Best Souvenir
A/N: Much thanks, credit, praise, and hugs (and no can openers!) to a2zmom for the beta.
Chapter 7
He ran his fingers outside a lock of her hair, not through it, so that he barely touched it. She yelped and jumped back, as if stung. The stake clattered to the ground. “Don’t touch me,” she snapped.
Angel’s face was a mask, withdrawn. “Okay,” he said.
Buffy bent down to swipe up her stake, and said, almost as if accusing him of something, “I’m not going to stake you.”
Angel blinked several times. “Why?” he asked, finally.
Buffy frowned. “Don’t think I’m saving your measly existence for any other reason but that I can use you. This isn’t some kind of . . .” She took a deep breath. “This isn’t some kind of pity thing, just because you’re a bum and a . . . a . . .”
“How can you use me?” Angel asked quietly.
She didn’t know if he was asking because he wanted to know his fate or because he desired to go on pretending he wanted to helped her. She didn’t care. “If the Immortal wakes up the alfalfa thingy some other way,” she snapped, “having you around might just be the thing to stop him.”
Angel was silent for several moments. “I don't think that if I’m not worthy to remove Acathla’s sword that I’d really be worthy to stop his breath,” he said finally. “If the Immortal can awaken Acathla on his own, you probably can’t use me to stop him.”
“What? You want me to make you a little pile of ashes?” Buffy snarled, holding up her stake.
He looked away again. For the second time, Buffy noticed his neck, how elegant it was, and how strong. How he was always exposing it to her by turning his head in just such a way. Her eyes widened slightly. She had thought he turned away like that because he was ignoring her, because he didn’t think her questions were worth answering. But now that she considered this particular response, she wondered whether it wasn’t some vampire sign of resignation-of submission.
Buffy swallowed, her mouth dry. His posture released the tension in her, and she lowered her stake. She needed to come up with a plan, not to completely wig out. It wasn’t only desire and emotion that was making her hesitate to fulfill her Slayerly destiny-part of it was Slayer instinct in and of itself.
“We might be wrong,” Buffy said, voicing her thoughts. “You might be wrong. Prophesies and curses and ‘guess-who’s-worthy-to-pull-out-the-sword’ stuff work in weird ways. I should know, I’ve done my share of prophesy thingies. Even the Immortal could have it wrong. You could be the one to close Hell, not open it.”
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so.”
“You got a death wish?”
“I’m dead already,” he said, and smirked. Her heart skipped a beat as she realized she hadn’t seen him smirk once yet this morning-evening. Whatever.
“Look, buddy,” she said, shoving the stake in her back pocket and exiting the bathroom, “you’re not helping your case any. I wouldn’t stake you now even if you asked. I’m keeping you with me until I destroy that hunk of rock, even if it means missing the sales at Castel Romano for a whole month.”
“Casa who?”
“A fancy outlet with to-die-for shoes,” she confided, nodding. “Now,” she began, pacing around the small hotel room and pursing her lips, as she often did while thinking. “I need to figure out where the Immortal’s keeping his big rock, and what exactly you have to do with it. I also need to figure out what to do with you until . . .”
“Yes,” he said. “If I’m going to be with you, we need to work a couple things out.”
Buffy froze. The way he said “with you” sounded like the way Riley had meant it when he used to say, “I love being with you, Buffy.” And Riley hadn’t meant, like, “here in this room with you, Buffy”; he had meant with you with you, as in together, like a couple. Of course, that wasn’t what Angel meant, but it opened up a whole can of worms, anyway. She had just decided her fate for at the very least the next few days, possibly a month-or even longer. She’d be stuck finding a new radiator to chain Angel to, trying to figure out how to use him to destroy Acathla, and arguing with him about the cheapness of his clothes. Buffy scowled. Now why didn’t that sound that unappealing?-except the part about missing the McArthurGlen Designer Outlet at Castel Romano on sale day.
