Fred was trying very, very hard to be very, very quiet.

This was something she was used to, something she was good at. At the library, she had made it a habit; in Pylea, she had made it an art form. Breathe in through the nose, slow and even, and don't move a muscle, or the monsters will get you --

Outside the kitchen, in the lounge, she could hear Cordelia talking to Gunn in a tone of voice that left little room for dispute. "You have to change. You smell of funk. Not even good old regular funk, either. Pylea funk."

"Which bears no resemblance to Sly and the Family Stone, I'm sorry to say," Lorne said. His voice, like Cordelia's, carried into the kitchen where Fred stood alone, hands clasped together so hard her fingers hurt.

"I don't care," Gunn said. "I like Xena as much as the next leather-bikini-loving man out there. But that does not mean I am ready to wear her face on my chest."

"Wesley's wearing his Sliders shirt!"

"Yeah, well, Wesley actually liked Sliders, so that tells you about the man's taste right there."

"I beg your pardon," Wesley said. "I consider this shirt a sort of ironic joke about our predicament. It's postmodern."

Fred could hear the smile in his voice as he said that. He acted like there was nothing wrong. But then, he was the one who had gone out for groceries in the first place -- he was the one who had brought it into the house -- and now it was sitting on the counter, waiting for her to show weakness, getting ready to pounce --

"You're not nagging Lorne to change."

"Lorne doesn't smell."

"Well, thank you for that vote of olfactory confidence," Lorne said.

Cordelia persisted. "You just don't care, do you?"

"You just want to have the rest of us looking even tackier than you. Thanks but no thanks on the shirt. We'll swing by the store and pick up some Old Spice or something."

"And that'd be an improvement in what sense, exactly?"

"Me, I find the ladies go mad for Brut," Lorne called back at Gunn as he stepped into the kitchen. Fred gestured desperately at him to be still and quiet, but he just stared at her. "What's the matter, pumpkin?"

Fred screamed and tackled him, knocking them both out of the kitchen and out of danger. As they landed together in an undignified tangle of limbs on the carpet, Cordelia, Wesley and Gunn rushed toward them. "What is it? What's happened?" Wesley said.

Angel threw open the door of the bathroom. "Fred? Are you okay?"

She was shaking so hard now she could barely choke out the words, but she managed to say, "In there -- in the kitchen --"

"What? He's not --" Angel began, but Lorne quickly shook his head.

Cordelia put her head cautiously around the edge of the door. "Lemme see. We've got milk, bread, cereal, those bran things Wesley likes, some ham and chee--"

"Don't say it!" yelled Fred.

Cordelia turned around, looking oddly at Fred. "Okaaay. So you're vegan?"

Lorne, however, was nodding understandingly. He gave Fred a sympathetic pat on the arm. "Let me hazard a guess. While on her grand tour of my dimension, I think our young friend here had a nasty encounter with some Pylean attack cheese."

There was a long silence.

"...Pylean attack cheese?" Gunn repeated disbelievingly.

Lorne nodded. "They mature it for five years in total darkness. That stuff is vicious."

Cordelia looked at him. "Your dimension is a strange and disturbing place."

"No argument there."

"You had some nachos last night," Wesley said to Fred, his tone one of reasonable persuasion. "The cheese was safe then."

"Well, sure, once it's melted!" Fred protested, gulping back a sob. "But now it's just sitting there on the counter, waiting to catch us off guard --"

The others looked as though they might laugh. For a second, Fred saw herself as they must see her: a wild-eyed girl getting hysterical about dairy products. But she couldn't make them understand -- it wasn't about the cheese. It was about spending your whole life learning how the world worked and then one day falling down a rabbit hole into another place where none of the rules held true any more. When you couldn't trust the world, the only way to keep alive was to stay scared and paranoid. Fred had found that running away from cheese helped, too.

