be all right," Angel said.

Gunn looked up at him. "That was tight, huh? We really stuck it to 'em."

"Unfortunately they stuck it back to you a few times," said Angel.

"Not a bad last act, though, eh? I mean, it's no Ocean's Eleven or anything."

"You're not done yet," said Angel.

Gunn smiled thinly. "It's okay, man, I'm ready."

"I'm not," said Angel. "I'm still your boss and I need you here, do you understand me?"

"Yeah," said Gunn. "I get it."

Angel closed his eyes and wished there was a god he could pray to. It was too late for Wes, but Gunn still had a chance. He had to make it. He was the last one. If Angel lost Gunn then everyone he'd ever been able to call friend would be gone. And it would be his fault.

Aggie pulled into the ambulance bay and ran inside for help as Angel and Spike hauled Gunn out of the van. An orderly and a nurse met them halfway with a gurney. Angel watched helplessly as they wheeled Gunn away.

"Come on," said Aggie, leading Angel to the waiting room.

After a few minutes a nurse came in with a list of questions, none of which Angel could answer. He stared at her blankly until Aggie got up and followed her back to the desk.

A little bit later Aggie came back and handed Angel a paper cup full of coffee.

He looked at her. "What did you--"

"I gave them a false name," she said. "Told them he was James Martin, no family that we know of. And that he was mugged."

She pressed something into Angel's hand. It was Gunn's wallet. "Where'd you--"

"Pocketed it before we left the house. Not a good idea to have his real name in the hospital's admission records right now."

"Is he going to... I mean, did they say--"

"He's in surgery," said Aggie. "It'll be a while before we know anything."

Angel stared into the coffee cup, watching the steam rise off the surface and disappear into the air.

"Is there anyone we should call?" Aggie asked.

Angel shook his head. "He didn't have any family left." Maybe some of his old crew, but Angel didn't even know if Gunn kept in touch with any of them anymore, or how to contact them.

And then he remembered the girl, Anne--the one at the shelter. He stood up. "I need a phone book," he said to no one in particular.

He found one at the nurse's station. Even though it was the middle of the night, Anne answered on the second ring. "East Hills Teen Center."

Angel tried to explain what had happened, but he found that he was stammering, and he wasn't sure he was making any sense. Anne just listened. "I'll be right there," she said finally.

He wandered back into the waiting room for lack of anything better to do. Aggie was opening a package of something pink and disgusting-looking she'd gotten from the vending machine.

She looked up at him and held it out. "Sno-ball?"

Angel grimaced. "Not much of an eater, remember?"

"Oh yeah." She took a big bite of the artificially colored coconut concoction.

"And even if I was," he said, "I wouldn't eat that."

"I don't think someone who drinks blood is in a position to criticize my dietary choices."

"I'll have one," said Spike. "If you're offering."

Aggie tossed the package to him. Then she looked back at Angel and narrowed her eyes.

He hated it when she did that. It made him feel so exposed, knowing that her empathy could sense everything he was feeling. He moved to the far end of the waiting room and pretended to turn his attention to the television, which was tuned to Headline News. There were apparently no reports of dragons in the sky over Los Angeles, not that he was surprised.

Twenty minutes later Anne showed up. She didn't ask many questions. Angel supposed she'd learned not to over the years. She sat down next to Aggie and waited with the rest of them.

After a while Spike fell asleep. Angel found his gaze wandering repeatedly to the clock on the wall. Eventually he got up and stretched, then started pacing restlessly around the room.

"It's taking too long," he said.

"Maybe that's a good thing," offered Anne hopefully.

"Maybe," he said, with no conviction. He wanted to hit something, to kill something. To be doing anything right now but waiting in this awful, plastic room in this building that reeked of blood and chemicals.

"Angel." Aggie's voice sounded oddly strained. She pointed down the hall, to where a man in blue surgical scrubs was flipping through a chart at the nurse's station.

Angel looked back at Aggie. She was staring at her lap, avoiding his gaze, because of course if her empathy had told her that was Gunn's doctor then she also knew what he was going to tell them. And so Angel knew as well, from her reaction.

He watched the doctor walk down the hall towards them. It seemed to take an eternity, each footstep stretching out in time, seconds becoming years. And then, suddenly, he was there, and talking to them.

"Are you the ones who brought in James Martin?"

Angel tried to answer, but he found that he couldn't speak. The man was covered in the smell of blood--Gunn's blood. He'd tried to wash it off, but blood doesn't come off that easily. Angel knew that from experience.

He heard Aggie stand up behind him. "Yes."

"I'm very sorry to have to tell you this..."

The doctor's words were an indistinct buzzing in Angel's head. He couldn't listen, couldn't focus. He heard a sound that must have been Anne crying. He should say something, do something, he knew, but he couldn't.

Aggie had gone to Anne, was offering some kind of comfort. More than he could muster. Spike had awakened at some point, and Angel was dimly aware that he, too, was speaking in the somber tones of condolence.

He felt someone touch his arm, and instinctively he jerked away. It was Aggie. "We have to go now," she said gently. The doctor had gone away, but the smell of Gunn's blood still lingered in the room.

"What about..." Angel was having trouble forming a coherent sentence. There were things that had to be done now, for Gunn. What were they?

"Anne's going to take care of Charles now," said Aggie.

"I'll call Rondell," Anne said.

Rondell. He had been one of Gunn's friends once. A long time ago.

"The boys'll take him home," said Anne. There were tears on her cheeks, running down her face. He wished he had a handkerchief to offer her. But it had been years since he'd carried a handkerchief. Decades. Centuries, even.

"Come on," said Aggie. "We have to get out of here. You have to get out of here."

Angel nodded and let her lead him out of the hospital.

Aggie cast a worried glance at Angel, who had done nothing in the past hour but sit morosely in a chair in her living room. He hadn't said a word since they'd left the hospital.

She'd done her best, saying all the empty, consoling things people were supposed to say in these situations, and doing the things people were supposed to do. She'd even brought him a cup a tea, but all he had done was stare at it gloomily until it had gotten cold and developed an unappetizing film on the surface, and she had taken it away again.

Spike, on the other hand, couldn't seem to shut up.

"I'm starving," he complained. "Don't suppose you've got any blood about the place?"

Aggie told herself that Spike was grieving for Gunn and Wesley in his own way, on the inside. On the outside, however, he was annoying her. "Sure," she said, "there's some O neg in the fridge right next to the milk."

Spike started towards the kitchen, then stopped and narrowed his eyes at her. "You're having me on, aren't you?"

"Would I do that?" said Aggie, hauling the last of the suitcases over by the front door.

"'S not nice," said Spike. "You should be nicer to a starving vampire. I go much longer without eating and you're going to start looking like an Extra Value Meal, soul be damned."

He finally seemed to notice all the stuff that Aggie had been piling up by the front door. "What's with the luggage?"

"I'm going on a cruise," said Aggie. "I hear Ibiza is fabulous this time of year."

Spike ignored the sarcasm. "That's a good idea, clearing out of town. In case the big bads trace us back here somehow."

"See, I knew you weren't as dumb as you looked," said Aggie.

"Where are we going, then?"

"I'm going back home," Aggie said pointedly. "I don't know where you're going, and I don't care."

"Just gonna throw me to the wolves, are you?"

"Hey, I did my part," said Aggie. "I got you out of that alley before you turned into dragon chow. What you do now is up to you. I figured you'd go with him." She glanced over at Angel again.

"In case you hadn't noticed, he doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Blighter's gone soft in the head or something. And I'm not sticking around to babysit him."

"I don't need a babysitter," said Angel, speaking up at last.

"Glad to hear it," said Spike.

Angel looked at Aggie. "You should take Spike with you."

"He's not invited to go with me," said Aggie.

"For protection," said Angel.

"And what are you going to do?" she asked.

Angel didn't say anything.

"You need to get out of L.A.," she said.

"And go where, to do what?" said Angel bitterly. "I'm not running away."

"'Course not," said Spike. "He's got bloody principles. Rather sit around and wait for the Senior Partners' hit squad to find him than live to fight another day."

"What, exactly, are you doing?" Aggie asked. "What's the next step in the big plan?"

Angel looked away.

"So that's it, you're just giving up?" said Aggie. "Angel, you can't stay here. You know that you can't."

"I don't know anything," Angel said quietly.

Aggie could see there was nothing but darkness inside him, thick and oily and so black it seemed to swallow the light in the room around him. It wasn't a malevolent darkness; it was just empty and perfectly cold, like the endless vacuum of space.

Aggie didn't bother arguing it further; there would be no getting through to him anytime soon.

"Fine," she said. "Do what you want. I'm getting the hell out of Crazytown at sunset and you can either come with me or not."

"What about me?" asked Spike.

"I suppose you can come," Aggie said reluctantly. She grabbed her purse and keys. "I've got some errands to run before I blow town. I'll be back in a few hours."

Later that evening, as the last rays of sunlight glowed orange on the western horizon, Aggie pulled into the driveway of her house in Los Angeles for the last time.

The mini-fridge in the back of the camper contained a six-pack of Mountain Dew and four tubs of cow's blood. Aggie grabbed a container of blood. The blood had been easy to find; it had come from a butcher in Chinatown. The other thing she'd needed--the harder one--was tucked discretely into the back pocket of her jeans, and she checked it nervously before going into the house.

Angel was right where she'd left him, staring disconsolately at the rug. Spike had stretched himself out on the couch and fallen asleep.

"Wake up," Aggie said, setting the plastic container on the coffee table. "I got you some blood."

Spike sat up eagerly. "You're my new favorite human." He lifted the lid and sniffed. "Cow's blood?"

"It's what I could find."

"It'll do," said Spike, carrying the blood with him into the kitchen.

Angel hadn't moved.

"You don't want any?" Aggie asked him.

"I'm not hungry," he said. It was a lie, of course. Aggie knew full well that vampires were always ravenous. She also knew that self-deprivation was integral to Angel's tenuous grasp on his pretended humanity.

"Don't suppose you've decided to come with me?" she said.

He stared at her, his eyes hard and defiant. "No."

"Suit yourself," she said. "Can you at least do me a favor and help me load the van?"

"Sure." Angel pulled himself slowly to his feet.

Aggie pointed to a box of books in the stack by the door. "That one there, if you don't mind. I don't think I can lift it." She slipped her hand into the back pocket of her jeans and nervously fingered the plastic cylinder secreted there.

Angel walked over to the box. Aggie knew she'd have just one shot at this. If he was at all on his guard, she'd never get away with it. Fortunately, he was sufficiently off his game tonight that she just might be able to pull it off. Of course, if he hadn't been so far off his game she might not have to do the incredibly dangerous and stupid thing she was about to attempt.

Angel bent over to pick up the large box. At the exact same time, Aggie slipped the auto-injector out of her pocket and jammed it into his gluteus maximus with all the strength she had.

He turned on her with frightening quickness and grabbed her arm in a vise-like grip. "What did you do?" he roared. Everything about him radiated menace.

Aggie's blood ran cold. He could kill her in a second--less than a second--and she was betting her life on nothing more solid than a hunch that he wouldn't.

"I'm--I'm sorry," she gasped, trying to will her voice to steadiness and ignore the pain radiating up her arm where Angel held her. "I had to."

"What... what did you do to me?" Already his grip on her was starting to weaken.

"I promised Lorne," Aggie said as Angel slumped to floor.

Aggie breathed a sigh of relief and rubbed her sore arm. Guess that weird guy at the vet clinic had been right about the dosage necessary to knock out a vampire after all. And she'd pulled it off without getting killed or peeing herself. She was going to have a doozy of a bruise, though.

"Bloody hell," said Spike from the doorway to the kitchen. He looked warily from the unconscious Angel to Aggie. "What'd you just go and do?"

"Tranquilizers," Aggie said, pulling the injector needle out of Angel's ass cheek. "I need you to carry him to the van for me."

Spike stared at her a moment, then smirked. "You really like getting your way, don't you?"

"You think I'm gonna leave him here to get killed after I went to all that trouble to save him? Forget it."

"I'm still coming, too, though, right?"

"Yes, Spike."

"Good." He hauled Angel over his shoulder with a grunt. "Gah, someone needs to put fatty here on a diet."

Aggie led the way and pulled open the van's sliding door. Spike dumped Angel unceremoniously onto the back seat. She peered at the unconscious vampire. "You think he'll kill me when he wakes up?"

Spike slapped her jovially on the back. "Prob'ly not. But I still wouldn't want to be you, pet."

Angel swam gradually to consciousness and the realization that he was in a moving car--on a highway, judging by the relatively constant high speed at which they were traveling. By the smell he knew that he was in Aggie's VW van; there were still traces of Gunn's blood in the upholstery. He fought off a wave of nausea--from the blood, from the moving car, and from whatever Aggie had dosed him with.

The van's tinny old radio was playing "Already Gone" and for some reason it struck him as odd that someone who'd just attacked and abducted him would be listening to the Eagles.

His head was killing him, but he forced himself to open his eyes.

Spike, of all people, was driving the van. He hadn't expected that. Aggie was slumped down in the passenger seat next to him; her slow and steady breathing told Angel that she was asleep.

Carefully, slowly, so as not to exacerbate the nausea, Angel sat up.

Spike glanced back at him and nudged Aggie. "Sleeping Beauty's awake back there."

Aggie turned around and looked at Angel with an expression that was equal parts defiance and apprehension.

"Where are we?" he asked. His tongue felt thick and heavy, making it an effort to form the words.

"Not sure," said Aggie. She glanced at Spike.

"Just crossed into Arizona 'bout half-an-hour back," he said.

Angel rubbed his throbbing head. "So, you're not turning me in to the Senior Partners, then?"

"God! No!" said Aggie. "I would never do that." She actually looked offended.

"But you'd stab me in the ass with a tranquilizer injector."

"It was the only thing I could think of," said Aggie.

"Bloody well made my day," Spike said.

Aggie glared at Spike, then turned back to Angel. "It was for your own good."

"Shouldn't I decide what's for my own good?" Angel said.

"Sometimes," Aggie said. "And sometimes friends do it for you when you're in a bad place and making stupid choices."

"I'm not your friend," Angel said coldly.

"Thanks for the newsflash, jackass, but Lorne is, and I promised him that I'd help you out. Again."

Angel felt a twinge of guilt. But just a twinge. "It was a stupid thing to do. I could have killed you."

"I know," said Aggie. "Lucky for us, you didn't."

Angel briefly considered demanding that they turn the car around and take him back to L.A. Or at least pull over and let him out. Surely Aggie considered her promise to Lorne fulfilled by now. She'd have to let him go back, if he insisted on it.

But why? What was there in L.A. for him to go back to? Lorne had made it clear he wanted to make a clean break. Gunn was gone. Wes was gone. Fred and Cordy were gone. Connor was... Connor was out of his reach, as he always would be. Better that way, but it didn't make it any easier.

Angel's friends, the people he cared about, had been the only thing keeping him going these past five years, the only thing that made his existence bearable and gave it meaning. And now he'd lost them all. Everything--everyone--that had ever mattered to him was gone.

There was no reason to go back. No reason to go forward, either. He had no idea what highway they were on or where they were taking him. He found that he didn't care.

The balance of his soul had shifted, moving him even farther away from the world through which the people around him moved.

He leaned back on the lumpy padded bench in the back of the van and closed his eyes. Don Henley was still singing on the radio up front.

I will sing this vict'ry song, 'cause I'm already gone...

That's what I am, Angel thought, what they all were, the people he had loved. Gone.

All right, nighty-night.

He'd chosen the funeral home out of the yellow pages at random. How was one supposed go about comparison shopping for funeral homes, anyway?

It had seemed so important, before, to take care of everything himself. But now that he was here in this soothingly decorated office talking to this woman with the sensible shoes and plastic name tag, it wasn't anything like he'd thought it would be. Nothing about this was personal or meaningful. It was a business transaction. Like closing on a house, only instead of purchasing your dream home you were burying a loved one.

And then the woman--saleswoman, that's what she really was--suggested they go downstairs to choose the casket. And they followed her into an old-fashioned elevator with a brass gate. It reminded him of the one at the Hyperion, except that this elevator was coffin-shaped, because of course that's what it had been built for. Transporting the dearly departed from the basement mortuary up to the viewing rooms.

On the elevator ride he wondered if Cordy was down there already, or if she was still in the hospital morgue.

Now Angel stood in a display room filled with coffins of all colors, styles and sizes, and he had no idea what to do. Style had always been so important to Cordelia. (You didn't just hurt me, you gave away my clothes.) He was suddenly, desperately afraid of making the wrong choice. They were all so... awful. Every time he tried to picture Cordy's skin against one of these lace-trimmed satin cushions he felt like he was going to vomit.

He looked over at Wes. Their eyes met and he saw his own revulsion and helplessness mirrored in his friend's expression.

"I think perhaps we should revisit the option of cremation," said Wesley to the saleswoman in his smooth, gentle voice.

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Orange light slanted in through the windows as Angel fumbled with the buttons on his shirt. His fingers felt thick and unwieldy as they attempted to maneuver the tiny plastic discs through the narrow holes in the fabric.

He'd spent an hour choosing what to wear. Such a simple decision to make, yet he had agonized over it, riddled with self-doubt.