Okay, so he was right. They were going to have to “work a couple things out.” He was talking about stuff like manacles and toothbrushes and shirts with collars, she suspected. Talk about a rock and a hard place. She was stuck between staking the guy and buying him hair gel. Buffy sighed. Her life was weird. “Okay,” she said, “assuming I’m not going to leave you chained to a radiator while I work all this out, what would you need?”
“Well, the radiator is broken,” he supplied helpfully, walking out of the bathroom. He appeared to be taking stock of the hostel room.
“Gee, thanks for letting me know, Mr. Obvious.”
“I could pay for it to be fixed,” he went on. “I could also pay for staying in this room. Or I could pay for a new room, with a better, stronger, harder-to-break radiator. Two rooms. Two suites. And one of those big, round, bath tubs. You know, with the hot water and the . . .”
“Jets?”
“Yeah. Those. I saw a bathtub with those, once.”
“Hold your horses, mister. One room. Two beds. No Jacuzzi.”
He looked disappointed. “No jets?”
“And tell me again why you have all this money and were living in a cardboard box?”
“I wasn’t living in a cardboard box,” he said, slightly offended. There was a pause, and he looked contemplative. “I was sleeping in the sewer.”
“Answer the question,” Buffy demanded irritably.
His head dipped down. “It’s complicated.”
“I’ve got time,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Try me.”
He held her eyes for several moments; then his gaze dropped away. “It’s blood money. Any high profile vampire usually makes a lot of it. I haven’t wanted to use it. I wouldn’t, except . . .”
“Except that this is for a good cause,” Buffy finished thoughtfully. Her brain was clicking again. Something wasn’t right. Darla wouldn’t have shied from using what Angel was calling “blood money,” no matter how many chips she had in her brain. “How come Darla never seemed to be rolling in it, then?” she asked.
Wearily, Angel walked over to the chair and sat down. His long fingers gestured dismissively. “I told you how vampires like to talk big. Darla . . . Existence is-was one big, long party for her.” Buffy sat down on the edge of the bed and nodded. That sounded like Darla. “She spent as much as she saved. Most vampires do that, too.” He shook his head. “You have no idea how many vampires were hurt by the stock market crash.”
“The who?”
“October 29, 1929? Kicked off the Great Depression?”
“Oh,” Buffy said, wrinkling her nose. “I knew that.” She scowled. “Hey, real people were hurt by that too, you know. Living people.”
“Of course.”
Buffy frowned and shifted her weight. “So, you’re saying most vampires don’t look after all the money they steal so they’re really no better off than the rest of us. Good to hear,” Buffy said, shrugging. Then she pinned him with a stare and asked, “So how come you’re different?”
His expression was dispassionate. “I’m obsessive,” he said simply.
Buffy shivered. His eyes were intent, hot, and very, very focussed on her. She repressed the urge to giggle nervously, not knowing how else to deal with such a confession. And then the full implications of what he had told her sunk in. “Wait. Are you . . . Are you telling me you’re like a millionaire? I found a millionaire on the side of the road smelling like guano?”
Angel shook his head. “No, nothing like that. I divided most of my assets long ago.” By division, he meant destruction. It had been blood money, and he had been ashamed of it. It wasn’t his. He couldn’t stand to give it away-not because he was opposed to charity, but because it made him feel dirty. Donating the money made him feel as though he was trying to buy his redemption, or at least purchase some small amount of solace. To punish himself, he had liquidated almost the entire fortune.
It wasn’t until later that he’d realized just what a selfish fool he had been-no better than the demon he’d been before. Buffy could have no idea of all the “real people” he’d seen suffering in the thirties; she could have no idea how much of it he blamed on himself. He could have helped so many people, had he been able to see past his own pain and suffering. People had been starving in Missoula, and he had given up a fortune because it made him feel bad. It was not an act of which he could be proud.
“But you still have a lot, right?” Buffy persisted.
“Enough,” Angel said, crossing his legs and lacing his hands together over his thigh. He looked around the room. “I you have a phone, I can see about a withdrawal.”
