Impressions Read Free Page B

outward-bound visitor. “Fairly recent, and it uses the same basic identification template as the Newcomb’s Wild-flower Guide . I’ll see if I can dig it up.”
    Their escaping client was so close to the door that he probably thought he had it made. But more smoothly, more quickly than the man could possibly anticipate, Angel stepped in front of him. Inches away, as though he’d been there all along and simply appeared . “That’s not talking, that’s leaving .”
    Ordinary words, but there was something in his voice that made Cordelia look up from her work, startled. Angel loomed over the man, and she would have said he was all but fang-face.
    “The fight’s over, Angel,” Wesley said, a note of worry in his voice that made Cordelia think he’d seen the same thing.
    Or maybe the fight wasn’t over. For yet another figure burst through the abused lobby doors—except this one had apparently been shopping in Angel’s closet. Of the same height only gawkier, his hair darkened by a bad home dye job, his glasses slightly askew, his human face a caricature of dismay, his entire appearance a caricature of Angel. In one swift look he took in the scene before him.
    There was a thick moment of silence.
    Then he muttered what could only have been an extremely bad word, turned on his heel, and burst right back out the doors and into the night.
    The fellow with the bowling ball cried, “No! Wait!” and dodged around Angel, breaking into a run as he called out after the most recent arrival departure. “Angel, wait! We have to talk!”
    “Yes, indeed,” Angel muttered to himself, his face full of grim. “That’s just exactly what we’re going to do.” And out the door he went, snatching his duster from a chair on the way.
    Cordelia reached for the check from the rat-thing woman and flicked it thoughtfully against her fingers. “This is starting to make a little more sense.” Mistaken identity, Angel sorta-look-alike…
    “Do you think so?” Wesley asked. “Because, frankly, I don’t think it makes any sense at all.”
    “Don’t look at me, ” Gunn said. “All I know about is this pile of stinky goo here.”
    “Whose day is it?” Wesley said, but there was resignation in his voice. As there well might be—even if it had been Cordelia’s day to catch the lobby messes, she wasn’t about to get any closer to this one. Besides, she had sketches to make.
    “I know darn sure it’s not the guy who didn’t make the mess,” Gunn said. “Besides, I’ve got places to be.”
    “Perhaps,” Wesley said with exaggerated weariness, “you might be so good as to see if there’s anything you can do with the door. Just to hold it for tonight. Not,” he added dryly, “that it seems to have been any good at keeping people out in the first place.”
    “Or in, ” Cordelia murmured, looking at the doors as if she could see right through the remains to whatever Angel had encountered when he caught up with the man, the bowling ball bag, and the poor imitation of Angel himself. “I wonder if we’ll ever know what that was all about.”
    Wesley headed for the cleaning supplies, grimly rolling his sleeves even higher. “I suspect it’ll go down as an inexplicable moment. Those do have their charm, after all. The demon’s dead, the potential client has run away…the world was never in danger.”
    Cordelia frowned at him. How much more could you possibly tempt the Fates than by suggesting the world was safe?
    Gunn gave a wise shake of his head. “Bowling night. Worse than a full moon.”
     
    Angel should have been able to catch up with them. He should have been able to catch up with them, do barrel rolls around them, and cut them off short, all while wearing a smile.
    If he’d been paying attention.
    He eased to a halt in the middle of an alley, feeling more than a little foolish. He hadn’t the foggiest idea when they’d zigged and he hadn’t. By now they’d probably zagged as well and weren’t anywhere to