"And still," Cordelia said, regarding the books scattered across the counter, "this is better than getting demon goop all over you." She sighed and leaned over something called _The Annals of Inshallah_ for the phone. "Hey, five orders of Pad Thai okay with everyone, or does someone want something different?"

There was no response from the research party behind her, and Cordelia turned in surprise. She would have thought by now Pike and Amanda's eyes would be popping out their heads with boredom. God knew she was bored, and she'd had a lot more practice. Then again, generally they were looking for something more concrete then why vampires would want to vamp a not-yet-called Slayer.

"And the answer is, they're not there," Cordelia muttered to herself. Fred and Wesley were bent over another table, covered three-deep in musty tomes, but Pike and Amanda were nowhere to be seen. Cordelia picked up the phone, hit speed dial, and gave their order to the guy at the closest Thai place. He knew her voice so well she didn't even have to give her name or address, and the food was always free after Wesley had exorcised a demon that was tormenting his daughter. Then she went in search of Pike and Amanda.

It was almost sunset, and they'd been hitting the books since about ten that morning. Angel had joined them later on, but had left with Gunn and Kate when someone called and asked for help. Usually, Cordelia appreciated jobs that did not involve her having blinding pains splitting her skull, but Angel was good at the research, and Kate was good at putting things together.

And she couldn't get the vision of Amanda as a vampire out of her mind.

She found Pike and Amanda out in the little ruined garden courtyard, sparring. Cordelia had been in enough fights to recognize that Amanda's strength wasn't anywhere near the level of Buffy's or Faith's, but she didn't know kids well enough to know if she was stronger than your average ten-year-old. But she looked good at it, aiming high-kicks at Pike's upraised hands, pummeling him across the ground. She was grinning fiercely, enjoying the motion, the action.

They couldn't make this kid a demon. Not just because she would be a Slayer someday, but because she teased her surrogate big brother and loved Jackie Chan movies and she was *ten*, damnit, and Buffy had been fifteen when she was Called and spent something like six years fighting bad guys and died in the end and -- Cordelia took a deep breath to slow her runaway thoughts, and called out into the courtyard, "Food'll be here soon. Anyone hungry?"

Amanda twisted out of an attack with athletic grace, avid at the thought of food. "What'd you get?"

"Pad Thai," Cordelia answered as, behind Amanda's back, Pike shook out his hands as though they were stinging and grinned at her over Amanda's head. It was a very attractive grin. It had a basic guy-level niceness dashed with a hint of wickedness. Cordelia's insides did a slow flip-flop, and then she firmly suppressed their acrobatics. He was cute. He was nice. He had no reasonable source of income, and fought demons for a living. Unliving. Whatever.

"Ick," Amanda said, totally oblivious to the exchange.

Pike picked up a towel from a bench and draped it around his neck. "She hates Pad Thai. I've tried to educate her, but she's got no taste."

"Peanuts. Ick," Amanda repeated again, forcefully.

Cordelia laughed and shook her head. "I think we've got some leftover pizza in the refrigerator, if you want that." She stepped aside to let Amanda zoom past her. "I guess she's hungry."

"She's always hungry," Pike said ruefully. "And let me tell you, a ten-year-old girl who hates peanuts is hard to feed on a budget."

"How do you feed her? I mean, where do you get --" Belatedly, Cordelia remembered that she was going to attempt tact sometime this decade, just to see if she could.

Pike didn't appear to be put out. He just laughed. "Money?" He shrugged. "I've never had any, so not-having it isn't a problem. I'm a mechanic, so when I drift into town I see if I can get a job for a couple weeks. Ditchdigging pays pretty good too. I don't need much." Shrugging, he went inside the hotel as the delivery boy -- brother to the girl Wesley had saved -- brought in the Thai food.

Cordelia grabbed one of the white styrofoam boxes before anyone else made off with it, pulled a pair of chopsticks out of the bag, and wandered over to Wesley. "Anything?"

"Nothing at all since the last time you asked me, fifteen minutes ago," Wesley said testily. He was mad at himself for not finding anything, Cordelia decided, and wandered away, devouring noodles.

Fred had given up the books for a few moments and wandered over to the counter. She was looking at an opened box of Pad Thai with a puzzled expression and her hands behind her back. "Are you sure this is food? It looks like --"

"Don't," Cordelia cut her off. "Don't even go there. I don't want to know what it looks like. You are not going to ruin Pad Thai for me."

Big-eyed, Fred nodded and backed away from the box. When she headed off to the kitchen, Cordelia picked it up and shoved it under Wesley's nose. "Eat. Got it?"

Absently Wesley looked up, his eyes almost crossing as they tried to refocus behind his glasses from the print on the book in front of him to Cordelia's face. He blinked his vision clear and smiled wanly. "Got it," he said obediently, shutting the book and putting it carefully aside, clearing a place for the food.