Buffy just stared at him. Was this really the bad-smelling bum from yesterday? Half of her scoffed and immediately discredited the idea that the vampire in front of her had a bank account and was offering to get money that he would then give to her. The other half warned that what he said was so out of wack that it was probably true, which sent a tiny thread of fear weaving through her. She should be very, very careful.
And yet, thinking it over, she couldn’t see anything wrong with it. If he wasn’t calling a bank she’d figure it out soon enough, and if he really didn’t have any money, no big. She’d find a way to pay for the additional costs of keeping him around. And if he actually did have funds, would that be bad? Hell, it’d be great if every bad guy she fought could help fund her campaign to stop them from destroying the world-but then again, that definitely sounded too good to be true.
But then Buffy looked at Angel, and made up her mind. She stood up, and went over to her luggage. As she began to rifle through it, she went on, “Just so you know, I don’t take charity. Not that I would expect charity from a vampire,” she added hastily. “This is for the radiator. And maybe for a new room. And don’t think, not for a moment, that I trust you just because you have moolah. I might just buy some magic manacles, or something, so I don’t need a radiator.”
“But you'd be using my money,” he said, following every movement from where he sat in his chair with his eyes. He smirked. “That’s called charity.”
“No,” she said, surfacing from a suitcase with something clutched in her hand. “It’s called stealing. Here ya go.” She threw a small object and he caught it easily, only his wrist moving.
“What's this?” Angel asked, turning the small, silver object over in his hand.
“Duh, it’s a cell phone,” Buffy replied. She eyed him skeptically. “You do know what a cell phone is, don’t you?”
“I’ve heard of them,” Angel said. At her aghast look, he hurriedly added, “and I’ve seen them, of course. It’s just so . . . small.”
“That’s just because your hands are so big and . . .”
He looked at her expectantly. “And?” he supplied mildly.
Buffy blushed. The correct word to end that sentence would most definitely be “sexy.” Not for the first time, doubt washed over her. Sure, it made sense that if he was the key to opening up Hell through Acathla he could also be the key to closing it, but Buffy wondered if that was the real reason she was sparing Angel. She might have ulterior motives even she didn’t want to face, such as wanting to fulfill some sick fantasy with a member of the race of her worst enemy, the enemy she had been sworn to slay. Except for the “sworn” part, because she’d never sworn to do anything. It had been thrust upon her. Her life was not fair, and she was standing here thinking a vampire’s hands were sexy. Yuck.
Luckily, he did not press her to finish her sentence. Instead, he had found the hinges on the little box and opened it from the other side, and now he was looking at the unfolded phone skeptically. “It won’t even reach from my mouth to my ear,” he complained. “Don’t you have something else?”
“Silk, hair spray, and rotary phones,” Buffy ticked off, relieved that he was being annoying again, in his utterly amusing way. “You’re such a big baby. Here,” she said, and took the phone from him. She pulled out the antenna and placed the receiver to his ear. “Hold it like this. If you talk, they’ll hear you.”
He looked thankfully up at her and covered her hand with his cool one to take the phone from her. His finger lingered on her wrist for a moment longer than it should have. Buffy trembled and snatched away her hand. “Hello?” he said, into the phone.
“You have to dial first, you idiot!” she told him, grinning.
“Oh yeah,” he said, taking the phone away from his ear. “I forgot.” He looked thoughtfully at the phone for a moment, contemplatively chewing the inside of his cheek. “What’s the number you call to get another number?” he asked.
“4-1-1.”
He stared at the keypad for a long time and then fumblingly dialed the numbers. He put the phone to his ear again and said, “Hello?” He paused. “How are you?”
Buffy grinned again and hit him lightly on the arm. “Just ask for the number,” she hissed.
Angel looked defensive. “I was just trying to be polite. No-no, not you,” he said into the phone. “I need a number for a bank.” A pause. “Right. Let me see . . . Oh yeah, Banque EEK.” A longer pause. “Well, I hope not. It’s in Switzerland.” He rolled his eyes. “Well, how was I supposed to know?”