But Angel smiled reassuringly, and she remembered that he, at least, understood what it was like to feel frightened when the rules you'd always lived by got twisted and warped. "I'll go melt it, okay? And then we'll get you some breakfast. Something completely cheese-free."

He began to move away, but Fred tugged at his arm. "Angel -- don't show fear."

"I promise," Angel said as he went into the kitchen.

"So, what's our game plan for today?" Lorne said quickly. "Now, weren't you saying that you needed some quality computer time to work out some equations and get us back under the rainbow?"

The computer. Fred relaxed slightly as she remembered the mental picture that went with that word. "Yes. Yes, that's right. I need to run some equations on the -- computer. I mean, I could write on the wall instead, like I did in the cave --"

The wall thumped several times in quick succession. "I think Dennis might have issues with that," Cordelia said hurriedly.

"So where can we get you some computer time?" Lorne continued.

"The library," Fred said. She could never forget that word, not ever -- how often had she dreamed, these past five years, of getting even one more wonderful hour in a real library? Then she hesitated. "Libraries are real, aren't they?"

"Absolutely," Wesley said. He was trying to smile at her, like Angel had, but he couldn't. He was tense now, upset. So were the others, now that she thought about it. The laughter and good humor from a few moments before were gone as though they had never been. They'd gotten all quiet right when Angel came out --

Oh. Of course. They'd found out about the cheese. No wonder.

"So, we pack a certain someone off to the library with Fred," Cordelia said. "They get some quality research done, come back with all that yummy math. Meanwhile, we take off to Huntercombe Hospital and track me down --"

"As the great philosopher and sage Samuel Goldwyn once said, include me out," Lorne replied. "I don't think I could walk into a hospital without being admitted for an emergency case of -- well, something."

"You can get us the ingredients we'll need for the disinvitation spell," Wesley said. "Since this universe's Cordelia is alive, it may be the most effective means we have of defending our base."

Lorne looked happy at the prospect. "Shopping. My kind of morning. And while I'm out there, I can find out a little bit more about this dimension in general. They may not have attack cheese here --"

"You can never be sure!" Fred said.

"-- but this is still a little on the strange side. Just my morning perusal of the local news tells me that much. I mean, wouldn't you think a dragon in the skies would rate a mention?"

"Good point," Wesley said. "And Angel and Fred can go with you to the library, Cordelia."

"I want to go with you guys," Cordelia objected. "I was gonna bring me a Get Well card."

Wesley paused before answering. Gunn beat him to it. "Cordy, we don't know what we're gonna find at this hospital."

He didn't say anything else, but apparently he didn't have to. Cordelia bit her lip and looked down at the floor. Wesley reached out to touch her shoulder, but stopped himself. Even Lorne seemed unusually grave.

Angel stuck his head out of the kitchen and showed Fred a skillet full of orange goo. "See? All taken care of."

Fred breathed a deep sigh of relief. She wondered why none of the others did the same.

Huntercombe Hospital was a small, private clinic in Burbank which had formerly been the residence of some forgotten Hollywood star with more money than taste. At least, that was the only explanation Wesley could think of for some of the building's more bizarre features: the grandiose Corinthian columns flanking the main entrance, or the stained glass windows above them depicting scenes from classic movies.

But the grounds were well kept, and as he and Gunn walked up the gravel path they passed a number of staff who gave them friendly smiles before hurrying on their way. Wesley felt reassured that this universe's Cordelia appeared to be receiving the best care possible.

The hospital reception was situated in what must once have been the main entrance hall. The window above the reception desk showed Judy Garland as Dorothy, linking arms with the Scarecrow and the Tin Man as they skipped along the yellow brick road -- all in a glorious stained glass version of Technicolor.

An attractive Asian woman sat behind the desk, laughing as she chatted with the man who was leaning against it, holding a file. She broke off as Wesley and Gunn approached.

"Hi there. Can I help you?"

"I hope so," Wesley said. "I believe a friend of ours is being treated here -- Cordelia Chase?"

