Modus VivendiBy Wiseacress
Chapter Fourteen
Somehow Xander had started to think of the warehouse as existing in its own dimension, somewhere outside of actual space and time, and so it was a shock to see the river to his right, and to realize that they were in plain old southeast L.A. He’d bounced through once or twice during his first few weeks in the city—enough to note that it was mostly skid row hotels, missions, and warehouses.
If he never saw another warehouse in his life, he would die a happy man.
Liv had hitched herself up onto the back seat, and sat staring out the window in silence. Angel hadn't said anything in ten minutes. Xander fiddled with the bandage on his knee, watched billboards and gas stations go by, and tried to feel like he was really here, like this was really happening.
It sank in slowly, a little at a time, and that was probably a mercy. They passed an SUV and the woman inside glanced at him, then stared. He remembered he was still wearing the shirt with Angel's blood on it. And his face—Angel's blood was on his face, too. He must look like a serial killer.
He wiped his face with his hand, and noticed that he was shaking. Angel looked over.
"I'm all—" Xander plucked at the shirt. "I look like Jackie Kennedy, here."
"Is there a towel you can use?"
"In the trunk, maybe."
Angel frowned. "Just try to keep out of sight. I don't want to stop if we can help it."
Xander slouched in his seat and wiped his bloodied fingers on the corner of his shirt. "Yeah, okay. Have fun explaining all this to the nice traffic officer."
Angel checked his mirrors and said nothing.
Xander leaned his head against the seat and watched the streetlights streak past the window. He was cold, and his body was just starting to remember that he hadn't given it any Demerol in a while. He wanted a change of clothes, a bath, a bed. A little piece of oblivion to call his own.
He had a bad feeling he wasn't going to get that.
"We'll be there soon," Angel said, and Xander fiddled with his bandage and watched the streetlights. They were going to the hotel. What if he didn't want to go there? What if he asked Angel to drop him off at his apartment, instead? If it still was his apartment.
"What day is it?" he asked. Angel paused.
"Saturday. The fourth."
The fourth of August. He'd gone to The Summer Place on Friday night, at the end of July. He'd been out of the world for a week.
Then the date struck him, and he realized he'd missed rent. "Oh, shit," he said.
"What?"
"Nothing. Rent. "
Angel gave him a cautious sideways look. "Yeah," he said. "I wasn't going to bring that up, but—“
"I'm out, right?"
"I...I think so. I went by your place yesterday, and it looked like maybe it's been rented."
He said it so tentatively, as if it might all just be a mistake and he didn't want to alarm anyone, that Xander laughed. "Fuck," he said. "Well, that's...that's a real drag." He thought of his stuff, and stopped laughing. "That really sucks."
"I'm sorry. If I'd known sooner, I would have—"
"It's okay." Xander chewed his lip and stared at the lights. "It's okay, whatever. It was a dump anyway."
"Well...yeah."
He laughed again. "Thanks." He watched the lights for a minute, then asked, "Why did you go by there in the first place?" Which was another way of asking why he'd turned up at Spike's. Why he was saving the day.
"Willow called. She hadn't heard from you, couldn't get you on the phone. She asked me to check up."
"Huh." Willow. Of course, Willow. She saved him, even when she didn't really know he was in trouble. He closed his eyes and swallowed, and realized with a sick pang that he was still wearing the same shorts, the ones he'd worn in bed with Spike. Had he been in bed with Spike? The gears in his mind slipped a cog.
"Huh," he said again, to cover the surge of shame and sickness. But Angel was looking at him sideways, and it was just like having Spike around, sniffing everything out before there was a chance to cover it up.
"Are you all right?"
"Fine." He set his jaw, opened his mouth, closed it again. "Look, I don't think—I'm not sure I want to go to the hotel. I mean, not like this. I'm...a mess." He touched the shirt again, unable to make himself touch the shorts. Angel frowned.
"It's not your fault. You can get cleaned up when we get there."
Xander ground his teeth and looked away, out the window. "That's not what I mean. I mean—" He got hung up, couldn't think what to say. Liv was still sitting in the back somewhere, silent and still. "I mean, I don't really feel like seeing Cordelia right now. Or Wesley. Or anyone."
Angel didn't say anything for a moment. He signaled, merged left, and slowed down for a light. They were back in civilization now; Xander could see the top of a 7-11 sign glowing, and it was real and familiar enough to make him feel like crying.
