“That’s just Mother,” Cordelia said, waving her hand dismissively as she set her shopping bags down on the desk. “You’ll get used to her. Actually, she’s mellowed a little since she married Wesley. You should be grateful you didn’t meet her when she was married to Daddy.”

Doyle shuddered. “Not that I don’t care fer yer family, Cordy, but no wonder yer father divorced the woman! If she was worse then than she is now, I’d hate ta have ta meet her at all!”

Cordelia frowned at Doyle. “She divorced Daddy, when he lost all his money. Daddy didn’t divorce her. He thought the moon rose and set on her.”

“Well, at least I can be assured that ye’re not like yer mother,” Doyle chuckled. “If ye were ennathin’ like her, all money grubbin’ an’ such, ye wouldna be marryin’ me.”

“That’s for sure,” Cordelia sniffed, glaring at Doyle. “Considering you don’t have two pennies to rub together. Or is that shillings, where you come from?” she sniped.

Doyle rolled his eyes and chose to ignore Cordelia’s comment. He turned instead to the bags, picking them up and heading for the closet. No sooner were his hands full than the phone rang. “Cordelia, honey, would ye. . .” He trailed off as he realized that Cordy already had phone in hand.

“Angel Investigations,” she answered cheerily. Her brow furrowed for an instant as she listened to the voice on the other end, then smoothed again as she smiled radiantly. “Xander! Oh my God, it’s been ages! How are you?” Doyle tried to listen without looking like he was listening. “Yeah, you know Angel, always busy working. Doyle? Hardly. Doyle’s busy *not* working at the moment. What’s up with you talking about work? As far as I know you’ve never done any. Why the sudden interest?” She rolled her eyes. “Oh, God, *another* case for us?” she complained. She perked up an instant later. “You’re willing to pay? Where’d you get money? All right, Angel’s going to call us when he and Kate are done with their research, so I’ll let him know and then call you back. All right. Yeah, Xander, it was good to hear from you. Especially when you’re going to pay us. Yeah. Later.” Cordelia hung up the phone and turned back to Doyle, who had given up all pretense of not eavesdropping when the agency and money had been mentioned.

“I take it that was yer ex honey?” he asked casually.

“Yeah, good old Xander Harris. Apparently he’s got a case for us. No demons or anything, not that I know of. It’s about time. We’ve been spending way too much time thinking about demons and slime and all that yuck.” Doyle winced. “I guess he just wants us to find somebody for him. He’s going to tell us all the details when Angel gets back.”

“Who’s going to tell us details about what?” Angel asked as he strolled into the office.

“Xander. Apparently he’s going to pay us a lot of money if we’ll find this guy for him,” Cordelia explained happily.

“Find someone? That doesn’t sound like our line of work,” Angel objected with a frown. “We help the hopeless. We aren’t a missing persons bureau.”

“I guess Xander thinks it’s really important to find this guy. Something about family history,” Cordelia shrugged. “He’s going to tell us what’s up when we’re all together. Speaking of, I better call him back.” She had the receiver in her hand and her perfectly manicured fingernails were delicately pressing buttons before either male could say a word. “Xand? Cordy. Angel’s back. When can you get here? Ten minutes? Oh, you’re staying in the city. Okay. See you.” She hung up the phone. “He’s staying at some hotel over on Baker. He’ll be here in ten.”

“So we’re going to help him?” Doyle asked warily.

“Of course!” Cordelia replied indignantly. “He’s a friend. And he has money he wants to spend. Why shouldn’t he spend it here, with his friends, instead of some sleazebag P.I.?”

“We’re not exactly his friends, Cordelia,” Angel pointed out wryly. “He hates me, you broke up with him, and he hasn’t even met Doyle yet.”

“Money!” Cordelia insisted staunchly. She folded her arms over her chest and glared at both men, challenging them to defy her. Neither did. Minutes later, they heard pounding footsteps outside the office door. Cordelia ran to it and threw it open, sunshine streaming into the room.

“Cordelia!” Angel howled as he jumped out of the path of the sun’s rays.

“Oops. My bad,” she said sweetly. She turned back to the open door and gestured for Xander to come inside. “Before I cremate my boss,” she added with a grin. Xander grinned in return and entered the office, glancing around.

“Wow. Oz said the place lacked homeyness, but he wasn’t kidding!” Xander exclaimed.

“Look who owns it,” Cordelia threw at him with a grimace. “Mr. ‘King of Colorless’ over here doesn’t know much about interior decorating. Unless you count the chains down in the apartment. I shudder to ask what those are for.” She smiled at Angel as he turned a dark crimson color. “So, what’s the what, to steal your phrase?” she asked, leading him to the chair in front of her desk.

“Well, I have to find someone,” Xander started uncertainly. Cordelia blew her breath out impatiently.

“Duh, got that. Who do you need us to find?”

“My brother.”

Cordelia and Angel stared at him in confusion. “Huh? Brother? Missing much? I didn’t know you had a brother.”

“Neither did I, until yesterday,” Xander said slowly. “My mom finally decided it was time I understood my father. I’m not sure why. But she told me that there’s a part of my father that nobody ever knew about, a part of him that keeps him closed off from everybody. I also found out that he had a whole other family, before he got together with Mom and they had me. He was with this other woman. I don’t think he ever married her, but they had a son. Then he found out about his. . . heritage, for lack of a better word, and he left the two of them.”

“So you want us to find him so you can learn more about your dad’s early life,” Angel guessed. Xander nodded.

“I want to find out more about what happened with my dad, who he was.” At Cordelia’s confused stare, he added, “Dad died last week. It wasn’t much of a shock. He was sick, and he was mean, which made it worse. I can’t say I’m really sad. He was never much of a father to me. I just want to learn about this new facet of my family, because I guess it’s going to affect me in a few years.” He took a deep breath. “You see, my mom told me something about my dad that kind of rocked my world, although that’s an understatement. Little did I know that the whole time I was fighting vampires and demons, I was living under the same roof as one.” He took another deep breath and dropped the bombshell. “My father was a demon.”