Cordelia sniffled. "You've got to tell me how you keep from sneezing with all this hay."

"I avoid breathing," Angel replied.

"Of course you do." Cordelia sighed. "I guess Tavist-D was invented a long time after 1898, huh?"

"You don't have to ride back here with me," Angel said. Cordelia was sitting beside him in the back of their borrowed transportation, a lieterwagon with a heavy cloth drape covering its top and sides. The drape was effective at keeping out the late-afternoon light, but unfortunately equally effective at keeping in dust from the hay piled inside. The gypsies hadn't bothered cleaning out the wagon on their behalf. Fred was handling the horses up front with Gunn by her side, and Angel was sure there was room for Cordelia up there as well.

"I'm going any time now," she insisted. "I'm gonna be there to see Old Evil You come barreling out of the house. Do you think I'd miss the chance to see you with even dorkier hair than you now have?"

"First of all, Golden Shimmer, my hair looks fine," Angel said, hoping this was true. "And second, you don't have to ride back here at all, if it's making you uncomfortable."

Cordelia didn't even bother reacting to the Golden Shimmer remark. She put the bundle of twenty-first century clothes she was holding on her lap to one side, allowing her to lean closer to Angel. In a softer tone, she said, "I just wanted to -- Angel, this is all pretty intense. Even for me, and I'm not the one having the real-life flashback. And this is a bad time for this to happen -- not that there's a good time to have your psycho ex try and mess with history --"

Angel interjected, "Cordy, I'm all right. At least as close to all right as I'm going to get for a while."

Only after he said it did Angel realize it was true. In Cordelia's face, he could see an echo of his inner surprise, but even as she opened her mouth to ask him about it, Gunn called to them. "I think we're at the right place, Angel. You wanna catch a glimpse of this and see?"

"Sure," Angel said. He ducked into one side of the wagon as Gunn pulled the drape back, revealing a slim, bright triangle of daylight. Fred's hand -- holding a tiny mirror -- swerved around, showing him the sunlit world outside.

He squinted, trying to remember the street and recognize it in the unfamiliar afternoon light. At last Fred's swiveling wrist hit the right angle, and he quickly said, "There. Stop there."

The villa. Slate roof and gables. The deep score in the door, made by the flailing boots of one of their victims. Angel glanced at Cordelia and nodded.

"We've got our home base," Cordelia confirmed for Fred and Gunn. "How long before Elvis leaves the building?"

"I ran out just a minute or two after the sun went down," Angel said. "And it's not long until sunset now."

"Then I'm going up," Cordelia said. She hopped out of the back of the wagon, and Angel could hear her going around to join Fred and Gunn. As she went, she called, "So, you and Darla are having a big fight in there, huh?"

She was just trying to keep him talking, Angel knew. He didn't mind. It would help him to focus on what had happened, to hold the necessary memories close. "Not that big a fight. At least, not by our standards. Some of our battles weren't on the same scale as your usual relationship spats."

"I don't think I want to hear about those," Fred said hurriedly.

"What were you fighting about?" Gunn asked. "She eat somebody you had your mind on?"

"No." He remembered Darla, icicle-sharp and gleaming in white satin, the disapproving purse of her lips. "We were supposedly fighting about a kill I wanted to make that night. She was in the mood for something different."

Cordelia said, "What do you mean, supposedly?"

"Really, the fight was about something we didn't talk about," Angel said slowly. "Sometimes she ruled me. I mean, she dictated everything I did, everything I felt. I existed only for her."

He could hear Cordelia mutter, "So glad I asked."

"But sometimes -- sometimes I ruled over her," he continued. "Then she was a slave to me. We'd go months or years at a stretch, one of us controlling the other, and then we'd switch. When we were here, in Romania -- I ruled her. Darla wanted the whip hand back, and I wasn't ready to give it to her." He'd never consciously understood that, not once in the 150 years he and Darla were together, nor in the century after her. How was it he was only realizing that now?

"Please, in future, try to leave any whip details out of your memories, okay?" Cordelia sounded a little more terse than usual. "Get back to the color commentary."

"I had this kill set up," Angel said. Somehow, returning to this place, at this moment, was causing details of memory to resurface for the first time in decades. "He was an English lord. His name was -- Dunstan? Dalton? Something like that, I think. Anyhow, she thought it was too stagy, and she wanted me to call it off."

He dressed with such care, Darla thought as she watched him. Sliding on his shirt, enjoying the feel of fabric against his skin. Buttoning up his waistcoat, his strong hands delicately plucking the whalebone buttons. Angelus took a positively decadent interest in his clothing.

She often enjoyed watching him get dressed for just that reason; his sensual delight in the smallest details was one of the qualities she prized most in her lover. But tonight, for some reason, it annoyed her. "He hasn't even invited you yet," she snapped from her place on the bed.

"He will," Angelus said, self-assured and smiling. Darla fought back the desire to slap him. "And when he does, I shall be ready. Now, tell me, my pretty mirror -- how do I look?"

Darla folded her arms in front of her. "Like an overweening dandy, if you must know."