Traffic started to move again, and they went with it. The slip in the belts was getting worse. He should get under the hood someday and take care of that.
"I know what you meant," Angel said. He signaled again, and they turned left. "There won't be anyone at the hotel tonight. You don't have to see anyone."
Xander scratched his cheek and stared at his feet. His throat hurt, and his eyes were hot. "Okay," he said softly. "Thanks."
"It's not your fault, Xander," Angel said again, more quietly. "Believe me when I say that Spike and I are going to have a conversation."
Liv shifted in the backseat, and Angel's eyes went to the rearview mirror. Neither of them said anything.
Xander slouched lower, and watched the world spin out along the top of the window.
When they got to the hotel, Angel parked out front and left Xander in the car while he hauled Liv in. Xander sat listening to the engine tick down, to cars and voices and the sounds of the world. He noticed that Angel had taken the keys with him.
He was going to have to call Willow. Willow, Buffy, Giles. The real world; he was going to have to make contact with it, and lie to its face like a son of a bitch. One tangled web of deceit, coming up.
He ached more now, and he was shivering even though it was warm. Probably a delayed reaction to...everything. There'd been a gun to his head, less than an hour ago. It had felt weirdly familiar.
He wiped his hands on his shorts, and then Angel was opening the car door, a blanket slung over his shoulder. Xander glanced at it and looked away.
"Hey, I'm fine, I'm not a quake victim or anything."
"You're covered in blood," Angel said, and slung the blanket around him. "I have neighbors."
"Oh." That made sense, that was tolerable. And the blanket actually felt good. He let Angel lift him up, kick the door closed, and haul him toward the hotel. He could walk a little by now, but Angel wasn't really giving him the chance. Well, it was faster this way, and there were the neighbors to consider.
Inside, Liv was sitting in a straight-back chair in the middle of the lobby. Angel did have rope, and he'd used it.
"Hey," Xander said reflexively, as Angel lugged him past her and started up the stairs. She watched in silence.
"There's a couple of rooms made up down here." Angel carried him down the hall and opened the first door on the right. The room was small and pretty barren, but it was clean and it had the basics. A bed, a chair, a telephone. "All right?"
"Yeah, sure. I mean—thanks, it looks great." Angel put him down on the bed and stepped back, looked around, then rubbed the back of his head with a slightly bemused expression.
"Uh, I think there are towels—" He went to the bathroom door and put his head through. "Yeah. And I can get you a shirt, some trousers, whatever you need."
"Thanks." The thought of wearing Angel's clothes was too weird to linger on, so he didn't. "Does that work?" he asked, looking at the phone.
"I think so." Angel picked it up, listened, and nodded.
"I should call Willow, let her know I'm okay."
Angel held the receiver to his chest a minute, then put it back in the cradle and looked at his watch. "Yeah. Well, it's late. You might want to leave it till tomorrow."
"What did you tell her so far?"
"Just that your place was empty, you might have moved." Angel's eyes were dark and steady; he knew there would be lying. "That was yesterday; I haven't called yet today."
Xander nodded and examined his bandage. It was grey and fraying.
"That needs changing. And your arm—"
"It's fine. I'm fine. I just need a bath, maybe some Tylenol if you've got it." He'd lost hold of the Demerol back when—well, back when Angel was shot. Hell, if anyone should be looking for Tylenol, it was Angel.
"I'll put it on the night table. Are you sure you don't want to go to the hospital?"
"Plenty sure. Thanks. I just need—" He blew out a breath and smiled tightly, suddenly afraid his voice was going to break. "I just need a bath."
Angel stood there a moment longer, looking at him, and the smile was getting smaller and tighter, and he kind of wanted to scream.
Finally, Angel turned to go. "I'll be downstairs," he said. "I need to have a talk with this Liv person."
"Yeah," Xander said. "Ask her about those tattoos."
Angel stopped and looked back around at him, and Xander tapped a finger behind his ear. "Little spikes," he said. "It's some crazy shit."
"Little—" Angel stood there chewing on that pretty hard, and Xander raised his eyebrows.
"What?"
Angel looked at him and blinked. "Nothing. I'll put some clothes on the bed." He raised a hand in a vague absent going-now gesture, and then he was gone. His footsteps went quickly down the hall, and another door opened.