He wished he could remember her favorite color, or whether she'd ever seen him in a tie. (You might want to think about mixing up the black-on-black look.) In the end he had gone with an old, burgundy silk shirt he'd found at the back of his closet. She'd complimented it once, a long time ago, when life had been simpler and full of small joys. He hadn't properly appreciated it at the time.

There was a knock and the door opened. Four sets of familiar footsteps filed in behind him. "It's time," said Wes quietly.

He finished the last button and turned to face the others. The sight of them brought to mind another night when they'd all gotten dressed up to go out together. Memories washed over him: silk sliding over sweat-dampened skin; pent-up desires unshackled. Firmly, he pushed them all away--they would drown him if he let them.

"I'm ready," said Angel, though he didn't feel anything like it.

"Angel--" said Fred hesitantly.

"What?"

"Your shirt."

He looked down, wondering what was wrong with it. "Oh." He'd missed a button. Ten minutes just to button his shirt and he'd done it all wrong. (I naturally assumed you'd be lost without me, but this?)

Fred stepped forward and methodically unbuttoned and re-buttoned it for him. "There," she said, smoothing the fabric when she was done. "All better."

She looked up at him, her eyes soft and sympathetic. It was too much. (I am lost without you.) He stepped away from her, a little more brusquely than he'd meant to, and silently cursed his own awkwardness.

"Let's go," he said, heading for the door before anyone tried to say anything else.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

They took the Plymouth, for old times sake. It was Gunn who found it, neglected and nearly forgotten, in a far corner of the Wolfram & Hart garage, under a dusty drop cloth.

Angel drove, hands gripping the wheel tightly, trying not to look at the passenger seat. He didn't want to see that Wesley sat there now, silent and grim, not Cordelia, bright and brassy. (Get over it. I mean that in a sensitive way.)

The night was cold; the silver moon preceding them even colder.

A glance in the rear view mirror brought an image of Fred shivering in the back seat between Gunn and Lorne, and a memory of slender, tanned fingers hijacking his mirror to apply bright pink lipstick.

At the next red light Angel leaned over a vaguely surprised Wesley and snapped open the glove compartment. He rummaged around in the clutter of maps and old receipts until his fingers closed on a small plastic tube. He pulled it out and turned it over in his hand.

"Heart's Desire," the color was called. (Are you gonna become loser pining guy, like, full time?) He put it back in the glove compartment.

The light turned green and Angel drove on.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Cordelia's parents had sent a large funeral wreath to the office rather than risk re-entering the country. The smell of the gardenias had given Angel a headache and he'd made Harmony toss it into the incinerator.

There were only seven people at the service. All the lives Cordelia had touched, and only seven had been moved to pay their last respects. (Oh, and you're welcome.) He might have been surprised, but he wasn't.

Wesley was. Angel watched him pacing back and forth, his footsteps leaving ever deepening imprints in the sand.

"Maybe they didn't get the message," said Fred.

"They got it," said Wes darkly. "They just didn't care."

Uncharitable, perhaps, but not necessarily untrue, thought Angel.

He hadn't even allowed himself to wonder if Buffy would come. She'd never been close to Cordelia herself, didn't understand what Cordy had come to mean to him. Couldn't understand. If she had--well, Buffy certainly wouldn't have come then, would she? (I’m not a sniveling, whiny little Cry-Buffy, I’m the nastiest girl in Sunnydale history.)

The same went for the others, he supposed. Sunnydale was nothing but a ragged hole in the ground, now. The people who had lived there were scattered to the four winds, the bonds that once held them together irreversibly broken.

He had thought perhaps Xander, at least, might come, but then Angel vaguely remembered something about Xander getting engaged.

Obla dee, obla da. Life goes on.

For some, anyway.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know.
But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

"A butterfly lands beside us like a sunbeam," said Lorne, the waves crashing behind him like a symphony. "And for a brief moment its glory and beauty belong to our world. But then it flies away..." Borrowed words. Borrowed time.

Angel had asked Lorne to lead the service, such as it was. Seven people on a beach with a cardboard box of ashes. (Nothing's going to happen to Cordelia. I won't allow it.)

Harmony cried when Lorne sang "Over the Rainbow." Spike stood beside her, flicking cigarette ash into the sand.

When Wes stepped forward to speak Angel averted his eyes and tuned out the words, letting them float away from him like smoke on the wind. Lorne had to nudge him when it was time.

He gripped the box tightly as he stepped into the water. The waves lapped against his legs and the sand sucked at his shoes, threatening to pull him down. He'd been down there once before. There were no seasons at the bottom of those depths, and no death. There was nothing down there but dreams and madness.

"Angel, you need help?" he heard Gunn say, and realized that he'd just been standing there, frozen. They were all waiting on him. (I am lost without you.)

He opened the box and turned it upside down. Cordelia's earthly remains--that was the funeral home's tasteful euphemism--fell into the ocean with a plop. It was less poetic than he had imagined it would be.

Angel stared at the water, watching as the ashes swirled in the surf, dissolving into the sea like sugar.

For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem. Amen.

The waves washed in and then out again, bearing her away with the tide. Away from her home. Away from her friends. Away from him.

In the sky overhead, unseen, a lone star plunged through the cold heavens.

(I'll be seeing you.)

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. People leave when you need them the most. Whoops. Sorry about that. Shit happens, you know?

Logan Echolls closed his eyes, leaned back against the lunch table, and tried to imagine he was sailing on a clear blue sea. Cloudless sky. Ocean breeze. Waves lapping gently at the hull. He'd have had more success if it hadn't been for Dick's yammering beside him.

"Hey, look, Caitlin Ford's back," said Dick, punching Logan in the arm and pointing.

Logan felt not the slightest inclination to look.

"Wasn't she in, like, a fat farm or something?" said Dick around a mouthful of Cho's special Peking Duck pizza.

"She was in the hospital being treated for bulimia," said Beaver in a tone of horrified exasperation.

Logan had no idea why he was at school today. It wasn't like attendance was high on his list of priorities. One of the perks of not having a family anymore. No one around to make sure you brush your teeth, eat your veggies or go to school. He usually brushed his teeth anyway, though.

For a while there he'd been making appearances at Neptune High pretty regularly. He had, after all, nothing better to do. Though if he were feeling honest with himself, he'd admit that it was really so he could see her. A glimpse between classes, a covert peek across the courtyard at lunch, a chance encounter in the parking lot. It was like poking a sore tooth; it hurt but it kind of felt good, too.

But he was done with that, now. Finito. Over and out. So long and thanks for all the fish.

He'd officially given up on Veronica Mars after she'd helped Duncan skip town. She'd deny it, of course, but Logan knew she'd planned the whole getaway. She and Duncan had used him to cover up their clever little plot, without even having the courtesy to mention that Duncan was about to add himself to the long list of people who'd bailed out of Logan's life. Whoops. Sorry about that. Shit happens, you know?

"How am I supposed to enjoy imagining sins of the flesh when chicks like that don't have any?" bellowed Dick, voice pitched to carry to where Caitlin Ford sat alone, eating her dietician-prescribed sack lunch.

"Why do you always have to be such an asshole?" said Logan irritably.

"Dude! What is with you? You're one seriously mopey motherfucker today."

Logan shrugged. "Must be that time of the month. You know how emotional I get when Aunt Flo comes to visit."

"Hey, let's hit Mood tonight. That'll bring you out of your funk."

Another night of meaningless conversations and meaningless sex. Tempting, but no. "I don't think so."

Dick stared at him in disbelief. "You're gonna pass on a trip to the land of free-range supermodels?"

"Yeah, you know, I hear there's a Seventh Heaven marathon on the Family Channel."

"Your funeral, gramps." Dick clapped him on the back and wandered off across the courtyard in search of another partner in debauchery.

Beaver gave him a quizzical look. "You sure you're okay?" He was a sharp kid, that Beav.

Logan smiled and squinted up at the sun. "Right as rain, my man." Except that he wasn't. He didn't even remember what it meant to be okay.

After fifth period he cut out and headed home alone. Home. A strange word for an empty suite at the Neptune Grand. But then home had always been a myth. A clever facade constructed of Vicodin and fake smiles, as flimsy and impermanent as a movie set.

There was a pile of mail by the door; right on top was a letter in a pale green envelope. He picked it up and stared at it. Guess his dad had finally gotten the date right after all.

He tossed the envelope into the trash and reached for the open bottle of Johnny Walker Black on the table.

An indeterminate time later he was dragged out of a whiskey-soaked haze by an insistent knock at the door.

"Hey!" said Veronica perkily when he opened the door.

He rubbed his eyes, but when he looked again she was still there. "Duncan doesn't live here anymore," he said slowly. "But then I guess you know that."

"I came to see you." Her expression was impenetrable, which was strange, because he used to be able to read her so well.

He leaned against the doorframe in a valiant display of nonchalance. "Gosh, I'm flattered, but I'm not currently in the market for sloppy seconds. Or is it thirds? No. Wait," he said, counting dramatically on his fingers. "Fourths."

"Today's your birthday," she said, ignoring the insult.

He feigned a look of surprise. "Really? I'd forgotten." He'd tried to forget, anyway. Leave it to Veronica to ruin all his best-laid plans.

She thrust a foil-covered pan at him. " I made you a cake. "

Something oily and bitter expanded in his chest, filling up the space where his heart used to be. "Here's a news flash," he snapped. "I don't want you or your pity cake, so run along, little Dorothy."

"Logan--"

"You know what? On second thought, I'll take the cake. It's just you I don't want." He grabbed the cake and tried to shut the door before she could say anything else. Except that she was wily, that Veronica Mars, and she already had her foot wedged in the door to keep it from closing.

He probably could have stopped her, but she was fast and small and he was holding the stupid cake, which he really did want, so he let her push her way into the room.

"Don't you ever get tired of hating me?" she asked, standing in the middle of his (formerly Duncan's) suite with her arms crossed.

"Actually, no, I'm pretty comfortable hating you, thanks for asking." He set the cake on the table, upsetting a pyramid of empty Red Bull cans.

She looked around disdainfully at the collection of dirty laundry, take-out containers and liquor bottles decorating the suite. "Entering your pre-wino phase, I see."

He was losing patience; his veneer of composure was a fragile, tenuous thing and he didn't know how long he could keep it up. "What are you doing here, Veronica?"

"It's your birthday."

"Yeah, I know. What do you want?"

She was studying the toe of her shoe like it was Cliffs Notes and he realized that for the first time since he'd opened the door she was uncomfortable. "Maybe I miss you," she said.

He laughed, because there was nothing else he could do. "Take an aspirin, it'll pass." He plunged his hands deep into his pockets. "That's what I hear, anyway."

"I'm worried about you, Logan. You're living here by yourself, doing god knows what. You barely come to school anymore; you're half-drunk most of the time--"

"And you've come to save me? Play Bobby to my Whitney? Oh, thank you, Veronica Mars, you're my hero!"

"God, Logan, you make it so hard to be nice to you."

He tried to ignore the crease in her chin, the one she got when she was angry. He'd always loved that crease. "Has it ever occurred to you that I don't want you to be nice to me?"

"Yeah, actually, it has."

"So again I ask, why are you here?"

"I told you. I miss you."

"Don't," he said sharply, the word feeling sour and corrosive in his throat. He turned away from her and fixed his eyes on the door to Duncan's now-empty room, grounded himself in the solid blankness of it.

"Duncan never loved me," she said. "Not really."

He snorted. "You just figure that out now that he's gone? And you call yourself a junior detective."

"I figured it out a while ago. Right after I figured out that I didn't really love him."

"Let me know when you get to the part I'm supposed to care about."

"Can you just shut up for five minutes and let me say what I came here to say? After that, I promise, you can make all the snarky comments you want." Her voice was high and shaky, and when he turned around her eyes were shining with unshed tears.

This is the part where you throw her out before things get out of hand, said a voice in his head. But there was a rushing sound filling his ears and it was growing steadily louder. It made it easy to ignore that voice in his head, which had always sounded a little too much like his dad, anyway.

"Duncan was safe," she said, taking a step towards him. "And I thought I needed that, after everything that happened. I thought if I went back to Duncan I could go back to the way things were, before. That I could be the person I used to be. But it was a lie. Everything was a lie except you, Logan."

When she got to the part where she still loved him and always had he had to close his eyes to keep from falling. So when she kissed him, a moment later, it caught him off guard. She tasted exactly the way he remembered--like marshmallows and sea water--and nothing at all like desperation. While he was kissing her back he wondered if she was just a figment of his imagination--a dream conjured out of Scotch and loneliness and room service fries.

He opened his eyes and there she was, real as rain, looking up at him with that fragile smile of hers. The one that said I need you and I'm sorry and please love me.

He buried his face in her hair and drew a deep, rasping breath. The scent of her was intoxicating, a drug better than whiskey or GHB or his mother's happy pills.

Maybe she was only here because Duncan had left her. And maybe she was going to hurt him all over again. But right at that moment he didn't give a damn, because standing there, holding Veronica in his arms, Logan knew what home felt like.

There were no promises this time, no professions of innocence or avowals of past mistakes; but there weren't any lies, either. Maybe it wasn't perfect, but Logan already knew that perfection was overrated.

Veronica twined her fingers in his and pulled him over to the couch. When she uncovered the cake he laughed because it was strangely lumpy and there were crumbs in the icing. He thought it was the best cake he'd ever seen.

She lit the single rainbow-striped candle with a book of matches from Java the Hut and smiled at him. "Happy birthday, Logan. Make a wish."

"It already came true," he said, and blew out the candle.

--Mèng Hàorán

Malcolm Reynolds had never been overly fond of quiet.

It was always in the quiet times when things seemed to fall apart. Not in the big flashy moments, or the exciting, heart-in-your-throat situations. No, when things fell apart all on their own they tended to do it when no one was looking. Like a shooting star falling out of the sky when there was no one around to even notice.

Things had been quiet on Serenity for a while now and Mal didn't like it, not one gorram bit. Work had been scarce of late. Real scarce. He'd sent out discreet inquiries in all the directions he could think of, and when that hadn't worked he'd sent out some more, not-so-discreet inquiries. So far nothing of any use had turned up, though, which was... discouraging.

Money was a becoming a serious issue--fuel and decent rations were both dangerously low. On top of that, his crew had been idle for far too long, cooped up on the ship without much in the way of a purpose. It was a recipe for disaster, and Mal didn't have the faintest notion what to do about it.

It was a problem--one he needed to think on some more. First, though, he was going to eat some breakfast.

Mal ran his hand uselessly through his hair one last time before climbing the ladder up to the foredeck. It was morning, or what passed for morning out in the black--a meaningless, arbitrary designation, meant to keep folk from losing their minds in the endless span of time.

He heard the fussing and hollering before he even made it halfway to the galley.

"You make her give it back, Doc, or I'm comin' over there and takin' it from her!" bellowed Jayne.

"It's just a can of beanie weenies," said Shepherd Book. "You can't let the girl have it?"

"It ain't just a can of beanie weenies, it's the last can of beanie weenies and she stole it outta my bunk!"

"How do you even know that?" said Simon.

"I been saving 'em! I had a can stashed under my bed and now they're gone and she mysteriously come up with a can of franks and beans wasn't in the pantry last night."

Mal leaned against the hatchway, taking in the scene with a mixture of despair and irritation.

Simon and Book were standing in front of River, trying to shield the girl from the advancing Jayne. River, meanwhile, seemed to be completely unaware of the tension in the room.

"Wieners are made of mechanically separated chicken," she said to no one in particular. "Synthetic beef product. Sodium phosphate. Sodium erythorbate. Sodium nitrite."

"Let the girl have the beans," said Zoe quietly. She was sitting at the table, staring down into her coffee cup like she was reading secret messages there.

"Girl took something that's mine and I'm just supposed to overlook that?" said Jayne. "A grown man can't be letting a girl--"

The shepherd sniffed. "Who's the grown man?"

Jayne spun on him. "You wanna dance, preacher-man?"

"So now you're going to beat up a preacher over a can of beans?" said Simon derisively.

Jayne jabbed a finger into Simon's sternum. "I ain't talkin' to you, Doc, so whyn't you go shove that namby-pamby dick a yours up a--"

"Jayne," said Mal sharply. Everyone turned to look at him. Everyone except Zoe, who'd surely known he was there all along.

"Do us all a courtesy and sit down and shut the gorram hell up. You heard Zoe."

"But Mal--"

"You really lookin' to get into it with me?"

Jayne cussed under his breath, but sat down at the table like he'd been told.

"It's too much sodium," said River, wrinkling her brow in concentration as she studied the label on the contested can of beanie weenies.

Mal turned on Simon. "I catch her nosing around in any of the crew bunks again I'm confining her to the passenger dorm full time, you hear?"

Simon pursed his lips resentfully, but didn't backtalk any, which was a blessing.

"Symptoms of sodium toxicity include edema--excessive accumulation of serous fluid in tissue spaces or body cavity--and hypertension," said River.

That crazy damn girl was gonna be his downfall, he just knew it. Mal walked over and poured himself a much-needed cup of coffee. He took a drink and nearly gagged on it. "What in the hell is this?"

"It's coffee, sir," said Zoe.