Angelus just grinned more widely. "Ah, such temper. I believe someone's feeling neglected." He slid his hand along her leg, brushing aside the white silk of her robe. "Don't worry. I'll make up for lost time when I come home. You know how I get after a particularly fine kill."

The liquid warmth in his voice threatened to melt her resolve, but only for a moment. Darla jerked away from him and slid off the other side of the bed. "When you come home, you may have to take out your -- enthusiasm -- on Drusilla. Or maybe Spike would be happy to service you. I expect to be elsewhere, enjoying other company."

"Other company, is it?" Angelus' eyes glinted dangerously as he crossed the floor. "And what other company might that be?"

The only company Darla had had in mind was that of a few warm-blooded street urchins no one would miss. But Angelus' anger was immediate and satisfying; it aroused her more than his smugness had. She decided to embellish the lie.

Smiling at him, Darla lifted her chin. "While you've been dining with your bookish young lord, I've had to fill so many hours. What luck, to find someone so willing to help me while away the long, lonely nights."

Angelus stared at her as though he'd never seen her before. "You know I don't begrudge you a sailor now and then," he said. "You allow me my nuns, after all. But I won't have you throwing some scrap of a mortal in my face."

"You won't have it?" Darla repeated incredulously, more outraged by these simple words than anything he'd said or done in years. "YOU won't have it? And am I to live by what you will and won't have?"

"I think perhaps you are," Angelus growled.

She laughed in his face. "Well, then, you can think again."

"Girl was gettin' down an' dirty with somebody else?" Gunn said.

"Maybe," Angel said. "She lied a lot, but then so did I. In any case, that wasn't the point of the argument."

Fred said, "Just in case you were wondering, Charles, if this ever comes up for us, it WILL be the point of the argument."

"Back at ya," Gunn said. Angel could tell by the sound of his voice that Gunn was smiling.

"So, Mr. and Mrs. Co-dependency are in a plain old power struggle," Cordelia said. "But if you guys did this all the time, why did you run off and leave her?"

"Because running off and leaving each other was something else we did all the time," Angel said. He settled back into the hay; he still had a couple of minutes left. The setting sun made the dark red of the wagon's drape the color of fire. "But we always came back. I didn't have any idea that this time, when I left -- it would be for good."

Not quite for good. Angel remembered a scant few weeks in China, days of desperate lovemaking and nightmare-riddled sleep, nights of deceit and trickery and lies. He remembered a hotel room with a warm, human Darla who had given him her life and her soul seconds before Drusilla took both from her. He remembered one night in his room at the Hyperion, broken glass on his floor and in his bed. Worst of all, he remembered her suffering in labor, bleeding and despairing, giving him their son as she gave herself up to die.

Not these memories, Angel reminded himself. He tried to pull his thoughts back to what would have to pass for the here and now. "Darla claimed that I had forgotten her," he said, hoping that Gunn and Fred and Cordy hadn't noticed his long silence. "She said she wanted someone who would never forget her."

"I've been thinking," Darla said, stretching out her arms as if admiring them. "Spike's a hindrance, and nothing but. He's forever wrecking our plans, ruining our hiding places, the like."

"As he has been for almost twenty years," Angelus snapped. He was agitated now, as Darla had intended he should be. "I don't see what this painfully obvious fact has to do with your poor taste in infidelities."

"Let's replace him," she said. She gave Angelus her most stunning smile as she began tucking her hair up into a chignon. The posture of her arms, raised behind her head, lifted her breasts in a way she knew Angelus found very appealing -- not that she intended to fulfill his desire, even if she did succeed in reawakening it. "I'll even let you do the staking, as much as I'd enjoy it. But my treat would come later."

Angelus stopped pacing and stared at her, hard and cold. "Don't tell me you seriously intend to turn your latest infatuation."

"He's far superior to Spike in every respect. He'll make a good companion for us. For me, especially. While you're off amusing yourself with your elaborate games, he can amuse me here. And then we'll all be happy." Darla paused a moment, purely to heighten the impact of what she said next. "Besides, let's not forget -- you owe everything you are to my capacity for infatuation."

That reminder of his own origins had exactly the effect Darla had hoped to achieve. "I forbid it!" Angelus exploded.

"You forbid it? You dare forbid ME from doing anything?" Darla wanted to attack him. To rip his silken skin to shreds with her claws, drink his blood and laugh in his face. "And this is all the notice I can expect from you? I warn you now, Angelus -- if you think so little of me, others don't. And Spike isn't the only one who can be replaced."

Gunn said, "Wait. She was going to off this Spike guy? Just -- poof? Like that?"

"That was Darla's solution to anything who got in her way," Angel said. The sun was low now. Angel could feel its weight lifting from him, feel his body becoming stronger and more free. So close now. So close. "Humans, vampires, anyone. I don't think she really intended to get rid of Spike -- but she would have done it. So would I. And Spike would have staked both of us, if he'd thought he could get away with it. That's just how things were."

"You do realize just how dysfunctional all this was, right?" Gunn asked. "Compared to this, the guests on Springer look normal."