The tattoos meant something to him, and in any other mood Xander would have called bullshit, but not just now. He didn't want to talk to Angel anymore tonight. He didn't want to think. He wanted to be alone, and he wanted to be clean, and he wanted to sleep.
He glanced at the telephone, and that was enough to get him moving. It was a small room, easy enough to get to the bathroom if he leaned on the bed and walls. The tub was old, big enough to drown in.
As Spike said, nice to have a dream.
He woke up in a tub full of tepid water, to the sound of the tap dripping. Old pipes, old fittings. Washer, his mind told him. Rubber gasket, maybe. The Hyperion needed a handyman.
He was stiff and sore, and his shoulder was playing a doleful blues number, because the sling had been soaked in blood too and he'd wrenched it off. It was lying on the tile on top of the bloodied shirt and the shorts, and he didn't know what to do with any of it. There wasn't a trash bin to put them in.
He sat up slowly and pulled the plug, then groped over the edge for the towel he'd dropped earlier. Out of the water, his shoulder hurt more. Time to see if Angel had made good on the Tylenol promise.
He was an old man again, a hundred years old with ground glass in all his sockets, and getting dried off and out the door took forever. There was a pair of trousers and a shirt on the bed, and—pay dirt—a prescription bottle on the night table. It wasn't just Tylenol; it was good old T3. Maybe Angel didn't know the difference. The prescription was Wesley's.
Xander dry-swallowed two pills and sat carefully down on the bed. He could hear voices downstairs; Angel and Liv. Angel was doing most of the talking, which maybe wasn't a good thing. Well, that was Angel's problem.
He wriggled into the trousers and thought about the shirt, but his arms weighed fifty pounds apiece. He got under the covers and lay listening to the voices. Most of what Liv said sounded like No, but he could be wrong about that. Anyway, it wasn't his problem anymore.
Not his problem. That knowledge did a slow warm bloom in his chest, and he pulled in a deep breath and reminded himself to thank Angel—really thank him, with actual sincerity—whenever he woke up. And yeah, sure, there were lots of things that still were his problem, but before he could start to think about them, he fell asleep.
The loft was dim when he woke up, and he thought, Daytime. Which meant Spike was probably asleep beside him, and if he thought about it for a minute he'd probably register a cool hand on his back or arm. Not such a bad thing, really. Not the worst thing in the world.
He closed his eyes, sank back into sleep for a while, and woke up later in a small bare room he didn't recognize. Then he did. The Hyperion, contractor’s wet dream. He was lying with his face pressed almost to the wall, and the wallpaper smelled like dust.
He pushed back into the middle of the bed and sat up slowly. The room was quiet and dim; there were cheap hotel curtains over the window, and through them he could see it was a bright blue sunny day. A beautiful day to be alive.
There was a white T-shirt at the foot of the bed, and now he vaguely remembered putting it there, just before dropping off the edge of the world. And on the night table—the bottle of T3 was still there, uncapped. He took a couple more to quiet down the ache in his shoulder, then pulled the shirt over his head. It hurt to put his right arm through, but at least he could move it now.
He needed to call Willow. The thought of her put a quick shudder of guilt and fear in his belly, and he had to stab it down hard. He was being an idiot. Just call her, lie to her, tell her everything was fine, and hang up quick. If he didn't do it, she might break out the magical GPS, and then he'd have some serious explaining to do.
He picked up the phone and dialed. Cleared his throat a few times while he listened to the tone, and hoped with serious and sudden panic that they didn't have Caller ID.
"Hello?" It was a froggy, sleepy, morning voice, not Willow's. Buffy. Sleepy Buffy. He smiled at his feet.
"Hey, Buff. It's Xander."
"Xander?" He could hear her fumbling with the receiver, knocking something over on the dresser. "What time is it?"
"Uh—" No clock in the room.
More fumbling. "It's...eight o'clock in the morning, Xander. Not even. My mother doesn't get up this early on a Sunday."
"Sorry." Not going so well. But still, full speed ahead, phasers set on 'lie.' "Sorry, I just ran into Angel last night and he said Wills was worried or something—"
"She was. Me too. We both were. Worried. Where have you been?" He heard Willow's voice in the background, a sleepy question he couldn't make out.
"I'm fine, I've been right here. Well, not right here—I had a little thing with my landlord, I kind of had to make tracks. Sorry, I kept meaning to call and let you know, but it's been really busy—"
He let it hang, hoping. After a moment, Buffy said, "Oh." There was hurt in her voice.