The woman frowned. "I'll have to check the register for you. I know most of our patients' names, but I don't think --"

The man interrupted her. "It's okay, Ling. Cordelia's one of my patients." He set down the file and shook hands with Wesley, then Gunn. "Doctor Simon Davies."

"Wesley Wyndham-Pryce," Wesley said. "This is Charles Gunn."

"Pleased," Gunn said easily.

Davies led them away from the desk and through the extravagant double doors at the far end of the entrance hall. "Ling's usually great with patients' names," he said when they were out of earshot, "but she's more likely to remember the ones who get a lot of visitors. Cordelia -- well, I think you're the first people who've come to see her since she was admitted."

The thought of this universe's Cordelia in pain and alone for several months caused Wesley an irrational stab of guilt. "We would have come sooner if we could."

"Sure," Davies said, nodding in what was an all-too-strained effort to be understanding. "It's difficult, I know. A lot of people find just being in places like this too disturbing. But, still, kind of strange, a girl this young having nobody to look in on her. Her records says she was brought in one night by a distraught man who left without giving his name. Apparently he never came back --"

"He's here now," Wesley said under his breath.

"Pardon?"

"Nothing," Wesley said. "Please continue."

"Actually, please don't," Gunn said. Wesley looked over in surprise at Gunn, who suddenly seemed a whole lot taller -- and more hostile -- than Wesley had seen him in a long while. "We didn't ditch Cordy because we didn't care. We didn't come because we couldn't. End of our story. Now, let's talk about her."

Davies raised his eyebrows, but kept his tone polite. "Cordelia's in the Intensive Care Unit. I'll take you there."

The doctor moved ahead of them, allowing Gunn the opportunity to turn to Wesley and mouth the words, intensive care unit? Wesley shook his head. Davies would think it more than a little odd if self-proclaimed close friends of Cordelia Chase came to visit her without knowing the basic facts about what had happened to her. If they were to avoid arousing suspicions, they would have to choose their questions with care.

"Tell me," he asked, "what kind of progress is she making?"

Davies exhaled. "To be honest -- not as much as I hoped she would. But she is stable."

"That's good," Gunn said, looking at Wesley. But his expression was less certain than his voice.

Davies turned right, and Wesley and Gunn followed him. Every hall they had passed along so far, Wesley noted, had been carpeted and decorated with movie posters, mounted on soft foam backings. But while the clinic's staffers went about their appointed tasks with speed and efficiency, he had yet to see a patient, much less an open door.

What kind of hospital was this, anyway?

They walked past a external window whose top panel appeared to be an artistic interpretation of Humphrey Bogart entreating Lauren Bacall not to get on the plane in "Casablanca." He frowned. Hadn't Ingrid Bergman been in that movie? "This is certainly an unusual building."

The doctor frowned. "In what way?"

Wesley was at something of a loss for a reply at first. Finally he said, "You don't find the art a bit -- strange -- for a medical facility?"

Davies looked up at the window they were passing, which showed Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra. "I never really thought about it. But now that you mention it, some of the patients with more profound psychoses do get upset about the David Lynch windows."

Psychoses, Wesley thought. He and Gunn glanced quickly at each other, and he could see his own horror reflected in Gunn's eyes. The locked unit, the lack of patients in the hallways -- suddenly it all made sense. Huntercombe was a psychiatric institution.

They had come to a set of sealed double doors. Davies opened them using a swipe card, then ushered them through. There was a second set of locked doors beyond the first, and Davies waited until they were sealed in the no-man's-land between the two before swiping his card through the reader to open the next set. "Patients with mild to moderate psychiatric disorders are treated in the part of the clinic we've just come through," he explained. "The ICU is a locked unit, for our severely disturbed residents."

Severely disturbed. Suddenly, Wesley didn't want to go any further. He wanted to turn around, walk out of the building and back down the drive. They could lie; tell the others they hadn't found her, and he'd never have to know what Angelus had done --

The main corridor in the ICU was empty. Davies stopped outside a closed, plain white door. "Of course, you know what happened," he said.