"How long now?" Fred asked quietly.

"Not long," Angel said. "I ran out just after sundown. The last things we said to each other --" How trivial it all seemed now. Such a stupid reason to go running off. And to this he owed everything he'd become, everything he'd done -- to this stupid fight. "She said I had nothing to give her anymore. And I told her I wasn't going to waste my gifts on an ungrateful bitch."

"You are SO lucky you're not dust," Cordelia said.

Darla followed him down the stairs, shouting at him all the while. "I don't need this from you, Angelus. I don't need ANYTHING from you. You have nothing to give me anymore."

Angelus whirled around as if to shout back at her. Then, to her surprise, he hesitated. Slowly, a catlike smile spread across his face. "I think perhaps I do." He continued down the stairs, and Darla stared after him for a moment before she followed.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she demanded.

Angelus called from the foyer. "I killed some intruders for you this morning, remember?"

"Oh, please," Darla scoffed. "As if you didn't enjoy that yourself."

"Killing them proves nothing," Angelus said. She could hear the sounds of rummaging, as if through a box or trunk. "But taking the time to find out what they brought with them..."

Unwillingly, Darla felt the tiniest bit curious. "They brought something interesting?"

"Many fine things," Angelus said soothingly. He came back into the room with his hands behind his back. "Now, you see, you or Spike -- or that fool of a mortal, whoever he may be -- you'd just kill them as quick as ever you could, get rid of the evidence even quicker. But I take my time. And even you'll admit that's where my patience brings rewards."

With that, Angelus brought his hand forward, and in it was --

"What is that?" Darla said.

"It's a bracelet."

"I can see that," she replied, not even bothering to sound angry. Cautiously, she brought her fingers toward its glittering surface. So many colors, and they floated above the material, instead of lying within it. A bracelet of a thousand jewels, and yet it was perfectly smooth. "What metal is this? I've never seen the like."

"Nor have I," Angelus said. "But it's beautiful, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes," she whispered.

"Then she slapped me," Angel said.

"You had it coming, buddy," Cordelia confirmed.

"I slapped her back," Angel said. "She told me it would be a cold day in hell before I slept with her again, and I told her that the thought of sleeping with her put me in mind of both hell and cold days --"

"Whoo, this got nasty," Gunn said. "Damn, cuz, no wonder you remember all this."

"This wasn't that unusual," Angel said. "I told you." But the memories seemed to be growing stronger by the moment. His past was his present again. Everything happening across the street -- it was as real to him as though it had happened yesterday. No, he reminded himself. It's happening now. "Then she started throwing things at me. Lamps, pictures, anything she could get her hands on."

"I guess the crashing starts anytime now," Fred said.

"I was saving this," Angelus said. His voice was low and smooth, and Darla lifted her eyes to his slowly, almost coquettishly. He smiled. "I wanted to give it to you on a special occasion."

Darla dimpled up at him. "Today's very special."

Angelus took her hand in his, and the touch of his skin against hers excited her against her will. He gently slipped the bracelet over her fingers, up her arm, caressing her as he did so. "Do you really believe I don't think of you?" he murmured. "I think of you all the time. Even as I plan my surprise for Lord Percy -- I'm also planning surprises for you."

"I like this kind of surprise," Darla said. She turned her arm this way and that, and the bracelet caught the light in a dizzy flush of colors. Darla laughed like a spoiled, greedy child, her anger forgotten.

"Just a minute or two more now," Angel warned. Already, almost no light was coming through the drape. He got to his knees and began brushing away the hay.

"We're keeping a lookout," Cordelia assured him from the front of the wagon. He could hear her alighting, the soft pat of her feet on the dirt road. "Just how does this big fight wrap up?"

"I told her I was tired of her behaving like a fishwife," Angel said. "She told me she was tired of me, period. I threw one of the lamps back at her, just as I felt the sun go down. Darla was screaming at me as I went out the door."

"Can't wait to hear her voice again," Gunn said dryly. "Okay, it's showtime."

Angelus pulled Darla close, and she didn't bother fighting him. She didn't want to fight him. Her sweet, darling boy. Always thinking of her. His games really weren't so bad -- not when they brought her dividends such as this. "Mmmm," she said, moving sinuously against him. "What a fine, generous man I have."

"And what a beautiful, desirous woman I have," Angelus said. He ran his tongue along the length of her throat, and she shivered. He whispered, "Wanting as much as she is wanted."

Darla slid her arms around his shoulders, which had the dual effect of drawing him nearer and bringing the strange, glittering bracelet back into her view. "Lord Dalton is a proper English gentleman," she murmured. "Surely he won't have dinner so early as this."

"Probably not," Angelus agreed. He began untying the sash of her robe. "He'll probably be an hour or so sending his invitation."

"Only an hour?" Darla pouted. "You with your preening. It would take your more than an hour to get dressed again." She stuck out her bottom lip, mock-sorrowful. "How disappointing."

"I'm a patient man," Angelus said. "But I can work quickly when the incentive is right." He tugged her robe away from her shoulders, leaving her naked to his gaze -- save for the bracelet. "Leave that on."