"I'm really sorry," he said again. "I didn't know you were trying to get hold of me, or I would have called." He hated himself, hated himself, wanted to get up and catch the next train to Sunnydale, gimp straight to their dorm room and beg forgiveness. "Was it, you know, something in particular she wanted?"
A pause, while Buffy processed that, and he squeezed his eyes shut and covered the mouthpiece to take a deep breath. "No," she said finally. "No, I think she was just checking in."
"Okay. Well, tell her I'm fine, okay? And, hey—how are you guys?"
"Fine," Buffy said absently. "Everything's fine—hang on a second." She went away for a minute, and he heard a quick exchange, then Willow asked another question. Buffy came back. "What kind of thing with your landlord?" she asked. She sounded a little sharper now, a little more awake.
He opened his eyes and stared at the cheap curtains, the blue sky beyond. "Just a landlord thing," he said. "Stupid pipes thing. No hot water half the time, it gets old. You know."
Buffy relayed that, and Willow asked another question. In a minute she was going to take the phone, and he was going to have to talk to her. Sleepy Buffy was a safer bet.
"Listen, I'm sorry I woke you guys up. I'm on weird hours at the site, I'm all turned around. But I'm fine, I'll call you in a couple of days when they flip the switch on my phone, okay?"
"Where are you staying?" Buffy asked. "Are you okay? Do you want—"
"I'm fine," he said again, and knew at once he'd hit that too hard, made it sound pissed off. "Sorry, Buff, I'm really fine. Just a little tired, kind of strung out from the move. I got another place, it's just as craptastic as the last one. You guys should come visit once it's fumigated."
"He's in another place," Buffy said, not bothering to cover the phone this time. Willow said something, and Buffy came back and asked, "Did you hang up your bead curtain yet?"
"First thing," he said, staring at the floor. "Wouldn't be the Harris House of Love without it."
"Want to say hi to Willow?"
Pause.
"Sure, yeah. Hi to Willow. Give her a big sloppy kiss for me—I gotta run. The Nova's double-parked. I'll call in a couple of days, okay?"
"Okay. If you need anything—"
"I'll send up a flare."
"Yeah. And...you know Angel's there, right? If you...I don't know, if you need anything, I guess." Her voice was a little tight on that one, but she still said it. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. Xander Harris, ladies and gentlemen. Colossal jerkoff.
"I'm fine, Buffy. I'll call in a couple of days."
They hung up and he sat staring at the floor, thinking about a fast Greyhound to Sunnydale, and a dorm room full of early Sunday sunshine and sleepy girls, and how much he wanted to be there instead of here. He couldn't be there. It wasn't an option. And if he kept up the asshole routine, pretty soon they probably wouldn't even want him.
He took a deep breath and levered himself to his feet. Someday he'd be rich and idle, and he'd have time for a nervous breakdown.
He was hungry, and thirsty again, though he'd drunk shamelessly from the bathtub tab the night before. It was the first proper morning he'd had in a week, and he was having diner visions, so real they hurt. Toast with butter and jam, scrambled eggs, bacon hot enough to make little crackling gasps on the plate. A cup of coffee. He'd kill for a cup of joe.
He put the pill bottle in his pocket and started for the door. Walking was better today; not a pleasure, but manageable in brief bursts. He let his left leg do most of the work and hung onto the doorknob, the wall, whatever he came near. He was halfway down the hall when it occurred to him that Cordelia or Wesley might be downstairs.
He paused and listened. No sound—and actually it was kind of early for work, and maybe they didn't even work on Sundays. And if they were there, what was he going to do about it? He couldn't stay socked into the little room the whole time, ordering pizzas and hoping no one would notice him. The only one he could see that working on was Angel, who'd probably forgotten him already.
If the help showed up today, he'd just have to bite the bullet and lie some more. He stood there a minute, swaying, wondering what the hell he could say. Nothing came to mind, and his right knee was starting to gripe, and finally he just gave up and started down the stairs with no fixed plan in mind. If he ran into them, he'd just have to trust to the Xander Harris stream-of-consciousness distraction technique.
The stairs took some concentration, because he had to cling and hop, cling and hop, and by the time he got to the bottom he was thinking room service would have been a better idea. On the plus side, nobody was around to witness the ungainly.