"That ain't coffee. For starters it's cold. Also, tastes like bilge water ."

"Funny how coffee don't tend to brew right when you just soak the grounds in cold water for a spell."

Mal felt the first dull throb of a headache coming on at the base of his skull. He rubbed his fingers across his forehead, trying to stave it off. "Stove's still broke?"

"Not like we have any real food left to cook on the damn stove anyway," said Jayne.

Mal shot him a look. "You gonna hobble that lip or do I need to do it for you?"

"He has an adversarial relationship with his food," said River. Mal couldn't tell if she was talking about him or Jayne and didn't much care to know.

He grabbed himself a bowl of the protein paste they'd all been eating too much of lately and took a seat across from Zoe. "Just once, I wish I could eat my breakfast in peace and quietude."

Jayne snorted. "Wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which one gets filled the fastest."

Mal slammed his cup down on the table with enough force to leave an imprint in the wood. Cold coffee-water splashed over the tabletop.

"Maybe I'll just eat my cold protein mash in my bunk," said Jayne.

"You do that."

Jayne angrily pushed back his chair and stormed out of the room, nearly shoving Wash up against the bulkhead as they passed in the hatchway.

"What was--" Wash started to ask, but dropped it on a look from Mal. He shrugged and grabbed a bowl of food for himself. "Wave come in for you, Mal, on a delay. From Espinosa."

Now that was interesting. Mal just wasn't sure if it was the good kind of interesting or the bad kind. Achilles Espinosa was a fellow he'd met just after the war. They'd worked together on an old salvage boat for a spell, until Espinosa had come into a chunk of coin under somewhat murky circumstances and started up his own operation. Nowadays he was mostly retired from smuggling and spent his time running a casino on Santo, but he could always be counted on to have more than a few pokers in the fire.

Zoe looked at Mal sharply. "What's that about, you think?"

"Could be he's got wind of a job for us." Mal quietly took note of the fact that Wash sat himself down by the doctor--at the opposite end of the table from Zoe.

"Could be he's missing that 50 platinum you owe him," said Zoe, never even glancing in her husband's direction.

Which could only mean things were still sour between Zoe and Wash--just one more damn problem Mal had to worry about.

There'd been arguments aplenty between those two over the years, but this was something else. Hell, they'd spent most of Wash's first year on the boat at each other's throats, and a lot of the time since, even after they'd gotten lovesome with one another. Arguing was normal; it was the silence between them now that Mal found unnerving. He knew better than anyone that the quieter Zoe was, the more dangerous she generally became. And a quiet Wash--well, a quiet Wash was just downright unsettling.

Mal pushed back his chair, grateful for an excuse to make himself scarce. "Reckon I'll go find out what Espinosa wants."

He made his way to the bridge and pulled up the prerecorded message. Espinosa's grizzled mug filled the screen, grinning crookedly.

"Malcolm Reynolds," said the old rocket-jock. "Been a long time. I got a piece of information I thought I'd pass on, just to be friendly and such."

Mal rolled his eyes. If Espinosa was being friendly then Mal was a little leather-winged bat.

"Contact of mine on Beylix knows of a guy got some cargo needs transporting. He's in a bit of a hurry, see, and willing to pay extra to get it moved in the next day or two. I thought maybe if you were in the area... look up a fellow named Durant, works outta Thermopolis, tell him I sent ya."

Now that was definitely promising, Mal thought. This panned out he might just have to give Espinosa a big ol' kiss on the mouth next time he saw him.

"Guess that's all. You be taking care of yourself out there, Reynolds. And you might want to think about stopping by my place on Santo pretty soon--one of these days I'm gonna come looking for that seventy-five you owe me."

"Fifty!" Mal protested futilely to the recording. "It was fifty, you mangy old cur."

"Pass on my regards to Zoe," Espinosa went on. "Assuming she's still tagging along after your sorry ass, that is." The transmission ended.

Mal shut off the display and leaned back in the pilot's chair, a slow grin spreading across his face. A job. A real, honest-to-god job. Maybe things were finally starting to look up for a change.

"Kaylee!" Mal roared as he walked toward the engine room.

Instead of Kaylee, he found himself face-to-face with Inara, which threw him a little. "Inara. I was--what're you doin' in here?"

Kaylee crawled out of from under the engine. "Hey, Cap'n!"

Inara smiled serenely. "Kaylee was just showing me how Serenity's propulsion system works."

"Oh, that's--huh."

"You look surprised, Mal."

"I just didn't know you were partial to machinery and such. Wouldn't have thought it was quite your cup of tea, so to speak."

Kaylee practically beamed with pride. "That's what I thought, Cap'n, but Inara said she wanted to know more about how Serenity works."

Kaylee's cheerfulness was in sharp contrast to the frayed tempers plaguing the rest of the crew. It'd take a powerful thunderstorm to rain on Kaylee's mood. No matter how bleak things were, she could always be counted on for a smile. It was one of the things Mal treasured most about her, though he'd never admit to it. Not out loud, anyway.

"It's fascinating," said Inara. "Such a complex set of systems and Kaylee knows how every inch of it works."

Mal recalled why he'd come into the engine room in the first place and tried to look stern. It was hard enough sustaining a scowl around Kaylee without Inara turning up and distracting him with her bare midriff and shiny lips. And the smell of her--all flowery and herblike--it made his head swim.

"What's the matter, Cap'n? You look cross."

"That's on account of I am cross, Kaylee. You know why? 'Cause my breakfast was cold. I thought you were gonna fix the gorram stove."

She shook her head. "No can do, that was our last heating element that burned out."

"Can't you--I don't know--magic it back together somehow?"

"Nope. Got completely fried--it's nothing but a melted lump of metal, now. Gonna have to get a replacement somewhere if you wanna use the stove."

"Ain't no money for a replacement. And no time, neither. Wash is gonna be making a course correction, slingshotting around Triumph to point us toward Beylix. Set it up the way he needs--we ain't got no fuel to waste."

"Beylix? Why are we going--Cap'n, did we get a job?"

"Might be. Got a lead on one, anyhow."

Kaylee's whole face lit up. "Well ain't that shiny! See, Inara, what'd I say? Cap'n always looks out for us, sure as eggs is round."

"Yes, he does," said Inara, her dark eyes sparkling with something Mal couldn't quite read. He was never sure what was going on in that head of hers. Unless she was mad at him, of course--then she was easy to read.

"I believe eggs are really more of an oval kind of--well, egg-shaped, actually--but I take your drift." Mal pretended to study the press regulator so he didn't have to meet Inara's unsettling gaze. "Just tell me you can hold her together a little longer, Kaylee. Can't afford to have anything else breaking down until we get paid."

"I'll keep her in the air, don't you worry. Oh, hey! I could get some heating elements for the stove when we get to Beylix, and that fuse regulator we been needing, not to mention--"

"No shopping until we get paid."

"I've got some redundant parts squirreled away, I could sweet talk Woo-Ping into trading for some of the stuff we need. Leastways an old heating element for the stove."

"That's my girl." Mal reached out to ruffle her hair, but Kaylee ducked and batted his hand away, flashing a smile sweet enough to melt even his mean old heart.

Kaylee grabbed the knapsack she'd packed with spare parts to entice Woo-Ping and sprinted down the stairs and across the cargo bay. Unfortunately, she was running so fast her foot caught on a deckplate in the airlock and she went careening down the ramp, barely kept her footing, and only managed to come to a stop by crashing into Jayne.

"Gorram it, girl, get offa me!"

"Sorry!" said Kaylee.

"And that's why we don't run on the ship," said Mal. Beside him, Zoe was covering her mouth to hide a laugh.

Kaylee pretended to look contrite. "Sorry, Cap'n."

He pointed a finger at her. "You got one hour, not a minute more you, you hear?"

"Yes, sir."

"Jayne, you're going with her."

"What?" said Jayne. "Aw, Mal, I don't wanna go to Woo-Ping's, it smells like a baboon's armpit in that place."

"Then you should feel right at home," said Mal, slapping him on the back.

The captain turned and looked pointedly at Wash. "No one leaves the ship. We're only staying on this rock long enough to work out the details of this job so there's not to be any sightseeing today."

Wash gave a mock salute. "Aye aye, Captain. Anyone tries to leave, I'll duct tape 'em to the hull."

Kaylee stood on her tiptoes and planted a kiss on Wash's cheek. "Take care of our girl 'til I get back."

Normally she was the one left behind on the ship with Wash while the captain and Zoe and Jayne were out on jobs. They'd passed a lot of time together, her and Wash, partners in worrying, waiting on the others and taking care of Serenity. Much as Serenity was the captain's ship, most times Kaylee felt like she and Wash were her real parents.

"Aw, shucks, ma'am." He batted his eyes at her, pretending to look bashful.

Kaylee expected to find Zoe smiling at that, but instead she gave Wash a look sour as a lemon and turned away.

The captain grabbed Kaylee by the shoulders and gave her a gentle push. "Best get a wiggle on, Kaylee."

"Sure, Cap'n, see ya later." Kaylee slipped her arm around Jayne's elbow and dragged him toward Woo-Ping's.

"One hour!" Mal yelled after them.

Of all the cities in the 'verse, Thermopolis was one of Kaylee's favorites. It weren't much to look at, on account of the dense cloud cover that surrounded the whole planet. And, sure, Beylix was the system's garbage dump, which meant that it was mostly nothing but scrap yards and refuse centers and recycling stations. But that was exactly why Kaylee loved it.

Because what was considered trash on the Core planets was treasure out here on the Rim. Thermopolis, the biggest city on Beylix, was teeming with junk dealers, scrap shops and yards full of all manner of rebuilt ships. Also smugglers, thanks to the lack of Alliance interest in what was mostly considered an abandoned trash heap.

You could get just about anything in Thermopolis, so long as you didn't mind it being used, reconditioned or rebuilt entirely from old parts. Kaylee had been trading with Woo-Ping almost as long as she'd been aboard Serenity. He was mean haggler, but she could always count on him to have the parts she needed, and he was usually interested in the extra stuff she brought him.

"Isn't it nice to be off the ship for a change?" she said.

"Yeah," said Jayne. "It's gorram joy to stand around watching you bicker with that old man over a two-bit piece of junk for forty-five minutes." He took the knapsack from her and swung it over his own shoulder.

"Don't be such a grump. If I can get him to take one these old hydro pumps off my hands, I'll buy you a mooncake on the way back to the ship."

"Oh, goody," he said, rolling his eyes, but she could tell he was secretly pleased.

Kaylee didn't mind Jayne so much; he kind of reminded her of her brothers back home. He could be a real wáng ba dàn, no denying that, but deep down she knew he had his soft spots, just like everyone else.

"Hey, will you look at that?" he said, pausing in front of shop window. "You know what that is?"

Kaylee peered through the grimy glass. "A gun?"

"That there's a McCoy T-51 sniper rifle."

"It's very... long," said Kaylee, trying to seem interested.

"She's a real beaut. Bolt action with a five-round clip. That there'll stop a charging bull with one shot from a klick away. Only 500 of 'em ever made."

"You wanna go inside and have a look?" said Kaylee.

Jayne looked torn, but he shook his head. "No time. I'll come back next time we're hereabouts. If'n it's still in the shop, that is. Those things don't gen'rally sit on the shelf for long."

He seemed so sad, Kaylee couldn't hardly bear it. "Go on, Jayne. I can go to Woo-Ping's on my own. 'Sides, he gets a look at you he'll probably try to charge me twice as much." Woo-Ping had never developed much liking for Jayne.

"You sure?"

"Sure as shootin'. Go on, git."

Jayne handed her back the knapsack, clapped her on the back nearly hard enough to knock her over, and disappeared into the shop.

Truth be told, she was glad to be rid of him. Jayne always got bored when she was shopping for parts and he was a right grouch about it. This way she could enjoy herself without listening to all his bitching and complaining.

The day was about as bright as a day on Beylix ever got and Kaylee's feet were well-acquainted with the route from the Red Key Docks to Woo-Ping's shop in the Tinker's Quarter. Wan sunlight filtered dimly through the clouds giving a soft, hazy cast to the city and everything in it. The breeze carried the smell of smoking meat and steamed cabbage and sent the colored lanterns strung up along the store fronts swaying prettily.

As she walked, Kaylee's eye was caught by a thrift shop with a pretty lavender robe hanging out front. She stopped to run her fingers along the embroidered hem and snuck a glance at the price tag. Even four credits was rich for her, but Lord, it was pretty. If only--

A hand clamped down over her face as someone grabbed her from behind, forcing her back down a narrow alley between the shops. She tried to wrench herself away but the man was nearly as big as Jayne and he had her pinned with a forearm across her chest like a tree trunk so she could hardly even breathe. And he'd slapped some kind of tape over her mouth so she couldn't scream, even if she'd had the breath for it.

Kaylee saw another man loom out of the shadows in the alley and then she was shoved up hard against the wall while they tied her wrists together, so tight it made her eyes water. The bustle of folks in the street felt like it was miles away, for all that it was only a few yards. She could see the knapsack full of parts lying on the ground where she'd dropped it. Someone was gonna steal it, and she'd never get that heating element for the stove.

One of the men jerked her away from the wall and next thing she knew they'd lowered some kind of big barrel on top of her and then turned it over, spilling her awkwardly onto her head. Then a lid slammed down over the top, throwing her into pitch blackness except for the light trickling through a few small holes in the top.

Kaylee felt herself hoisted roughly into the air and carried away, off into the city.

Fear washed over River like a tide. Tugging at her, pulling her down.

Trytoscreamtrytorunawaycan'tcan'tcan't. Heart rate increasing, adrenaline pumping. Cold sweat, taste of fear. Struggle. Fight. Pain.

And then darkness.

Round as an apple, deep as a cup.

She was gone, taken away.

Serenity felt it, too. River was acutely aware of the ship's grief, a low, keening throb that ran down the walls and through the floors, up through the soles of feet, along her legs and straight into her heart like an arrow made of ice and steel.

And all the king's horses can't fill it up.

Zoe followed the captain back onto to Serenity with something approaching regret. It'd been nice to step out in the world again, even if it was a hóuzi de pìgu of a planet like Beylix. She wasn't usually one for getting landsick, but the last couple of weeks had been hard. No work, no money coming in, fuel and rations running low. Situation like that was bound to have an adverse effect on morale, make the close quarters on the ship feel even closer.

She hoped the troubles she and Wash had been having were just a symptom of that, but she had a fear it wasn't that simple. Fraying tempers among the crew were to be expected, but whatever was happening to Zoe's marriage was new to her.

Last few weeks, she and Wash had grown distant with one another, cold even. They hardly ever talked and when they did they usually ended up sniping at each other. It'd gotten to the point she could barely stand to have him touch her anymore. Not that Wash had seemed particularly inclined to touch her.

Zoe couldn't even remember who'd started to pull away first--which maybe meant it had been her. All she knew was they were like two strangers living in the same space and it'd got so she could hardly stand it.

It made her uncomfortable to think that Mal had to have noticed--he knew her too well, kept too sharp an eye on his crew for something like this to pass under the radar of Malcolm Reynolds. Bless him, though, he never said a word. Zoe just hoped the rest of the crew hadn't picked up on it. Not too much, anyway.

At least now they had a job to look forward to--a decent one, even--and the promise of a shiny paycheck at the end of it.

Wash and Jayne had just finished up dumping Serenity's waste water tanks with Shepherd Book's help and they all looked up expectantly at the captain's return. Zoe couldn't help noticing the way her husband didn't even throw a glance in her direction.

"What's the news?" said Wash with a cheer that probably only she knew was forced.

"Got ourselves a job," said Mal.

Jayne whooped and Wash's smile got a little more genuine, though it still didn't turn her way.

"It's on the simple side," said Mal, "but the money's good. Pick up a shipment of livestock here on Beylix and transport it to Despina. Practically a milk run--we can be done and paid in a few short hours if we hustle."

"Livestock?" said Jayne. "Ain't cows again, is it? Hold stank like a cow's ass for a solid month after the last time."

"T'ain't cows," said Mal. "Something called cara--carca--"

"Carcajou," supplied Zoe, suppressing a smile.

"Yeah, that. Somewhat smaller and fuzzier than cows, I reckon. Breeder on Despina wants to raise 'em for their fur but the Alliance got strict rules against importing and exporting the little devils."

"How come?" said the shepherd.

Mal shrugged. "Don't know and don't care to."

"And the pay's good?" said Jayne.

"Three hundred in pretty platinum coins," said Mal.

Jayne whistled in appreciation. "Not bad for a one-day job."

"Seem a little strange, getting paid so much for something so simple?" asked Book.

"Skirting the Alliance is never simple," said Mal. "And anyhow I'm disinclined to look a gift horse in the pearly whites just now. Feels like a reliable job, though, right Zoe?"

"Near enough."

The captain handed Wash a data disc. "There's the coordinates for the pickup, somewhere outside of Sinclair. They need the goods delivered today, so let's grab some sky."

"Yeah, uh, Captain... about that," said Jayne, looking suddenly guilty as a dog who'd stolen the Christmas goose.

Mal raised an eyebrow. "Jayne, you fixin' to ruin my fine mood?"