For many moments Angel was silent, tapping his long, elegant fingers on the table beside him impatiently. “Yes, Geneva. Banque EEK. Okay.” After a while of Angel tapping his fingers, rolling his eyes, and saying the words “Geneva” and “Banque EEK,” Angel turned to her. “How do I hang this up?”
“Here.” Buffy took the phone away from him and pressed the “end” button. Then she turned to him incredulously. “Your bank is in Geneva?”
He looked startled. “Of course. Normally, I’d go to Switzerland to make a withdrawal, but . . .” He waved his hand negligently. “I figured you wouldn’t approve of that. It takes nearly a month to get there by freight.”
“By freight?”
He raised a brow. “The sunlight?”
“Oh yeah. So why bother?”
“Greater secrecy. The best way to keep a secret account is to deal directly with the bank, in person. No intermediary.”
Buffy rolled her eyes. “I should have known you’d have a secret thingy. All the scaries have them.” At his inquisitive look, she grinned. “Oh, you know,” she said. “Mafia. Movie stars.”
“Demons.”
“What, all demons have Swiss accounts?”
“Any demon worth knowing about, yes. EEK was chartered by vampires. It must have been different in the seventeenth century, before-”
“Wait,” she said, putting up her hand. “The seventeenth century? How long have you had this thing?” she asked incredulously.
He looked at her, again with surprise. “The account? Since 1753,” he answered, as if it should be obvious. “Since I was made.”
“So you’ve had a Swiss bank account for like, three hundred years?”
He looked slightly offended. “Two-hundred and fifty-one.”
“Yeah, whatever. Wow. That’s like, old. No wonder vampires get rich. All that interest. I didn’t even know Switzerland was that old.”
Angel raised a brow. “The Swiss have been administering private accounts since the Edict of Nan-”
“Hey,” Buffy said, interrupting. “Does the Immortal have one?”
Angel’s expression darkened. “The Immortal has his own Swiss bank.”
“Wow,” Buffy said, smiling, tickled by Angel’s scowl. “A whole bank. What for?”
“To administer his investments,” Angel answered impatiently. “Buffy, can I please call the bank, now?”
“Sure.” She handed him the phone, and he began to dial. “I guess the Immortal is swimming in it,” she goaded, grinning impishly. When he grunted, she laughed. She moved his hand and sat down beside him.
His other hand, the one holding the phone, froze in the process of bringing the phone up to his ear. His eyes flicked to her legs, her hips, perched on the arm of his chair. He was very still. The phone hovered there in the air in his lax hand.
Alarmed, Buffy hastily stood up and backed away. Suddenly, she wondered how much he knew about the effect he had on her, whether he knew his body made her hot and tingly and his eyes made her insides all melty. She wondered particularly now, since sitting down beside him on the arm of his chair had been done in complete innocence. She could be flirty and sexy; she knew how to do it. But she hadn’t been doing it. She wouldn’t do that, not with a vampire. At least, she didn’t think she would.
She’d just been amused by Angel’s discomfiture at her mentioning the Immortal. She suspected he was jealous of him. She’d wanted to tease him. She’d been . . . Oh, rats. She’d been having good, clean, innocent fun teasing a blood-sucking demon-possessed vampire. The fact that she simply enjoyed talking to him was scarier than anything else she could possibly feel. And now he thought . . . .
His arm was still poised mid-air. “What?” she asked, anxiously.
He was very, very still. “That was the first time I heard you laugh,” he said lowly, his gaze raking over her again. Then he turned away and brought the phone up to his face.
Buffy sucked in a breath, her heart skipping a beat. She wondered if he could hear that, too. She felt her face growing hot. She made a small movement back toward Angel, but stopped when he said, “Ja?” He spoke into the phone; his face was turned away.
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A/N2: There really is a bank EEK in Switzerland. Except it's Bank EEK, not Banque. I was going to name it something clever and bloody in Latin, but while researching I saw EEK and couldn't help myself.
