"I still don't understand," Fred said. "What are we running away from?"

Angel took the next corner too fast; he could hear all the passengers groan as they banged hard into the sides of the vehicle and each other. Fred was thrown against him so roughly that she gasped to collect her breath. The realization that he could hurt them badly -- that he had already hurt them -- achieved something that all Fred's pleading, Wesley's questioning and Cordelia's outrage had not. It made him put his foot on the brake.

As the car slowed and pulled over into a parking lot, Cordelia said, "Thank God."

"I'm not sure He's in this zip code," Lorne said. "But it's worth a shot, sweetie. Keep at it." He turned to Angel with a nonchalance that only barely seemed forced. "So that's your darker half. May I just take this moment to thank you for all that neurotic energy you expend keeping him bottled up? Because bottled up is exactly what that guy needs to be."

"Where the hell were you driving to, anyway?" Gunn demanded.

"Anywhere," Angel said. "Just -- away." He looked back over his shoulder at the carful of people with him. Fred was utterly confused -- poor Fred -- and the others were a mixture of angry, frightened and thoughtful. The "thoughtful" element consisted chiefly of Wesley; he had steepled his fingers in front of his face and his expression was distant. Gunn kept rubbing his shoulder, which had been injured during their encounter at the hotel; he was staring back at Angel with a mixture of displeasure and shock. In the back seat, Cordelia fumed, and even as she opened her mouth, Angel braced himself for her words --

"What the hell is he doing here?"

After staring at her for a moment, Angel said, hesitantly, "You mean Angelus?"

"No, I meant Ed McMahon. Yes, Angelus. What is he doing here?"

All her anger, all her fury -- it was directed at Angelus. As though he were someone else entirely -- "We have a number of different possibilities before us," Wesley said. "It's possible that, in this reality, Angel was never cursed with his soul at all --"

"No," Angel said. "I don't see why I would ever have ended up in the Hyperion if I'd never been cursed with a soul."

"So you did get cursed, but you never came back after your shag-nanigans with Buffy," Cordelia said.

"No," Angel said again. "Darla was in there. I killed her long before -- before Buffy and I --"

"I don't know all these names," Fred said. Where the others were on edge, she was simply curious. "Am I supposed to?"

"You're gonna know more than you want to know fast enough," Gunn said. "So Wolfram & Hart still brought babe-in-a-box back to haunt you --"

The car became suddenly very quiet. After a pause, Wesley said, "And in this universe, their plan worked."

"How?" Cordelia said. "How could it work? I mean, Angel got all antisocial and freaksome, but he never lost his soul. He never slept with Darla."

Lorne pursed his lips and looked up at the sky.

"Yes, I did," Angel said.

For a long few moments, there was no sound in the car at all. Traffic whooshed by in the night, sirens sounded in the far distance, and a faulty old air-conditioning unit in a nearby building wheezed incessantly. Angel wanted to meet their eyes, wanted to face up to it all, but there were so many eyes to face. Wesley's disbelief, Cordelia's outrage, Gunn's disgust -- even Fred looked wounded, God knew why --

"You had sex with Darla," Cordelia said. "You lied to me."

Quietly, Angel confirmed, "Just before I came back to all of you, there was a night when I hit bottom."

"So to speak," Lorne said.

"How could you?" Wesley said. "How could you do such a thing, knowing what the consequences might be?"

"I didn't!" Angel said. "I mean -- there were no consequences. I couldn't have been farther away from perfect happiness --"

"So you were practicing safe sex?" Cordelia snapped. "Well, guess what? Turns out it wasn't that safe at all. You lost your soul here, and Angelus is back out to play. Just so you could get your rocks off."

"Way to go," Gunn muttered.

"Everyone, wait," Wesley said. His voice sounded calmer, more measured; the tide of bad feeling in the car suddenly seemed to ebb and fade. "This isn't the time to go handing out blame. I think we have more important matters on our hands."

"Like what?" Cordelia said.

"Finding a safe base of operations," Wesley said. "And finding out what's become of us all."

Angel didn't want to know the answer to that question. But he didn't think he was going to be spared finding out.

In Silverlake, Cordelia's apartment was eerily silent, its windows uniformly dark. As it was 3 o'clock in the morning, that shouldn't have been surprising, but the events of the night so far had set Wesley's nerves on edge. Instead of getting out of the car immediately, he kept watching the apartment.