"It's just that Kaylee ain't back yet."

Zoe noted the way Mal's jaw clenched and winced inwardly.

"What do you mean, she ain't back?" he said in an unnaturally quiet voice. "Kaylee's with you, Jayne. I distinctly remember giving you an order to that effect. Don't you remember me giving such an order, Zoe?"

"Yes, sir, I do."

"She told me to go on, Mal! She said she'd be fine, and I thought--"

"What'd I tell you 'bout thinking?" the captain snapped. "I tell you to go with her, it ain't up to you or Kaylee to say otherwise."

"I'm sorry, Mal, I--"

The captain turned his back coldly on Jayne. "Zoe, take Jayne here and fetch little Miss Kaylee back, would you please?"

"Yes, sir."

Zoe almost felt sorry for Jayne. Almost.

Inara hadn't been especially sorry to miss out on the excursion into Thermopolis. Beylix wasn't exactly her kind of planet--perpetually gray and cloudy, populated primarily by smugglers, scavengers, and junk dealers. Part of her wished that they were staying longer, though. Too many people sharing a too-small space could be wearing after a while. Everyone had been in a temper lately and Inara thought a few hours of shore leave, even in a depressing place like Beylix, might do them all some good. Even her shuttle had begun to feel confining to her, and so she'd come up to the galley with a book of poetry to take advantage of the relative peace of the common area while most of the crew was away.

Inara flipped through the pages of the book, looking for the spot she'd left off, and then paused, listening. She thought she'd heard something--a sort of muffled whimpering.

She followed the sound down the aft passage and into the engine room where she found a small, frail form cocooned in Kaylee's hammock. It was River, her long dark hair cascading over the edge of the brightly-colored fabric. She was shaking and muttering to herself the way that she did whenever something very bad was about to happen.

"River?" Inara moved toward her, trying to shake off the prickle of foreboding.

"Gone," River was saying over and over. "Gone. Gone. Gone."

Inara laid a gentle hand on the girl's cheek. "What's the matter, baby?"

"They took her away. Closed the lid up tight."

"Took who?"

"Kaylee."

Inara's mouth went dry and she took an involuntary step backward.

River followed her with wide, tear-stained eyes that saw far too much. "Who will Serenity talk to now? Who'll understand her?"

"Inara?" Shepherd Book appeared in the hatchway. "I thought I heard--" His eyes fell on River. "Is she all right?"

"I don't know," said Inara. "She's had another... episode."

"I'll fetch her brother."

"Shepherd," Inara called after him. "Have you seen Kaylee?"

He turned and gave her a sharp look. "Funny you should ask."

"Why?"

"Seems she hasn't come back yet. Captain's in a foul fettle, I hear."

Inara felt herself go pale, and turned away from the shepherd so that he wouldn't see the fear that must surely be written on her face.

"Gone," River continued to whisper to herself. "Gone. Gone. Gone."

"Wash, how we lookin' for fuel?"

Wash's voice crackled over the comm system. "Not great, Mal. The course correction used up a lot of our reserves."

Mal grimaced. "Can we get the job done? That's what I need to hear from you right now."

There was a pause. "It'll be a close thing, but yeah, as long as we get straight there and back with no distractions."

"Suppose we better not be having any distractions, then."

Mal walked back over to the mule and glared at it. Gorram starter had given out on him. Serenity was falling apart around him and if they didn't get this paycheck--well, he didn't like to think about that.

He pulled a power wrench out of the toolbox, only to discover the power pack had given out so it was about as useful as box of hair. He cussed and hurled the wrench across the cargo bay, then winced as it bounced off an ammo crate.

Why couldn't things ever just go smooth? Kaylee knew better than to go and wander off like that. He'd been in a fine mood, too. Now half of his crew was out taking a walkabout instead of on their way to doing the perfectly respectable smuggling he'd lined up. And here he was couldn't hardly get anything done anyway for worrying about Kaylee.

Probably the girl had just got carried away wrangling with Woo-Ping over engine bits and she'd be back in no time, full of apologies. Except the longer she was gone the less likely that theory was starting to seem. There was a client waiting on them, and time was rushing by, moving toward the moment when Mal was going to have to make a decision, one way or the other. A decision he didn't want to make.

He shook his head, trying to push it all away and concentrate on the work at hand. One obstacle at a time, that was the way to do it.

"Mal."

Inara. Must be his lucky day. Mal didn't even have to look at her to know that it was gonna be one of those conversations; he could tell from her tone, all uppity and tense.

"If you come to ask me to dance, I'm gonna have to regretfully decline," said Mal, reaching for another wrench. "There's work to be done and I don't seem to have enough crew about to do it at the moment."

"River's upset," said Inara. "I found her in the engine room crying."

He looked up sharply. "She didn't touch anything, did she?"

"No, she... she seems to think Kaylee's in some kind of danger."

That gave him pause. He tried not to show it, though. "Wouldn't put too much stock in that girl's babbling. We both know she ain't got both oars in the water."

"But Kaylee's missing, isn't she?"

He concentrated on the mule's starter, grateful for something to look at that wasn't Inara. "Wouldn't say missing. More like late. Probably got distracted by some shuài fellow she saw in town."

"You don't believe that."

He grit his teeth and tugged ineffectually at one of the bolts. "And you'd know all about what I do and don't believe?"

"Mal--"

He gave up on the mule, straightened and looked at her levelly. "I understand the worry, it being Kaylee and all, but don't waste your time frettin'. Zoe and Jayne'll be along any minute now with the girl in tow and I'll give her a year of septic flush duty for being such a thorn in my side."

"And if they don't find her?"

Something in his jaw clenched just a little bit. "We got a pickup to make on the other side of the planet won't be waiting on us forever."

Inara looked at him incredulously. "You'd actually go off and leave her here?"

He made a concerted effort to keep his voice calm and even. "In case you haven't noticed, we ain't so well off we can afford to turn down a job like this. A member of the crew decides to go AWOL we ain't got the leisure to wait around."

"Mal, you can't!"

"Don't tell me what I can't do on my gorram ship!" So much for calm and even.

But Inara didn't even blink. "Yes, I get it, you're the captain, you're the boss of us all. This isn't about who gets to give the orders--"

"This is about I got a job to do ain't got nothing to do with you. I don't barge into your shuttle telling you how to do your whoring, you don't stand in my cargo bay telling me how to do my smuggling. I seem to recall we had an understanding to that effect."

The smooth facade Inara usually wore slipped a bit and Mal got a glimpse of what lay behind it: fear. "Kaylee would never run off for no reason," she said in a quiet voice she hardly ever used with him. "If she's not back yet it's because she's in trouble."

Some of the anger drained out of him. "I look like some kind of soft-in-the-head idiot you reckon I don't know that?" he said quietly.

Inara opened her mouth to retort but Mal held up his hand. "Don't answer that, it might ruin my fine mood."

"Is it true that Kaylee's missing?" Simon stepped out of the hatch to the passenger dorms, looking anxious as a mother hen. Just what Mal needed--more folks working themselves into a flippy-hiss over Kaylee.

Fortunately, Zoe saved him the trouble of talking to Simon by showing up with Jayne on her heels. Just the two of them, Mal noted grimly.

"Well?" he said, knowing he wasn't going to like the answer.

"She's nowhere, Mal," said Jayne. "We looked everwhere, too. She's just gone. Never even got to Woo-Ping's."

Mal looked over at Zoe. She had that crinkle around her eyes that she got whenever she had bad news to deliver. "I'm guessing there's more," he said.

"Found these hanging up outside the magistrate's office." She pulled a couple of paper fliers out of her pocket and laid them out face-up on one of the storage bins.

Mal peered down at them, felt Simon and Inara come up beside him to do the same. They were missing person notices. Both for sweet-faced girls who'd disappeared recently.

"Talked to the clerk," said Zoe. "Seems near half-a-dozen girls have gone missing in the last two weeks, mostly from around the Tinker's Quarter."

"Damn," said Mal.

"What does it mean?" asked Simon.

"Slavers," said Zoe flatly.

"I thought slavers usually kidnapped men for the workhouses," said Simon, ever two steps behind the parade.

"Different kind of slavers," said Mal, rubbing his brow with the back of his hand. "Different kind of house, the kind full of young girls."

"Oh," said Simon, finally getting it.

Mal's eyes flicked over to Inara before he could stop himself. Every single time he'd thrown the word whore at her came back to him, pricking like burrs under his collar.

She stared back at him full of cold blame. Look what you've done to Kaylee now, those dark eyes were saying.

"Slavers ain't so bad," said Jayne. "Least they'll keep her alive. Better'n organ dealers."

Sweet little Kaylee with the teddy bear on her coveralls. The girl who'd insisted on painting flowers all over the kitchen of his ship and who could replace a blocked intake valve in 43 seconds flat. An image came to him of Kaylee, flat on her back with some meaty, bedsore of a man holding her down, ripping those teddy bear coveralls off of her, forcing her legs apart while she struggled and cried--

Mal lashed out at the closest thing to hand worth lashing out at and punched Jayne square in the face. Taken off guard, the big man went sprawling on the floor.

"Bèn tiānshēng de yī duī ròu!" Mal spat, still trying to rid himself of that image of Kaylee.

"Ruttin' hell!" Jayne wiped at the blood running from his nose and glared up at Mal with angry, violent eyes.

Okay, so hitting a granite-jawed maniac who could probably punch a rhinoceros to death with his bare hands wasn't exactly Mal's best idea ever. No taking it back now, though. Zoe took a warning step toward Jayne, hand on her weapon, quietly reminding him of his place in the hierarchy.

Mal clenched his fist, trying to ignore the pain in his hand. "Gorram it, Jayne, this is your fault."

"My fault?" said Jayne, pulling himself carefully to his feet.

"If you'd gone with her like I told you to, she'd be safe on the ship right now and we'd be halfway to a paycheck on Despina."

"Or maybe Kaylee'd still be just as taken and I'd have a bad case of being dead from trying to protect her. You ever think of that?"

"And that'd be a powerful shame, would it?" Mal walked over and angrily punched the button to shut the airlock. With his sore hand. He winced and rubbed his knuckles.

"This isn't helping Kaylee," said Simon. "How are we going to get her back?"

Everyone looked at Mal expectantly. That's the way it was. Things went pear-shaped they looked to him to come up with a plan. It was only later that they started in with the arguing and the complaining.

Cap'n always looks out for us.

He stared at the comm panel. "We need that money in a bad way."

"Mal!" The reproach in Inara's voice rubbed him like sandpaper on a sunburn.

Sure as eggs is round.

He hit the comm. "Wash, get us off the ground and make for that rendezvous in Sinclair."

...continued in ACT II...

"You're choosing money over Kaylee's life!" Simon yelled over the roar of the engines. "I always knew you were an opportunistic húndàn, but this is going too far!" He'd gotten himself right up in Mal's face and if there was one thing Mal hated more than being told what to do, it was when people got up in his face.

He gave Simon a look fit to freeze the the nuts off a squirrel and let his voice drop to a low, menacing snarl. "Doctor, you're gonna want to take two generous steps back, or else you're gonna find yourself tossed out of that airlock."

Simon shut his trap and backed up more than the required two steps.

"Kaylee believes in you," said Inara. She was flushed and shaking, about as angry as he'd ever seen her. "She trusts you to protect her and you're just going to abandon her? That girl worships you and you--"

Something on Mal's face must have finally stopped her because she snapped her mouth shut, leaving the thought unfinished. Serenity shuddered around them as the engine pods rotated to propel the ship westward, away from Thermopolis.

"I'm the captain of this boat," said Mal, his voice coming out flat with barely-suppressed fury, "which means when push comes to shove I'm the one makes the hard decisions. We don't do this job, Serenity don't fly anymore. So we are doing this job and it's not up for debate in any gorram committees. Dǒng le ma?"

No one said anything to contradict him for a change. The way it oughta be. "Zoe, you're taking Serenity and making that pickup. Me and Jayne are going back for Kaylee in the shuttle."

The barest trace of a smile hovered at the corner of Zoe's mouth. "Yes, sir." Everyone else might doubt him, but Zoe knew him too well for that. Never leave a man behind. Or a sweet, helpless girl who couldn't hardly defend herself against an enthusiastic dumpling vendor.

"Can I ask, Captain," said Inara placing bitter emphasis on the last word, "exactly how you plan on finding her? Go door-to-door asking if anyone knows where the slavers live?"

Mal swung around to face her, eyebrows raised mockingly. "Think that'd work?"

"Probably best to start at the local whorehouses," piped up Jayne, earning himself eyerolls and groans from most everyone standing around him. "What? You're saying we shouldn't look for whores in a whorehouse?"

Zoe shook her head. "They'll wanna take the girls to work somewhere offworld, somewhere they've got no hope of escaping and getting back home."

Mal nodded thoughtfully. "Means they're holding 'em somewhere quiet and out-of-the-way until they're ready to pick up and transport 'em to their glamorous new life."

"What you need is a minnow in the water," said Zoe. "Sir, maybe I should--"

"You ain't exactly their type," said Mal. "They'll be looking for easy targets--weak, helpless. No offense, Zoe, but I don't imagine you know a lot about being vulnerable."

"I reckon that's true," said Zoe.

"You're talking about bait," said Inara.

Mal ignored her, kept his attention fixed on Zoe. "Anyways, I need you with Serenity, making sure that job gets done and we get paid. That getting paid part's important."

"I'll do it," said Inara. "I can be a minnow."

"No," said Mal flatly.

Her eyes flashed in challenge. "Why? Because I'm not helpless enough or because I'm too helpless?"

"It's too dangerous, Inara. They already got Kaylee, I'm not handing you over to them, too."

"I can handle it. I only have to play along until they take me to wherever they're keeping the girls, right? Then you and Jayne can rush to my rescue like a couple of knights in dingy battered armor."

Mal crossed his arms stubbornly. "They won't go for it, they'll make you for a fine lady straight away."

"You let me take care of that."

"I don't like it." Somehow he sensed that he'd already lost, and wondered how and when that had happened.

"Do you have a better idea?" said Inara.

He thought about it. "That knocking on doors plan didn't sound so bad."

She looked at him with those doe-soft eyes of hers, the ones that were liable to make him melt into his boots if he wasn't careful. "Kaylee's in trouble, Mal. Whatever the danger, it's worth it."

And he couldn't think of a damn thing to say to that.

Kaylee was jostled around in the container for what seemed like an hour but was probably closer to half that. She tried to listen to the sounds of the city around her, to figure out where she was, but it was no use. Then she got a big whiff of engine exhaust and realized they'd brought her to one of Thermopolis' many space docks.

She started to panic all over again at the thought of being stowed on a ship and whisked off to Lord-knows-where without anyone being the wiser. What was she thinking sending Jayne off like that? Oh, the captain's gonna be so mad at me. She struggled against the lid with all her might and when that didn't work she tried throwing her weight against different sides of the container, trying to knock it out of the grip of whoever was hauling her around. That didn't work either, though, and then she heard the sound of a ship's hatch opening and closing and boots clomping on deckplates, and she knew she was well and truly cooked.

A minute later she felt the basket start to tilt and she was dumped out on the floor, about as graceful as a cow on a water slide. The sudden light blinded her and she blinked, trying to clear her vision.

She looked to be in the officer's quarters of a mid-sized transport. One of the late-model Monroe ships, maybe an AC-series, with a lot of aftermarket modifications.

It was only after she'd identified the ship that she noticed the folks in the room with her. Two mean-looking goon types--probably the lugs who'd snatched and carried her here--and a plump, middle-aged woman with gray-streaked black hair that was pulled into a loose bun.

The woman was peering down at Kaylee and smiled when she saw Kaylee looking back. "You're a pretty thing, aren't you?" She gestured impatiently at the goon on the left. "Don't just stand there, get that awful tape off her face and unbind her."

The cord around her wrists was cut and the tape on her mouth ruthlessly ripped away, taking a little bit of skin with it. "Ow!" Kaylee pressed her hand against her mouth.

"I am sorry about that," said the woman kindly. "Nasty business, but it's all right, honey, you're safe now." Her words were nice enough, but something in her manner whispered the lie of them.

"I need to get back," said Kaylee, pulling herself to her feet. "I got people waiting on me."

She thought she saw a flicker of irritation flit across the woman's face but it was gone as quickly as it appeared. "What's your name, sweetheart?"

"Kaylee."

"Kaylee. That's a pretty name. My name's Hope."

"The captain will come looking for me, you know."

"I wouldn't worry about your captain. Why, I'll bet he's forgotten all about you by now."

"He wouldn't never do that!"

"Oh, now you're upset. It's not good for a girl your age to worry so much. Frown lines, you know. Lucky for you I've got just the thing to cheer you up." She picked up a crystal bowl full of fresh fruit--apples and melons and strawberries and some things so fine Kaylee didn't even recognize them--and held it out. "Go on, dear, take one. Goodness, take more than one, you look hungry. Are you hungry, sweetie?"

Kaylee stubbornly shook her head, though in point of fact she was starving, and after eating nothing but molded protein for weeks the smell of those strawberries was like to make her faint.

"Suit yourself." Hope set the bowl down again. "Things are going to be different from now on, Kaylee, so you just forget all about that mean old captain. I want you to think of me as your mama from now on. We're going to have a fine time together, you and me and the other girls. You'll see."

