“Wes,” Gunn said.
“Yes, Charles?”
“I’m amazed and disgusted that you know all this. But good job.”
“Thank you,” Wesley replied, still smiling.
Cordelia bent over and looked in the car again, still keeping her distance from it. “Okay, which one of you is going to look in the glove compartment and see if they left some identification behind, or maybe a map with a big ‘X marks the Fred’ drawn on it?”
Gunn realized that she was right. “Good point. All we know now is that Roshons dumped this ride here. We don’t know for sure they were the shooters, even though we think they were. We don’t know for certain if the drive-by is connected to the snatching of Fred, even though we think it is. And we don’t know what any of that means in terms of who’s got Fred, or where.”
“Well, it means that Roshons are involved,” Wesley said. “We at least have a direction to work in. That’s progress from where we were five minutes ago.”
“We know where these Roshons hang out?”
“Not precisely,” Wesley answered. “We could find out, given time.”
“Which is exactly what we don’t have,” Cordelia said archly, pacing the sidewalk.
“Yes, indeed.”
“Think Angel would know?” Gunn inquired. It was frustrating to have what was almost definitely a clue but not know exactly what the clue pointed to. It was a step in the direction of saving Fred—and Angel, he reminded himself—but he didn’t know how many steps would be needed, or how many changes in direction, before they reached the final goal.
“He might,” Wesley said. “And he’d certainly agree that finding some Roshons and forcing them to tell us what they know is a reasonable approach.”
“That sounds right,” Cordelia said. “Except isn’t he on his way to try the same trick on some presumably-human building owner?”
“Then we’ll have to take it upon ourselves,” Wesley said. “The Zhoon said the car was just dumped in the past couple of hours. Unless they were picked up immediately by some other vehicle, there may be traces around that will lead them to us. Perhaps they left traces on the sidewalk or the walls. We’ll just have to see if we can find any.”
“This night,” Cordelia said, almost to herself, “just keeps getting funner and funner.”
“Is that a real word?” Gunn asked her.
“Funner?”
“It is now. You got a better one?”
He shook his head and started combing the sidewalk for drips of green mucus. “Nah,” he said finally. “I think funner kind of sums it up.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Lorne,” Mif’tal said, “we’re going to leave now.” The Nemchuk’s voice was soft and almost apologetic, but the club had gone completely silent when he and Urf’dil had started for the door, and Lorne knew that every eye in the place was upon them. He had turned off the recorded music a few minutes before, figuring that everyone, himself included, was too tired to care anymore.
“No, listen, Mif’tal, honey,” Lorne stammered, palms out and pressing against the air as if he could shove them back toward their table from here. “Just wait a little bit longer. I have to talk to four more tables and then we’re done, we’re all done. I appreciate your patience so much, but—”
“Urf’dil is exhausted,” Mif’tal told him, sounding sleepy himself. “She can barely keep her eyes open, and she gets cranky when she’s tired, and—”
“I get cranky?” Urf’dil interrupted, in a tone that was all about crankiness. “I get cranky? Listen to you, Mr. Cranky-Pants, trying to blame it all on me. The truth, Lorne, is that Mif’tal just gets put out if he doesn’t get his eight hours right on schedule, you know? His whole routine goes screwy, he becomes irregular, and I have to listen to his complaints for a week while he gets back to normal.”
“Just let ’em go!” someone shouted from the shadows.
Okay, Lorne thought, time to put this down before it becomes all-out revolution. He crossed to the stage and stood in front of the microphone. “Listen, I know what you all have been through tonight,” he said. Enthusiasm was hard to drum up, even within himself, but it had to be done. “You’ve put up with a lot, what with the excitement outside and then me insisting that everybody stay put until I’ve talked to each of you individually. You’ve been magnificent, and I mean that. Why not give yourselves a hand?” He clapped his own hands together fiercely, but nobody joined in, and he tapered off. “It’s been a long night,” he said. “For you and me both.”
