She dropped the dead thing she'd brought back with her, undid her sword belt and set it and her sword Cinaed, on the dining table. She studied the creature she had, trying to figure out how best to approach the problem she'd been asked to look into. 

The creature was small, and looked... twisted. As if it were distorted. The last time the primal pattern had been marred by royal blood. Was it the same this time, or had someone found another way of causing a break in it?

 

She really needed to consult with her aunt later, she decided. 

 

She looked up at the wall clock and cursed. She needed to get down to the bar. She should demand cash money for her time spent on this issue she thought as she unzipped and unbuttoned and let the gory clothes drop to the floor, walking naked to the shower.  As she was showering she idly wondered if she should make a new trump.

 

-------------

 

Cayden tossed the towel in the basket and pulled on his clothes, his standard attire....jeans, well broken in, a cotton shirt, soft and comfortable from repeated washings, and shoes just as broken in, just as comfortable.  He scooped his change into his pocket, and slipped his wallet in as well.  He'd spent the last five days working almost non stop and he was getting out of Dodge while he could.

He cantered down the stairs, grinning.  It wasn't like Buffy couldn't find him is she needed to.  He always had his cell phone with him and he always took her calls.  They all did, no matter what.  It was a matter of principle. 

He grabbed a hot dog and knish from a sidewalk vendor, munching happily as he headed towards the theater district.  It was early, the curtains hadn't gone up yet, let along fallen.  So Ariadne's would be quiet, and Fiona not busy.  An assessment that proved correct when he pushed the door open and strolled in.  He grinned at Sal and took a seat at the bar.  "A draft, I think," he said when Sal asked.  "How's it going?"
 

"Hey, good to see you. Figured you'd given up," Sal retorted, pulling a draft of the best in the house for Cayden.

Cayden gave him a look, laughing.  "Get away from me." 
 

"What?" Sal asked. "You'd hardly be the first."

 

"To give up?  I'm not surprised.  But I'm not the usual kind of guy."
 

"Still..." Sal said as he looked toward the door to the back. Fiona, hair up, wearing a black sheath dress, very simple, with a blue scarf wrapped around her neck and draped to fall behind her, and heels, walked in. She was frowning down at a notebook, completely absorbed.

Cayden just watched her, letting her be. 

She took a seat at the bar, still too busy to even notice Cayden there. Sal's comment, "Mojito?" made her look up. 

She must have noticed Cayden out of the corner of her eye. She turned, her eyes wide, a flush traveling up her neck. "Oh, hi."

"Hi."  He let his eyes say everything else as they swept her face, the exposed, vulnerable line of her throat, the curve of her breasts as they shaped her dress.  He let them do what he knew he couldn't, what she wouldn't allow, at least not yet.  He let his eyes touch her, warm her, slow and soft and gentle, the way he wanted to cup her face in his hands while he lowered his mouth to hers.
 

"Uhm. How are you?" was what she said, her mind in overdrive, realizing she wasn't going to get out of there easily, and she did have a dead body in her tub that needed some attention.  At about that time she realized she didn't really want to just blow him off. Argh. Lousy timing. It seemed to run in the family.

"Good.  How are you?"
 

"Uhm, good. I'm good."  She took the mojito Sal held out to her and took a good slug of it.

 

"And nervous as a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs."
 

"Oh. Yeah. Sorry.  How's your beer?" she asked, trying for calm.

"Good.  How's your mojito?" 
 

"Uhm good. Been busy private securitying?"

 

"Working?  Yes, I have.  And you?"  He gestured towards the notebook that had had her engrossed. 
 

 

"Yes. I've been working on something," she replied.

 

"Not the books," Sal replied with a snort.

 

She looked away from Cayden to Sal. "No, not the books.  They're fine, as always."

 

Cayden set his glass down, his hand just brushing the notebook as he reached across it for hers.  He held it, his thumb rubbing tiny circles against her inner wrist.  "Relax," he whispered.  "I don't bite unless invited to."
 

 

Sal made for the other end of the bar.

 

Fiona took a deep breath. "I'm ... uhm, it's nice to see you."

 

He grinned, amused.  "Little liar."  His voice made it a caress.
 

 

"It's just.. Actually I am rather glad I didn't scare you away. But well, I'm in the middle of something. And, well..."  She took a deep breath. "It's a family thing,"

 

"Yes, I know.  I exchanged...greetings...with some of the things."
 

 

"Yeah, well, I know where they came from and now I'm trying to figure out what's going on.  So I don't have a lot of free time right now. Since, uhm, my uncle's ordered me to investigate it."

She really was flustered.  "Ordered you to?  How very interesting.  I wouldn't have thought ordering was something someone would get away with with you."
 

 

"Yeah, well," she blushed bright red. "He's the k... he's the head of the family business. And he sort of asks you in such a way that you can't really say no. And besides, it's really important."

 

He waited, his gaze steady. 

 

"You really don't want to get involved," she said after a moment. 

