“It’s not—” The shorter boy choked down a breath. His bag clattered to the floor. “It’s not our blood.”

“That’s why we need your help,” Andrew told her. He clasped his hands into a pleading prayer position. “Jonathan and I need a Wish.”

This caught Anya’s attention. She hadn’t done much vengeance magic since moving to California. She had the ability, but there weren’t many spurned exes living in Demondale in need of revenge. Under the sunshade, if you wanted to get even with an ex, you just pointed the nearest hungry monster at them and then bye-bye, bad boyfriend.

So, on occasion, she’d grant a Wish outside of her usual purview. For a little extra cash. Or a lot of extra cash. Depending on how she was feeling and what kind of rube she was dealing with. She had bills to pay, and even with tips, working for the juicery wasn’t terribly lucrative. Sometimes—mostly when she was stuck on shift with Human-Mike—she fantasized about getting a different job. Something that wouldn’t require a uniform or smelling like animal blood all day. Something sexy. Like being a bank teller or an accountant. But it was hard to find a position when you couldn’t promise how long you were planning on living on earth.

“What kind of Wish?” she asked. It was in her best interest to keep her vengeance skills spry. She couldn’t waltz back into Vengeance LLC with rusty magic.

Andrew and Jonathan launched into a story about a demon Ascension gone awry—something about a girl and a warehouse and a misplaced blast of energy that had gone kapow instead of kablooey. Or maybe the other way around. Anya was only ever half-sure what Andrew was talking about. All of his pop-culture references were so irritatingly recent. And they seemingly always revolved around media set in outer space. Just once she’d like a nice ninth-century joke, something she could relate to. Like the increasing price of ale. Or the wonder of the rotary grindstone.

“And then the girl took the Kryptonite and the staff and went through this portal—” the shorter boy, Jonathan, was saying.

“So, you’d like me to what?” Anya interrupted, growing bored with the story. She hated when people turned a Wish into an excuse to recite their whole autobiography. She was interested in vengeance, not tedious backstory. “I could make it so she was never born. Or turn her into a dog? I used to do this great thing where I turned someone fully inside out but kept them alive. It’s sort of like a full-body paper cut. Apparently, the wind on your spinal cord stings like the dickens.”

“Ew!” Andrew recoiled from her. “No! That sounds awful. We don’t want revenge on the girl. We don’t even know her.”

Confused, Anya said, “But you said it was her fault that the stink ray—”

“Shrink ray,” Jonathan said.

“Does it matter if it didn’t work?” Anya asked, brushing off the correction. “You said it was her fault that you ended up aiming it at your friend.”