Wesley's mouth was too dry; he couldn't speak. He heard Gunn say, "Yeah," and was glad one of them was still capable of maintaining the deception.

Davies' expression was grave. "I won't lie. It looks bad. Just remember, she's on the best drugs available. The pain is minimal at this point."

As if from a great distance, Wesley heard himself say, "That's good to know. Thank you, doctor."

Davies opened the door.

The room beyond it -- was just a room.

Wesley realized he'd stupidly been expecting a padded cell -- something from a nineteenth century novel, with bars on the windows and shackles on the wall. Cordelia's room, like the rest of the clinic, was attractively if sparsely decorated, and might almost have been a hotel bedroom in one of the better chains. The only clues to its true nature were the furnishings, which were bolted securely to the floor, and the metal rails edging the sides of the bed.

And in the bed --

Her hair had been chopped to a length almost as short as his own, and she was thin rather than slender, but she was still recognizably Cordelia. He couldn't see her face; she was lying turned toward the window, where faint daylight glowed behind tightly drawn blinds.

Wesley entered the room, Gunn behind him. She reacted to the noise, her hands twitching as if she was trying to bring them to her face. She couldn't, and now that he was closer, Wesley saw why -- her wrists were held securely in padded restraints. So, they weren't so far from the nineteenth century after all.

Evidently Davies could read the dismay in his face. "The restraints are necessary. She suffers periodic psychotic episodes. As unpleasant as they are, they'd be worse if she hurt herself again in the process."

Wesley took another step toward the bed. Cordelia's chest rose and fell more rapidly under the blankets, and he heard her make a tiny whimpering sound. "It's all right," he said gently. "It's me. I'm here, Cordelia --"

At the sound of her name, she turned her head to look at him. But she couldn't.

"Oh, God," Gunn whispered.

Cordelia couldn't see Wesley because her eyes were gone.

Her face was a mess of scar tissue and ugly welts of damaged flesh. Glistening flaps of skin swirled like twin whirlpools around the pits where her eyes should have been. This had been no clean surgical extraction; her eyeballs had been torn out of her head, violently and by someone with no consideration for the pain involved or what the aftereffects would look like.

Cordelia made another tiny, wordless noise and twisted her head on the pillow. As she did so, moisture crept down from the mangled corner of one eye socket. For a moment, Wesley thought she was crying. Then he realized the fluid wasn't tears.

"There's still some infection," Davies said. "We're using strong antibiotics, but her injuries have been very slow to respond."

Wesley half-choked, tasted bile in his mouth. He made himself go closer to the bed, so he was standing over her. Taking her hand, he squeezed it. It remained limp. Not just antibiotics. "My God, what kinds of drugs are you pumping into her?"

"Only what we have to," Davies said.

Gunn looked at him. "But if she wasn't sedated, she'd be able to talk to us, right? She'd know us?"

Davies hesitated. "It's unlikely."

"We're not strangers," Wesley snapped. "We're her friends."

Davies tone was gentle as he said, "I understand. But every time we've cut back on Cordelia's medication, she's become violent. And she's invariably incoherent. She hasn't shown any awareness of her environment." He paused. "I'm sorry. She's obviously not the girl you remember."

Girl, thought Wesley. Not even a woman, really. A girl.

Cordelia arched her back and pulled against her restraints, muscles stretching like cords on her stick-like arms. Pushing her head back against the pillow, she uttered a keening wail of misery and fear.

Something inside Wesley twisted, and sorrow became cold, hard rage.

Periodic psychotic episodes, the doctor had said. So she still had the visions. But now, instead of helping others, they only added to the torment she already endured.

She still received messages for Angel, but Angelus wasn't listening.

Of course he had taken her eyes, Wesley thought bitterly. A blinded seer -- the irony must have been too delicious to resist. He would love this scene, the girl he had broken blind to the real world but still able to see the full spectrum of human suffering. And he hadn't simply taken her sight; he'd stripped her of her mind in the process and left her this shell, this mockery of the person she'd been.