"As if I'd remove it," she said. "Even for you."

Angelus laughed and swung her up into his arms. "Let's go upstairs," he said. "And there we'll see just what you will and won't do for me."

"Yes," she said, nipping at his throat as he carried her up. "Oh, yes."

"The sun's going down," Angel said.

"We can actually see it this time," Cordelia said. "Okay, watching for Dru. Watching the door."

Angel lifted the corner of the wagon's drape, giving him his first direct look at the street. The familiarity of it hit him hard, but he focused on the door. "Any moment."

"She's gonna waylay him right here. Right here," Gunn said. "But we are waiting."

The sun was gone. He could feel the remnants of it against his skin, remember that it was just as it had felt when he stormed out that night. "It's happening," he said. "It's happening -- now."

Angel tensed. So did the others. The door didn't open.

Then the door didn't open.

Several minutes later, the door still hadn't opened.

"Uh, Angel?" Fred said. "When you say 'now,' when exactly do you mean?"

"This is it," Angel said, stunned. "This -- this should be it."

"It's okay," Cordelia said quietly. "It was a hundred and some odd years ago, Angel. You're off by a couple minutes. No big. It's gonna happen any second."

"I'm not off," Angel insisted. "I remember this. I know how it happened, except -- except it's not happening."

"Dru," Gunn said flatly. "Gal got in there and screwed this up already."

"She couldn't have," Angel said. "The back entrance was shaded from the sun first thing in the morning, but only then. There's no way she could have gotten in any later, and there's no way she could have gotten from where we were last night to here any faster."

"She could've used a blanket," Cordelia said. "You do all the time -- plenty of vamps have ways of moving around in the daytime."

Angel shook his head. "Drusilla's terrified of daylight. She doesn't understand that blankets will protect her. If she didn't get in first thing in the morning, she didn't get in at all."

"Are you sure?" Fred said. She clearly hoped Angel would answer quickly in the affirmative.

But the door stayed closed.

"I don't know," Angel said. "I don't know what Dru's done. I don't know where she is. All I know is --"

"-- you're not running out to get cursed," Cordelia said. "When I get my hands on Dru --"

Drusilla could hear the voices as though they were at a very great distance. They rang like bells, great clangy bells. Everything in her head was ringing, and Drusilla did not like it at all. She tried to put her fingers in her ears, but her arms wouldn't move. Naughty arms.

She felt fingers -- warm, human fingers, so very appetizing -- against her throat. The voice nearest to her spoke again, in that language she hadn't bothered to learn. She didn't have to know what the words meant, when she could see the thoughts behind them, flickering and spinning like a zoetrope machine.

She opened her eyes and sat up.

The priest -- nasty priest, wearing a nasty cross -- gave a cry of surprise and leaped back. He called out to another priest, who hurried over to join him at Drusilla's side.

The priests had found all the dead people in their church, and they thought she was a dead person too, and they were right. But she was the only dead person who would get up again.

The first priest clasped his hands together and, face alight with joy, began to babble loudly in that silly language. Drusilla ignored him as she attempted a mental feat she undertook only rarely, and never with much success. She tried to concentrate.

Her reflection had hit her on the head. Naughty reflection. Now Drusilla was wearing her reflection's dress, which was very strange -- the crimson cloth glittered as she moved, the stitches were so tiny they must have been sewn by fairies, the skirt was so short that her legs showed almost to the knees, and she hadn't a corset at all. "How very daring," she said to herself. "I'm a boHEEEMian." That was a funny word, and she said it to herself a few dozen times. If she was wearing her reflection's clothes, did that mean she was her reflection, now? Was her reflection, her?

The priests were still jabbering, their words clogging her ears and their thoughts muddling her brain. The crosses they wore made Drusilla's skin itch. So she grabbed their heads and smashed them together as hard as she could.

So much clanging! But the bells broke, and now they were all soft.

Drusilla thoughtfully lifted her bloody fingers to his mouth and began licking them, one by one. She felt pleased with herself, because now it was nice and quiet again, and she could think clearly, about important things.

She wanted her own pretty dress back. Then she could be herself again.

Pleased with this line of reasoning, Drusilla got up and headed purposefully out of the church.

"All right, all right!" Spike was laughing as he lifted the crowbar. "What is it I'm supposed to say again?"

"Batter up!" Dru cried. "You say batter up! Say it, say it, say it --"

"Batter up!" Spike yelled. Dru hefted the pitcher in her hands, then tossed it the length of the china shop. Spike swung the bar and smashed the pitcher to pieces.

"Run the bases!" Dru said. "You have to run the bases, if you're a good boy."

"Then I shouldn't run them at all," Spike pointed out. But he began running them anyway. The china shop's owner was first -- at any rate, what was left of him -- and the two patrons who'd entered that evening were second and third. Home was Spike's own coat, but Dru didn't intend to let him get there.

She ran to his coat, trying to reach out and touch him. "You're out!" she said, giggling. "You're out!"

"Am I?" Spike said. He was grinning insanely at her. "What are the rules of this game -- what is it called again?"