“You’re not kidding,” the heckler shouted again. Lorne tried to see who it was, but with the spotlights aimed at him, everyone beyond the first few rows of tables was indistinct.
“If you don’t have a suspect yet, Lorne,” Mif’tal said from where he and Urf’dil stood, near the door, “you’re probably not going to.”
“I’m not looking for a suspect,” the Host tried to correct. “I’m just looking for information, a witness, any little detail.”
“Anybody remember anything? Anybody see the girl get snatched?” That, Lorne could tell, was Virg, the Kailiff. “Well?”
A chorus of negatives met his inquiry. You’re losing them, Lorne thought. As an entertainer, he’d faced that situation before, and knew there was a point beyond which a lost audience couldn’t be reclaimed, no matter what. He’d usually managed to catch his crowd before that point was reached, but this one had fallen so fast—seemingly with him one moment, against him the next—that he feared it might be too late. I could try a few jokes, a crowd-pleaser like Lady Marmalade, but I don’t think they’re going to bite.
Or, given the nature of this group, they just might.
He decided to go for the direct appeal instead of trying to jolly them anymore. “People, friends, give me twenty more minutes. That’s all. Four more tables, five minutes each. Short and sweet, and then we’re all out of here.”
“Why not just talk to the last four tables after we’re gone?” someone else asked. Lorne peered through the gloom and saw that it was Visssclorf, the Shrenli. He’d thought she would stay on his side longer than most because she wanted him to listen to her sing and give her a reading. Maybe she’d decided that could wait for another time. Or she’d waited in here so long, she was past her dividing years. “What difference does it make if we all stay or not?”
For a moment, Lorne, near exhaustion himself, couldn’t even remember his own reason. “Because…because if someone at one of those tables tells me something that clicks with—or contradicts—something I heard earlier tonight, I have to be able to cross-reference. The last thing I need is to hear something that could be a clue except I can’t make sure because the one of you who actually saw something critical has already gone home.”
“That’s not really our problem,” Virg growled. “Getting out of here before daylight is our problem.”
Murmurs of assent met this statement, much to Lorne’s dismay. When ordinarily peaceful demons are agreeing with a Shrenli and a Kailiff, that’s really a bad sign. Maybe not quite Apocalypse Now bad, but Apocalypse Soon. “I know most of you don’t really know Fred, so you don’t know how important this is to me,” he said. “So let me tell you something about her.”
There were groans, but no actual objects thrown at the stage—though, of course, because of the sanctuary spell covering Caritas, nothing could be thrown at the stage as a weapon. Mif’dal and Urf’dil had stopped by the door but still hadn’t gone out. Lorne took this as a positive omen, and continued. “She hasn’t been in town very long, and she doesn’t really know anyone that well except for the gang at Angel’s. Even they don’t really know her, I guess, because she kind of keeps to herself. And I have to take some responsibility for that, since it was her five years in my home dimension that sent her over the deep edge, if you know what I mean. I didn’t know her before that, but I have a hard time believing she went into Pylea the same way she came out.
“She kind of reminds me of a creature, a
kind of field mouse called a shrackle, in my homeland. It lives in cultivated fields or woodland meadows, it comes out of hiding when no one’s looking for it, it’s apparently sweet tempered and friendly, but hardly anyone ever gets a good look at one because as soon as you focus on it, it dashes back under cover. Well, Fred is a shrackle. You couldn’t hope to find a more pleasant young lady, or a smarter one, for that matter. And she’ll come out and take part in a conversation, as long as it’s not about her. But shine a spotlight on her and she’s gone. Sometimes she brings the spotlight on herself, because of what she says or does—it’s hard to ignore a girl who could take an old toaster and a couple of rubber bands and whip up a thermonuclear MacGyver bad-guy blaster, if that’s what she needs. But she can do it. And then when everyone’s looking at her like she’s just pulled off a miracle, which she has, she blushes and hides because everyone’s looking at her. How can you not love a kid like that?”
“Fine, we love her,” Virg announced. “But the Nemchuks are right. We’ve been here too long and we’re going. I am, anyway.”