"He should see this."

"I'm sorry?" Davies asked. "Who should?"

Wesley hadn't realized he'd spoken the thought out loud. "Nobody. Nobody at all."

There was a small wall around the edge of the visitors' parking lot. Wesley sat on it, looking back across the wide, freshly mown lawn and carefully tended flower beds at the institution's main building. Institution -- that was the right word. He couldn't think of Huntercombe as a hospital anymore. People got better in hospitals, then left them. Seeing this universe's Cordelia had shaken Wesley to the core, but left him certain of one thing: it wouldn't be easy for her to come back from whatever dark place she had fled to inside her skull. Left alone like this, she wasn't going to get better. She wasn't ever going to leave.

After a while, he became aware that he was no longer alone. Gunn was sitting beside him, selecting stones from the gravel under their feet and throwing them, one at a time, at an empty soda can lying some yards away on the grass.

"I used to know a girl," Wesley said finally.

Gunn stopped throwing the pebbles.

"I'd never met anyone quite like her. She was still in high school; very pretty -- somewhat vain -- but smart, too, although she went to pains to hide it. She was frivolous. Irrepressible. Unexpectedly practical. Occasionally shallow; always optimistic. Undeniably courageous. This girl, she --" he forced himself to smile, "-- she had a crush on me."

"Get outta here." Gunn smiled too. "No accounting for tastes, huh?"

"No," Wesley agreed. It hurt his mouth to keep smiling, so he stopped. "Anyway. I was going through a bit of a bad patch. Questioning a lot of things. Questioning myself. I was doing the only thing I wanted to do, and finding out I couldn't do it very well at all. When I looked in the mirror, I didn't like what I saw anymore. But this girl -- when she looked at me -- her eyes lit up --" His voice threatened to break. "Her eyes --"

Her face, disfigured and weeping fluid, flashed through his thoughts again. He wished there was some way he could erase the sight of the pathetic creature strapped to the bed, wipe it away before it bled into his better memories of Cordelia and corrupted them with its brutality. What he was feeling, he realized, was only a fraction of what she had endured. What she still endured, and would continue to endure, over and over and over --

He felt a hand rest lightly on his shoulder. "Remember, it ain't her," Gunn said. "This place -- it's a world gone wrong."

Wesley said, "No. This is the world the way it should be. All thanks to Angel." Gunn was looking at him, so he explained, "Angel is as responsible for what happened to Cordelia here as Angelus is. The only difference between the woman in there and our Cordy is that we come from a place where Angel's actions didn't have the consequences they ought to have had."

Gunn paused. Then he said, "Ain't a lot of 'ought to' with consequences, at least in my experience. You do your best, you make your mistakes, and in the end, there's still no telling what's gonna happen."

Wesley stared at Gunn in disbelief. "Are you -- making excuses for him?"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Gunn held his hands up in front of him. "I'm not making excuses for anyone or anything that had something to do with what happened to the Cordelia we just saw. I just mean -- Angel's not the same guy who did this any more than that's our Cordy in there. This whole thing's one bad head trip. Only way we're gonna get through it is keeping what's real and what's not straight."

Wesley clenched his hands into fists at his side, then tried to relax them. "I know that. But I also know the chance Angel took -- the risk that this would happen to our Cordelia too -- that's real, isn't it?"

Gunn had no reply.

"I think I'll go crazy," Cordelia said.

She found a table in a shady corner of Los Angeles Central Library's science section and took off the backpack she'd been carrying. As she unloaded the paper and pens they'd stopped to buy on the way, she saw Angel looking at her uncomprehendingly.

Cordelia sighed and gestured at the stacks of books behind them, where Fred was standing perfectly still, her eyes closed and her expression one of pure, blissful contentment.