As he looked, he began to notice the absence of familiar features. The wind chimes Cordelia had hung outside the door -- the ones he always knocked his head on as he went inside -- were missing. The fern by the front door drooped sideways in its pot, withered and dead. "The place looks empty," he commented.

"Hyperion looked empty, too," Gunn said, shooting a sideways glance in Angel's direction.

Wesley had to concede the point, but they needed to find a base -- somewhere he could just stop long enough to think -- and they needed to find it soon. "I'll take a look. Just to be on the safe side." Turning around to face Cordelia in the back seat, he asked, "Do you have your keys?"

She raised her eyebrows, then waved her hands down the front of her body: "Wesley, I look like I'm auditioning for an 'I Dream of Jeannie' remake. Do you see any pockets in this ?"

He felt himself blush. "Oh. Right. Sorry."

"Since you ask, my apartment keys are in the pocket of the pants of my best denim pantsuit, which is currently in another universe. Which I guess is a better excuse than leaving them in the dryer." She shrugged. "But there's a spare set on the ledge above the door. Or there ought to be."

Wesley nodded, got out of the car and made his way quickly across the lawn at the front of the building and along the covered deck to Cordelia's apartment. Once there, he reached up and ran his hand along the top of the doorway. There was a metallic clink as the spare key fell to the ground, and he smiled as he retrieved it. At least something in this warped version of the world was the way it was supposed to be. Oddly, the key was speckled with rust, but with an effort he made it turn in the lock.

He opened the door cautiously, unsure what to expect. But the apartment was as quiet inside as it appeared to be from outside, and when he breathed in he found the air had a stale edge. Wesley stepped outside again to wave to the others, then waited while they joined him.

"Home sweet home," announced Cordelia, walking past him and into the apartment. The others followed, Angel last, and when he was inside Wesley shut the door firmly. "Even if it's some other me's home sweet home, right now I'll take what I can get. "

As soon as she spoke, the lights flicked on, flooding the living room with welcoming brightness. A blanket that had been draped over the back of a chair flew through the air, wrapping itself around Cordelia's shoulders and pulling her towards the sofa. As she collapsed onto it, cushions snuggled into place under her arms and behind her head. Wesley could almost sense the glow of intense delight permeating the space.

"Dennis, cut it out!" Cordelia was laughing as she freed her arms from the blanket hugging around her in a fierce embrace. "What, is this a hint about the Princess Leia costume? Cut it OUT, I said, that tickles -- Oh, I missed you too -- I know I haven't been here for a while --"

Wesley saw her look around the bright living room properly for the first time. As she took in her surroundings, her laughter stopped abruptly. "Jeez. I guess I really haven't been here for a while."

The apartment was a mess. Packing crates were stacked carelessly on top of one another, and a slew of belongings -- books, plates, clothing, a model of the Starship Enterprise -- lay scattered randomly around them. Much of the furniture had been pushed up against the walls and half-covered with old sheets. The place looked as if someone had got halfway through moving in, had an abrupt change of heart, then simply walked out and never returned again.

Cordelia stretched across the sofa and lifted a dog-eared copy of Playboy between her thumb and forefinger. With distaste and dawning realization she said, "This isn't my stuff."

"You probably decided to skip town when he took up homicide as a recreational activity," Gunn said, taking a seat beside her and referring to Angel as if he were invisible. While the others were making themselves comfortable in the living room, Angel had not moved far from the door: he was standing outside the group. The expression on his face, noted Wesley, clearly said that invisible was exactly what he currently wished he were.

"Yeah, that makes sense," Cordelia said, but there was doubt in her voice. She smiled a falsely cheery smile: "And Dennis has been making sure I'd have somewhere to come back to. You're the best roomie a girl could have."

Fred, apparently oblivious to the exclusion zone in force around Angel, moved closer to him. "Should I be able to see Dennis?" she whispered. "Or is he maybe Cordelia's make-believe friend? I had a make-believe friend for a while. His name was Schrodinger. He was a cat. Then one day he got in his box and when I looked inside he wasn't there." She saddened at the memory. "I think his quantum wave collapsed. Or maybe he just went to chase a mouse."

Lorne reached into a pocket and took out a handkerchief, which he used to dust the top of a packing crate before sitting on it. "Judging from the psychic energy sloshing around in here like ice cubes in an alcoholic's G&T, I'm guessing Dennis is a ghost."

Cordelia held up a hand, cutting him off before he could say any more. "In my house, we try to avoid the 'g' word. Sensitive subject." This established, she looked up and addressed herself to the room at large: "Dennis, meet Lorne and Fred. Lorne's from another dimension." She frowned. "Well, actually we're all from another dimension."