Cordelia sat in the chair Fred had abandoned, and squeezed her own box on a corner of the desk. "Okay, let's look at this a different way. We've been trying to find a prophesy or a spell or something to explain why vampires would want Amanda. What if there isn't one? What if someone just thought it up on their own? I mean, think about it. Attacking a not-quite Slayer, and making her a vamp. Less risk to them, but still evil and twisted. Wouldn't Angel have done something like that? You know, back when he was evil and world-endy?"

Wesley screwed up his mouth in thought. "If that is the case, we'd have no way to track them. They wouldn't have a predictable pattern."

"Other than chasing Amanda." Cordelia fixed Wesley with a glare that he returned, puzzled, until he remembered and scooped up some noodles. Satisfied, she returned to the matter at hand. "Oh, and like so many of the things we fight are predictable anyway."

Wesley chewed thoughtfully. When he'd swallowed he said, "You have an excellent point. We may have been going about this all wrong."

"Don't say it like it's a shock," Cordelia said, grinning. "Anyway, that lands us back where we started, which is basically clueless."

"Not entirely. The question is how they found out who Amanda is, or, rather, who she will be."

"Same way Pike did?" Cordelia guessed. "Something happened to those Watchers, right?"

"Yes." Wesley's mouth tightened. "Many of them were killed, in much the same manner Amanda's family was. A few got away."

"So, the vampires have been chasing him ever since he's been with Amanda."

"Which would seem to indicate that the vampires themselves had no way to track a possible Slayer, so they could not afford to lose one that had been unearthed for them." Wesley was getting steadily more excited with the new theory. "All right, then, we --"

Both of them were on their feet and moving before consciously registering that they had heard a scream. Executing a tight pirouette, Cordelia turned back to grab a crossbow, while Wesley had reflexively grabbed a sword before getting up from the desk. They broke into the kitchen to find it full of vampires. Pike was desperately trying to beat one into submission, and Fred had grabbed an old, corroded saucepan and hit one of them over the head with it.

"Where's the girl?" one of the vampires growled. "He said to get the girl!"

Amanda was nowhere in sight, Cordelia registered as she fired a shot at the vamp Pike was fighting. She missed the heart, but the bolt hit high in its shoulder. Pike snatched it and buried it in the vampire's heart, stepping back as it exploded into dust. Screaming to get his attention, Cordelia tossed the crossbow to him, figuring he probably had a better chance with the second loaded bolt, and sprinted back to the weapons cabinet to see if there was anything else she could use.

She grabbed an axe and turned to face a vampire that had followed her out of the kitchen. Running on pure adrenaline, she swung the axe in an arc that turned her completely around and cut the vampire in half. She was still choking on the dust when she ran back to the kitchen.

Which was empty. Except for a few piles of ash on the ground, it was totally empty. Cordelia clutched her axe, gasping for breath, and said, "Where the hell is everyone?"

Amanda crawled out from a cupboard. Her eyes were huge and she hugged herself to stop shaking. "I don't know. Pike stuffed me in here. I heard one of the vamps say something about getting the seer if they couldn't get the girl, and then someone screamed. I thought it was you. Then everyone ran out."

Cordelia was shaking herself, and not just from fighting a vamp. Leaving a room full of fighting vampires and coming back to nothing shook her so much that she was barely focusing on what Amanda was saying.

Which was, of course, why at that exact moment she pitched forward, clutching her head in agony.

When she came to, Wesley and Pike had returned, and she had been moved out into the lobby. "Fred," she gasped out. "They've got her."

"We know," Wesley said grimly. "They thought she was you."

***

Three hours later, after Angel, Gunn and Kate had come back, the message arrived. "The girl for the seer, or the seer dies."

"Not exactly wasting words, are they?" Cordelia asked bitterly, dropping the note.

"A hellish choice," Wesley said quietly. "They must know Angel can't afford to lose his connection to the Powers That Be. Somehow, they got information on who Angel's seer was, and what she looked like."

"But they didn't know I cut my hair six months ago." Abruptly, Cordelia got up and moved away from the group. She went to stare out a window.

"You okay?" Pike was behind her.

"Oh, yeah, great. Fred just got kidnapped in my place, and wow, you know, she's so stable to begin with. And now she's in danger and my vision wasn't all that helpful and no, I'm *not* okay." Fiercely, Cordelia backhanded the tears on her face. "Well, we're just going to get her back, that's all."

"Hey, you want to blame someone, blame me. I brought you all into this."

Cordelia sighed. "It doesn't work that way. We're the do-gooders. Which kind of means we end up having to do good. Okay," she said, raising her voice to be heard by the rest of the people in the room and walking back to their little planning huddle. "One more time. Empty building. Concrete floor. Old crates. Some sort of machinery rusting in the corner. Sounds of traffic."

Screw the vampires. They'd save Fred, they'd protect Amanda, and they'd kick some ass.

"Streetlights through a window. Gas station across the street. Yuri's Tip-Top or something...."