Impressions Read Free Page A

column behind which the man quivered—and not so incidentally beside which Cordelia had been standing. It pushed Angel right off his feet—and up—to dangle against the column.
    Cordelia’s anger flared. Was that any way to behave in someone else’s hotel? She hauled back and kicked the demon. She kicked it in the shin—or what she thought was a shin—she kicked it in the thigh—ditto—and she kicked it in the groin— definitely not sure about that one. It didn’t appear to notice, and, panting, she staggered back to reconsider.
    At the far lobby wall, Wesley flung open the glass-front door to the weapons cabinet and grabbed something sharp at random; he tossed it to Cordelia. She made no attempt to catch it—not until it clattered to the floor and she could identify the not-sharp parts of the short curving sword. Then she scooped it up and slapped it into Angel’s open hand. Just like a scrub nurse, she thought. Perfect for a guest role on E.R. That is, if they could lure George Clooney back.
    In one smooth motion, Angel swept the blade deeply across the demon’s midsection. The demon instantly dropped him, and before Angel could get back to his feet or Cordelia could catch her breath or Wesley could arrive with his own weapon of choice, the thing let out a garbled wail of agonized defeat and collapsed in upon itself.
    And continued to collapse in on itself, so by the time they gathered to stand in a circle around it, there was little left but a mound of faintly hissing goo. As they watched, it bubbled slightly and settled even further.
    “May I just say,” Cordelia began, waving her hand under her nose in a futile attempt to dispel the smell of the thing, “ew.”
    “Ew,” Angel agreed, and looked at Wesley, who gave the slightest of shrugs.
    “Ew,” he said, but of course he had to add,
    “indeed,” just so he could sound like his usual scholarly, stiff-upper-lipped self.
    Gunn entered through the broken lobby door wearing his nothing-surprises-me-anymore expression, which totally went with the shaved head and the blocky, oversized shirt that hid too much of what Cordelia had always considered very nice shoulders, not to mention jeans that could have been tighter for her taste. He’d given up on the skullcap bandanna lately…probably couldn’t keep it from turning his underwear pink in the laundry. He walked in backward to assess the damage from the inside, brow raised. He turned around as he reached their little circle, his feet just out of the danger zone. “Whoa,” he said, wrinkling his nose in offense. “Not your mother’s perfume.”
    “No,” Cordelia said grimly. Typical day so far—moody Angel, inexplicable identity crisis, and dissolving demons. “Not your mother’s pile of goo, either. I mean, how rude . It’s not going to be easy to identify that .”
    “Best make a sketch while it’s still fresh in your mind,” Wesley suggested.
    “Also not an image I want to contemplate,” Cordelia told him, but went to grab the notebook they kept for such things—mostly so she could sketch things from her visions. Goo Demon apparently wasn’t vision-worthy.
    Angel turned to the man with the bowling ball, who looked as if he hoped they’d forgotten about him. “We need to talk.”
    As Cordelia slapped her notebook on the counter and started to sketch, thinking wistfully of all those high school art classes she’d skipped, the man eased around the edge of the room. And as Cordelia decided there probably hadn’t been anything in those classes that would apply to drawing demons, anyway, the man edged toward the broken door and escape.
    “Talking.” Angel’s gaze followed the man’s retreat. “As in answering questions. We have plenty of questions to choose from.”
    “Identikit,” Cordelia murmured, sketching away. Erasing. Erasing more. “A demon Identikit. That’s what we need.”
    “I do have a new guide,” Wesley said, with deceptive lack of reaction to the slyly