 

"You wish, angel."  He lifted her hand to his mouth, kissing her knuckles, back to letting his eyes tell her the rest.

 

"You aren't helping," she whispered.

 

"That's because you aren't letting me."  He nibbled gently, scraping her skin with his teeth, unrepentant.

 

She tried to pull her hand away from him. "Look, I've got a dead body smelling up my loft. I need to study it. Come back tomorrow."

 

"After that?  You must be joking."  He finished his beer in a long swallow, never letting go of her hand.  "Instead you're going to show me."  He picked up her notebook and gave her a little tug to get her moving towards the loft.  When she opened her mouth to blast him he raised a brow.  "You're forgetting your drink," he pointed out before she could speak.
 

 

"I know you're intrigued but really, you don't need to get involved. We've handled this stuff before. This is Pattern magic, well, a Pattern problem."

 

"I'm already involved, honey.  You just don't want to admit it.  Mostly because you can't get past the idea you're dealing with someone you don't have to protect."  He shook his head.  "Well, mostly, other than you've no experience trusting anyone," he amended, "especially not a man who's interested in more than your truly luscious curves.  But it'll sort itself out."
 

 

"What did you do with the bodies you took?" she asked, eyes narrowing.

 

"Buffy checked them out, put a few bullets in at least one of them.  Nothing much.  If I'd known you wanted to check them out I'd have had her save them for you."
 

 

"No one got hurt? Your people I mean?" she asked, holding her breath.

 

"No, no one."
 

 

"All right. I'll show you," she said, taking her drink and leading him to the elevator.

 

He waited until the door closed, then he backed her against the wall, leaning in to kiss her. 
 

 

Her heart was beating a wild tattoo when their lips met. An electric current seemed to arc from her to Cayden. She broke the kiss then asked, "Are you all right?  Sorry, magic got away from me."

He nibbled along her lower lip, not hiding a small, purely male, smile of satisfaction.  "Is that what happened?"

The elevator doors swept open and she pushed against his chest. "Yes, that's what happened. Wait outside for a minute while I remove a few spells," she added as she extracted herself from his arms.

He leaned back against the wall, watching as her hands wove patterns in the air, conjuring magic and so innately graceful it made his chest tight to watch her.  Her hands were slim, her fingers long and slender, tipped by pearl pink nails, a method of hypnosis.  She probably thought she weighed to much, or that her cheekbones were to prominent, or her mouth too wide.  If she did she was wrong, just plain flat wrong.  She probably hated her hair and all he wanted to do was plunge his hands into the silken threads and let it slither over his skin, wrapping his fingers in softness.
 

He was achingly hard just watching her do a simple thing like removing her safeguards.  Kissing her was like stepping off a cliff into a volcano.  The motion of her arms made her breasts rise and fall, pulling her blouse taut around the lush curves and watching her, wanting to feel the weight of them in his palms sent blood rushing to his groin, hot and thick, flooding his erection, making his jeans painfully tight.  He set his teeth, clamping down on the demons stirring in his head, urging him to take the two steps that separated them, letting him press against the plump, perfect globes of her bottom, while his hands reached around to cup her breasts so he could flick her nipples...

He sucked air, shifting just a fraction, dragging his wayward thoughts under control, settling his features into impassivity.  She probably thought she wasn't even pretty.

She eyed him warily. "The body's in the bathroom."  She looked up toward the ceiling, then looked away quickly. He could sense something there, even if he couldn't tell quite what was watching him.

"You're in no danger from me," he said, ignoring everything else.  "Nothing's going to happen that you don't want to happen.  Though," he added before she could say anything, anticipating her, "that doesn't mean I'm going to let you run me off just because you're afraid."

She blinked, regarding him. "I'm afraid, that's true. Not of you, exactly.  It's more what you might be. Who you might be, or who sent you."

"I'm me, exactly as and what I told you.  No one sent me.  I work for Ash Jacobs, the man who polices the supernatural elements of the mid Atlantic region of the US.  I have for a long time.  But even he didn't send me.  I'm here because I want to be."  He said each word clearly, distinctly, without emotion. 

He took possession of her eyes with his.  "I will open my mind to you if that is what you need to believe that.  If you look you will see that I told Ash about what happened, what you told me.  You will see that I and he, and by extension those who work for him, want nothing from you except to help you if we can and to make sure that whatever battle you're fighting doesn't spill over into something that draws unwanted attention or hurts civilians."

Fiona said a few words in a language Cayden didn't recognize although it seemed to have some vague relationship to Celtic.  As she said them something became visible. It hovered near the ceiling and spiraled down toward Cayden. Fiona said a few words more and it halted.

"I'm told you are not a pattern or a logrus ghost, that you are purely human from this Shadow. Very well."  She paused, then added, "Thank you for the offer of opening your mind to me. It was kindly made, and trustingly too. But you shouldn't open yourself so willingly."

"And you need to believe me when I tell you that I can take care of myself, that I am powerful in ways you know nothing of and as such I can protect not only myself but you as well."