Lorne shook his head, feeling hopelessness well up within him.
“Sure, the Kailiff wants to go,” another demon said. Lorne saw a Wifflin resting its four massive fists against its table as it sneered at Virg. The many folds of its cheeks flapped when it spoke, like chicken wattles in a high wind. “He probably did it.”
Oh, no, Lorne thought. This is just what I don’t need.
“What,” Virg countered, sounding insulted. “Just because I’m a Kailiff, you think I’m guilty?”
“You Kailiffs are all thugs,” the Wifflin said. “You didn’t do this, you’re guilty of something else. Or you just want to get out of here so you can join up with your gang and get back to terrorizing innocent demons.”
“Hey,” Lorne said. But demons were starting to take sides, chairs screeched as some leaped to their feet, a glass fell from a table and shattered against the floor. “Hey!” he called louder, trying to be heard over the noise. “Everybody just calm down! We don’t want this to turn ugly.” Of course, considering the nature of this crowd, “ugly” is pretty much a given, at least physically. With few exceptions, demons didn’t tend to be easy on the eyes. Maybe one reason that so few of them were in show business, despite having such a large population in the entertainment capital of the world. A couple of pop singers, Lorne thought, one or two actors, a fair number of directors. And that one family singing group, but who doesn’t know about them?
“It’s been ugly ever since that girl was taken,” Urf’dil said. “That was ugly, wasn’t it? If the Kailiff had something to do with it, he should say so.”
“We could make him talk,” the Wifflin suggested. “Kailiffs work for Kedigris demons, right? Someone said they smelled cinnamon, right? But there’s no Kedigris demon in here, so it must have left with the human. This Kailiff is covering for his Kedigris masters, and we just need to persuade him to come clean.”
“No!” Lorne boomed, right into the microphone. The single word echoed like a gunshot. “Caritas is a sanctuary,” he continued, softer now that he had everyone’s attention again. “I can’t believe you’re willing to forget that this is a place for music and joy and peace…to turn it into a place of violence and vengeance, just because you’ve been inconvenienced a little bit. You can’t fight in here. No one is going to force Virg to say anything.”
“Take him outside, then,” someone else suggested. “And make him talk out there.”
“That’s the same thing,” Lorne protested. “Do you still want to go outside, Virg? Because if you do, there’s nothing I can do for you out there.”
“What makes you think you can do anything for him, anyway?” an angry voice asked. The room no longer consisted of dozens of different demon types at their own tables, but had turned into a mob, milling about, anxious and scared and teetering on the edge of violence. “You going to stop all of us if we decide to do something?”
“You won’t,” Lorne argued, feeling desperation swirl about him like a whirlpool. “You can’t. Sure, there’s a spell on the club that prevents demon-on-demon violence. But it only extends as far as the door. The real reason Caritas functions as a sanctuary is not because I enforce it, not because I prevent you from hurting one another, but because you enforce it. All of you, by agreeing to it when you come here, and living up to it as long as you’re inside. If you break that pact now, then Caritas is gone. Without sanctuary, we’re never going to be able to have a place where you can all relax and sing and enjoy the music and drinks and atmosphere. We’ll just have one more battleground, in a city that’s already got plenty of those. What would be the point?”
“He broke the rules first, by using this place as a trap for the human,” the Wifflin pointed out. Others shouted their agreement.
“That doesn’t matter,” Lorne countered. “Even if you were right it wouldn’t matter. If you’re driving down the freeway and you’re speeding and a cop stops you, do you think you can tell him it’s okay because you saw someone else speeding first? What the Kailiff—what Virg may or may not have done is beside the point. You are—each of you—responsible for your own actions. If you choose to break the sanctuary of Caritas by committing violence outside, that’s not Virg’s doing, it’s your own free choice. Don’t look to blame it on anyone else.”