"I used to have a regular life. I dated. I was a cheerleader. And now my typical morning consists of reading physics textbooks in the company of a vampire with multiple personality disorder and a woman who's clearly achieving some kind of high on library-smell. Since the world's clearly gone 100 percent nutso, I might as well just join in."

Angel's confused expression disappeared, and instead he looked wounded. For a moment, Cordelia regretted the multiple-personality remark, until he said, "Fred just needs a minute to herself. This is a big deal to her."

Fred could spend as much time in the stratosphere as she wanted, Cordelia thought as she switched on the public terminal sitting at one end of the table, as long as she came down from reality's upper atmosphere for long enough to find them a way home. "Hey, Fred. If you're done savoring that mildewed-paper aroma, come and take a look at this."

Fred opened her eyes and lifted her arms. She twirled toward them between the stacks, wearing a smile so wide her face could hardly hold it. "There are books!" she said as she joined them. "All in order!"

"How about that? What will they think of next." The PC monitor hummed, and Cordelia put her hands on Fred's shoulders, placing her in the seat in front of it. "Okay, here's one of those boxes that beeps and makes things easier --"

"Computer," Fred said proudly, looking at Angel. "Right. Windows has moved on a couple of versions since the last time you used one of these, but you'll pick it up."

Fred lifted the mouse hesitantly. "Pick it up?"

"Put it down," Cordelia said.

Fred put the mouse down again. She looked at it, then at the glowing monitor in front of her. For a long time her expression remained doubtful, and her hand hovered uncertainly above the keyboard.

Finally she extended her index finger and pressed 'Q'. When the letter materialized on the screen, she smiled in simple delight.

We are totally stuck here for good, Cordelia thought.

And then Fred began to type.

She was slow at first, but as her fingers found the keys with increasing speed and accuracy, the chain of letters and symbols on the screen rapidly lengthened. At the same time, her expression changed, child-like rapture replaced by focused concentration.

Suddenly Fred stopped, reached across the table and lifted a notepad and pen. "I need these books," she said, listing out titles and authors. "It's okay if they don't have Schwartz, I can use Peebles if Thorne's out, but I have to have Ferris. If they don't have Analysis of Uncertainty by Weinberg, Calder's Quantum Interpretation of Space-Time is just as good. And it has prettier pictures."

"On it," Angel said, taking the list.

As he left, Cordelia asked, "Anything I can do?"

Fred nodded without looking away from the equations rapidly scrolling down the screen. "Ask the desk for the last five years of the Reviews of Modern Physics." Fred was by far the most lucid Cordelia had yet seen her. Somehow, while extracting from her memory the knowledge and tools of another life, she'd brought back at the same time a bit of the old Fred too, the girl who'd seen alternate universes only as theoretical possibilities, and not as places where monsters were real and cheese attacked you.

It was like following a forest trail, Cordelia thought suddenly: if you retraced your steps far enough, sooner or later you'd come to the place where the path split. At the crossroads, there'd be one person; afterwards, two. And you never got to go back and find out what happened to the you who went the other way.

At least, not if you were lucky.

"So you can do it, right? I mean --" Cordelia gestured at the computer's screen, "-- solve this puppy and get us home -- really home?"

Absorbed in the task at hand, Fred nodded absently.

"Good," Cordelia said, standing up. "You may not have met Angel's enemy within, but I have. Trust me when I say, we can't get out of any dimension that has Angelus in it soon enough."

"We're safe," Fred said. "Angel's here."

As she spoke, she looked up from the computer and through the stacks in the direction he had gone. The expression she wore was one of total, implicit trust.

And something more.

"Journals, coming right up," Cordelia said, and went to talk to Angel. She found him flipping through the pages of a massive book whose tissue-thin leaves were covered in incomprehensible math, broken up by occasional paragraphs of incomprehensible English. As Cordelia approached, he indicated the page and gave a small, hesitant smile. "You know, it's at times like this I regret not having a formal education."

Cordelia placed her hand firmly in the center of the book and pushed it down. "We need to talk."