No—scratch that. The chair was still in the middle of the lobby. Liv was still in the chair. Her chin was on her chest, her face dropped, and all he could tell from here was that her eyes were closed.
He glanced around, but there was no sign of Angel anywhere. He looked back at her and felt the back of his neck tighten. She'd spent the night there, in the chair, while he'd been bathing and sleeping and talking to Buffy. That seemed like a raw deal. On the other hand, she'd threatened to shoot him, and she'd actually put a couple of bullets in Angel. So maybe the deal wasn't really that raw; maybe it was just kind of medium-rare, and pretty much what she'd ordered.
He stood watching her a minute longer, and she didn't move, and he started to feel a little uneasy, trying to see her face. Angel wouldn't have hit her—he was a good guy. Helped the helpless. Well, he'd kneed her, but that was self-defense. Tying her to a chair and hitting her was something else completely, and Angel wouldn't do that.
Just to be sure he cleared his throat, and her head lifted. Her face was bleary and tired, but not bruised. She looked like someone who'd spent the night tied to a chair, possibly like someone who'd had to answer a lot of questions and listen to a few choice words of advice. Maybe a quick punch in the kisser would have been more merciful.
She looked warily hopeful until she saw him; then her face fell.
"Nice to see you too," he said.
She worked her mouth as though it tasted bad, which it probably did. "Xander," she said.
"Present."
She pulled a little, experimentally, on the ropes. They didn't move, and she didn't look surprised. "Okay," she said. "Okay, will you please untie me?"
"No."
She yanked hard on her wrists, more out of frustration than anything else, it looked like. "Look," she said. "It's morning, it's daytime. Spike's stuck in that place. You have to let me go."
He took a step back and sat down slowly on the stairs. "You're talking like we have a shared concern, here."
"I don't—look, I'm not going to do anything to you. I just want to get back there. I have to get back there."
He waited. She shifted uncomfortably and he reflected that she probably had to pee by now.
"You know what those guys were like," she said. "They put you in hospital, and it was just a message. What do you think they'll do to him?"
"I don't know," he said honestly. "But again, you're talking like I care."
She stared at him for a moment, and he saw her eyes go to his neck, then back to his face. He looked away.
"Why should they show up now, anyway? They don't have his address, do they?"
"No. I don't know. They're looking, and Angel went there last night, they might have followed—"
"Through the sewers?" He laughed. "Good one. And the mystery mastermind is what, a Morlock?"
"Actually, a caedo,” Angel said. They both jumped and swivelled to look at him; he was standing in the doorway, holding a book and a coffee cup.
"Jesus Christ," Xander said, putting a hand to his chest. "Don't do that."
"Sorry." Angel walked into the lobby and held the cup out to Xander. "You want this?"
"Hell, yes." He took it, burnt his tongue on it, and felt an ounce or two more human. "Thanks."
Angel was already walking away, closing the book and tucking it under his arm. "There's food in the kitchen. I'll be in my office if you want me." He paused and looked back. "Don't untie her."
"No," Xander said. "A what?"
"A caedo," Angel said, turning again to walk out. "Ask her about it."
Xander looked at Liv. "A what?"
She stared at him, and he could tell from the creaking of the ropes that she was testing them again. "I'm thirsty," she said after a minute. "And I need the bathroom."
"Sorry about that."
"I helped you."
"Was that before or after you put a gun to my head?"
She tried to stare him down, but had to look away after a minute. "Yeah, well," she said. The ropes creaked.
"What's a caedo?" he asked.
"Let me go."
"Whatever it is, it's after Spike, right?"
"Untie me, Xander."
"He must pay you a hell of a lot."
She stared at him in silence.
"You want some coffee?"
Pause. "Yes." Pause. "Please."
He pried himself off the step, stumped over, and held the cup so she could drink from it. It burnt her too, and she made a face.
"Ow."
"Yeah, apparently he boils it."
"Tastes like." She grimaced, then glanced down at his legs. "How's the knee?"
"Fine. Better. I'll survive."
"You still taking the antibiotic?"
He shrugged and chanced some more coffee.
"You have to finish them, or it's no good. You can't just stop halfway through."
"I’ll see if Angel has any Lysol kicking around in his medicine cabinet." He held the cup out again and she sipped carefully. "You know, it's kind of too late for the whole cryptic silence thing. I think the cat has pretty much clawed right through the bag."