Go to: Chapter 8
Chapter 7
He ran his fingers outside a lock of her hair, not through it, so that he barely touched it. She yelped and jumped back, as if stung. The stake clattered to the ground. “Don’t touch me,” she snapped.
Angel’s face was a mask, withdrawn. “Okay,” he said.
Buffy bent down to swipe up her stake, and said, almost as if accusing him of something, “I’m not going to stake you.”
Angel blinked several times. “Why?” he asked, finally.
Buffy frowned. “Don’t think I’m saving your measly existence for any other reason but that I can use you. This isn’t some kind of . . .” She took a deep breath. “This isn’t some kind of pity thing, just because you’re a bum and a . . . a . . .”
“How can you use me?” Angel asked quietly.
She didn’t know if he was asking because he wanted to know his fate or because he desired to go on pretending he wanted to helped her. She didn’t care. “If the Immortal wakes up the alfalfa thingy some other way,” she snapped, “having you around might just be the thing to stop him.”
Angel was silent for several moments. “I don't think that if I’m not worthy to remove Acathla’s sword that I’d really be worthy to stop his breath,” he said finally. “If the Immortal can awaken Acathla on his own, you probably can’t use me to stop him.”
“What? You want me to make you a little pile of ashes?” Buffy snarled, holding up her stake.
He looked away again. For the second time, Buffy noticed his neck, how elegant it was, and how strong. How he was always exposing it to her by turning his head in just such a way. Her eyes widened slightly. She had thought he turned away like that because he was ignoring her, because he didn’t think her questions were worth answering. But now that she considered this particular response, she wondered whether it wasn’t some vampire sign of resignation-of submission.
Buffy swallowed, her mouth dry. His posture released the tension in her, and she lowered her stake. She needed to come up with a plan, not to completely wig out. It wasn’t only desire and emotion that was making her hesitate to fulfill her Slayerly destiny-part of it was Slayer instinct in and of itself.
“We might be wrong,” Buffy said, voicing her thoughts. “You might be wrong. Prophesies and curses and ‘guess-who’s-worthy-to-pull-out-the-sword’ stuff work in weird ways. I should know, I’ve done my share of prophesy thingies. Even the Immortal could have it wrong. You could be the one to close Hell, not open it.”
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so.”
“You got a death wish?”
“I’m dead already,” he said, and smirked. Her heart skipped a beat as she realized she hadn’t seen him smirk once yet this morning-evening. Whatever.
“Look, buddy,” she said, shoving the stake in her back pocket and exiting the bathroom, “you’re not helping your case any. I wouldn’t stake you now even if you asked. I’m keeping you with me until I destroy that hunk of rock, even if it means missing the sales at Castel Romano for a whole month.”
“Casa who?”
“A fancy outlet with to-die-for shoes,” she confided, nodding. “Now,” she began, pacing around the small hotel room and pursing her lips, as she often did while thinking. “I need to figure out where the Immortal’s keeping his big rock, and what exactly you have to do with it. I also need to figure out what to do with you until . . .”
“Yes,” he said. “If I’m going to be with you, we need to work a couple things out.”
Buffy froze. The way he said “with you” sounded like the way Riley had meant it when he used to say, “I love being with you, Buffy.” And Riley hadn’t meant, like, “here in this room with you, Buffy”; he had meant with you with you, as in together, like a couple. Of course, that wasn’t what Angel meant, but it opened up a whole can of worms, anyway. She had just decided her fate for at the very least the next few days, possibly a month-or even longer. She’d be stuck finding a new radiator to chain Angel to, trying to figure out how to use him to destroy Acathla, and arguing with him about the cheapness of his clothes. Buffy scowled. Now why didn’t that sound that unappealing?-except the part about missing the McArthurGlen Designer Outlet at Castel Romano on sale day.