"Something-ball," Dru said. "There's a song all about it. Peanuts and crackerjack and huge leather mittens. They play it in America."

"You've never been to America, you silly bint," Spike said.

"I've been all sorts of places," Dru said. "You'll go to all sorts of places too. And we shan't have any fighting, and you'll make your hair all sorts of pretty colors, and we will have Daddy and Grandmother with us forever and ever."

Spike didn't seem as happy about that last part. "Oh, yeah, there's the icing on the cake."

"Won't be any nasty slayers," Dru said. She could see this better future now, full and shining, like the moon. The moon would be coming out soon, and she could dance for it in the streets, with Spike by her side. "Won't be any metal in your mind to take away your thirst. The dollies won't pack up their bags and hide."

"You said it. None of that," Spike said. He sounded a little tired. "We ought to be getting back, Dru. Angelus is going out, and you know how Darla gets when she's bored."

"No," Dru said. "We won't go back. I've come back, and now there's only going forward. Everything's all right again. Let's play something-ball some more."

"You're batty," Spike said. Dru drew her arms up and pretended to be a bat, flapping all around the china shop. She danced over the bodies of the people they'd killed, and Spike laughed and laughed. The boning of her corset cut into her skin, sweet familiar pain. "Ah, what the hell," Spike finally said. "Darla can amuse herself for one night."

Dru grabbed up the crowbar. "In the belfry," she sighed, smiling dreamily at him. "Batter up, bats up, bats, bats, bats."

Spike selected a heavy platter and began making moves like a discus thrower. "Play ball!"

The sun had gone down a full ten minutes ago, and the darkness on the street, unbroken by electric streetlights or car headlamps, was complete. But the windows of the villa glowed with a gentle golden tint, lit from within by oil lamps and candles. From time to time, Cordelia could see shapes moving behind the drawn blinds, evidence that the vampires were still inside the house.

"That's it," Angel said at last. "I'm going in there."

He jumped down from the cart, but before he could start crossing the street, Cordelia grabbed his arms; Gunn helped hold him back. "SO not a good idea," she said. "What are you planning on doing? Because somehow I don't think knocking on the door and explaining nicely to yourself that you have to come outside so you can begin a century of torment is gonna work."

"I'm going to make sure he gets cursed," Angel said, "even if it means I have to knock him -- me -- him out, tie him up and drag him to the gypsies myself." As he spoke, his arms and shoulders tensed, as if he were getting ready to do just that.

"Darla's in there, too," Gunn reminded him. "The way I remember it, she was pretty mean in a fight -- and I don't guess she got much softer in the last hundred years. You gonna take two to one odds?"

"Maybe five to one," Fred said. "Angelus and Darla being alone in the house is the way things should have been. But we know Drusilla's changed something already. Maybe she found herself and Spike and told them everything. Maybe they're all in there right now."

That, finally, seemed to get through to Angel. His shoulders slumped, and he shrugged off their restraining hands. "This is all wrong," he said.

"And we're gonna put it right," Cordelia told him firmly. For whatever reason, Angel seemed to have shaken free of the worst of his depression; she didn't intend to let him sink back into it. "So, the first thing we've gotta figure out is how to get your evil ol' self out of there. Ideas?"

Gunn turned to Angel. "Where were you headed when you stormed out? 'Cause I'm thinkin', maybe if we found another way to get you to go there --"

But Angel was shaking his head in frustration. "I don't remember. When I left, I was angry. I wasn't thinking about where I was going."

"Maybe you were going to that guy Dalton's place," Cordelia suggested.

"No," Angel said. "Fighting with Darla made me lose any interest I'd had in him. When I left the house, I just wanted to --" Angel hesitated, then finished reluctantly, "I just wanted to kill the first person I came across. Preferably as brutally as possible."

Gunn crossed his arms. "I don't guess you ever thought of working out your excess aggression some other way. You know, punching bag, quick game of squash, that kinda thing."

Angel gave him a look, then went on, "I wanted to kill someone, but I never got the opportunity. I got as far as the theatre when the gypsies jumped me --" He stopped, and suddenly his face cleared. "The theatre. It happened in an alleyway behind the theatre. They had garlic and crosses and holy water, and there were about fifty of them. They caught me off guard, overpowered me and dragged me back to their camp. I remembered all that, but I'd forgotten it happened outside the theatre. How did I forget that?"

"Just a guess, but maybe being beaten to a pulp by a vengeful mob took your mind off the scenery for a second," Cordelia said. "We'll forgive you."

"The theatre," Fred said. "That's where we've got to get you -- I mean, him -- to."

"Heads up, guys," Gunn said suddenly. "Someone's coming."

A cloaked figure -- indistinct in the darkness but definitely female -- was walking up to the villa's front entrance. "Is that Drusilla?" Fred asked.

"And if it is, which one of them is it?" Cordelia added. She sighed, thinking that the one thing the world emphatically did not need was multiple Drusillas.

"That's not Dru," Angel said with certainty.