"And we need to start working out how we're going to get back there. Especially now that it's clear this universe is somewhat more dangerous than it initially appeared to be," Wesley said. "Dennis, is the phone still connected?"

In reply, the telephone took off from its cradle and deposited itself in his waiting hand. "Thank you, Dennis."

"Who are you calling?" Gunn asked.

"Someone who might be able to help, I hope," Wesley said, feigning confidence. But he looked at the phone he held for a long moment before dialing. He doubted anyone in the room -- including Gunn and Cordelia -- seriously believed this dimension's Cordelia was soaking up the sun on a beach in Hawaii, or that this version of Gunn had won the lottery and dwelled in Beverly Hills. But with no easy way to find out what had happened to them all, it was left to Wesley to ask the uncomfortable questions.

No point in delaying the inevitable.

He keyed in the number quickly, then held the phone to his ear as the connection was made. He felt an unexpected surge of optimism when it was answered almost immediately. "Hello?" a male voice said.

"Wesley Wyndham-Pryce?" Wesley asked.

"Never heard of him," the man said, in a nasal East-coast accent. "You've got the wrong number, pal."

"Wait," Wesley said quickly. "This is his home number. I mean -- I'm sure I'm not mistaken."

There was a brief silence on the other end of the line, as the man apparently considered the choice between becoming more deeply involved in the conversation, and just putting the phone down. To Wesley's relief, he chose the former option. "Uh, hang on. This isn't my place, it's my girlfriend's. I'll ask her. Hey, Kim!"

Another pause, during which Wesley strained to make out the details of a muffled conversation taking place somewhere distant from the phone. "This guy you're looking for," the male voice asked when it finally returned, "is he English?"

"Yes."

"Kim says the guy who lived here before her was English. She thinks he had some weird, long name."

"Did he happen to leave a forwarding address?"

"Not unless you can pick up mail in the afterlife."

Wesley swallowed. Around him, the five people who couldn't hear the other side of the conversation were looking at him hopefully. "So he's dead," he said, and watched five faces register varying degrees of disquiet.

"Yeah. I don't know what happened, but it was pretty sudden. Kim was almost ready to give up on finding a place. Good luck for her, real bad luck for him." The man stopped, as if something had just struck him for the first time. "Hey, uh, I'm sorry -- did you know him well?"

"I knew him very well indeed," Wesley said, and broke the connection.

He stared at the phone for a very long time before he felt able to look up and meet the gazes of the others again. When he finally could, he said with false joviality: "Well, I for one won't have to worry about the correct etiquette to observe when meeting one's double from an alternate reality."

"Wesley --" began Cordelia.

"Call Sunnydale," Angel said. His voice sounded uneven, and it cracked over the last word.

Wesley clenched his jaw -- for some reason, just the sound of Angel's voice threatened to push his temper past the breaking point. "I believe we're perfectly capable of handling this situation ourselves, thank you."

"Glory," Angel said. "We should find out what she was doing, exactly. That could help us. And I want to know if --"

Angel said no more, but Wesley could fill in the rest. Of course, of course. Angel's suggestion was only sensible. He ought to have realized that himself. After a moment of searching his memory, he came up with the right numbers, dialed quickly.

As Giles' phone rang and rang, Wesley watched Angel's expression grow progressively darker. He couldn't have, Wesley thought, he couldn't have killed them all --

"Who's that?"

The voice was rougher than Wesley remembered it, and the pronunciation was uncharacteristically indistinct, but it was still Giles. "This is going to sound a little odd," Wesley began.

"Who's there? What d'you want from me this time?"

Wesley blinked. If he hadn't known better, he would have sworn Giles was -- drunk. "This is Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, Mr. Giles."

"Oh, God," Giles said.

This was not going well at all. "I realize this is something of a shock, but there is an explanation --"

"You again," Giles said. Beneath the sloppiness, the weariness, he sounded intensely irritated. "I wish you people -- you dead people -- would stop phoning me up at all hours. Call bloody directory inquiries if you want to talk to the living." Suddenly the anger drained from his tone, replaced by something like dread. "Is Buffy there? Tell her -- I can't bring her back. So stop asking me --" The line went dead.

Slowly, Wesley lowered the phone.

"Is something up with Giles?" Cordelia asked.

He hesitated before replying. "Mr. Giles is... rather indisposed just now. And in no condition to tell us about this Glory being. But I did glean some useful information. I'm afraid it's bad news."