Okay, so he was right. They were going to have to “work a couple things out.” He was talking about stuff like manacles and toothbrushes and shirts with collars, she suspected. Talk about a rock and a hard place. She was stuck between staking the guy and buying him hair gel. Buffy sighed. Her life was weird. “Okay,” she said, “assuming I’m not going to leave you chained to a radiator while I work all this out, what would you need?”
“Well, the radiator is broken,” he supplied helpfully, walking out of the bathroom. He appeared to be taking stock of the hostel room.
“Gee, thanks for letting me know, Mr. Obvious.”
“I could pay for it to be fixed,” he went on. “I could also pay for staying in this room. Or I could pay for a new room, with a better, stronger, harder-to-break radiator. Two rooms. Two suites. And one of those big, round, bath tubs. You know, with the hot water and the . . .”
“Jets?”
“Yeah. Those. I saw a bathtub with those, once.”
“Hold your horses, mister. One room. Two beds. No Jacuzzi.”
He looked disappointed. “No jets?”
“And tell me again why you have all this money and were living in a cardboard box?”
“I wasn’t living in a cardboard box,” he said, slightly offended. There was a pause, and he looked contemplative. “I was sleeping in the sewer.”
“Answer the question,” Buffy demanded irritably.
His head dipped down. “It’s complicated.”
“I’ve got time,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Try me.”
He held her eyes for several moments; then his gaze dropped away. “It’s blood money. Any high profile vampire usually makes a lot of it. I haven’t wanted to use it. I wouldn’t, except . . .”
“Except that this is for a good cause,” Buffy finished thoughtfully. Her brain was clicking again. Something wasn’t right. Darla wouldn’t have shied from using what Angel was calling “blood money,” no matter how many chips she had in her brain. “How come Darla never seemed to be rolling in it, then?” she asked.
Wearily, Angel walked over to the chair and sat down. His long fingers gestured dismissively. “I told you how vampires like to talk big. Darla . . . Existence is-was one big, long party for her.” Buffy sat down on the edge of the bed and nodded. That sounded like Darla. “She spent as much as she saved. Most vampires do that, too.” He shook his head. “You have no idea how many vampires were hurt by the stock market crash.”
“The who?”
“October 29, 1929? Kicked off the Great Depression?”
“Oh,” Buffy said, wrinkling her nose. “I knew that.” She scowled. “Hey, real people were hurt by that too, you know. Living people.”
“Of course.”
Buffy frowned and shifted her weight. “So, you’re saying most vampires don’t look after all the money they steal so they’re really no better off than the rest of us. Good to hear,” Buffy said, shrugging. Then she pinned him with a stare and asked, “So how come you’re different?”
His expression was dispassionate. “I’m obsessive,” he said simply.
Buffy shivered. His eyes were intent, hot, and very, very focussed on her. She repressed the urge to giggle nervously, not knowing how else to deal with such a confession. And then the full implications of what he had told her sunk in. “Wait. Are you . . . Are you telling me you’re like a millionaire? I found a millionaire on the side of the road smelling like guano?”
Angel shook his head. “No, nothing like that. I divided most of my assets long ago.” By division, he meant destruction. It had been blood money, and he had been ashamed of it. It wasn’t his. He couldn’t stand to give it away-not because he was opposed to charity, but because it made him feel dirty. Donating the money made him feel as though he was trying to buy his redemption, or at least purchase some small amount of solace. To punish himself, he had liquidated almost the entire fortune.
It wasn’t until later that he’d realized just what a selfish fool he had been-no better than the demon he’d been before. Buffy could have no idea of all the “real people” he’d seen suffering in the thirties; she could have no idea how much of it he blamed on himself. He could have helped so many people, had he been able to see past his own pain and suffering. People had been starving in Missoula, and he had given up a fortune because it made him feel bad. It was not an act of which he could be proud.
“But you still have a lot, right?” Buffy persisted.
“Enough,” Angel said, crossing his legs and lacing his hands together over his thigh. He looked around the room. “I you have a phone, I can see about a withdrawal.”