Kaylee thought she might have an idea as to what that meant, and it filled her up with fear. "Please, I need to go home."

The woman smiled a cold, bland smile that didn't make it all the way to her eyes. "Kaylee, sweetie, you are home."

Mal stood outside the hatch to Shepherd Book's quarters, wondering if he had gone a little soft in the head. Hell, he thought, couldn't hurt, could it? He raised his hand and knocked. A moment later Book opened the door.

"Captain," he said, looking surprised, but trying to mask it.

"I heard you were looking after River," said Mal.

Book nodded. "She was rather upset, before, but she seems to have calmed down somewhat."

"She up for a visitor?"

"I don't see why not." Book stood aside, implicitly inviting Mal to enter. He could tell by the shepherd's expression that he didn't quite trust him around the girl, though. Mal tried not to take offense, though it rankled him.

River was sitting cross-legged on the shepherd's bunk, playing with a deck of cards, turning them face-up one by one.

"Hey there, little one," said Mal, as gently as he could.

River's eyes flicked over to him, then back to the cards. "King of kites."

"You like cards?" said Mal.

"Seven of plums," said River, laying the card down on the mattress.

"Sure is," said Mal. "Inara thinks you might know something about Kaylee. That right?"

River looked up at him with those creepifying eyes of hers that always seemed to see right through him. It took all his will not to look away. "Queen of hearts," she said, laying down another card.

This was an unholy waste of time. He'd figured it would be, but at least he'd given it a shot. He turned to go.

"Hope," said River.

Mal turned around. "What?"

"Hope's got Kaylee."

"I don't know what that means." He looked over at Book, but the preacher was obviously just as mystified as Mal. "Is Kaylee all right? Is she... alive still?" It cost him to ask that last part, to give voice to the fear that'd plagued him from the minute he'd heard Kaylee'd gone missing.

"She's alive." River closed her eyes and smiled. "Strawberries are her favorite."

Mal didn't know what to make of that, but pressed on. "Do you know where she is? Can you tell me where to look, where to find Kaylee?"

River turned over another card. Smiled. "Deuce of hearts."

And she was back on the cards. Obviously he wasn't getting anything more useful out of the girl. He tried to take comfort in the fact that Kaylee was alive. He wanted to believe River was right about that part, anyway.

Mal bid goodbye to the shepherd and made his way up to the bridge in search of Zoe and Wash.

He could hear their bickering halfway down the foredeck passage. They shut up as soon as they caught sight of him, though, sparing him the chore of having to find out what it was about.

"Everything set?" he said.

"We'll be at the rendezvous in an hour," said Wash. "Fuel reserves should get us from there to Despina and back if we don't burn too hot."

Mal picked up the jury-rigged transmitter sitting on the console. "This it?"

Wash nodded. "Got it wired into the shuttle's data reader like you asked."

Mal pocketed the transmitter and looked at Zoe. "From what I hear, Ham Kennet's a straight-shooter. Deliver the goods intact, get paid what's agreed on. If luck's on our side it'll be just that simple."

Zoe raised her eyebrows at him ever-so-slightly. "Luck ever been on our side before, sir?"

Mal smiled ruefully. "Not as such, but I hear there's a first time for everything."

"Yes, sir."

He had a sense Zoe wanted to say more; he could always tell. "Got something to say?"

"Don't feel right, splitting our manpower like this. You sure you and Jayne can handle it just the two of you?"

He caught Wash throwing an eyeroll that the man never would have dared in front of Zoe a couple months ago.

"Have to," said Mal. He looked from Zoe to Wash and back again. The tension between them was thick enough to choke a horse. "There a problem I don't know about?"

"No, sir," said Zoe quickly.

Wash opened his mouth to say something and Zoe gave him a look a look that would raise a blister on boot leather. Something hard came over Wash's face at that look, but he shook it off and met Mal's gaze with a glassy smile. "No problem at all, Captain. Everything's peachier than a... thing with a lot of peaches in it."

"Good," said Mal. "Keep it that way."

Inara stared at herself in the mirror, checking to make sure the effect was complete. She'd borrowed some of Kaylee's clothes-- a pair of worn sandals and an ill-fitting floral cotton dress that was fraying at the hems and stained with engine grease. Her usually shining hair now hung limp and dull, knotted carelessly at the base of her neck, and her face was smudged with dirt rather than makeup. The varnish had been scrubbed from her finger and toenails and the expensive scented oils and perfumes washed from her skin. She practiced several expressions, posing carefully until the face in the mirror reflected poverty and desperation. Perfect.

She stepped out of her shuttle and found Mal, Zoe and Jayne at the other end of the catwalk, prepping the other shuttle. When she approached they all went silent and still, taking in the new Inara.

"Well, I'll be," said Zoe, the first to speak.

Inara smiled. "Do I look appropriately helpless, then?"

"I'll say," said Jayne, scratching his head. "They'll be on you like a pack of dogs on a three-legged cat."

"Shut it, Jayne," snapped Mal. "You and Zoe go get the last of those storage bins stowed in the crawlspace."

Zoe gave Inara a smile and a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder as she passed.

"Do I look all right?" she asked Mal when they'd gone.

"Well enough," he said gruffly. He reached in his pocket and fished out a small metal capsule about a third the size of grape. "Wash fixed this up for you. We'll be able to track you with it."

Inara took the transmitter, turning it over in her hand.

"'Fraid you'll have to swallow it," said Mal. "There's nowhere on your--uh--person we can be sure it'll be... safe."

The implications of that hung in the air between them. He was afraid for her, Inara knew, and trying desperately not to let it show. It actually helped, knowing that. Being brave for his sake make it easier for her ignore her own fears.

"You don't have to do this," he said.

She forced a smile. "Yes I do."

He shook his head. "The people on this ship are my responsibility. That's my burden to carry and in exchange I get the privilege of ordering everyone around. But you--Inara, I'll find another way to get Kaylee back."

She popped the transmitter in her mouth and swallowed it before he could say anything else. It tasted metallic and oily and burned all the way down her throat. "Okay, maybe I should have swallowed that with water."

She braced herself for the inevitable unseemly joke, a crude reference to her professional aptitude for swallowing things.

Mal didn't say anything, though, just reached into the shuttle, came out with a canteen and unscrewed the lid for her. Her knight in dingy, battered armor. The water tasted like plastic, but it soothed some of the burning in her throat.

"We won't be able to shadow you too closely, or else we'll scare 'em away. But we'll be able to find you, all the same."

"Mal," she said uncertainly. "Do you think Kaylee's... all right?"

"River says she is."

That surprised her, that he'd talked to River. It made her feel better, too, to know that Kaylee was still alive. She believed it, if River said it was so. She couldn't not believe in the things that River seemed to know.

Mal reached out, rather tentatively, and laid a hand on her shoulder, right at the curve of her neck. The gentle pressure was comforting, and Inara felt some of the tension she'd been carrying wash away. His thumb traced the hollow of her collarbone and she found herself leaning into him, as though gravity were pulling her toward the reassuring solidness of him.

No. It was too much, too close. She stiffened, breaking the spell.

Mal took his hand away and cleared his throat. "Kaylee's quick and clever. She'll know to keep her head down, not start any trouble or draw undue attention to herself."

He was trying to be reassuring, but to Inara it sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as her.

She forced another smile, and tried to look brave.

Kaylee had never gotten on much with other girls. Most of 'em just seemed so useless. Sure, she liked a fancy dress or a handsome young man as much as the next girl, but she also liked trace compression blocks, and well-stocked toolboxes, and thrilling adventures.

So it was just her luck that she'd been taken to another chamber in the ship and locked up with six other girls. As prisons went it wasn't too bad--in fact it was a whole heck of a lot nicer than her quarters on Serenity. There were eight bunks lined up along the walls and a table laid out with all kinds of delicious-looking foods just sitting there waiting to be eaten. Kaylee tried not to look at the food.

She'd already searched the whole damn place and concluded that there was no way out that she could figure. Spaceships were about as secure as anything and this one was especially tight--no loose panels or screws anywhere that she could find. And whoever'd fixed it up had done a bang up job of it, too, completely rewiring the hatch controls so they were inaccessible from inside the room. Not that she had any tools to work with anyway. If she had, well, it'd be a whole different story then, for sure.

"We have to figger a way out of here," she said.

The girls all stared at her blankly, as if she'd just suggested they take off their drawers and wear them on their heads.

"What are you doing?" said Kaylee, snatching a cookie out of the hands of a red-haired girl.

"Hey, that's mine!" said the girl.

"You can't eat their food!"

"Why not?"

"Because they're bad people and that's bad food. They're just tryin' to tempt you."

"Maybe I don't mind being tempted," said the girl, snatching back the cookie.

"How come you're all just standing around like we're at some kind of church social?" Kaylee said, looking around at the other girls. "They kidnapped us! Grabbed us off the street and dragged us here against our will."

"Miss Hope's not so bad," said one of the girls. "She's nice. Gave me this pretty dress to wear and all this fancy food. She promised to take care of us."

"She's a deceiver," said Kaylee. "A low-down dirty deceiver."

"She's nicer than my folks," said another girl. "Miss Hope says she's gonna make me into a lady, nice and proper."

"Yeah, I'll bet. Don't you know what that means?" said Kaylee. "What they're gonna do to us?"

"What?" said a scared-looking blond girl who couldn't have been a day over 16. "What does it mean?"

"It means they're gonna turn us into whores!"

"So what?" said the girl with the cookie. "My pa was gonna marry me off to Stump Magillicutty, I don't see how this is any worse. If I'm gonna share the bed of a man I don't like, at least I ought to have nice things."

"Didn't you hear me? Whores!" Kaylee's voice rose with frustration. "I'm not gonna let 'em make me into a whore."

The blond girl started crying and some of the others tried to shush her up. "Be quiet," one of the girls hissed. "You're gonna get in trouble like Wei-An."

Kaylee's eyes fell on a pretty dark-haired girl sitting on one of the bunks with her knees pulled up against her chest. She was rocking slowly back and forth in a way that made Kaylee think of River. There were angry, purple bruises up and down her arms and legs.

The hatch slid open and a guard stepped in. "What's going on in here? Who's making a ruckus?"

Cookie girl pointed an accusatory finger at Kaylee. "She did it. She was trying to scare us and talking about escapin'! She's fermentin' dissent!"

The guard grabbed Kaylee painfully by the arm. She thought about struggling, but one look at the nightstick gripped in the guard's other hand made her think better of it.

"Come on," he said as he pushed her roughly through the door. "Miss Hope's gonna teach you a lesson."

The shuttle rocked and swayed under Mal's not-so-expert guidance. It had been like this the whole flight back to Thermopolis.

Jayne had finally gone into the back and silently strapped himself in with the shuttle's safety harnesses. He sat there, jaw clenched, rigid as a corpse.

Inara gripped the seat back to steady herself against the turbulence. "Honestly, Mal, you should have let me fly."

"I'm not completely incompetent," he snapped. "I can pilot a gorram shuttle, it's not my fault the atmo's full of air pockets."

The shuttle was taken by a fresh bout of shaking and several sensors began flashing and beeping excitedly. "Okay, it's possible I'm the littlest bit incompetent," he said.

"Would it help if I got out and pushed?" Inara asked dryly.

"It might!"

"For God's sake, turn up the inertial reductors." She leaned across him to adjust the lever on the console just as the shuttle gave a great lurch. It caught her off-balance and she went tumbling into Mal's lap. He grabbed her to keep her from sliding to the floor, then gave her a sly grin.

"You did that on purpose," she said, primly standing herself upright again.

"Truth be told, I wouldn't know how," said Mal.

They managed to dock in Thermopolis without shaking themselves to pieces or crashing into anything important and Jayne set about readying the arsenal of weapons he'd brought along for the rescue mission.

Inara opened the hatch and stepped out into the city. She watched the people around her busily going about their business under the cold, gray sky and wished she'd thought to bring one of Kaylee's jackets.

"Ready?" said Mal, coming up behind her.

She hadn't heard him approach and started a little. Not a good beginning.

"Inara--"

"I'm fine," she said quickly. A little too quickly. Pull it together, you can do better than this.

Jayne was already locking up the shuttle behind Mal. Showtime.

"You won't see me," said Mal, "but I'll be right behind you all the same. You hear me? Right behind you. I'll get you out of there before--"

"I know," said Inara.

"You've got my word."

It meant everything to him, his word. It was one of the things she'd admired about him from the beginning. He wouldn't let her down. She knew that as surely as she knew her own name.

"Mal--" she said, and then stopped, afraid she'd betrayed too much, the way she'd said it. She laid her hand on his chest--

--and pushed him gently away. "Go."

She smiled one last time and walked into the crowded city.

...continued in ACT III...

Zoe had never taken much to animals. Born and raised in the black on a series of cargo ships, she'd never had much experience of them growing up. They'd hauled livestock on Serenity before, of course, and other than the smell and the noise it hadn't been so bad, but then the captain had been around all those times to see to things, with all the experience of his rancher upbringing.

Now, Zoe watched in dismay as Budge Zabriskie's men loaded the "livestock" into Serenity's hold. Wash, Simon and Book watched with her, their expressions pretty much matching the revulsion she felt. River's expression, on the other hand, was something closer to childlike fascination.

Budge noticed their looks and grinned. "Smell bad enough to stink a dog off a gut wagon, don't they?" He was a great whale of a man, all red-faced and sweating even though it was a cold day and he hadn't lifted a finger to exert himself. "Some folk call 'em stink bears."

Stink was right. They reeked like skunks and already the smell was making Zoe's eyes water.

"But they're wolverines," said Wash.

"Ayuh," said Budge cheerfully.

"But... wolverines," Wash repeated, gesturing helplessly at the wooden crates.

"Someone's actually going to breed wolverines?" said Simon.

"Fur's about as warm and waterproof as you could ask for," said Budge. "Leastways, that's what I hear. Wouldn't wanna get close enough to check, myself."

"No," said Shepherd Book. "I don't imagine you would."

Each of the two dozen wooden crates rattled and bounced as if it contained a tiny tornado. A terrible cacophony of snarling and growling and shaking and clawing emanated from the boxes, filling the cargo bay with a deafening racket.

"Those crates are secure, right?" said Simon. "They're not going to come open or anything?"

"Safe as houses," Budge assured them. He thrust a ledger book at Zoe. "Sign here."

"They smell really bad," said Wash after Budge and his men had gone. "I mean really bad. Not just a little bad, like a leaky septic tank or a bloated corpse, but really bad."

"We get it," said Zoe irritably. "They smell."

Wash opened his mouth like he was going to say something, then snapped it shut and stalked over to the airlock controls.

"River, don't get too close," said Simon. The girl was sitting on the floor in front of one of one of the crates, her head tilted sideways, studying the vicious creature inside.

"They're so loud," she said.

"They are that," Simon agreed.

"All instincts and urges and desires. They need. It drowns out everything else, so loud it's quiet." She looked strangely content in the midst of all the stink and noise.

Zoe bent down for a closer look at the animals. "Don't like their eyes. All red and beady with those slanty pupils. It's not right."

"Like the burning embers of Hell," said Simon.

"I don't know," said Book. "There's a certain beauty to them. They might even be considered cute, if you overlook the teeth. Like tiny little bears."

"Oh, yeah," said Wash. "They're cute, fluffy balls of demonic fury. I'm sure if you let one of 'em out it'd just lay down in your lap, sweet as anything, and gnaw quietly on your thighbone." He shot Zoe one last unhappy look before heading up to the bridge.

Jayne squinted up at the curdled sky and tried not to think about Kaylee and how long it'd been since she got snatched. He and Mal had been following Inara around for a couple hours now, keeping a goodly distance between them, but not letting her get out of eyeball range. He had several guns strapped on under his jacket and Vera hidden in a duffel on his back. A promiscuous display of firearms in the middle of town was liable to attract attention and Vera did tend to turn heads.

He was itching to shoot someone, or to hit someone, but he was starting to wonder if this whole plan was going to work at all. Those slavers had already gotten themselves one girl today, maybe they'd lay low for a while before striking again. Or maybe they'd met their quota with Kaylee and were already halfway across the quadrant by now. He figured there was a pretty good chance they'd treat her okay for the first little while--didn't like to think about what came after that, though.

Jayne was fonder of Kaylee than he'd willingly own up to. The girl kinda reminded him of a dog his ma'd had around the house. Damned annoying yappy little thing, but sometimes it was nice just to have someone around who was actually glad to see him.

Inara had paused in front of a shop window and was pretending to look at the bent pots and pans displayed there. She looked different with the paint all scrubbed off her face, wearing one of Kaylee's short little dresses. Younger and... prettier somehow. More like a girl Jayne might have had a chance with.

He spat on the ground, ignoring the dirty look from the shopkeeper whose doorstep he'd sullied. "She's got real nice legs, don't she?"

"What?" said Mal distractedly.

"'Nara. She's got a fine pair a legs."

Mal scowled at him. "Quit staring at her legs."

"We're supposed to be watching her, ain't we? I mean, isn't that the whole damn point?"

"That what you were looking at when Kaylee got snatched? A fine pair of legs?"