In a voice that was barely more than a low whisper Angel said, "It's Buffy."

Wesley nodded, and Angel turned away, his whole body slumping as if something solid inside had turned to liquid and drained out of him. But of course, thought Wesley. In this universe, he was certainly dead and Cordelia very probably was -- but it still took the Slayer's name to get a reaction from Angel. It was an uncharitable thought, he knew, but he couldn't entirely suppress it.

"You don't have to be Columbo to work out how things went down here," Gunn said grimly.

"And we're not going to get any help from Sunnydale," Cordelia added.

"Then we'll find our own way out of this," Wesley said with determination. "It'll be dawn in a few hours; we'll be safe here until tomorrow morning." Then he looked at Angel, standing inside the apartment doorway, and realized the absurdity of that statement.

Cordelia was evidently thinking the same thing. "Want to bet? If Angel can walk in here, so can Angelus," she said, standing up and going to a chest of drawers which had been pushed roughly into a corner. "We have to do a dis-invite. I always kept some rosemary and thyme about, just in case --"

Kneeling down, she opened the bottom drawer and began to root around in it. "What is this junk? Deep Space 9 trading cards? Damn it, it isn't here --"

"Cordelia..." began Angel.

She ignored him and kept sifting maniacally through the drawer. "I hid it right at the back --"

Wesley rubbed his eyes. He was exhausted. Bone-weary. More than anything, he wanted to put his head down somewhere safe and soft and go to sleep. Attempting to soothe Cordelia's agitation, he said, "It's all right. It doesn't matter. We probably couldn't do a dis-invite, anyway. It doesn't work if the original occupant is d--"

He snapped his eyes open and bit off the word just before it slipped out. It was still too late. Cordelia straightened up slowly and turned around. When she looked at him, he saw her eyes were shining. She blinked -- once, twice -- and stood up. Then, as self-possessed as she had been frantic a moment earlier, she went back to the sofa and sat down again.

"We're safe tonight," Angel said. "He won't come looking for us before dawn."

Gunn frowned. "How come you're so sure 'bout that?"

Steadily, Angel said, "Because I couldn't face him again right now. So he isn't going to be able to face me."

"Nevertheless," Wesley said, "someone should keep watch until morning."

Angel took the hint and nodded. As he left, he said, "I'll be right outside."

Fred kept looking at the door after he had gone. "Angel's going to keep us safe, isn't he?"

Cordelia made a face. "Yeah, because Angel's safety-first man."

Lorne stood up, giving a theatrical yawn as he did so. "I vote we make this a slumber party. I need at least four hours, or my complexion turns from verdant lawn to old avocado."

"That's an excellent idea," agreed Wesley. "We could all use some sleep."

"Den's through there," said Cordelia, pointing for Lorne's benefit. "Make yourself at home. There's a sofa bed. It's a little lumpy, but --"

Lorne bowed graciously and, taking her hand, kissed it with a flourish. "Your ex-majesty, I assure you tonight there is no finer accommodation in all the palaces of Pylea than the sofa bed in the den of apartment 212, Embury Street, Los Angeles."

Wesley smiled. After a second, so did Cordelia. Getting up, she put her arm around Fred and led her away from the door. "C'mon. Allow me to re-introduce you to the concept of hot running water." A moment later, Lorne was gone too.

"You know," Wesley remarked to Gunn, "I wouldn't have thought a clairvoyant singing demon would have been the ideal companion for inter-dimensional travel, but I'm glad he's here."

Gunn swung his feet up on to the sofa and attempted to stretch his tall frame out on its inadequate length. "Yeah. We need someone on morale duty, that's for sure."

Wesley began arranging cushions on the floor to create a makeshift mattress. "We're going to get through this," he said. "There are plenty of hotspots out there. There must be another portal home."

"Oh, I don't doubt that," said Gunn. He closed his eyes. "What I'm wondering is, are we gonna survive 'round here long enough to find it?"

Outside Cordelia's apartment building, the night was quiet, and every window on the block was dark. The only noises were the faint hum of night insects and the occasional car passing on the street. But Angel wasn't paying attention to his surroundings. He walked blindly, aware of nothing except the litany of guilt echoing inside his head.

I gave up, he thought. I gave up, and I destroyed everything. Cordelia, and Wesley, and oh God not Buffy --

Cordelia and Wesley had been on their guard. They'd have known to be careful. They would have fought him.