The Wifflin and a few other demons had massed together, and now started to move toward Virg, shoving chairs and tables out of their way as they came. The clatter and screech of falling furniture was the only sound for a moment. Lorne knew that a flashpoint had been reached, that what happened in the next few seconds was going to decide if there would be a Caritas tomorrow night, or the next, or ever again. He felt himself sinking further into hopelessness. Well, he thought, there’s always the island resort. I do look great in white.
Now Virg was on his feet, his gaze moving back and forth between the demons approaching him and Lorne, as if pleading for assistance that Lorne could no longer provide. “This isn’t fair,” he said. “I’m tellin’ you, I had nothing to do with it. Okay, I got a grudge against Angel, but not the girl. I didn’t even know she was with him until tonight. How could I have planned something like this without knowing she existed?”
“Easy,” one of the others replied. “You didn’t plan it. The Kedigris did; all you had to do was follow orders. Everybody knows Kailiffs aren’t smart enough to plan anything.”
“Hey,” Virg said. “We’re plenty smart. But not—well, I just didn’t do it, that’s all. You can take me outside, you can work me over, whatever, but you’re not going to get me to admit to something I didn’t do.” He looked at Lorne again. “Come on, Lorne, help me out here, you know I didn’t…” He let the thought hang there, unfinished.
Lorne didn’t know anything anymore. In ten minutes his entire world had been turned upside down. He could sing and he could make an audience laugh and he thought he could keep the peace, but now that was proving not to be true. And without the peace, he didn’t have the rest of it. He sure wasn’t going to get work in a human nightclub, not looking like he did. David Letterman might bring him on the show, but just as a curiosity, not to perform. If there were still an Ed Sullivan, maybe I’d have a career, he thought. Right up there with the little mouse puppet and the talking hand wearing lipstick and the guys who spin plates on sticks.
Lorne tried to understand why he felt so hopeless in the face of the disintegration of his nightclub, and then he realized what it must have been. He had Angel and the gang, of course, and they would always stick by him. But since he’d left Pylea and come to this dimension, alone, leaving behind everyone he’d grown up with, his mother and Numfar and the rest of the Deathwok Clan, Caritas had been his real home, its habitués his real family. Sure, it had been a sanctuary for all demons, but mostly it was that for him, a safe harbor, a place where he was always accepted, even loved, a place where everybody knew his name and where they always had to let him back in.
Wi
thout Caritas, what did he have here on Earth? Angel, the vampire detective who seemed likely to sacrifice himself for Fred? Cordy, Wes, Gunn? He loved them all, and knew they cared about him, but they had their own lives to live, their own problems and challenges. And since Fred had been taken from under Lorne’s nose, they might not even be so happy to see him next time he came around. And Fred…Fred had accepted Lorne immediately and unthinkingly, but she was gone too.
And that brings us full circle, he thought despairingly. If I let Caritas be destroyed in the name of getting Fred back, then I have no more Caritas. If I let Fred die, then I have no more Angel Investigations.
Virg had backed up against a wall, and could go no farther. Most of the demons were, Lorne was pleased to note, still keeping to themselves and not joining the small mob that had circled Virg. No one had touched him yet—the spell would cause an instant reaction if anyone tried. But it only prevented actual violence, not the threat of it. Most of them want to maintain the sanctuary, he thought, feeling a momentary glimmer of hope through the sadness that had gripped him.
“Listen,” Virg pleaded. “I…I didn’t—it’s not me. It’s that Skander, I bet. Where’s that Skander?”
This brought a new outburst as some disagreed with Virg and others looked about, in vain, for the Skander that Lorne had talked to earlier. What was his name? he wondered. That’s right, we settled on Quort when his name turned out to be bigger than he was. “Who, Quort?” he asked into the microphone. He realized he hadn’t seen the demon for a while. “Quort, where are you?”
He didn’t want to point the mob at another demon, but as long as he could keep them off their toes a little, he hoped, maybe he could prevent any violence from taking place.
“Yeah, it’s gotta be the Skander,” Virg went on. “They can manipulate dimensional gateways, right? How else could they have gotten the girl outta here, with all of us standing right there? Open up a gateway, shove her through.”
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