Some of the fire went out of Jayne's belly. He wanted to say something, but didn't know exactly what. "Listen, Mal, about that... Kaylee, she's... well..." He rubbed the back of his head while he struggled with the words. "I just... I feel real bad, is all. You don't even know."

For the first time all day Mal looked at Jayne like he wasn't something that needed to be scraped off his boot. "I got a pretty good idea."

Jayne checked the spot where Inara had been just a second ago and felt himself go cold. "Where'd she go?"

Mal snapped back to attention. "What?"

Jayne studied the display on the data reader. "She's heading away from us. North-northeast about 200 meters. " She should have been plainly visible if the transmitter was reading right.

"She ain't there, Jayne."

"She is, says so right on the thing." Mal grabbed it away from him, as if he could somehow read it better himself.

Jayne scanned the street with his keen sniper's eyes. The light was starting to fall out of the day and it was a busy area, but not so crowded they shouldn't have been able to spot her pretty easy. He caught a glimpse of a bright green rain barrel being carried by two men, just before it turned a corner and disappeared out of sight.

"She changed direction," said Mal. "West-southwest, 250 meters."

"Come on," said Jayne, pushing his way into the crowd. "I know where she went."

Wash stared out the cockpit window, lost in the black. Not the blackness of space--he knew precisely where Serenity was and where she was headed--but the blackness that had crawled up inside of him and nested there.

He was mad. And he was pretty sure it was Zoe he was mad at, although there was a small part of him that suspected he was maybe mad at himself a little bit, too. Thing was, he couldn't rightly recall what exactly he was mad about anymore. Zoe'd done something, or said something, or maybe it was something she hadn't said or done. Didn't matter, because a quiet had fallen between them, and he didn't know how to get rid of it.

Zoe had always been on the quiet side. Not like him--he was always trying to fill up all the silences around him with words. Zoe was a woman of actions, not words; she spoke to him with the playful swish of her hips, the smiles that lingered at the corner of her mouth, the way her eyes would follow him around a room.

Not anymore. She was cold and rigid around him now, and her eyes didn't follow him anywhere. It was a hurtful kind of quiet that lay between them and it... well, it hurt. Honestly, he was tired of being mad. He wished he knew how to go back and undo it.

"Wash." Zoe's voice behind him nearly startled him out of his chair.

He recovered his composure and turned to look at her, eyebrows raised slightly.

"How long 'til we hit Despina?" She spoke with the tone of grim detachment she'd fallen to using with him lately whenever ship's business forced them to interact.

He checked the console. "One hour and twenty-three minutes."

"I want you wearing a sidearm when we meet Kennet."

"Okay. Sure." He'd never heard of wolverine smugglers being particularly cutthroat or dangerous before, but then again he'd never actually heard of wolverine smugglers before. And with Mal and Jayne both gone after Kaylee...

Zoe turned to go, her business with him apparently concluded.

"Zoe."

She paused in the hatchway, but didn't turn around.

He wanted to go to her and put his arms around her, hold her tight and bury his face in her hair. But he knew instinctively that if he tried, she'd pull away, and he wouldn't be able to bear that.

"You--uh--you think they're gonna be able to get Kaylee back?" he said. Because that was the other thing that had been gnawing at him. The thought of what might happen to Kaylee; what might have already happened.

Zoe turned to look at him, and something in her face softened just a little. "Hope so."

It was the best conversation they'd had in days. Wash watched her walk away down the foredeck passage, missing the playful sway of her hips so badly it hurt.

Kaylee sat in an uncomfortable wooden chair in an empty storage cabin, flanked by two of Hope's goons. She was pretty sure that if it'd been the captain in her place, or Zoe or Jayne, they'd already have some sort of amazing escape plan worked out. She wasn't them, though. She was just Kaylee, and she was scared.

For the first little while she'd been staring at the floor, at a funny-looking spot near her feet. Kinda reddish. Like blood, she'd realized. After that she kept her eyes off the floor.

Eventually the hatch slid open and Hope came in. She was carrying a long cardboard box wrapped in a pink satin bow, which she set down on a stool by the door.

"Kaylee, Kaylee, Kaylee," she said, shaking her head sadly. "I'm just so disappointed, sweetie. A genteel and quiet deportment is the characteristic of a well-bred person, you know, and we just can't have you rousing rabble among the girls."

"Please," said Kaylee. "Please let me go. I won't tell anyone, I just want to go home. I'm not the kind of girl you want."

"You know what I think?" said Hope. "I think you'd look just lovely with your hair up. It'd show off your neck to such pretty effect. You ever wear your hair up?"

Kaylee didn't say anything.

"No?" Hope continued as if Kaylee had answered. "Well, it's something to think about. I've got very high hopes for you. You're a beautiful, bright girl with her whole life ahead of her and I simply won't tolerate sulking among my girls. But don't worry, I'm not ready to give up on you, yet."

Hope fetched the box and set it down on Kaylee's lap. "For you," she said. "Go on, open it."

Kaylee's hands shook as she untied the bow. Inside the box was an aquamarine brocade dress. It was like something Inara would wear, finer by far than anything Kaylee had ever owned, nor even hoped to.

"I'll bet pink is probably your favorite color," said Hope, taking the dress out of the box and holding it up so Kaylee could admire it. "But I confess I've been dying to see you in blue. Don't you want to try it on?"

Kaylee bit her lip and shook her head.

"Now, Kaylee, a lady always accepts gifts with grace and civility."

"I won't do it," said Kaylee. Her heart was pounding fair to burst, but she managed to muster her courage anyway. "I don't want your stupid presents! You can't just dress me up in fancy clothes and make me into one of your doxies."

Hope sighed and placed the dress neatly back in the box. "This is very unfortunate. I'm afraid you're going to have a bumpy road ahead, dear, if you can't see your way to being more cooperative."

She nodded at the guards, who grabbed Kaylee's arms, forced them behind her back and tied them to the chair behind her. Kaylee thought about the bruises on Wei-An and began, very quietly, to panic.

"If you only gave me a chance, you'd find that I'm a very generous woman," said Hope. "But I don't like to be crossed."

She smiled a wrong kind of smile that filled Kaylee's heart with icy fear.

One of the guards backhanded Kaylee across the face. The shock of it was almost greater than the pain, at first. Kaylee'd never been hit before--not for real like this. She could taste blood in her mouth.

"There are rules, after all, and they must be followed," said Hope.

The guard raised his nightstick and hit Kaylee again, on the arm this time, and she cried out. She hadn't meant to cry out, but when the pain hit her she couldn't help it.

"As long as my girls keep me happy, I keep them happy. Isn't that a nice little system? It works very well. But right now, I'm not happy."

This time the nightstick hit Kaylee full in the gut. She couldn't even double over with her arms tied behind her and the pain was so bad she thought she might pass out. She wished she'd pass out.

It hurt worse than the time she'd been shot, but maybe that was because she couldn't really remember anything about getting shot. She remembered the pain after, but that had been a dull, throbbing sort of pain, not a sharp, dizzying pain like this. Thinking about that made her think of Simon, and how he'd take care of her if he was here, but he wasn't here and she'd probably never see him again, and she started to really cry then.

She didn't want to cry, she wanted to be strong like the captain would want her to be, but she couldn't help it. She was just Kaylee and she was scared and all alone.

It was coming on towards evening and the light was failing as Mal quickened his steps, trying to keep up with the elusive rain barrel and its two bearers. They'd turned another corner and momentarily slipped out of his sights, though. Not good, because they were right near the docks, now, which meant--

"Signal's gone," said Jayne, who was watching the data reader again. "Just plumb disappeared."

They tore around the corner and found themselves staring down a long line of ships parked at the Dunmire Docks. The facilities here were nicer than the Red Key Docks where they usually set down Serenity--and much larger. Nearly two dozen ships in just this one slip alone and Inara could be on any one of them.

"Musta took her on one of them ships," said Jayne. "Transmitter can't send a signal through another ship's hull."

"I know that," Mal snapped. If anything happened to Inara--anything at all--he didn't think he'd be able to live with it. Bad enough Kaylee was in trouble, but he'd gotten Inara into this mess. She'd put herself on the line, trusting him to get her out of this, and by God, he wasn't going to let her down.

Mal turned his attention to the four ships closest to where the signal had disappeared, figuring she was most likely to be on one of those. The first was a small Wren Class container ship. Not a likely place to stash a half dozen girls. Beside it was an old Zhejiang surveyor, which was maybe a possibility, and next to that was a mid-sized private transport that--

He noticed the name of the ship and fought off a cold shiver. It was the Deuce of Hearts.

I'll be damned. They'd called her a witch back on Jiangyin, but he hadn't really believed it. Not really.

"They're on that one," said Mal, pointing.

"How d'you know?"

"Because I do."

Jayne gave him a funny look but didn't question. "Alright."

Mal studied the situation. The Deuce was bigger than Serenity--probably carried a crew of at least eight or ten, plus room for maybe another dozen in the passenger dorms. She was closed up nice and tight, the forward hatch guarded on the outside by two mercenary-looking types. You had to figure there were at least six, maybe even as many as a dozen men in there, most of them likely armed. Versus him and Jayne. Yeah, this was going be interesting.

"So, let's have it," said Jayne.

"What?"

"Your cunning strategy. You got a cunning strategy, ain't ya?"

"Sure I do," said Mal, trying to sound like he meant it.

"What is it?"

"Gimme a minute, I ain't thought of it, yet."

Mal looked around, sizing up the landscape of the situation, waiting for inspiration to strike. And then it did.

Shepherd Book stepped out into the cargo bay and winced as the stink of the wolverines hit him full in the face. They truly did smell awful. Still, he found something fascinating about them. There was beauty to be found in all the beasts of the field, if you only looked hard enough. In the case of Jayne Cobb, he was still looking, but he was confident it was there to be found, if only a man were patient enough.

Zoe was over at the ammo lockers with her back to him, loading cartridges into the lever-action rifle she carried. She'd been somewhat edgy and out of sorts of late, and Book considered turning around and heading back into the passenger dorm, leaving her to her peace. But though he didn't like to be intrusive, neither was it his way to walk away from a soul in pain if there was something he could offer in the way of help.

So he approached her, making sure to let his footfalls be heard, even over the din of the wolverines rattling and snarling in their cages. "Anticipating trouble?"

"Always," said Zoe. "Then I get to be pleasantly surprised if it don't come around."

"Expect the worst but hope for the best?"

"Something like that."

Book leaned against one of the lockers. "Awfully quiet on the ship with the others away."

Zoe cocked her head in the direction of the wolverines. "Call this quiet, do you?"

"Perhaps quiet wasn't the best word choice. Lonely, more like."

She nodded. "Serenity does seem emptier without Kaylee about to brighten the place up. But don't you worry, the captain'll have her back here before you know it."

"I have no doubt of that," said Book. He hesitated, wondering if perhaps he should just leave well enough alone. Something told him Zoe wasn't likely to thank him for the intrusion.

She glanced over at him. "You got something to say, Preacher?"

Taking that as a sign, Book resolved to broach the subject. "I can't pretend not to have noticed the troubles you and Wash have been having, lately."

She froze, hand still poised over the box of cartridges. "That so?"

He pressed on, despite the hostility he read in her face. "A very wise man once told me that success in marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person. Of course, I can't claim first-hand knowledge myself, or pretend to understand what it's like--"

"No, you can't," said Zoe coldly.

Book hadn't expected her to be particularly receptive to his counsel, but he suspected perhaps he should have followed his first instinct and left well enough alone. But before he could form an apology they were interrupted by the sound of someone bouncing down the steps from the catwalk above. Book glanced up and saw Wash making his way toward them. When he looked back at Zoe the anger had fled from her face, replaced a mask of cool impassivity.

"I'm not sure I did this right," said Wash, gesturing helplessly at the holster at his hip.

Zoe wordlessly loosened the strap on Wash's gun belt and yanked it down so that the rig hung lower on his hip. Book discretely wandered over to the wolverine cages, giving the couple some space.

"So, uh, we'll be at the drop-off in twenty minutes," he heard Wash say. "Looks like we might just pull this job off without any hitches."

"You really think it's a good idea to be tempting fate right now?" said Zoe.

Book moved farther away from them, around to the far side of the wolverines.

He stopped, his attention caught by the one crate that wasn't vibrating and trembling with the fury of the beast within. The nails had pulled out in one corner and the lid gapped just wide enough for a small animal to escape.

"Excuse me," he called out to Zoe and Wash. "I think we may have a small problem."

Inara didn't resist when she was manhandled by the two guards and thrust into a compartment on the ship with the other girls. She was enraged on the inside, of course, but she kept her expression studiously meek and mild. The hatch slammed shut behind her and she looked around at the faces of the other prisoners. Six girls, but none of them Kaylee.

She felt a momentary jolt of fear. What if she'd been kidnapped by different slavers altogether? Or what if they'd already sent Kaylee off-world and out of reach?

"Don't be scared," said one of the girls. "They won't hurt you none, long as you behave."

"What are they going to do with us?" asked Inara.

Several of the girls exchanged uncomfortable looks. "Miss Hope's going to make us into fancy ladies," said one.

"Who's Miss Hope?"

"She's our new mama, and she's going to take care of us," said a red-headed girl confidently.

Inara's eyes fell on a girl huddled on one of the bunks in the room, her skin livid with bruises. Take care of us like that, you mean.

Inara walked around the cell, pausing by the buffet table, eyes wide. "I've never seen so much food before."

"It's all for us, if you can imagine!"

"Are there other girls here? Besides us, I mean?"

"Nope, just us, I think. Except for that troublemaker."

"Troublemaker?"

"She showed up this morning, started right off making a fuss. Miss Hope's having a talk with her now, but I guess she'll be back."

So Kaylee was here. And possibly in danger, from the sound of it. Inara fervently hoped that wherever Mal was, he was hurrying. In the meantime, perhaps there was something she could do to grease the wheels a little bit.

"How many guards are there outside the door?" asked Inara.

"Just the one, usually," said the red-haired girl. "Why?"

Inara smiled. This was going to be even easier than she thought.

River walked up the stairs slowly, moving to a secret rhythms that pulsed in her blood. Bare feet on metal, fingers trailing along the cold rail. Counting every step as she went. Two. Six. Twelve.

Twelve pairs hanging high, twelve knights riding by.

She was was being pulled by... something. A sense of overwhelming, desperate hunger. Not hers, though.

Around the corner and into the galley she crept. Quiet as mouse--don't scare it. She was big for a mouse, but quiet. Invisible, too. Eyes slid right over her, seeing only what they cared to see. She was just an echo, after all, not a real girl.

Thirty-eight teeth and twenty retractable claws. Scrabbling and tearing and biting to get into a packet of dried apricots. It could smell the food, couldn't get at it. Frustrating. Meat was what it wanted, but there was no meat here. Not for eating, anyway.

River thought it was beautiful, all teeth and claws and muscle. Dangerous and terrible and graceful. And yet so small and vulnerable. Scared, too. Like me. Strange place, strange smells. Everything confusing.

The voice whispered in her head, the one that spoke in facts she almost remembered learning once. The wolverine drives other animals away from its food by baring its teeth, raising the hair on its back, sticking up its bushy tail, and making a low growl.

Just like it was doing now. River smiled (baring her teeth) and growled back.

Jayne watched surreptitiously as Mal approached the two guards outside the Deuce carrying a large box of take-out containers in his off hand. They were all empty containers, of course--Mal and Jayne had fished them out of a dumpster--but you couldn't hardly tell just by looking. As plans went, Jayne wasn't overly impressed.

"This the boat ordered the Eight Treasure Duckling special?" said Mal, all friendly-like.

One of the guards stepped forward warily to talk to Mal, his hand hovering near the sidearm at his hip.

Once Jayne judged they were sufficiently distracted by Mal's yammering dumbass routine, he silently slipped into position behind them.

"So you're saying this ain't Slip E521?" said Mal. "Damn, I really am turned around. Either of you fellows kind enough to point me the right way?"

As the guard closest to Mal reached out an arm to point, Mal sucker punched the guy in the face. Before the other man could react, Jayne had knocked him over the back of the head with Vera's stock. He slumped to the ground, out cold, followed a few seconds later by Mal's man.

"That was fun," said Jayne as they dragged the guards out of sight behind the ship and tied them up with their own belts. "What comes next?"

"Yeah, um, it's not presently coming to mind."

"You ain't got a next step, do ya?"

"Not as such, no."

"Well, ain't that grand."

"Hang on. Okay, here it is. We rush in... and shoot at anyone that stands between us and the girls."

"Use the element of surprise to our advantage."

"Something like that." Mal drew his old service pistol. "Ready?"

Jayne grunted his assent.

Mal swiped the key card they'd pulled off one of the guards through the fancy card reader. The little light on the display turned from red to green and the lock on the hatch clicked. Mal pulled the hatch open and they plunged inside--

Right into the barrels of three guns that were being pointed at them by three more guards, waiting just inside the ship's hold.

"They don't exactly look surprised, do they?" said Mal, raising his hands up into the air.

"Great strategy," hissed Jayne. "Real cunning."