So they would have died quickly. Angel hated having to be grateful for that bleak fact, but he was.

Buffy, though -- she wouldn't have known. Her mother had just died; he remembered her sorrow on the night after the funeral, and how fragile she had been. Was that how he'd found her in this universe? Her vulnerability would have opened a whole new range of opportunities to him -- and he had always craved novelty --

He could imagine the possibilities too easily and too vividly. Within seconds, they threatened to drown him in their horror.

He stopped walking, forced himself to concentrate. This isn't our reality, he reminded himself. Wesley and Cordelia and Buffy are all very much alive and well. And you have to hold yourself together to make sure Wes and Cordy stay that way.

Being trapped inside his own frustrations was what had created this situation in the first place. He couldn't afford to let it happen again. If he had any chance of preserving the fragile truce between himself and his friends, he had to be stronger this time. Smarter.

And getting lost in thought while Angelus came to kill them all wouldn't fit into either of those categories.

Angel inhaled deeply, mostly as a means of focusing on his surroundings. His undirected footsteps had taken him to the swimming pool which served Cordelia's apartment complex. Here, the air was thick with the chemical tang of chlorine, mixed with scent from the white flowers blooming on the trees that edged the courtyard and clung to life in tiny clay pots. And beneath all that was another scent -- something familiar --

He heard rustling and half-turned to see Fred standing behind him. Her hair was tugged back into a ponytail; she looked younger with it pulled away from her face. She was now wearing sweatpants almost comically too large for her and a T-shirt with the face of a black man who, for some reason, had a woman's hair barrette across his eyes. "What are you doing out?" Angel said slowly.

"I got the first shower. And -- Cordy let me take first pick from the clothes the last guy left behind." There was a slight hesitation before Cordelia's name, as if she wasn't completely certain it was all right to copy the others and shorten it. When Angel didn't object, Fred finished, "I don't think she was very excited about any of them, though."

Angel knew he should say something reassuring about making do or joke about Cordelia's sartorial misfortunes. But he was too weary -- in body, in soul -- to muster up anything of the kind. "It's not safe out here," he said. "You should go in."

"I feel safe if you're here," she said, so guilelessly that something inside him snapped.

He stepped close to her, held a finger of warning in her face. "I don't know how much you understood of what we were discussing back there. But Angelus? The murderer they're all talking about? He's me. He's what I was -- what I can be again. And apparently not even I understand what it is that changes me. You think you're safe?"

Fred didn't even seem to register his anger. "Is he worse than the beast? You didn't hurt me then."

"I could hurt you now. I mean, he could," Angel said. He'd learned, through hard practice, to think of Angelus entirely as a force within himself. That habit could prove dangerous now; best to break it, embrace the third person, recognize that Angelus was also another entity here, physically distinct and capable of acting -- and striking -- on his own. There would be time, later, to explain to Fred that he carried all of Angelus' evil within him, every moment. Assuming the others didn't explain it for him. "You're going to have to be careful."

"Okay." Her young face was naked of makeup, of any kind of artifice. She was meeting his gaze with the unblinking courage of a child. "So what do I do to be careful?"

Don't trust me, Angel wanted to say. But instead he began with the basics. "You've heard stories about vampires, right?"

"Like Count Dracula," she said easily. She sat down by the edge of the pool; he realized, for the first time, that she'd wandered out barefoot. Never even considering if there might be glass on the ground, or sharp stones that could cut her feet.

Fred dunked her feet in the pool, and her face lit up in a bright smile. "Oooh, nice. I never saw a pool painted this color green before. Usually they're blue." Then she frowned. "Aren't they?"

"Vampires are not exactly like Count Dracula," Angel said, reminding himself to think about the fictional creature Fred was referring to, not the Eurotrash he remembered from Prague. "They're real. I am one. Do you understand that?"

"Uh-huh. They're the mean cows. But you're not mean," she said. "Want to dunk your feet too?"

"This isn't the --" Angel paused as he realized what she'd said. He sat by her side. "What did you say about mean cows?"

"Sometimes cows -- I mean, people -- would show up in Pylea who weren't what you'd call normal. Not that anybody's normal after a little while there," she said, and something in her expression made him realize, for the first time, that Fred was painfully aware of how awkward her conversation and habits were to the others. "I think they came for the sunlight. But when the Pyleans tried to make them slaves, they'd get really mad, and turn into beasts, like you did."

Angel nodded. It made sense, now; others in L.A.'s supernatural underworld had to know about the portals, and all vampires would crave the taste of the sunlight denied them.