She said nothing, and he waited a minute, then shrugged and started to stump off in what must be the direction of the kitchen. Well, the direction Angel had taken anyway. Caedo was a caedo was a caedo, and it wasn't his problem anymore, and he was hungry as hell.
"A caedo is a demon," she said, and he stopped and half-turned to show he was listening. "You know about demons, right?"
He smiled, even though it wasn't really funny. "Yeah, I know from demons."
"Those guys who beat you up, they work for a caedo."
"And you know this because why?"
She paused, and looked oddly shamefaced. "Angel told me," she said after a moment.
He stared at her, then laughed. "Angel told you? You found this out from Angel?" Her cheeks were red, and she was scowling at the floor. "Man, you should get kidnapped more often. It's like taking a field trip—you travel, you learn a little something—"
"Shut up."
"Man, that's great." He paused. "Hang on—how did Angel know?"
She gritted her teeth and looked aside, then said, "I told him about the tattoos."
"The—what, the snakes those guys had?"
She nodded.
"Snake tattoos equals caedo?"
Another nod, even less patient.
He chewed his lip. "But you have them too. Little spikes."
"Yeah."
"And you work for Spike."
"Yeah."
"I'm confused."
"Xander, I have to pee."
He stared at her for a minute, then held up his index finger—one minute—turned, and went out. He passed a kitchenette and continued on until he came to a door that was ajar. There was a light on inside. He tapped softly and put his head in. Angel was sitting behind a desk covered in papers and books, holding a phone to his ear. He looked up at Xander without speaking, and Xander stepped out and went back to the kitchenette.
There was a loaf of bread in the freezer, a jar of Joyce's jam in the door of the fridge. He spent a few moments wondering how that had made it here, then pulled it out and started making toast. He was sitting on the counter eating a second piece when Angel came in.
"Everything okay?"
"Great, yeah. She needs the bathroom."
"Oh." Angel looked a little nonplussed. Apparently he hadn't tied anyone to a chair for a while. "Right, thanks."
"You really think she has to be tied up like that?"
"I think if she wasn't, she'd be out the door in a second."
"Back to Spike."
"Yeah."
Xander studied his toast. "She's worried someone's going to attack him. The guys who did this, actually." He indicated his knees. "They were kind of bad-ass. And kind of human."
"I know."
He knew? Well, he'd been talking to Liv all night, he'd got the broad strokes.
"Well—" Xander took a small bite of toast, and couldn't taste it at all. "I don't know what the hell a caedo is, but those guys were serious. And Spike's chipped."
Angel didn't say anything.
"Really chipped," Xander said after a moment. "Chipped like it's going out of style. I mean, it was always pretty zippy, but now it goes to eleven. I saw it fire, it looked like he was being trepanned."
Angel was silent.
"Not that that's a bad thing," Xander said quickly. "You know I'm strongly pro-chip. It's just—"
"It's getting worse?" Angel asked.
"In third grade, Craig Mueller jammed a paintbrush up his nose and bled so much the school nurse fainted. Like that."
Angel was fiddling with a fork, studying the shine in the light. "Hm."
"Well, I'm just saying. I don't know what he did to piss this caedo thing off, but if those guys show up, he's dust."
Angel put the fork down carefully. "He hired Liv."
Xander didn't get it for a minute; then he did. "He hired a butler, and this caedo's out for blood?"
"He didn't just hire her. He copied the caedos—she's got the same tattoos."
Xander put the toast down and wiped his hands on his trousers, then remembered they weren't his trousers. Too late. "Okay, there's a lot I'm not getting, here. What, exactly, is her job?"
"That's the interesting question," Angel said. "That's what I want her to tell me."
It was on the tip of Xander's tongue to say something about the blood bags, about the night when Liv may or may not have—probably had, practically certainly had—killed someone. But he didn't say it. Something was bothering him, he had the feeling he'd forgotten something. He'd had that feeling a lot lately.
"Well, you'd better get in there before you have to put newspaper down under her chair," he said, and turned back to his toast. He wasn't so hungry now, but he was damned well going to eat it.
Angel turned to go, then turned back. "I talked with Wesley about the caedo. I told him to take a couple of days off. Cordelia, too."
Xander glanced at him, then away, before he could really make eye contact. "Okay. Thanks."
Angel went out without saying anything else. At times there were real benefits to the silent, broody type.