This is not scary, Wash told himself as he warily ascended the stairs to the foredeck passage. Reavers were scary. Alliance cruisers were scary. That fanged cartoon octopus in the fruity oaty bar commercial--that was scary. Fuzzy, raccoon-sized mammals were not scary.

Except they really were. Especially when there was one loose on the ship and it was entirely possible that the thing could jump out at him any second with all those teeth and claws and those beady red eyes.

A wolverine could take down a moose if it had a mind to. A moose! Wash had been doing some reading on the cortex since they'd brought the animals on board. Turned out the reason it was illegal to import them was because they pretty much devoured all the natural ecology in any environment they were transplanted to. Lovely critters.

And to make matters worse they were exactly twelve--make that eleven--minutes from the drop-off. Zoe had everyone on board searching the ship from top to bottom, but with half the crew gone and God knows how many hiding places on Serenity that something that size could squeeze into, Wash was not feeling especially optimistic.

"Grrrrrr."

Wash froze. Okay, that hadn't actually sounded like an animal growl. It had sounded more like--

River?

He stepped into the galley and found the girl crouched on the floor, staring at something in the pantry.

Then he heard another growl, and this one definitely came from an animal.

Wash edged closer and saw the ravenous slavering creature that was busily tearing through what was left of their food rations.

"River," said Wash, moving slowly toward her. "Let's move away from the tiny ferocious monster, okay?"

"It's hungry," she said.

"Yes, I'm sure it is. We don't want it to eat you, though." He reached down and pulled her away from the wolverine. Then he shut the hatch to the foredeck and dragged River out into the aft passage. He shut that hatch too, trapping the wolverine in the galley.

He pushed the comm button. "The demented hell beast is in the kitchen," he announced to the ship at large.

About 45 seconds later, Zoe was beside him, peering in the hatch window. "Where is it?"

She was all business now, the unflappable warrior women who'd first caught his eye. It was, Wash had to admit, incredibly hot.

"Food pantry," he said, trying to focus on the current emergency rather than his wife's attractively commanding presence. "What'll we do now?"

Zoe drew her rifle and levered a round into the chamber. "Only one thing to do."

"You don't think Kennet will mind if we kill one of his animals?"

She cocked her eyebrows at him. "You want to be the one to get it back in that crate?"

Wash thought about the teeth and the claws and the slavering. "Killing it is."

"No!" wailed River.

"Wait!" called Simon, hurrying up the stairs from the infirmary. He had a small medicine vial and hypodermic auto-injector in his hands.

"Doc, you really don't want to get close enough to dope that thing," said Zoe.

"It's just scared," said River, on the verge of tears. "It's not it's fault, it didn't ask to be made this way."

"It's all right, mèi mei," said Simon, loading the hypo. He looked back at Zoe. "If we don't deliver all twenty-four animals alive, we don't get all our money, right?"

Zoe nodded. "Best case scenario."

"And the worst?"

"Threats, violence, gunplay. The usual."

"I don't have to get close," said Simon, holding the hypo like a dart. "I just have to hit the bullseye."

Zoe shrugged. "Worth a shot, I guess."

Simon looked at River. "Stay here, okay? Keep the doors closed behind us and don't try to come in. Promise?"

River nodded. "Don't kill it."

"Not if we can help it."

They slid the hatch open quietly. Simon, Zoe and Wash slipped into the galley and crept toward the wolverine. It had given up on the food pantry and was now doing unspeakable things to various kitchen utensils.

"I'm feeling violated for the sake of the can opener," said Wash uncomfortably.

Simon raised the hypo and aimed it at the wolverine.

Zoe leaned over beside him for a better look. "You're good at darts, right, Doc?"

"Sure," said Simon, not actually sounding particularly sure. "I played when I was in medacad."

"And you were good?" said Zoe.

"I never played in any tournaments or anything, but I won a few free beers off my friends."

"I'm not overflowing with the confidence here," said Zoe.

"Do you mind?" said Simon. "I'm trying to concentrate. Unless you'd rather do it yourself."

Zoe held up her hands and backed away.

Simon raised the hypo, aimed, and threw. The needle struck the wolverine right in its furry backside and stuck there. The surprise attack and the indignity of the needle sticking out of its haunch became too much for the beast and it went into a kind of frenzy, whipping around in circles, trying to bite at the offending hypo.

"And now you've made it angry," said Wash. "Well played."

"Like it wasn't angry before," said Simon.

The wolverine finally succeeded in removing the needle from its haunch and turned its red beady eyes on the three humans.

"Holy mother of crap!" yelped Wash as the snarling whirlwind of teeth and fur charged straight for him, its sharp claws skittering for traction on the deck.

Wash fumbled with the gun at his side, trying to get it out of the holster and knowing he wasn't going to be fast enough.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Zoe launch herself into the dining table, knocking it onto its side and sending it flying straight into him. It knocked him off his feet and sent him crashing into the counter, but the table made a serviceable barrier between him and the angry wolverine.

Startled and confused by the noise and the falling table, the wolverine darted right, then left, then made straight for Zoe. She stood her ground and calmly raised her gun.

But before she got a round off the wolverine stopped dead in its tracks and dropped to the floor, eyes rolling back in its head. It lay there, snarling quietly to itself and twitching like a hophead tweaked on drops.

Wash breathed a sigh of relief and sank back onto the deck.

"Wash, baby, are you okay?" Zoe was at his side, holding his hand, her luminous eyes wide with worry.

This was an opportunity, Wash decided, that should be milked for all it was worth. He rubbed his leg where the table had hit him and moaned pitifully. "Ow, my leg."

Zoe narrowed her eyes at him. "You're fine, you big baby."

"You threw a table at me!"

"I was trying to save you."

"By throwing a table at me?"

"It worked, didn't it?" She smiled at him, and suddenly everything in the world felt like it was okay again.

He thought about kissing her, decided he was going to do it, and then the alarm warning him of the approach to Despina went off. Figures.

"That would be for me," he said, reluctantly and somewhat painfully pulling himself to his feet. "Pilot-type stuff to do."

He looked back at Zoe one more time, basking in the glorious radiance of her smile just a little bit more before limping to the bridge.

Inara smiled reassuringly at the red-haired girl named Leah. It hadn't actually taken much persuasion to convince the girls to go along with her plan. Apparently Kaylee had already gotten some of them pretty well worked up earlier, and it'd taken only minimal use of Inara's wiles to convince the others to follow her. Leah had been the most resistant initially, but Inara had finally enlisted her enthusiastic participation by giving her a starring role in the scheme.

At Inara's signal Leah closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let loose an ear-piercing scream. Then she dropped to floor and huddled in a ball, clutching her stomach. The other girls all backed away from her, fanning out around the perimeter of the room.

"What the hell's going on?" demanded the guard who threw open the hatch.

"I think she's sick or something," said the blond girl named Chloe.

The guard bent over Leah, who continued to writhe and moan loudly. While his attention was focused on the girl's antics, Inara deftly slipped the nightstick from his belt and cracked him over the back of the head with it.

Leah rolled herself out of the way just before the man crashed to the floor.

"I do alright?" she asked, standing up and brushing herself off.

"Perfect." Inara swiped the keycard from the guard's belt and unlocked the hatch. She threw a look over her shoulder at the girls. "Everyone ready to get out of here?"

They nodded back at her, looking scared, but determined.

"Drop your weapons," said the biggest of the goons leveling guns on Mal and Jayne. Two more men came into the hold behind him and spread out to cover them.

Mal's mind raced, trying to think of a way out, but when there's five guns trained on you there's not really a whole lot to be done about it.

"I said, drop 'em!" the number one goon barked.

Mal complied. The fellow struck him as being on the nervous side. Which might be good, because maybe there was a better chance they could get out of this if they were dealing with unseasoned muscle, but might be real bad if it meant the guy was gonna get twitchy and shoot them on accident before they had a chance to make their daring escape.

"I don't like to drop Vera," said Jayne carefully. "How 'bout if I just lower her slowly to the ground so's her scope don't get bent?"

"You think I'm playing around?" said the guard, starting to appear concerningly agitated.

"Jayne," hissed Mal. "Just drop the damn thing like the nice gentleman said."

"Nuh uh. They'll have to kill me 'fore I let Vera come to any harm by my own hand."

"That can be arranged," snarled the goon, though Mal was fairly certain the fellow had never actually shot anyone with the gun he was holding in increasingly shaky hands. He was probably just some street thug spent most of his time pushing around scared girls and never even had to use his gun before. The rest of the guards didn't look much better, either. Which meant he and Jayne could probably take 'em in a fair fight.

If only they could cook up some kind of distraction...

A shiny red apple fell out of the air and bounced off the deck just behind goon number one. Followed immediately by a veritable hailstorm of apples that rained down on the guards from the platform above.

"What the hell?" The guards momentarily let their attention waver from Jayne and Mal as they tried to duck away from the fruit projectiles.

Huh, thought Mal as he grabbed his gun and rolled for cover. That was easy.

Inara grabbed another apple and pitched it as hard and as far as she could from behind the cover of a supply crate. So far the guards hadn't seemed inclined to use their pistols against the girls. Presumably they'd been rather severely warned against damaging the merchandise.

Some of the girls had truly impressive throwing arms, she observed proudly, as an apple bounced off the head of a guard trying futilely to aim his gun at Mal.

Below them, Mal and Jayne were doing a pretty fair job of fighting off the guards on the floor of the cargo bay. Inara grabbed another apple and winced as the percussion of gunfire echoed through the hold.

A girl screamed to her left and Inara spun around. One of the guards had managed to get up the stairs and grab Chloe, and was dragging her back down into the hold. Inara charged after him, swinging the nightstick with all her strength and connecting with the back of his head with an arm-numbing crack. She made a grab for Chloe as the man holding her started to tumble down the stairs but the force of his fall dragged all three of them down in a jumbled heap at the foot of the stairs.

Inara sucked a painful breath into her lungs and pushed herself to her feet, nightstick still clutched in her fist. Before she'd even fully regained her balance, though, another guard had grabbed her from behind. He shoved her, hard, and she went careening into a stack of storage crates, bounced off of them and landed painfully on her shoulder.

The world went a brilliant white, and then dark, before her vision slowly began to telescope back to some semblance of normal. Inara rolled onto her back, gasping at the pain it caused, just in time to see a guard standing above her, nightstick raised. She cried out and tried to scramble away, but her left arm was all but useless and the pain screaming in her shoulder was threatening to black her out again.

There was another blast of gunfire, closer than the others, and a spot of bright red blossomed on the front of the man's shirt. The nightstick fell uselessly from his hand and he slumped to the floor.

Inara sagged back against the deck and tried not to pass out.

"Inara!" Mal rushed to her side, kicking aside the body of the gunshot guard.

"I'm okay," she said, squeezing his hand. She wasn't exactly okay, though. Just from what he could see she'd taken a good whack to the head and maybe broken a few ribs, too, the way she was favoring her left side. He cursed himself once again for letting her get involved in this mess.

Behind him, the fight had pretty much petered out, and Mal was content to leave it to Jayne to mop up while he saw to Inara.

"Apples?" he said, carefully helping her to sit up. "You had a bunch of girls attack armed men with apples?"

Inara smiled despite the pain she was obviously feeling. "It's what we had to hand."

There was no makeup on her face to enhance or mask her expression, no rich fabrics calculated to attract the eye, no fancy scents to cloud his senses. It was just Inara now, looking up at him, as natural and as lovely as Mal had ever seen her. Something stirred within him, and he became acutely aware of the nearness of her. Their faces were so close he could feel the soft touch of her breath on his mouth, count the dark lashes around her eyes--

Inara's face clouded and she tightened her grip on his arm. "Mal, you have to find Kaylee."

"She wasn't with you?"

"They took her to another part of the ship. I think they might be hurting her." She made a valiant but foolish attempt to get up.

Mal put a gentle but restraining hand on her waist, guiding her back to a sitting position. "I'll find her." He pressed a pistol he'd lifted off one of the guards into the hand of her good arm. "Stay here, don't try to move."

Jayne had been busy tying up the guards who were still breathing, with the assistance of some of the more level-headed girls. Seemed like he'd picked himself up something of a fan club, the way the girls were following him about and making moony-eyes at him.

Mal hauled the most coherent-looking guard to his feet and threw him up against the bulkhead. "Where's the other girl?" he demanded. "The one you took this morning?" He didn't have the time nor the inclination to go searching the whole damn ship for Kaylee.

The man glared sullenly at him, refusing to talk. He felt Jayne step up beside him.

Mal raised his gun and pressed the muzzle against the man's nose. "I never like killing a man--"

"I do," Jayne piped up, smiling broadly and waggling the big damn knife in his hand.

"--but he does," said Mal, jerking his head toward Jayne. "And he's got lots of interestin' ways of doing it, too."

"I know where she is," said a small voice behind them.

Mal threw a look over his shoulder. One of the girls had come forward--a pretty, dark-haired thing with a big ol' shiner and nasty-looking bruises down her arms and legs. He shoved the guard at Jayne and turned to face the girl. "They do that to you?"

She nodded. "Miss Hope and two of her men."

"That what they're doing to my friend Kaylee?"

Another nod.

"What's your name, darlin'?"

"Wei-An."

"Wei-An, you think you could show us where they took Kaylee?"

"Yes. It's at the top of the ship."

"Okay, then, let's go. Jayne--"

The merc was holding his knife to the guard's throat but at a quick shake of Mal's head settled for punching him with the haft instead. Much as Mal would have liked to see the fellow laid open from belly to breakfast for what they'd done, he didn't much like the idea of Jayne's little teenage fanclub watching it.

They followed the girl into the bowels of the Deuce, up two flights of steps and across a catwalk into the ship's loft area. Mal and Jayne kept a careful eye out, but they didn't run into any more company along the way. Even the bridge was empty.

"In there," she said, pointing to a hatch at the end of the passage.

"Good girl," said Mal. "Now you skedaddle back down to the hold and keep the other girls out of trouble."

"Are you gonna kill them?" she asked staring at the closed hatch.

Mal looked at her levelly. "Might do."

A hint of a smile quirked the corner of her mouth. "Good." She turned and ran off back down the steps.

"Long way away from the rest of the ship up here," said Jayne. "They probably never even heard the tussle down below."

"Maybe."

They positioned themselves on either side of the hatch and Mal knocked loudly with the butt of his gun. The hatch slid open and before the man who'd opened it knew what was happening, Jayne had yanked him out into the passage and heaved him headfirst into the bulkhead.

The other guard in the room was just starting to move toward the hatch, reaching for a sidearm that was still holstered when Mal stepped into the room, gun leveled. "I wouldn't," he said sharply, and the guard's hand froze. "Hands up on your head, if you don't mind."

There was a woman standing beside him, plump and motherly-looking, though she had a hard cast to her mouth. Beyond them he could see Kaylee, sitting in a chair with her hands pulled behind her, head slumped down on her chest. Her hair was hanging down over most of her face, but where the skin of her arms and legs showed it was marked by contusions that hadn't yet had a chance to darken. Mal felt his finger tighten on the trigger.

"Jayne," he said through gritted teeth. "Relieve our friend of his weapons."

Jayne started forward and then hesitated, his eyes falling on Kaylee. "Mal--"

"I know."

Jayne disarmed the guard with brisk efficiency and then hauled back and pistol-whipped him with his own gun. The man crashed limply to the deck, but Jayne hauled him up by his collar so he could hit him some more. Mal couldn't much blame him. Seeing what they'd done to Kaylee made him want to join in, but he had himself other things needed seeing to at the moment.

He turned his attention to the woman. "You'd be Hope, I'm guessing."

"I am. " She thrust her chin in the air, like she was accepting some kind of award instead of facing down a man aiming a pistol at her guts. "I take it you're here for one of my girls."

"My girl." He inclined his head in Kaylee's direction. "That one there, matter of fact."

"So take her. She's a nuisance anyway."

"She is that. Still, I'm not well pleased with the condition you're returning her in. There's gonna have to be a reckoning, you understand."

She cast an uneasy look at Jayne--still pounding her man into meatloaf--and backed up a step, clasping her hands nervously across her bosom. "Surely we can come to some sort of financial arrangement."

Almost too late, Mal saw her hand slip inside the frilly vest she was wearing. "Uh uh," he said as her fingers closed around a small gun-shaped bulge. "Don't think for a second I can't turn your insides to outsides before you even draw that little girlie gun."

She froze, eyes narrowed at him, trying to make up her mind whether to go for it or not. Mal had a sense he knew her type--couldn't ever believe she wasn't better and smarter than everyone else around her. He watched her patiently, waiting for the tell, never doubting it would come.

It did. The muscles in her hand twitched a half-second before she started to draw. He shot a hole in her middle before she even got the gun pointed in his direction.

He walked over to where she lay bleeding and gurgling on the floor and pocketed the small gun that had fallen out of her hand. Then he calmly raised his pistol and shot her once more, in the head. His momma had always told him, anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice.

Once he was sure the woman wasn't going to be getting up again, he holstered his gun and spared a glance at Jayne, still beating the living shit out of the other guard. Mal left him to it and sank to his knees at Kaylee's side.

The right side of her jaw was puffy and pink, her lip split open and bleeding. She flinched at his touch and her eyes flew open but they were glassy and unfocused, like she didn't even see him.