"Damn," Gunn said. "Then it must be the nineteenth-century equivalent of a pizza delivery guy. Except, if we don't do something, she's gonna be the hot snack. Come on."

Without waiting for a response, he headed off across the street. "Charles, wait!" Fred called after him.

It was too late. The cloaked woman had already put her hand on the chain which hung at the side of the villa's front door. Even from her position across the street, Cordelia could hear the faint clanging of bells inside the house.

"If they open the door and see Charles too --" Fred said.

She didn't have to finish the thought. Immediately Angel started running toward the villa; Fred and Cordy quickly followed him, stumbling as they went. Lucky dead guy with his night vision, Cordelia thought. He can just get around all the loose stones and -- eww -- horse poo on the roads. But, smelly-stuff danger to cloth shoes aside, she couldn't look down: she could only focus straight ahead, on the villa's front entrance, where Gunn stood in plain view.

She barely slowed down as they reached him. Somewhere inside the house, bells were still ringing loudly.

"-- You gotta get out of here," Gunn was saying to the cloaked woman.

"Who are you?" the woman gasped in an English accent. Not even a woman, Cordelia realized -- a girl, maybe even younger than she was herself.

No time for "Gilligan's Island," Cordelia decided. As they all reached the villa's steps, she said, "We're time travelers from the twenty first century. Inside this house, there are a couple of vampires who'll kill you if you're still here when the door opens. So now we've got the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 explanation out of the way, how about you just RUN?"

The look on the girl's face changed from surprise to fear. "Gypsies! You're gypsies!"

"No, we're not," Fred said. She glanced down at her borrowed clothes. "Although I see why you might think that."

The girl started to sob. Sinking down on to her knees, she clasped her hands together in supplication. "Please, don't kill me. I've nothing of value. I'm just a servant --"

"No one is gonna get killed," Gunn said. "Not if you listen to me --"

But the girl was beyond listening, Cordelia realized. She was shaking with terror, and her sobs were becoming louder and higher-pitched.

"Somebody better get her quiet --" Fred began.

Cordelia looked worriedly at the villa's entrance. Angelus and Darla were inside. Why hadn't the bell ringing brought them to the door? If the bell-ringing hadn't done it, surely the screaming would soon --

There was a thunk, and the servant girl's cries abruptly stopped. When Cordelia looked around, the girl was lying unconscious on the steps. Angel was standing over her, fist closed.

"You hit her!" Cordelia said to him accusingly.

Angel looked uncomfortable. "I had to stop her screaming, and gentle persuasion didn't seem like an option."

"Guys, maybe we should move," Fred said. "You know, before they decide to find out what all the noise out here is about."

That provoked an immediate response. Gunn and Angel picked up the girl's unconscious body between them, while Fred and Cordy found a path around the side of the house. It wasn't until they were safely out of sight of the door that Cordelia began to feel even a little safer.

Gunn and Angel laid the servant girl out on the cool ground, and Cordelia checked her over. A large bump was already swelling just above the girl's ear, and when she woke up she was going to have a particularly unattractive bruise. "You are SO lucky this isn't 2002," Cordelia said to Angel, "or you'd be looking at a personal injury suit for sure."

But Angel looked as if he had other things on his mind. "This isn't right. I have to think about this."

"About which part?" Gunn said. "The part where history's all screwed up, or the part where Dru couldn't have done it, except that she did, or the part where we don't know what the hell is going on?"

"The part where you saved her life," Angel said.

"That's not top on our list of worries," Gunn said. But then he hesitated, realizing what Angel meant a half-second before Cordelia did herself. She stared down at the unconscious girl in the street, feeling vaguely sick in her stomach.

"You weren't there when she arrived before," Cordelia whispered. "I mean, in the history that was supposed to happen. But Darla might have been."

"So Darla might have killed her," Fred said, catching on. "Which means --"

Fred didn't say it. Neither did anyone else. History was even more out of joint than it had been before.

Cordelia wondered what they could do, then realized the answer and rejected it in the same moment. "Angel, we can't," she said. "We can't kill her. I know it changes things even more, but -- we just can't."

"No, we can't," Angel agreed, to Cordelia's immense relief. But his face was still troubled as he said, "We don't know if we changed history here. So we also don't know if we'd change it by killing her. That means we leave her alone."

The night breeze moved the girl's cloak, and Cordelia saw there was an envelope tucked into it. She took it out and opened it; the card inside was cream-colored and inscribed with elegant, old-fashioned script. She read it out loud for the benefit of the others: "'Percival, Lord Dalton, requests the pleasure of your company for dinner at his home in Leiberstrasse, Sighisoara, on November 16, 1898, at nine o'clock.'"

"Give me that," Angel said. He took the card from her. "This is one invitation I won't be accepting." He ripped it to shreds, taking out some of that repressed violence on the paper; Cordelia watched him carefully, but Angel seemed reasonably controlled, at least for the moment.

Then a noise from somewhere above them made them all look up. A light shone out from a room on the villa's upper floor; the window was open, and the sounds coming from within were clearly audible in the quiet night.