His hopeful expression vanished, and Angel looked grave and more than a little worried. "I know. Cordelia, I didn't tell you about Darla because I thought if I did--"

"Oh, screw Darla," Cordelia interrupted. "Well, obviously you already have -- but that's not what we're talking about."

"It's not?"

"No. We're gonna talk about Fred."

"What about Fred?"

"She has a crush on you."

Angel looked perplexed for a moment. Then he smiled, nonplussed. "No, she doesn't."

"Yes, she does."

"No, she doesn't."

"Does."

"Doesn't."

"Yes, she --" Cordelia broke off and took a deep breath. "Okay, we're gonna start this conversation again, and this time it's not gonna play like a comedy routine. Angel, Fred likes you. She more than likes you. She's probably carving I Heart Angel on the table as we speak."

He shook his head. "Cordelia, that's not possible."

Cordelia fought the urge to grab him and shake him. Apparently she was going to have to do this in very small, very simple steps. "How did you meet her, exactly?"

"You mean in Pylea? There were some people who wanted me to chop her head off, and I refused. When things turned nasty, I stole a horse and we got out of there."

"Uh-huh. So, you appeared like some knight in shining armor, saved her life, then literally swept her off her feet and on to the back of a noble steed."

Angel shook his head. "I would have done that for anyone. She's grateful, sure, but --"

"Yes, but you did it for her," Cordelia said, holding up a hand to cut him off. "And then you took her away from Pylea, a dimension whose chief attractions are slavery, uncomfortable underwear and cheese that bites back. And you brought her home."

"It's not really home --" said Angel, but she could see he was beginning to get it.

"And now she's all with the big doe eyes and 'Angel will keep us safe'." Cordelia allowed him a moment to process that. "Maybe it's slipped under your radar, but Fred digs you with a spade. And you're going to nip this thing in the bud. Not even the bud. Whatever comes before the bud, you're going to stop it there."

Angel looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Cordelia, even if Fred did think -- that -- I could never --"

Coldly, Cordelia said, "Never what? Sleep with her and lose your soul? Because, hey, third time's a charm, right?" Angel was silent, stung. Cordelia felt an unaccustomed pang of regret for her sharp words; something about this situation just brought the worst out in her. More gently, she finished, "You don't get to do the relationship thing, Angel, not with Fred or Buffy or Darla or anyone else. The proof's walking around out there."

Quietly, Angel said, "I know."

"So you're going to talk to Fred right now and explain to her exactly why it is you don't date. I'll get the rest of the books and journals." She held out her hand. "Give me the list."

Angel looked thoroughly unhappy, but he handed her the list and set down the book he was holding on top of the pile on the floor at his feet. "Cordy --"

"I know. Just go and get it over with."

She didn't relax until he was out of sight. Then she exhaled slowly and began checking the titles of the volumes in the pile against those on the list, making a mental note of the ones she still needed to find. How was it possible, she thought. How could he keep making the same mistakes again and again?

She set the list atop the books and lifted the pile. When she turned around, she saw with annoyance that she wasn't alone.

"I'm not gonna do this for you, Angel. You know what you need to do. Go do it."

He didn't move. Instead he cocked his head to one side, as if he wanted to examine her from a different angle. The merest ghost of a smile played over his features.

Cordelia felt ice form in her bones.

And then he was in front of her, his face inches from hers, his weight pushing her up against the shelves. She could feel the metal ledges against her back, her thighs, her calves. She loosened her grip on the books -- they were heavy, they'd make a noise, surely someone would hear and come. But he took the books from her and set them on the floor in silence. As he turned away from her, she opened her mouth to scream -- and felt a hand, cool as clay, clamp over her mouth. The other rested on the back of her neck, fingers lightly pressing into the hollow at the top of her spine.

"Be quiet for me," Angelus said in a low voice.

As he led her away, Cordelia hoped he was going to kill her quickly. Because the alternatives were much worse.