Kaylee Kaylee Kaylee. His heart thudded in his chest as he sliced the cord at her wrists and pulled her gently into his arms. He hadn't gotten to her fast enough. He'd taken too gorram long finding her and look what had happened. They'd beaten his bright girl.

She blinked a couple of times and then finally seemed to focus on him.

"Cap'n," she whispered, so soft he could barely hear it.

"There's my girl." He wanted to hug her to him, but he was afraid he'd hurt her worse. Instead he gave her a smile meant to convey comfort he didn't quite feel qualified to give.

She reached up and pressed her fingertips to his forehead, tracing a crease along his brow. "You look cross."

He smoothed her hair back from her face and tried not to look at the way the marks on her arms stood out bright pink against the paleness of her skin. "That's on account of I am cross, Kaylee. You gave us all a mighty scare, disappearing like that."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to."

"Yeah, I guess maybe I'll let you off the hook this time."

She brought her hand to her mouth and stared at the blood that came away on her fingertips. "I must look something awful, huh?"

"Not a bit. You're the prettiest thing I ever saw."

"You're lyin'." She gave him a faint, fragile smile.

"Possible you may have looked prettier, but you're still a far sight prettier than me. Well, maybe not prettier than me, but you're definitely prettier than Jayne."

It won him a real smile, not so fragile, with more of his Kaylee in it. The smile he'd been aching to see again.

"Kaylee alright?" asked Jayne, coming to stand over them.

"Yeah," said Mal. "I think she is."

"Hey, Jayne. You come to save me, too?" Kaylee's voice was a thin echo of her usual chirp.

"Sure did." Jayne shifted from foot to foot like an awkward, big-boned boy and tried to wipe his bloody hands off on his pants. When that didn't seem to work he settled for shoving them in his armpits. "You got me in a heap of trouble with the captain, you know."

Mal rolled his eyes. "Never was there a tale of greater adversity than Jayne's. He starts to tell it, I may have to cry."

"Can we go home now?" said Kaylee. "I'm ready to go home." He could feel her shaking in his arms, a faint tremor that ran right through him.

Mal held her as tight as he dared. "Sure, bǎo bèi, anything you want."

Despina was a smallish moon, drifting along in its quiet orbit just beyond Beylix's icy rings. She was greener and sunnier than the cloud-covered planet that dominated her sky, but on the cold side and with a bit more than her fair share of annual rainfall.

Serenity had set down in a clearing a few miles outside of Brigham, a modest-sized logging town. A light, steady rain fell on the hull, filling the cargo bay with a soothing, gentle patter. At least it would have been soothing and gentle if it weren't for the snarling and rattling of the wolverines drowning it out.

Zoe tried to remember how long it'd been since she'd even heard the sound of rain, then decided it didn't really matter and gave up wondering.

Ham Kennet was slowly circumventing the wolverine cages, inspecting his newly delivered merchandise with the eye of an experienced rancher. He was a sallow sort of man, well past his middle years, who favored a stiff knee with the aid of a gnarled wooden cane.

The two men he'd brought to do the loading and lifting were passing the time by engaging in a spitting contest off the end of Serenity's ramp. They wore rancher's boots and canvas chore jackets and hats with flannel earflaps--definitely farmhands rather than mercs.

"You're really gonna breed these things?" said Wash, fiddling absently with the strap on his holster. He seemed to have pretty much given up on trying to look menacing once they'd gotten a good look at Kennet and his hayseeds.

"Sure am. Fur's worth a damn fortune on the black market."

"And you don't mind the smell?"

Kennet tapped the side of his nose and grinned. "Lost my sense of smell in a mine accident a few years back."

Good thing, thought Zoe, because the damp really was not making the beasts' odor any sweeter.

"This one ain't moving," said Kennet, peering into the cage of their lately re-imprisoned escape artist.

Zoe and Wash exchanged a silent look of alarm.

"He's sleepy," piped up River from her perch on the mule. "Needs a nap after his adventures."

Kennet poked his cane into the crate and nudged the wolverine. It answered with a lethargic snarl.

"That must be it," said Wash. "Just sleepy. He's healthy as a horse, though. A horse that's really healthy."

Kennet shrugged and called out to his men to start loading the crates onto the back of the wagons. As they carried the first of the crates down the ramp Kennet dropped a small sack into Zoe's hand. It jingled promisingly as she palmed it and she let herself relax just the tiniest bit.

Wash wandered over to stand beside her. "You know, I think I'm actually going to miss the little devils."

Zoe raised an inquiring eyebrow at him. "That so?"

"I was starting to fantasize about keeping one as a pet. I'd name him Fluffy, we'd go for walks, and frolic together as everyone around us screamed in terror."

Zoe laughed. Even before she'd ever let herself like the man, Wash had always been able to draw forth her laughter. And that laughter had been like a balm to her parched soul in those bleak and barren years after the war. And so she'd opened herself up, let down her guard, and fallen in love with this ridiculous, goofy man with terrible taste in shirts.

It'd been a long time since Wash had made her laugh and she'd missed it. She'd been missing a lot of things lately and decided it was past time to do something about it.

She captured Wash's hand in hers and tugged him into the back of the cargo bay, away from River and Kennet's men. He looked a mite surprised, but not displeased, which was a promising start.

"Listen, honey," she said squeezing his hand affectionately. "I know I've been offish lately, and I just wanted to say I'm sorry--for letting things get so cold between us."

"Well, I've been kind of a jackass, so who could blame you? What say we just call it even and forget the whole thing?" His blue eyes were clear and guileless.

"That's sweet, dear, but I seem to recall something about two wrongs not making a right."

"No, but three lefts make a right just fine." He grinned at her. "Trust me on this, I'm a pilot."

There was just something irresistibly endearing about her man. She hooked a hand around the back of his neck and pulled him in for a kiss.

"Ahem."

Zoe reluctantly tore herself away from Wash and looked up. Shepherd Book was leaning over the catwalk railing and smiling down at them.

"Got a wave from the captain," he said. "He wants us back on Beylix as soon as we're done here. They've got Kaylee. "

"Starboard hatch green for docking, Shuttle Two." Wash's voice crackled cheerfully over the shuttle's comm system. "Welcome back, Captain."

"Thanks, Wash." Mal felt the shuttle lurch as he guided her into Serenity's docking bay. "Shuttle Two locked."

He jumped out of the pilot's seat and hurried into the back to help Inara, who was struggling to unfasten her safety harness one-handed. "Let me," he said, reaching for the buckle.

"Thank you." Inara smiled gratefully, which right there was enough to tell him she was hurting pretty good. That and the fact that she was about three shades paler than normal.

Jayne threw open the shuttle's hatch and bent to scoop up Kaylee like she weighed nothing at all.

"Jayne, I can walk just fine," she protested.

"Hush up," the big merc growled. "Captain said to see to you and that's what I'm doin'. Don't want you falling down all those steps on the way to the infirmary and getting yourself even more banged up than you already are."

He carried her out through the shuttle's hatch and Mal heard the greetings of the crew waiting just outside, their reactions a mixture of relief at having Kaylee back and alarm at seeing the state she was in.

Mal would have liked to carry Inara, but he didn't think she'd thank him for it, proud and stubborn as she was. "Ready to get up?" he asked.

She nodded, her lips pressed together in a thin line. "Ready as I'll ever be."

Mal slipped a hand carefully around her waist as she draped her good arm over his shoulder and allowed him to help her to a standing position. Her left arm hung limp and useless at her side and he was almost certain the shoulder was dislocated.

Most of the others seemed to have followed Kaylee and Jayne to the infirmary already, but Zoe was waiting for him just outside the shuttle as he guided Inara onto the catwalk.

"Welcome back," said Zoe, darting a worried glance at Inara.

"You do the thing?" asked Mal as they started toward the infirmary.

"Sure did." A smile curled the corners of her mouth as she held up a small bag of coins and jingled it for him.

"That's what I like to hear. Now, what the hell's that horrible smell on my boat?"

"You don't even want to know, sir."

It took a while for Inara to get down the steps from the catwalk, but Simon was waiting for them at the bottom. "Kaylee sent me to check on you," he said, looking concerned. "She said you were hurt worse than she was."

Inara shook her head stiffly. "I'm fine, Simon, I just hurt my shoulder."

"Dislocated," said Mal, and saw the doc's curt, professional nod of agreement as he observed Inara's slow, painful movements.

Kaylee was sitting up on the counter in the infirmary, pressing an ice pack to her face while Jayne hovered around her like a mother hen, along with Book and Wash. Her eyes clouded with concern when she saw Inara.

Mal knew it must be tearing her up inside to see how Inara'd been hurt trying to rescue her and he felt bad for the girl. Hell, it just about killed him to see Inara like this, too.

For her part, Inara was trying her damnedest not to show how much pain she was in. She was one hell of a lady. Mal admired her for it, but he knew the effort had to be a strain.

"Whyn't you all take Kaylee upstairs, get her something to eat," he said while Simon helped Inara lay down on the exam table.

They filed out obediently, throwing sympathetic looks over their shoulders. Inara seemed to relax a bit once they'd gone, and stopped trying so hard to act like she was made of stone. She wore the pain on her face clear as day now, etched in lines around her eyes and mouth.

"Are your fingers numb?" said Simon, gently manipulating her arm. "Can you feel this?"

Mal gestured toward the door. "You want me to--"

"Stay." She winced as Simon gave her an injection. "Please."

"Sure," said Mal, moving to stand beside her. He took hold of her good hand and felt her fingers intertwine with his. Her skin was cold and he held onto her tightly, trying to transfer some of his warmth to her small hand.

Inara's eyes followed Simon warily as he felt around her injured shoulder; she knew what was coming as surely as Mal did.

"Hey," said Mal gently. He pressed his hand against her cheek and turned her face to him, away from Simon. "Look at me, okay? Let the doc do his thing and it'll be over before you know it."

Whatever Simon had doped her with had already started to do its work because the tension in her face had eased and she was breathing a lot slower and easier than she had been a minute ago.

"It's not bad at all," said Simon soothingly as he manipulated her arm. "I saw this man once, back in the E.R. on Osiris, he fell off a grav lift and dislocated both shoulders and cracked his pelvis. We had to--"

Inara gasped as Simon jerked the bone back into place, but she didn't cry out. Mal squeezed her hand reassuringly.

"All done," said Simon. "It should start feeling better soon." He slipped a sling over her head and guided her bad arm into it.

"See there," said Mal. "Easy peasy."

She smiled fuzzily. "Feels better... I'm just going to... rest for a few..."

He smiled as her eyes fluttered closed. "You do that."

She forced her eyes open again. "Mal?"

"Hmm?"

"Don't leave."

"Never." He brushed a lock of hair off her forehead. "I'm right here."

"You always take care of us," she murmured sleepily before drifting off.

Mal woke with a start, momentarily disoriented. He'd stayed in the infirmary with Inara until late, when she'd recovered enough to retire to her shuttle. He was in his own bunk now, but he'd been dreaming that he was back home in the kitchen of his momma's ranch house and there was bacon frying on the stove--

He sat up. Inhaled deeply and got a whiff of just about the best odor in all the 'verse.

Bacon.

He dressed and pulled on his boots just as fast as he could, and followed the heavenly smell all the way down the foredeck to the galley.

"Mornin', Cap'n!" said Kaylee cheerfully when she spotted him. The bruise on her face had purpled dramatically overnight and she wore long pants and sleeves to hide her arms and legs, but she seemed as high spirited as ever despite her experience the day before.

He laid an affectionate hand on top of her head. "How's my girl?"

"Glad to be home," she said, and her eyes almost matched the smile she gave him.

Mal moved to the stove, where Jayne was hunched over a frying pan. "That bacon I smell?"

"Yup," said Jayne, transferring several strips of deliciously greasy meat onto a plate.

"Real bacon? Sliced off the backside of an honest-to-God mud-loving hog?"

"Yup."

"And eggs," added Shepherd Book, holding up a bowl of frothy yellow liquid that he was stirring with a whisk.

"And strawberries!" called Kaylee from the table.

Mal reached out to snag himself a piece of the bacon as Jayne walked by, and got a whack on the knuckles for his trouble. "Ow!"

"That there's for Kaylee," growled Jayne. "You can just wait your turn, Captain."

Kaylee beamed as Jayne set the plate in front of her. She popped a strip of bacon into her mouth and held another out to Simon, sitting beside her.

Mal poured himself a cup of steaming hot coffee that was a pleasing shade of brown and went to sit down at Kaylee's other side. He tried to sneak a piece of bacon off her plate while she was busy looking at Simon, but she caught him and gave him another thump on the knuckles.

"You heard Jayne, wait your turn!"

"Just where did this sudden bounty of riches come from, anyway?" he asked, sucking on his sore knuckle. "Don't tell me ya'll already went and spent all our paycheck on food?"

"Not a bit," said Kaylee. "It's all gifts from the parents of those girls you rescued."

"A group of them showed up at dawn bearing baskets of fresh food," said Book. "And several crates of what appears to be a rather competently home-brewed whiskey. Not that I would know about such things."

"And that ain't even the best part," said Jayne. "Magistrate sent word for us to come by and visit him at our 'earliest convenience,' on account of there bein' a reward for the capture of one Hope Leung, wanted in three systems for kidnapping and slave-trading."

"Huh," said Mal, hardly able to take it all in. He wasn't used to good things happening.

"And Woo-Ping even sent over a couple of elements for the stove when he heard about what happened," said Kaylee. "Which is how come we can cook all this fine food."

Zoe and Wash walked into the kitchen arm in arm, nuzzling and cooing at each other like a couple of lovebirds.

"Morning, you two," said Kaylee with a sly grin.

"Good morning, dear friends," said Wash, sliding into a seat across from her. Zoe poured two cups of coffee and set one down in front of her husband, trailing her hand along the back of his neck.

"It's about damn time ya'll were back to bumpin' fuzzies," said Jayne, observing them sagely from the stove. "Two a you are downright unpleasant to be around when you ain't getting' your ends wet."

There was a moment of awkward silence and then everyone--including Zoe and Wash--erupted into laughter.

"What?" said Jayne.

Mal sat back in his chair, enjoying the bustle of activity around him, letting the bubble and swell of friendly voices and laughter wash over him for a minute.

"It's Pandemonium," whispered River in Mal's ear.

He started, nearly spilling his coffee. "Panda-who?"

"Pandemonium. The capital of Hell, dwelling-place of demons."

He turned around in his chair to look at her. "Sounds real nice. You been at the preacher's bible again?"

She smiled innocently, swirling her skirt around her knees. "Pandemonium also means a very noisy place, wild uproar, or state of disorder."

"Now that's more like it," said Mal, smiling back at her.

She deftly swiped a piece of bacon off Kaylee's plate and sank into the chair on the other side of her brother. Jayne moved around the table, passing out plates of food to everyone.

Everyone except Mal, apparently. "Am I invisible?" he said as Jayne passed by him. "A man could die of starvation before anyone offered him any breakfast around here."

"Here you go, Captain," said Book, swooping in to drop a plate piled high with eggs, bacon and fresh fruit in front of him.

"That's more like it," said Mal. "Saved a bunch of girls from slavers, oughta get some bacon for my trouble."

"Inara!" chirped Kaylee.

Mal looked up and saw Inara standing in the hatchway. "Is that really bacon and eggs?" she asked.

Her arm was in the sling Simon had given her but otherwise she looked back to her old self--all fancy clothes and makeup and hair done up as pretty as ever. And not even a trace of grogginess, despite the fact she'd been doped to the gills the night before. The woman really was a wonder. Mal had no idea how she managed it.

He stood up and pulled out the chair next to him with exaggerated courtesy. Inara sat down with a grace that seemed to require a little more effort than usual, the only indication that she was still in any kind of pain.

"Here," he said, moving his plate over to her place. "Saved this for you special."

Their eyes met and she gave him an almost timid smile, all the more bewitching for its artlessness. "Thank you."

For some reason, he got the feeling she was talking about more than just eggs, and felt his blood starting to rush to places it had no business rushing to.

"I'll go get you some tea, 'Nara," said Kaylee.

Mal put a restraining hand on Kaylee's shoulder. "I'll do it. Eat your breakfast."

In the kitchen he put on the kettle and leaned back against the counter, chewing a piece of bacon while he waited for the water to boil. Muted morning light leaked through the skylight, laying a soft yellow blanket over everyone gathered around the kitchen table. He watched--a part of them, yet a measure apart--as they ate and chattered and argued and joked and got on just the way a crew--the way a family--ought.

It was one of those rare perfect moments when everything comes together with an almost audible click, and suddenly, for that one instant, everything falls into place. All the people that Mal cared about most in the 'verse were here--safe, happy and together--which was just the way it ought to be.

But already his mind was moving on to other things--supplies to be bought, repairs to be made, jobs to be found. The moment was nice but it wouldn't last. The good ones never did.

That's why he always had to keep moving. Keep working. Keep flying.

"Rowing Song"

--Folk song of Earth-That-Was, circa 2010*

* Recent research by the Institute for Cultural and Historical Studies, Londinium, attributes this song to late 20th/early 21st century songwriter Patty Griffin.