"Oh," Darla's voice cried. "Oh, ohhh, ahhh, OHHH --"

Even in the darkness, Cordelia could see Fred turning a brilliant shade of pink. Cordelia herself was too annoyed to be embarrassed. She folded her arms and looked at Angel. "Now we know why no one's coming to the door. They're too busy just coming. I thought you said you FOUGHT with Darla?"

"Apparently we made up," Angel said uncomfortably.

His embarrassment deepened a second later, when another voice joined in with Darla's moans. This voice was lower, male, and instantly familiar to Cordelia. The last time she'd heard Angel make noises like THAT had been in the freaky haunted dressing room at the ballet.

Angel winced. Gunn covered his mouth with his hand, trying very hard not to laugh. Cordelia felt herself going from annoyed to furious. It was one thing to think about Angel having sex with Darla, but it was another, altogether more upsetting thing to think about Angel enjoying sex with Darla. Not to mention sounding just like he had that one time he'd made out with Cordelia at the ballet, even if neither of them had really been themselves at the time, because a girl liked to feel special, possessed or not. Cordelia was aware that this line of reasoning didn't make sense, and she also didn't care. She gave Angel her best subzero-arctic glare. He winced again.

Fred was staring up at the window too, but fortunately she was focusing on more important matters. "I think I know how we can get Angelus out of there."

"You mean, out of her," Gunn said, smirking. Cordelia and Angel both stared at him until he became serious. "Okay, what's the plan?"

Fred gazed down at the still-unconscious servant girl. Then she looked at the shredded invitation Angel still held in his hand. "Well, it's a little risky..."

"That's not risky," Charles said. There was no longer even the slightest hint of amusement in his voice. "Risky is not putting on a seatbelt. This is suicide."

Fred took a step back, which made it easier to look him in the eye. "No, it isn't. It's a calculated risk. Charles, we're running out of time. If Angelus doesn't get cursed tonight -- well, history might get changed so much we'd never be able to put it right." She took a breath, and tried to sound reassuring as she said, "Besides, if this works, I won't even have to go into the house."

"IF it works," Charles said stonily. "What makes you think you won't end up as cocktails, just like she would have?"

He pointed down the street, where Cordelia was bundling the semi-conscious servant girl into a carriage while Angel paid the driver to take her back to her employer's house. From the gestures Angel was making to accompany his halting Romanian, Fred guessed he was saying the girl had been attacked by gypsies -- although what explanation he was offering for the theft of her servant's uniform was anyone's guess.

The uniform -- an over-starched white blouse and black pinafore -- wasn't nearly as warm as the gypsy clothing had been, and Fred pulled the cloak more tightly around herself as a chill wind rattled dry leaves along the street. "I've been with y'all for almost a year now, Charles. I may not be a champion like Angel or Cordy, or a really great fighter like you and -- like you. That doesn't mean I can't help. That girl didn't have any idea what she was getting into, but I do. I've learned a few things, you know -- battle tactics, and strategy, and --"

"You're not researching a term paper!" Charles snapped. "This is for real."

Fred blinked; she'd never heard him get angry like this before. Quietly, she said, "I know it is. That's why I'm doing it."

Charles began to pace up and down in front of her. "Why you? Why not Cordy?"

"Because I'm the right size to wear these clothes," Fred said, gesturing at the servant girl's uniform she now wore.

"That's a hell of a stupid reason for risking your life," Charles said angrily.

Fred started to feel herself getting angry in return. "Then here's a better reason -- this was my idea, and I can do it, and it's my risk to take." She stepped in front of him and stopped him from pacing by jabbing her finger in the center of his chest. "You take risks all the time."

"Like when?" Charles demanded.

"Like just now! You ran right up to the front of the house when you thought that girl was in danger. What if Angelus and Darla HAD answered the door?"

"That was different."

"How?"

"Because I can look after myself."

"So can I!"

Charles was staring at her, a peculiar kind of hurt in his eyes, but it was too late to take it back, even if she could have. "So can I. Charles, I spent so long in Pylea looking after myself, and it was so hard to keep doing it, all the time, I went kinda crazy trying. And then, when I got home, I guess I wanted -- I needed -- someone else to look after ME for a while. And you did. You make me feel safe, and that's the best thing you could've done for me, because now I can be brave again. But you have to let me be brave."

Charles looked at her, and for a long time his face barely changed. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft again, and sounded more like the Charles she knew. "I lost so many people. Lost my friends. Lost my sister. They were all brave, and it didn't save them. I'm not gonna lose you."

As he finished, Charles put his arms around her, hugging Fred to himself so fiercely that it was a little difficult to breathe. She didn't mind.

"That's okay," she told him. "Now I'm found, I'm not gonna get lost again."

As Angel approached them, Fred tried out her English accent. "Tell me, guv'nor, did they bleeve you about the gypsies?"

"Seems like it," Angel said. He raised an eyebrow. "That's a little heavy."

"I'm taking the accent from 'My Fair Lady,'" Fred said. "I guess maybe that's not 100% accurate."

Angel said, "Say as little as possible, and just try to not to sound like you come from Texas. You shouldn't be talking to him for long, so hopefully he won't notice much."