Xander pitched the rest of his toast into the trash.
By the time he made it back out to the lobby, Angel was just herding Liv in again from the bathroom. He wasn't holding onto her, but he was walking pretty close on her heels, and when she looked sideways at the doors he said, "No way," in a flat definitive tone. She kept looking, and he took hold of her shoulder and steered her back to the chair.
"There's no point in keeping me here," she said, as he started lashing her back in place. "I'm not going to be any good to you."
"I don't expect you to be," he said, without looking up. "I just don't want you to be any good to Spike."
"You want him to get killed."
Angel finished lashing and tied a knot at her back. He didn't reply.
"If those guys find him, they'll kill him. How careful were you when you went there?"
He stepped back and studied the knot a minute. "If a caedo was looking for Spike, it would have found him by now. He's not exactly low-profile."
She turned in the chair and looked at him. "No," she said after a moment. She didn't sound certain; she sounded as if she were trying to get certain.
"I found you in a day. All they have to do is ask around."
She stared at him, her hands twisting in the ropes. Her face was strained; then it was angry. "No," she said again, and turned away. "There are four million people in this city. It's not that easy."
"It is if you know who to ask."
She sat staring at the floor, while the rope creaked and rubbed over the back of the chair.
"You're going to get a burn doing that," Angel said. She ignored him.
Xander sat down quietly on the stairs and leaned against the balustrade. Angel glanced at him, walked away, and came back with a chair that matched Liv's. He put it down a few feet from hers and sat down in it.
"Liv, you can't help Spike. I can. But not if I don't know what's going on."
She gave him a quick angry glare, and said nothing. He crossed his arms and looked at the ceiling. Watching them, Xander wondered how much of the night they'd spent in the same positions.
"Okay," he said, "I don't get this. Spike knows about caedos, right? Because he copied them, he did the tattoo thing, pissed in their campfire, whatever." He waited; after a second, Angel nodded. "Right, okay. So how come she doesn't know what a caedo is?"
Angel lowered his gaze to Liv. "We've been talking about that," he said. "About what Spike's told her, and what he hasn't."
Liv flushed again. After a minute she said, "I'm hungry."
"You won't starve." Angel leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. "Xander said the chip's been getting worse. That it makes him bleed now."
She looked up, surprised, and stared at Xander. "It's always done that," she said, then shut her mouth hard, as if she hadn't meant to say anything.
"Always since when?"
She stared hard at the floor.
"You've known him—what, four months? Five?" Angel looked over his shoulder at Xander. "My guess is he hired her to help him get it out."
Xander was holding his hand against his neck; he realized it all of a sudden and dropped it self-consciously. "Right," he said. "Sure. Maybe she's a closet neurosurgeon. Maybe she just got back from AMA."
Angel turned back to Liv. "Where did you go?" he asked.
"Let me go."
"I can't help him if you don't talk to me."
"You can help him by letting me go."
"I don't think you know what you're doing. I don't think Spike tells you everything, and even if he did, I don't think you'd be much help to him."
"Give me back my gun and we'll see how much help I am."
"Shooting vampires doesn't work, Liv. You shot me before you even knew who I was, or what I was doing. If I'd been any other vampire, I'd have ripped your head off." He paused. "If I'd been human, you'd have killed me."
She went a little white at that, and didn't have a comeback. Xander shifted, thinking of the blood bags in Spike's fridge, and she looked up at him quickly. Then her eyes slid away again and for some reason he hadn't said anything. Angel glanced at Xander, then looked back at Liv.
"You could have killed Xander," he said, and it was a good shot but the wrong basket, it wasn't the reason she'd gone white. Still, the truth of it suddenly struck Xander and he had to swallow. If Angel hadn't turned, hidden Xander's body behind his own—
He had to remember to thank Angel with actual sincerity, very soon.
"I don't think you really know what you're into here," Angel said quietly. "And no, I don't want to see Spike get killed. I'm offering to help, Liv."
She sat for a while in silence, staring at her feet. They waited. Finally she looked up.
"Then let me go," she said, and yanked on the ropes.
Angel tried a while longer, and from the tone of his voice Xander got the impression that he was doling out his last meager reserves of patience. Liv was monosyllabic. She kept working at the ropes, until finally Angel's nose wrinkled and he stood up suddenly.
