Concerning Ann Grove -- a fragment.
By Lynn K. Hollander
(This is set after "The Door in the Hedge" and before "Watcher,....")
"Cordy leave?"
"She and Ann went shopping."
"It's after eight. What's still open?"
"Milan, I believe, after breakfast at the Hassler in Rome. Ann says they'll be back before one, or two at the latest. Oh, she left this for you."
It was a letter from Claire. Angel broke the seal and read it.
Wesley, watching him, said "What?"
"This is from Claire. You haven't met her yet, but she seems to have become my doctor. The time with the drug? When I tried to kill you and Cordy? She tried some on Spike. Spike reacts the same way I did, even with the chip in his head."
"Spike has a chip in his head?"
"So she says. She became annoyed with Spike, and has made him into a birdbath. Willow, on the other hand, is worried about Spike out in the Seattle winter. Willow has a very soft heart, but is a very promising witch despite that. Claire digresses a lot. I should avoid over-indulgence in alcohol and stay completely away from doxymal or ecstasy or anything similar." Angel folded the letter, replaced it in the envelope, held it above the desk, released it. As it hung above the desk, he said, "Burn." The letter flared like flash paper and went out, leaving no ash.
Wesley glanced at him curiously. "Taking up magic yourself?"
"The paper's enchanted. Claire doesn't like leaving medical records unsecured. I'm going out."
He thought he knew where he was going, but when he reached Sunnydale, he stopped and pulled out a map instead of going on to Giles's apartment. Los Robles Lane was in the hills east of town.
Half way up the hill, the road crossed a gully, then T'ed. The left turn curved over the low haunch of the hill and disappeared, while the road to the right, which followed the gully around the hill, had gates across it. They opened as Angel stopped. He eyed the number on them, and drove through. They closed after him. About a quarter mile further along, the slope increased, the gully dropped quickly, and above and below the road, the cuts were reinforced with concrete and steel.
Near the end of the driveway, he passed between two huge stone fu dogs. There was a clear space in front of a double garage, giving just enough room to turn his car around. He left the car there. There was a gateway by the right of the garage, leading into a quiet entry garden, with a gently dripping fountain and night scented plants. Smaller fu dogs flanked curved stone benches around the fountain. The wall on his right shrank in height, then stopped, giving the front door a clear view of the lower reaches of the hill, with the gully, now obviously a dry creek bed, in the center of a valley.
There were no lights in the house, but he knocked anyway. After receiving no answer, he went back to the fountain and sat down, wondering if he should take the omen and leave, or stay. The garden was pleasant and he leaned back and relaxed, then drowsed.
"He's welcome," a voice said.
"No," said another. "He's a demon."
"He's mostly human," a third voice said.
"No, he's demonic," insisted the second voice.
The first voice said. "It doesn't matter what he is. He has Wu Jing's charm."
He opened his eyes. There was a scurry of many feet, then silence. Ann Grove stood in front of him.
"Hi."
"Hi."
"You got back."
"Yes."
"Did Cordy enjoy her shopping?"
"She seemed to."
He nodded. "What did she buy?"
"Angel," Ann said. "Did you come to talk to me about Cordelia's shopping?"
"I came to ask you to come to bed with me."
"You look aghast at the prospect," Ann said. She seemed seriously annoyed. "Why now? Why me? And why are you doing this in the first place?"
"That letter you left for me? It was from Claire. She says she had Willow demonstrate the curse Willow put on me. Not the original that had Tara worried, the spell Willow actually used. It just brought my soul back. Claire says I'm a perfectly normal vampire, but with a soul and without a curse."
"Claire says Willow has the witchy equivalent of a spell checker in her head. She cannot cast a curse. She couldn't even curse Oz, when they were breaking up. Why does that bring you to Sunnydale?"
"Normal vampires...."
"You want some proof that Claire knows what she's talking about."
"Yes."
"And you're not going to be satisfied with healer board scores, case histories or paid testimonials."
"No."
"So that's why now and why you're doing this in the first place. Now, and I'm really interested in the answer to this question: Why me?"