Charles was still glowering. "I just wish there was somethin' else we could do to make this safer apart from voice coaching."

"There might be," Angel said. "Do either of you have any string?"

The front door bell rang for the third time. Darla propped herself up on one elbow, so that the bed sheets slipped off her in a manner which Angelus might almost have thought was unintended, if he hadn't known her as well as he did. "Aren't you going to answer that?" she asked.

He was too comfortable to think about moving. "Most likely it's only Spike and Drusilla."

Darla sniffed her derision. "Hardly. He lacks the requisite gentility and she the soundness of mind to use a bell pull. Perhaps whomever called earlier, while we were..." She gave a half smile and dragged her finger down the center of his chest, "...otherwise occupied has returned. Perhaps it is your invitation to dine with the foolish Lord Dalton."

The bracelet on her slim wrist scintillated in a myriad of colors. Angelus caught hold of her hand and kissed her fingers lightly, one by one. "Should I answer it, then?"

"One should never disappoint the aristocracy," Darla murmured, her attention fixed on the bracelet she wore. She was captivated by it, Angelus saw, as in thrall to its beauty and novelty as she was to her desire for him. Pretty, foolish Darla. A vicious, magnificent creature -- but still, in her cold heart, greedy and selfish and easy to manipulate, if you knew the tricks. After 150 years, Angelus was pretty sure he'd learned them all. "You should go," she said.

He savored the subtle pleasure of victory as he pulled on a robe and left her, and he was savoring it still when he opened the front door of the house on the cold night outside. "Yes?"

The girl staring up at him from the villa's steps was little more than a waif, nearly swamped by her servant's uniform and cloak. Sounding as if she had rehearsed the words by rote, she said, "Sir, my master, Lord Dalton, sent me. He wishes to invite you --"

Angelus smiled.

"-- to meet him outside the theatre this evening."

Angelus felt his good humor begin to sour. There was, of course, no reason why Lord Percy couldn't meet his end anywhere, but Angelus hadn't spent weeks enduring the man's tedious company for the privilege of drinking from him in some alleyway. No, the artistry of this kill depended on subverting His Lordship's insufferable sense of invulnerability, and that could only be accomplished by demonstrating just how little security he enjoyed, even in his own home.

"Tell Lord Dalton," Angelus said, "I very much regret that I have another engagement this evening." He started to close the door.

"Wait!" the servant girl said. Her accent was strange -- as if she were aping a high-class tone, the exact opposite of Spike and his put-on Cockney. "You have to go!"

It was surprise, more than anything else, that stayed Angelus' hand on the door. He stared at the girl, undecided as to whether to be amused or offended. "Perhaps in my age my hearing is suffering -- did I just hear a maid give a gentleman an order?"

"No," the girl said, looking increasingly flustered. "I mean, yes. I mean -- Lord Dalton said to tell you -- that he has something to give you. A gift."

Now Angelus was curious. "What manner of gift?"

"Something you'll have for a very long time," the girl said. "It's -- priceless."

"Intriguing," Angelus said, looking at the girl closely for the first time. She was thin, but her complexion was pleasingly smooth and her eyes were bright. He wondered if he should present her to Darla, to occupy her while he went out. Softening his voice, he said to the girl, "You're shivering, my dear. The night is cold. Won't you step inside?"

The girl hesitated. "Oh -- oh no," she said at last. "It wouldn't be proper."

"Come, come," Angelus said briskly, smiling at her as kindly as he could manage. "We needn't tell Lord Dalton. And it is only a few minutes by a warm fire."

Her eyes were wide as she slowly stood more upright, straightening as she became more confident, her cloak slipping open slightly to reveal her throat -- and, hanging on a loop of twine, a small, crudely made cross.

Revulsion lanced through him, and Angelus fought to keep from wincing. He turned his head slightly to remove it from his sight. The cross could not have kept him from the girl if he were truly hungry, but he was not. Neither was Darla. And such a bony little thing was not worth even the minimal trouble.

"On second thought," Angelus said, "go back to your master. Tell him I will join him outside the theatre, and that I very much look forward to spending tonight in his delightful company."

At that, the girl looked relieved. "Yes, sir," she gasped and, before Angelus could dismiss her, turned and ran down the villa steps and across the street. Angelus watched her go, amused, before closing the door.

Upstairs, Darla was still lounging in their bed. "My beautiful boy," she said to Angelus as he returned, her earlier displeasure entirely forgotten. When he reached for his waistcoat and jacket instead of rejoining her, she merely pouted. "You're leaving me."

He leaned down and kissed her. "For the shortest of times."

"Are you dining with Lord Dalton?" Darla smiled languidly. "Or are you dining on Lord Dalton?"

"There's been a change of plan," Angelus told her. "But I can improvise. All the great artists do."

When he left her, she was twisting her arm in the glow of the oil lamp, marveling at the way the pattern on the bracelet changed in response to her movements.

Angelus smiled. "It's like I always say," he murmured to himself. "You can never go wrong with jewelry."