Fred reached out and began taking off Angel's shoes; he was too distracted by her words to protest. "But you turned back into a person. They didn't. They were animals, but worse than animals. The only way to get them off of somebody was to offer them blood. Pure blood. That was what they were after. That's why I kind of figured they were vampires -- or that they started as vampires, anyway. I still don't know what that other thing was, that thing they turned into."

"That's how you knew how to pull me away from Wesley and Gunn."

"Uh-huh." She stripped off his socks and pushed his now-bare feet into the pool. "Isn't that nice?"

The water was icy against his legs. If you were alive, he thought, the sensation was probably delightful -- the contrast of warm flesh against cool liquid. To Angel, it was just cold.

He stared down at the surface of the water. Fred's face was reflected there, wavery and alone on the pool's rippling surface. She saw it too. "You don't have a reflection any more. That's like Count Dracula too, right?"

"Right," Angel said, though it was hard to imagine Dracula, in any incarnation, dunking his feet in a swimming pool. He began going through the information that might keep Fred safe. "We can't go out in the sunlight, and we're burned by holy water and crosses. Crosses can also ward us off -- garlic too, though not for very long, so don't rely on it."

"So eating -- that food -- wouldn't work." Her eyes closed tightly, and Angel could almost see her straining to remember. "That food that's like a whole lot of string."

"Spaghetti?"

"Yes!" She beamed up at him. "I like Italian food too. That is Italian, right?"

"I think so," he said. "I'm not really that good with food. But concentrate, okay? You can tell a vampire by his lack of reflection, lack of pulse, cold body temperature or avoidance of sunlight. You can kill a vampire by staking him, with wood, through the heart." He pointed to his own chest, then to his neck. "Beheading works too, but I don't think you should try it. In fact, the best thing for you to do, always, is to run away and call for me or the others."

Fred actually seemed to be paying attention now. "That other woman you were talking about -- Darla -- is she a vampire too?"

Oh, God. How did he even start explaining Darla? Keep it simple, he decided. "Yes. She's the one who made me this way. She's dangerous."

"She turns into a beast, too," Fred concluded.

"Not exactly," Angel said. "It doesn't happen like that, here. But we do change before we feed." He hesitated, then looked her steadily in the eye. "I'm going to change now, so you can see what it looks like, all right?"

She squared her shoulders. "All right."

Angel breathed in again, let himself react to the warm smell of Fred's blood, so close, pounding beneath her pale, fragile skin --

His control, almost automatic at this point, relaxed; the demon surfaced. Fred stared at him, and he prepared for her shock and dismay.

Instead she said, "Well, that's not nearly as bad as before." Fred poked his forehead curiously with one finger. "Those ridges are really hard. Is that bone? How can you grow bone that fast?"

"I don't know -- I never --"

"Rate of deposition of osteoid must be phenomenal," Fred said, mostly to herself. "And then there's the mineralization -- maybe it stays pliable --" Then her expression changed abruptly, and she looked concerned. "I hope it doesn't -- Does it hurt when you do that?"

"I -- no. No, it doesn't hurt." Angel was completely at a loss. He felt foolish, now, for expecting a different reaction. For a woman who associated vampires with the wild, demonic animals she'd seen in Pylea -- who had been surrounded by demons of all kinds for years -- the face he wore now would scarcely look unusual. "You need to remember what this looks like, Fred. If you see anyone with a face like this, you have to get away from them as fast as you can."

"Except you."

"Including me, unless I've already told you what's about to happen," Angel said.

"Because there's a bad man here who looks just like you."

"Who is me," Angel corrected her. "And even after we get home, Fred -- even then, if you see me looking like that, and I'm acting even a little strangely -- you have to get away. Trust your instincts. Don't -- don't trust me --"

His throat closed off, and he stared back down at the lawn-green waters of the pool. Did Buffy have any warning at all? Or had she trusted him until it was too late, reached out to him for support and received instead a kiss that concealed teeth, or an embrace that crushed?

He would have seen the light fade from her eyes and relished it.

"Angel? What's the matter? Your face changed all of a sudden." Fred's voice suddenly sounded more focused than it had before. "Is this about the dead woman they were talking about inside?"

"Yes," he said dully. "Buffy. I killed her."

"You mean -- back home, too, or just the other you, here?" Fred paused as she reviewed her own sentence, and then she straightened up to look at him again, apparently satisfied.