"If Claire's wrong, I think you can kill me."
Ann's air of restrained menace transmuted into quiet concern. "All right, you're serious. Obviously, this needs some more talk. Not here, however. Tara, Willow and I have been trying to establish an interface spell that works with my spy crystals. Put your car in the garage, we'll go somewhere I can cast a really strong privacy spell." She went around to the front door and entered the house.
The garage door was open when he returned to his car. He put the convertible next to a platinum-silver Jaguar sedan. Ann came out of a door in the back wall and gestured the rolling door shut. "San Francisco is out. Have you ever been to Taos?"
"I think I drove through there in the late forties."
"We'll go there, if you don't object."
"No."
She took his hand, and he saw the garage disappear and a wide, wood paneled, carpeted lobby, appear.
>>>|||<<<
Ann released his hand, and approached the desk.
"Ana, how nice to see you."
"Thank you. Is the library free tonight?"
"Yes." The being behind the desk handed her a large key, adorned with a purple tassel.
"And some light refreshment, suitable for me and a vampire, please."
"Of course."
Ann turned back to Angel, and said, "From here we walk. The stairs are there." She led Angel up the stairs, then down a wide hall to the double doors at the end. She used the key and entered, saying: "Lights."
It was a library. There were two sets of curtained windows on each side wall, with tall bookcases between them. There were reading tables; computer tables; a huge globe; lecterns displaying open oversize books; glass display tables; and two hanging scrolls beside a smaller set of double doors at the far end. In front of the windows there were arm chairs and low tables, arranged for reading or conversation. The light ranged from bright reading on the study tables and globe, to soft yellow over the arm chairs, to dim for the computer screens.
Ann was watching his face as he completed his survey and turned back to her. She smiled. "You seem to like the room."
"Oh, yes."
She stood in the center of the room, whispered to her closed fist, then threw a handful of nothing into the air. "Over here," she said, and went over to a chair by a low table with a variety of dishes on it. She inspected every dish, then took a plate and selected mushroom caps stuffed with paté, vol au vent with cheese and spinach, and marinated asparagus tips. "Can you eat anything but blood? I know very little about vampires, you know."
"I can taste, but only blood feeds me. I thought you lived with a Watcher."
"A lot of what Mighel believed was not substantiated by fact. And of course, you're not part of my original briefing. So why me? Not the killing you part, we'll discuss that later. Why pick me to sleep with?" She poured him a glass of wine from the unmarked bottle, then one for herself.
"What do you mean?"
"I've seen some of the girls you take to bed, Angel. Short, generally blonde, and ideally, younger than you are."
"Which ones have you seen?"
"Buffy, of course. Darla."
"Who's older than I am. Where'd you see Darla?"
"Wolfram and Hart."
"What were you doing there?"
"A friend was dropping some papers off." Clearly she had no intention of continuing.
He tasted his wine. Burgundy, rich and full. "Who else?" he asked.
"Drusilla."
"How did you find Drusilla?"
"If I want to find something, I do. She's in South America."
"She's a very dark brunette."
"But young and short. I am barely two fingers shorter than you are."
"I like you tall."
"Good, because I don't play shape-shifter games with human lovers."
"Fine," he said, drinking his wine to cover some sudden and vivid images.
"My hair is black and I'm so much older than you it's almost meaningless."
"You're kind, you're strong, and you care about minor details, like a scared Alv, facing his first battle."
"It wasn't his idea to be there, you know."
"I know."
"And he did well, for his first battle, even though he's not really a warrior, not like his sister."
"Not like you. Which is part of why you."
"What are you afraid might happen if we make love?"
"I'd lose my soul again."
"I have reservations about that, but this is about you. Is that bad?"
"Oh, yes. Without my soul, I'm a killer."
"You've watched me kill people," Ann said quietly.
"Demons."
"People. Beings," she said. "Admittedly, beings who were going to cause the deaths of many other beings. I don't care about labels too much, Angel. I do care about the responsible use of power, for one thing. You showed that, when you said stop, not kill, before we went to fight on the mountain. Claire does it all the time. I'm trying to teach it to Tara."