"That's enough. Xander, I'll be in my office." He went out without a backward look, and Xander, who had been in a semi-doze with his head propped against the stair rail, sat up in confusion.
"What—where's he going?"
Liv glanced back over her shoulder and wiggled the ropes again. A drop of blood hit the tile behind her. Xander looked at it, then at her.
"What, you're going to saw your hands off to escape?"
She turned back to him, grimaced slightly, and stopped wiggling. "No."
"That's kind of gross, you know."
"Yeah. Made him stop, though."
"You couldn't just ask for a recess?"
She pushed against the floor with her heels, and the chair tipped slightly onto its back legs. "Think it would break if I dropped it?"
"No. I think you'd concuss yourself. But be my guest."
She lowered the chair and studied him. "What did Spike ever do to you, Xander?"
A silent alarm went off and he sat up straight. "What?" Was he flushed? He felt flushed, suddenly.
"He took you to the hospital—"
"You took me to the hospital."
"—gave you a place to stay, took care of you. So why do you want to get him killed?"
He was sitting like had a ramrod in his shirt. Relax. Try to be slightly less transparent. Aim for translucent. "I've known Spike a lot longer than you have. I have countless reasons not to care at all if he sublimates."
She stared at him. "Yeah, maybe he stole your bike when you were twelve. Spike is minor league. I've seen major league, and he isn't it."
"Major league," he repeated. "Define 'major league.'"
She shrugged. "Major league is scary shit. Major league is people I wouldn't work for in a million years. But they never have trouble hiring because if you say no they kill you."
"Okay." He held up a hand, staring at the floor. "Okay, hold on. I have so many comments and questions."
"Spike's a pretty good boss, Xander. I don't want to see him get dusted."
"What exactly do you do, Liv?"
She shrugged and stared at the wall somewhere over his shoulder. "I do a job. I help him out."
"You provide hot meals." He lowered his voice as he said it, though he still wasn't sure why he didn't want Angel to know.
She kept staring at the wall, but pursed her lips as if she were considering her response. "That wasn't supposed to be part of it," she said after a minute.
"Part of what?"
"The other thing is, if he gets dusted while I'm working for him, it makes me look bad. I won't exactly be anyone else's first choice."
"My heart weeps for you. Will you tell me something, please?"
She looked at him.
"Did you kill someone, that night?"
She looked away and started to work at the ropes, then winced and stopped. "That wasn't supposed to be part of it," she said again.
He leaned back until he was propped against the riser behind him. "How many?"
She was staring at the wall again, and working her wrists against the ropes almost absently. "I don't know," she said. A few drops of blood fell to the tile behind her.
"Enough that you had a system. You put it in bags for him."
She said nothing, just kept working her arms, and the blood kept falling. Xander stared at the spots. It was going to drive Angel crazy when he came back.
"Major league," he said after a minute. "That's pretty fucking major league, Liv."
She shrugged. "Not compared to what's out there."
"What's worse than killing people?"
She looked at him a moment, then shook her head. "Read your history, Xander. All kinds of things are worse than what I do."
He watched the red drops mark the floor behind her until he couldn't take it anymore. "Cut that out. It's gross."
She looked surprised, as if she hadn't noticed she was doing it, but she stopped. They sat in silence for a few minutes, while he stared at his feet and she shifted uncomfortably in the chair a couple of times.
"Xander." He looked up; she was staring at him with a solemn expression. "I'm not saying he's good. But he isn't completely bad, either. You know that."
"He eats people," Xander said.
"He took care of you. He helped you; he didn't have to do that."
"He's a demon."
"He could have left you where he found you."
"Yeah."
There was a silence, and she let it draw out while he stared at his feet, and then she asked very quietly, "How did you get the marks on your neck, Xander?"
He looked up; she was sitting perfectly still, watching him. From her face he could tell that she knew the answer already, somehow. She wasn’t really asking, just making a point.
His face was hot again, and his heart had slammed up into his throat. He swallowed, spread his palms on his knees, and tried to breathe.
As soon as he could trust himself to do it without shaking, he reached for the banister and pulled himself to his feet. He didn't look at Liv; instead, he turned around and stared up the staircase. It looked very long all of a sudden.
"You are so on your own," he said aloud, and then wondered whether she knew he was talking to her. It didn't matter; he wasn't going to clarify.
He grabbed the banister and started pulling himself slowly up the stairs. One by one by one.
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