BackWater - Chapter 2

Angel and Spike enter once the girls silence has become almost unbearable, both vampires wear stunned expressions. "Nerice why don't we take a walk?" Angel suggests.
Nerice looks back and forth between Angel and J.J. and then nods, "All right."
"So, Jerica would you like to take a walk as well?" Spike asks once they are left alone.
"Um," J.J. takes a deep breath, "sure."
Once they are out of the meeting room Spike begins to talk, "So lil' bit..." and then he stops and asks, "do I call you lil' bit, that's what I call your, well I guess your aunt."
J.J. shakes her head, "You used to call me tiny bit, but then..." J.J. stops herself before she reveals anything about her life and instead she states simply, "but Mom made you stop ."
Spike seems to want to inquire about this but instead he asks, "Do we have a good relationship them, get along all right?"
"You and me?"
"Yeah." Cordelia had ordered both Angel and Spike not to question either one of the girls about Buffy.
J.J. had to look away for a moment to control the tears in her eyes as she mutters, "the best."
"Then do you know how a vampire came to have a child?" Spike inquires, throwing all of Cordelia's orders out the window.
"You're a..." J.J. stops quickly but by the look on Spike's face she realizes that he's all ready figured out what she wasn't supposed to tell him.
Angel and Nerice had ended up at the food court, and even though she wasn't hungry she had allowed Angel to get her the soda and sandwich that now sat in front of her. Angel is the first to break the silence between the two, "We've put a call to Buffy in Italy, that's the last place we heard that she was, but it might take her awhile to get back in touch with us."
"You mean she might come here?" Nerice asks, startled that she might actually get to see her mother after seven years.
Angel nods, "I'm sure she will, we haven't had much contact in the last year or so, but I'm sure she'll come for this. Cordy says you guys will be here for awhile, so we've sent people over to the hotel we own and had the prepare it for your stay there."
"All right." Nerice nods.
"Also, Cordy says that you guys should be in school."
"I don't go to school." Nerice states firmly.
"Well you're going to have to, Cordelia's right."
Nerice's facial expression darkens as she jumps to her feet, "You've been my father for 10 minutes and you're all ready bossing me around? You don't even know me."
Angel grabs Nerice's arm as she attempts to hurry out of the room, "Hold on a second. I'm only relaying what Cordy passed on through me."
"I don't do school." Nerice states glaring at her father.
"You sound more like Faith then Buffy." Angel comments lightly. Nerice rips her arm back from Angel and she shifts uncomfortably at the change in conversation and Angel can't help but take notice of this. "I'm sorry Nerice, but you're going to have to go to school."
Nerice sighs, "Fine."
"There you guys are." Cordelia appears then with spike and J.J.
"What's going on?" Angel asks.
"We'll we're going shopping courtesy of Wolfram and Hart," Cordelia smiles sweetly up at Angel, "and then I thought we'd get settled in at Wolfram and Hart. We've all decided that we are going to move back into the hotel, Lorne, Gunn, Fred, Wesley, Spike too, you want to join us."
Angel nods, "sure."
"All right, I'll call the decorators over there now and have them open your old room up as well." Cordelia states lifting her cell phone out, "so Wolfram and Hart's credit cards?"
Angel smiles at Cordelia as he hands her the credit card she wants, "Don't go to crazy all right?"
Cordelia arches an eyebrow at Angel and then rolls her eyes, "Right."
They all exchange good-byes and as the girls are walking away Harmony's voice is heard over the small walkie talkie she had insisted that Angel carry around with him so she could get in touch with him, "Uh boss, you've got Willow here on line one."
Angel picks up the phone, "All right, I'll be right there Harmony." Spike and Angel hurry to Angel's office and Angel quickly picks up his phone. "Hello Willow. We need you here in LA. This has nothing to do with Wolfram and Hart. No, just because we work for it doesn't mean it has to do with everything. This, for the first time has nothing to do with the "evil law firm", it's important, we need Buffy here. No there's no apocalypse. Yes. All right, we'll explain later. All right. Fine. Good-bye."
"Red giving you a hard time?" Spike asks once Angel has hung the phone up, slamming the receiver into the cradle.
"They'll be here in two days." Angel responds. "All of them."
"Uh, OK then, I have to...to take care of something, I'll see you around."
By the time Cordelia, Nerice and J.J. get back to the hotel it's late and everyone else is there eating the take-out Fred and ordered. "Did you guys have fun?" Fred asks.
"Oh yeah." Cordelia responds enthusiastically, "we got a lot of shopping done. We bought a lot of clothes."
"What about you guys, are any of those clothes yours?" Wesley asks as everyone takes note that all three girls hold about 6 bags from various stores.
"More than enough." Nerice rolls her eyes.
"We had fun." J.J. responds and then rolls her eyes at Nerice, "although Nerice hated every moment of it."
"Well all right, come eat." Lorne urges gesturing to the many Chinese food containers on the large table.
Once they have joined the rest at the table Angel informs the girls, "I talked to Willow today, Buffy and the rest of them will be here in two days."
Nerice and J.J. both exchange quick glances, pale and then stare at their plates. Nerice proceeds to break her chop sticks into small pieces as J.J. pushes the food around on her plate. The rest of the dinner everyone makes small talk and the girls excuse themselves early to go to their separate rooms and to go to bed.
The people remaining at the table watch the girls leave and once they are upstairs Lorne comments, "I'm surprised at how quiet J.J. is, I expected it from Nerice but with Angel as her father I expected her to be..."
"Rude?" Angel supplements.
"Hey now." Spike speaks up, "Angel's off-spring is the rude one."
"They've both been through a lot in their worlds." Cordelia states, "I'll pick everyone up from the airport, I'll take a Wolfram and Hart limo, I'll make the arrangements tomorrow. Anyway I'm going to bed, all this shopping has made me tired too."
"I'm getting sick of all the cryptic." Spike bursts once Cordelia is gone. "We aren't being told everything." Everyone else nods in agreement and Spike states, "I want to know what's going on, and I think we should demand to know. I want to know why my daughter burst into tears the instant she saw me, but she says we have a good relationship, why Angel's daughter fainted like she saw a bloody ghost, and why neither one of them will talk about their mother. We don't even know why they are here, but Cordelia does and she should be filling us in."
"I think we should at least wait until Buffy gets here, maybe that's what Cordelia is waiting for." Wesley states calmly, "we should at least wait until she gets here to do anything."

In the coming chapter: Buffy comes to LA Startling conclusions are made about why Nerice & J.J. are

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