"You have it. Demons don't."
"We're going to discuss this further, at a later time. Humans are so insistent on labels. This may matter to you: I am not human."
"You are not a demon."
"No. I'm neither human nor demon. That established, do you want me to send you home?"
"No."
"All right. If we make love, and you lose your soul, what do you want me to do?"
"Kill me, before I hurt you or anyone else."
"Stop or kill?" she asked him again.
"Either, as long as it's permanent."
"So, you don't entirely believe Claire, Willow and Tara, or me about your uncursed state, and you're afraid I might make you happy enough to invoke that curse you think you may have. If I manage to do that, if you lose your soul, you trust me enough to deal with you before you hurt anyone else." She found some thumb-nail sized creme puffs with a sweet filling and slipped several onto her plate. Her wine glass became a champagne flute and the wine she had been drinking became straw-colored and carbonated.
"Yes."
"Not logical, Angel, but then logic isn't appropriate when the subjects are religion or sex. Well, whatever happens, I don't want to kill you. Oh, I can and I will, if necessary, but killing you would really complicate my life."
"How?"
"Your friends love you. There you'd be, safely dead, and there I'd be, facing an angry mob."
"Maybe they wouldn't know."
"Your car is in my garage and you drove through Sunnydale, where you're known. None of your friends have an IQ over 120, except Willow and Riley Finn, but they all can reason from those facts that I was the one who saw you last."
"Finn isn't exactly a friend."
"He's that smart, though, and he'd help Buffy do anything. So would Willow, and Buffy would certainly come after me. Tara would be miserable and Claire would probably be very annoyed, if she didn't just stop talking to me. Cordelia might be satisfied just to yell at me for sleeping with you in the first place, but Gunn and Wesley would join Buffy, as would Rupert and Xander; and Anya always goes where Xander leads."
"I think you're wrong about that."
"It's a risk I'm unhappy with. Consider this: I can do the same thing as Willow's spell, and give you access to your soul, just as you have it today."
"Claire says you're not a witch."
"I can do anything a witch can do, just not always by the same means. If you change, I can restore you to the state you currently enjoy."
"It's not really that enjoyable. But I would know, and I wouldn't hurt anyone. I really want to know."
"I promise you, I won't let you hurt anyone, even if I have to kill you."
"Just so I'm not a birdbath." He smiled. He felt an irrational but absolute confidence in her promise.
"One of those is enough. If you ask me again to go to bed with you, I'll say yes."
"Just a minute." He stood in front of her, took her hand and raised her to her feet. Her eyes were nearly level with his own. He brushed her loose hair back from her neck and carefully removed the platinum earring she always wore. "Are you still under geas?"
"Clever," she approved. "And neatly reasoned; but not the key to my freedom. Thank you, Angel. It was kind of you to try."
He kissed her. One thing nagged at him, though. He raised his head. "Ann?"
"Yes?"
"We don't have a bed here to go to."
"Thorough the other doors."
"Will you come to bed with me, Ann?"
"Yes."
*****
"So what happened? Last night and just now?"
"The second time we made love, I gradually put an infatuation spell on you."
"Why?"
"Do you recall the first thing I asked you this morning?"
"You asked me if I were happy."
"And you said?"
"Really happy. I was perfectly happy."
"And the next thing I asked you?"
"If I was still me. I didn't understand."
"Were you? Are you?" Ann asked.
"Yes."
Ann waited, watching him as she drank her coffee.
"I don't have a curse."
"No," Ann said. "You don't. You haven't for some years."
"What happened just now? In the shower?"
"I took the spell off."
"Why?"
"A side effect of infatuation spells, Angel, is that they tend to make the one infatuated stupider than he was before the spell. That's true even of a spell as well timed and expertly cast as the one I put on you, and I like you the way you are."
"So you took it off. Why did you put it on me exactly?"
"There was a point," Ann said gravely, "when you should have been markedly more relaxed than you appeared to be. I added a little depth and color to an otherwise shallow and unconvincing demonstration so you would have no doubts."
"Are you laughing at me?"
"Maybe just a little."