"I really hope you're right," she replied.  "Because what I'm dealing with is something outside of your experience, outside of your Shadow.  If you don't become involved in this it will ignore you. If you do..."

"I"m already involved,"  he said.  She just didn't get it.  What kind of a world did she come from that she didn't get that he cared?  That she didn't get he was for real, and he was deadly, utterly, completely and unrepentantly deadly.  "Angel, I've been fighting the things that go bump in the night for a very long time.  Things from this world and things not.  I'm very, very hard to kill and I don't scare."  He willed her to understand.  It wasn't macho bullshit, he wasn't strutting and posing.  It was fact.

She sighed. "Then come this way."  She led him to the bathroom where a body lay in her tub. It was headless, but the head was with it. It wasn't like anything he'd ever seen, and wasn't like the bodies he'd sent to Buffy.  This one had grayish skin, but that might be because it was dead.   It had spurs on its hands, and its teeth were nothing like human.  "The spurs exude a poison. I've heard of these creatures before. They.. worship my family. I therefore think they are here at the behest of one of my uncles."

"Worship?"

She shrugged. "They once followed my Uncle Bleys into a holy war, thinking he was a god. Bleys is thought dead, but then so were three of my other uncles. Several times.  I'm not sure why he'd send them after me. Last I knew he and my father were, more or less, allies."

"And why would one of your uncles want to kill you?"

"They've been trying to kill one another for centuries. For power. So I'm not sure why I'd be targetted unless it is to hurt my father."  She paused.  "Unless I have knowledge they think dangerous."

"Or power of your own."

She gave it some thought. "Perhaps. Although I've tried to stay out of the politics and out of the endless scheming. It's why I'm here, rather than at home. I've done my best not to take sides."

"Not that sort of power," he said, his tone amused.

"Magical power, is that what you mean? I'm far from the most powerful sorcerer in the family."  She was frowning. "Of course it's odd that I am one. I mean, only the redheads have magic.  They've always explained it that it came from their mother rather than Grandfather."

"Angel, power to me is a living thing, as tangible as you are.  I can touch it, taste it, and smell it.  I can hear it whispering, find it when it tries to hide and make it do whatever I want it to do.  And you have lots of it, regardless of the source."

She leaned against the door jamb. "I'm unclear on where to go with this. If I contact anyone at home, I'll probably be recalled and ordered to brief the entire story.  And then I will be a part of the politics, whether I want to be or not. Prudence tells me to remain in shadow and find a way to handle it myself."  It was clear she was mostly talking to herself.  "Yet the longer I stay here, the more I put my few friends in danger. Sal in particular."  Then she met Cayden's eyes. "Unlike you, he has no powers."

"We can protect him if that's what it takes."  Robyna's image surfaced and he wanted to smile.  "It's what we do."

"I'd be grateful if you could. I may have to leave."

He went still, every predatory instinct coming awake.  "Leave?" His voice was mild, curious, showing nothing else.

She nodded. "I've some things I need to collect. A thing or two to look into."

"From home?"

She nodded.  "And I need to do it without anyone knowing for certain I'm there."

"And you want me to just let you go off and do this?"  His voice was even softer, gentler, velvet over steel.

"Let me?" Her eyes narrowed, her own voice going dangerously soft.

"As in not argue, not protest, not follow or otherwise try to protect you from the probable consequences of your determination to prove how strong and independent and never, ever in need of help you think you are." 

She grinned. Then with a motion of her hand the body disappeared. She turned on her heel. "Drink?"

"Can I trust you not to drug it?"

She laughed. "I could trump out in a moment.  I don't need to drug you."

"Then a beer would be nice."

She went to the refrigerator and got out two Amstels, popping both tops and handing him one.  She walked over to take a seat and motioned for him to take one too. "Your interest in me is more than, or perhaps different than, that of a powerful being studying someone else with power."

He grinned.  "You think?"

"Is it merely because I'm something you don't fully understand?" she asked, holding his eyes.

And she probably didn't even think she was pretty.  "I will admit you fascinate me, but not like that."

"Like what then?"

"You.  All of you.  The person, the woman, you."  Maybe if he said it enough times she'd finally believe him.

"Oh," she said quietly, looking down at her beer. "You see, mostly it is about.. about who I am. Whose daughter I am. Especially if someone knows as much as you do about me."

He shook his head.  For an intelligent woman she could be remarkably obtuse.  "You might recall, just for a moment, that I was interested before I knew who you were.  and I still don't know whose daughter you are or even why I should care."

"I've frightened away a lot of would-be lovers who didn't understand about me, you see, so that perplexes me. It also confuses me that you see that I've tried to send you away and yet you won't go."

"I also see that you're beautiful and sensual and your mouth is the stuff of fantasies and I'm sure you agree with none of those things."

She paused, as if to argue yet more. Instead she said, "Then kiss me again."

"Always happy to oblige a lady, angel."