Buffy just stared at him. Was this really the bad-smelling bum from yesterday? Half of her scoffed and immediately discredited the idea that the vampire in front of her had a bank account and was offering to get money that he would then give to her. The other half warned that what he said was so out of wack that it was probably true, which sent a tiny thread of fear weaving through her. She should be very, very careful.
And yet, thinking it over, she couldn’t see anything wrong with it. If he wasn’t calling a bank she’d figure it out soon enough, and if he really didn’t have any money, no big. She’d find a way to pay for the additional costs of keeping him around. And if he actually did have funds, would that be bad? Hell, it’d be great if every bad guy she fought could help fund her campaign to stop them from destroying the world-but then again, that definitely sounded too good to be true.
But then Buffy looked at Angel, and made up her mind. She stood up, and went over to her luggage. As she began to rifle through it, she went on, “Just so you know, I don’t take charity. Not that I would expect charity from a vampire,” she added hastily. “This is for the radiator. And maybe for a new room. And don’t think, not for a moment, that I trust you just because you have moolah. I might just buy some magic manacles, or something, so I don’t need a radiator.”
“But you'd be using my money,” he said, following every movement from where he sat in his chair with his eyes. He smirked. “That’s called charity.”
“No,” she said, surfacing from a suitcase with something clutched in her hand. “It’s called stealing. Here ya go.” She threw a small object and he caught it easily, only his wrist moving.
“What's this?” Angel asked, turning the small, silver object over in his hand.
“Duh, it’s a cell phone,” Buffy replied. She eyed him skeptically. “You do know what a cell phone is, don’t you?”
“I’ve heard of them,” Angel said. At her aghast look, he hurriedly added, “and I’ve seen them, of course. It’s just so . . . small.”
“That’s just because your hands are so big and . . .”
He looked at her expectantly. “And?” he supplied mildly.
Buffy blushed. The correct word to end that sentence would most definitely be “sexy.” Not for the first time, doubt washed over her. Sure, it made sense that if he was the key to opening up Hell through Acathla he could also be the key to closing it, but Buffy wondered if that was the real reason she was sparing Angel. She might have ulterior motives even she didn’t want to face, such as wanting to fulfill some sick fantasy with a member of the race of her worst enemy, the enemy she had been sworn to slay. Except for the “sworn” part, because she’d never sworn to do anything. It had been thrust upon her. Her life was not fair, and she was standing here thinking a vampire’s hands were sexy. Yuck.
Luckily, he did not press her to finish her sentence. Instead, he had found the hinges on the little box and opened it from the other side, and now he was looking at the unfolded phone skeptically. “It won’t even reach from my mouth to my ear,” he complained. “Don’t you have something else?”
“Silk, hair spray, and rotary phones,” Buffy ticked off, relieved that he was being annoying again, in his utterly amusing way. “You’re such a big baby. Here,” she said, and took the phone from him. She pulled out the antenna and placed the receiver to his ear. “Hold it like this. If you talk, they’ll hear you.”
He looked thankfully up at her and covered her hand with his cool one to take the phone from her. His finger lingered on her wrist for a moment longer than it should have. Buffy trembled and snatched away her hand. “Hello?” he said, into the phone.
“You have to dial first, you idiot!” she told him, grinning.
“Oh yeah,” he said, taking the phone away from his ear. “I forgot.” He looked thoughtfully at the phone for a moment, contemplatively chewing the inside of his cheek. “What’s the number you call to get another number?” he asked.
“4-1-1.”
He stared at the keypad for a long time and then fumblingly dialed the numbers. He put the phone to his ear again and said, “Hello?” He paused. “How are you?”
Buffy grinned again and hit him lightly on the arm. “Just ask for the number,” she hissed.
Angel looked defensive. “I was just trying to be polite. No-no, not you,” he said into the phone. “I need a number for a bank.” A pause. “Right. Let me see . . . Oh yeah, Banque EEK.” A longer pause. “Well, I hope not. It’s in Switzerland.” He rolled his eyes. “Well, how was I supposed to know?”
