C/A spice: Medium
Read the details, summary, and review of Haunted.
"Quiet," Angel said. "She's on." Cordelia had suddenly come onto the screen, and Angel found
himself leaning forward, almost as if he might reach out and touch her. That was his
Cordy on a national television show, the girl he'd know since she was a spoiled high school
princess and had watched grown into a beautiful and confident woman. At the moment, though, she
looked lovely but a little peaked. Then she was speaking, and the room settled into a hush.
"... a guardian angel like Kirsten has to look in on me from time to time, that's
for sure." Cordelia was saying. "Someone to keep me out of trouble."
* * *
Angel paked in the alley behind Kristen's apartment building for this nightly pilgrimage.
He couldn't say exactly why he was so obsessed with finding this young woman. Obviously the
impact her disappearance was no doubt having on Cordelia was part of it. For a long time - too
long, he knew, now - he had hurt Cordelia, and Wesley and Gunn, by turning his back on
them...
But it seemed like he'd just gotten his family back when Cordelia had gone off to be on this TV
show, and her week's enforced absence just pointed out to Angel how much he'd missed her. Her
wit was caustic and knew no boundaries. She would say anything that popped into her head to
absolutely anyone. She had grown past the stage where she did it specifically to be mean, and
now there was, he believed, atually an innocence to the way she didn't bother with the kind of
self-editing that other people di. And he missed that. He missed the sound of her read laughter,
the arch of her voice when she was annoyed, the shriek when she was startled. He even - though
he hated to admit it to himself - missed the way she and Wesley bicked like adolescent siblings
or some elderly couples he'd known.
Soon, he thought. The game can't last forever, and then she'll come back...
He climed the stairs as quitely as he could, and when to Kirsten's door. As always, he felt a
sudden wave of anxiety when he reached for the knob. One of these days he might open the door
and walk right in, and that would mean he was too late, watever had taken her away had killed
her.
But not tonight. He opened the door, tried to go in, and was prevented from doing so by the
invisible barrier that prevented vampires from entering unbidden. He had never felt such relief
over that stupid rule in his life.
He'd been frustated by it more than once in his Angelus days, when cahsing a tasty morsel
who slipped away from him by dashing across her own threshold. But now he was glad that it
existed, one of the inviolate rules of vampirismm because it confirmed for him that Kirsten yet
lived. As long as she did, he could find her. As long as she did, he hadn't let Cordelia down.
* * *
He backed away from the door before she reached it, so she wouldn't think he'd been watching
her. By the time she ented, his back was turned. "Hi, Angel," she said brightly.
"Oh," he said, trying to sound stateled. "Hi, Cordy."
"What are you doing" she asked.
"Me? Just... um... thinking."
"Because standing there in the middle of the floor, facing a blank wall, is where you do
your best thinking, right?"
"It's a good thionking spot. Nothing to distract me, you know. Good for serious contemplation."
"No brooding?"
"No brooding."
"What are you really doing?" she demanded.
"Okay," he said. "I was watching you."
"I knew it!" she said triumphantly...
She has me pretty well trapped, Angel knew. "Okay," he said again. "I missed you, all
right? Happy now?"
Cordelia crossed the floor and put her arms around Angel in a strong, friendly hug. He returned
it, glad she was back safely once again.
"Yeah," Cordelia said. "Definitely. Happy now."