"Just here. Back home, she's alive. Buffy's alive," he repeated. "If I didn't know that, I couldn't even --" His throat betrayed him again, and he looked up at the blank, starless sky.

"She's your girlfriend," Fred said, as though trying to commit it solidly to her memory.

"Not any more."

"But you still love her." It wasn't a question, but Angel nodded anyway. "And she still loves you."

"I don't know," Angel said. "I think -- it doesn't matter what I think. Or what she feels. We're not together, and we're not going to be. Because of what I am."

"Did she mind? You being a vampire?"

"No. But she should have." They were both silent for a long time after that. Angel watched the shimmering reflections on the surface of the water -- uneven lines of light crossing and weaving together like a rippling, ethereal fabric.

"Like the surface of a portal," Fred said, and he believed she had followed his gaze, read his thoughts. "It can swallow you up, take you under. But you can come back to the surface again."

Angel hesitated, then said, "I thought you were talking about the pool, but you're not, are you?"

"I know what it's like to get all wrapped up in ideas that aren't real. To let everything get so jumbled together that you don't know what you can trust." Fred held one hand in front of her, parallel to the surface of the water, then balled it into a fist. "I still don't know what's real and what's not. So I just deal with what's in front of me."

"Is that enough?"

"It kept me alive," Fred said. "It brought me to you."

By the time Cordelia had taken the longest, hottest shower the building's elderly plumbing was capable of producing, the apartment's other occupants were asleep. She wrapped a towel around herself and crept out of the bathroom and into her bedroom, noting with amusement as she tiptoed past the den that Lorne even managed to snore in key.

Once the bedroom door was firmly shut behind her, she snapped on the lights and dried herself off. Her Pylean royal bikini was lying on the bed where she had gratefully stripped it off at the first opportunity: eyeing it now, she knew she'd scream if she had to endure one more second of being scoured by semi-precious stones like cheese on a grater every time she crossed her legs. Rolling the bra and panties up inside the cape, she put the bundle to one side and began to cast around for an alternative.

Unfortunately, the choice was somewhat limited. Fred had been more than happy to swap her Pylean peasant chic for the first clean clothes they'd found that didn't swamp her small frame completely. In fact, she'd seemed positively enthusiastic about her Geordi LaForge XX-large T-shirt. Cordelia sucked in her breath and shook her head at the memory. Maybe it was a science-nerd thing. Picard, she could understand. But Geordi? He didn't even have a catchphrase. Opening cupboards and drawers, she continued her search of the bedroom, determined to find something -- anything -- that didn't scream 'merchandising'. The room, like the rest of the apartment, was a wreck, and although clothes and books and knickknacks were strewn all over the place, Cordelia saw not even one thing she recognized.

Well, that wasn't strictly true. She recognized the guy in the poster above the bed -- that was Captain Picard, celestial starlight reflecting off his bald head, as the Starship Enterprise streaked through the night sky behind him. At the bottom, blue type proudly proclaimed "Boldly Going Where No One Has Gone Before!" Nice poster, if you went for that kind of thing, but it sure as hell wasn't hers.

Nothing here was hers.

Her makeup and jewelry were gone. Her clothes were gone. The menagerie of crystal animals she'd been collecting since she was fourteen but now thought were tacky, yet somehow couldn't bring herself to throw away -- they were gone too. Cordelia Chase had been wiped out of existence, and the world had just flowed into the hole and filled it like she'd never been there.

All because of Angel --

Cordelia pushed that thought out of her mind. It would be so easy to let herself get angry, to blow up at Angel over this stupid choice he'd made, this lie he'd told her, the danger he'd put them all in. So easy to let the terror that had haunted her this winter take over again -- the terror that Angel could snap, at any time, and she had seen what happened the last time Angel really snapped.

But it wasn't worth it. Angel was back in her life now, and she liked it better that way, and he could only stay in her life if they didn't look too closely at what might have been.

She blinked and saw she was holding a plain gray sweatshirt with a small Star Trek logo embroidered just below the collar. It was almost subtle. Lying beneath it, she found a pair of drawstring pants she might get to stay on her, if she wrapped the cord around her waist twice.

Out loud, she said, "I swear to God, when I get home I'm taking Angel's credit cards to Macy's and I'm not coming back until I've brought retail therapy to a whole new place."

The thought made her feel better as she dressed; after all, this was the second time she'd lost a whole wardrobe thanks to --

She froze, the sweatshirt half on and half off.

The poster above the bed had changed.