For many moments Angel was silent, tapping his long, elegant fingers on the table beside him impatiently. “Yes, Geneva. Banque EEK. Okay.” After a while of Angel tapping his fingers, rolling his eyes, and saying the words “Geneva” and “Banque EEK,” Angel turned to her. “How do I hang this up?”
“Here.” Buffy took the phone away from him and pressed the “end” button. Then she turned to him incredulously. “Your bank is in Geneva?”
He looked startled. “Of course. Normally, I’d go to Switzerland to make a withdrawal, but . . .” He waved his hand negligently. “I figured you wouldn’t approve of that. It takes nearly a month to get there by freight.”
“By freight?”
He raised a brow. “The sunlight?”
“Oh yeah. So why bother?”
“Greater secrecy. The best way to keep a secret account is to deal directly with the bank, in person. No intermediary.”
Buffy rolled her eyes. “I should have known you’d have a secret thingy. All the scaries have them.” At his inquisitive look, she grinned. “Oh, you know,” she said. “Mafia. Movie stars.”
“Demons.”
“What, all demons have Swiss accounts?”
“Any demon worth knowing about, yes. EEK was chartered by vampires. It must have been different in the seventeenth century, before-”
“Wait,” she said, putting up her hand. “The seventeenth century? How long have you had this thing?” she asked incredulously.
He looked at her, again with surprise. “The account? Since 1753,” he answered, as if it should be obvious. “Since I was made.”
“So you’ve had a Swiss bank account for like, three hundred years?”
He looked slightly offended. “Two-hundred and fifty-one.”
“Yeah, whatever. Wow. That’s like, old. No wonder vampires get rich. All that interest. I didn’t even know Switzerland was that old.”
Angel raised a brow. “The Swiss have been administering private accounts since the Edict of Nan-”
“Hey,” Buffy said, interrupting. “Does the Immortal have one?”
Angel’s expression darkened. “The Immortal has his own Swiss bank.”
“Wow,” Buffy said, smiling, tickled by Angel’s scowl. “A whole bank. What for?”
“To administer his investments,” Angel answered impatiently. “Buffy, can I please call the bank, now?”
“Sure.” She handed him the phone, and he began to dial. “I guess the Immortal is swimming in it,” she goaded, grinning impishly. When he grunted, she laughed. She moved his hand and sat down beside him.
His other hand, the one holding the phone, froze in the process of bringing the phone up to his ear. His eyes flicked to her legs, her hips, perched on the arm of his chair. He was very still. The phone hovered there in the air in his lax hand.
Alarmed, Buffy hastily stood up and backed away. Suddenly, she wondered how much he knew about the effect he had on her, whether he knew his body made her hot and tingly and his eyes made her insides all melty. She wondered particularly now, since sitting down beside him on the arm of his chair had been done in complete innocence. She could be flirty and sexy; she knew how to do it. But she hadn’t been doing it. She wouldn’t do that, not with a vampire. At least, she didn’t think she would.
She’d just been amused by Angel’s discomfiture at her mentioning the Immortal. She suspected he was jealous of him. She’d wanted to tease him. She’d been . . . Oh, rats. She’d been having good, clean, innocent fun teasing a blood-sucking demon-possessed vampire. The fact that she simply enjoyed talking to him was scarier than anything else she could possibly feel. And now he thought . . . .
His arm was still poised mid-air. “What?” she asked, anxiously.
He was very, very still. “That was the first time I heard you laugh,” he said lowly, his gaze raking over her again. Then he turned away and brought the phone up to his face.
Buffy sucked in a breath, her heart skipping a beat. She wondered if he could hear that, too. She felt her face growing hot. She made a small movement back toward Angel, but stopped when he said, “Ja?” He spoke into the phone; his face was turned away.
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A/N2: There really is a bank EEK in Switzerland. Except it's Bank EEK, not Banque. I was going to name it something clever and bloody in Latin, but while researching I saw EEK and couldn't help myself.
Go to: Chapter 8