A long, cylindrical space-station hung in the foreground. Behind, some actor who was neither bald nor Patrick Stewart gazed nobly into the middle distance. The slogan now read, 'Our Last Best Hope For Peace.'

Cordelia finished pulling on the sweatshirt and exhaled slowly. She was tired, she reminded herself. She was stressed. She'd recently abdicated leadership of a demon dimension, and now she was stuck in another universe where her vampire ex-boss's evil double was undoubtedly planning how to kill her for the second time.

In short, she'd had the kind of week that messed with your head. And, despite having dated Xander Harris for more than a year and absorbed a disturbingly high dosage of geekiness by osmosis, she wasn't exactly an expert on sci-fi television. So -- she'd been wrong about the poster. Yeah, that had to be it. After all, space ship, space station -- where was the difference, really?

Satisfied with this explanation, Cordelia lay down on the bed. Wesley was right: they all needed to get some rest. She reached out to turn off the bedside lamp and swore under her breath when her hand brushed a pile of envelopes, knocking them to the floor. She leaned down to retrieve them--

--and stopped when she saw, amid bundles of junk mail destined for RESIDENT, her own name printed in black and white. Above it, someone had scrawled in messy capitals, ADDRESSEE UNKNOWN.

"Am too known," she muttered, and tore open the envelope, grateful for even the slightest proof that she hadn't disappeared entirely from this world.

She glanced quickly at the pages inside. Then, her heart speeding up, she read them again, slowly, in case she'd made a mistake. She got up and ran out of the bedroom to where Wesley and Gunn were sleeping in the living room.

"Wesley, wake up," she hissed, shaking his arm.

"--Uhh?" He opened his eyes and sat up so quickly they almost bumped heads. "Is Angelus--"

"No, no." She waved the paper in his face. "I'm not dead!"

"I can see that," he said mildly.

"No, I mean, I'm not dead here, in this universe. This is my May bank statement. There's movement on my checking account."

"Let me see that."

She gave him the pages, and waited while he put on his glasses and squinted at it in the gloom. On the sofa, Gunn snored softly, undisturbed. "Not much movement," Wesley said after a moment. "A large deposit on the sixth of the month... Who are Mutual Dependable?"

"I have health insurance with them."

Wesley looked up at her, pleased and slightly surprised. "I had no idea you were so -- prudent."

She shrugged. "You grow up in Sunnydale, you learn the importance of comprehensive medical coverage. Insurance company execs put their kids through college on Sunnydale premiums."

"There's a payment made for the same amount a few days later, to --" he peered closer, "-- Huntercombe Hospital."

Unable to keep from grinning at him, Cordelia said, "You see? Angelus didn't get everyone. I'm alive somewhere and getting better. Maybe I can even help us."

Wesley didn't look as convinced as she felt, but he gave her a small smile. "Well, we should certainly follow this up. We'll find out where this hospital is and drop by tomorrow. Now, Cordelia -- please do try to get some sleep."

Feeling more content than she had since they'd fled from the Hyperion, Cordelia returned to the bedroom. She was about to flop down on the bed again when she heard the faint murmur of voices drift in through the open window.

The bedroom was at the back of the building, and the window looked out over the complex swimming pool. Cordelia peered down and, after a second, recognized the remote figures of Angel and Fred below her.

They were sitting close to the edge of the pool -- so close, they had to be dangling their feet in the water. How adorable, thought Cordelia sourly. We're in the wrong dimension and in mortal danger. Just the time to go paddling.

As she watched, Fred raised her hand and touched Angel's face. He made no move to pull away. There was something about the action -- an assumption of intimacy -- that set all kinds of warning bells ringing in Cordelia's head.

Fred was smart: maybe she'd work out by herself that Angel was strictly look, don't touch. Then again, Fred hadn't dated in five years and her ability to interpret the nuances of human interaction was rusty, to say the least.

Trouble brewing, Cordelia thought --

A sudden noise made her start. A car which had been parked on the street beyond the apartment complex roared into life, performing a fast and sloppy U-turn in the empty road. As it swung around, its headlights momentarily blasted the side of the building head-on with light, flooding the bedroom with an intensity of illumination that made Cordelia's eyes water. Then it was gone.

Her heart was thumping and her mouth dry as she got into the bed. C'mon, Cor, she told herself sternly. It's just a car. Angel said Angelus wouldn't come looking for us tonight, and Angel should know. There's no one out there. No one's watching us.

But, as exhausted as she was, she didn't sleep for a long time.