“And I am saying that I want at least triple that. In American dollars,” Anya said, shaking the Ram’s Horn horn by the bend in the mouthpiece. “It’s a seller’s market here, Ripper! Do you know how many Demondale idiots would pay top dollar to command hell’s livestock? Not just creeps and losers either. Think of the money they could earn on evil sheep alone. Evil wool for evil scarves. Evil lanolin. Evil mutton!”

“You’ve made your point,” Ripper said. He was smoking inside again, tapping ash into a teacup. “If the world doesn’t end, I’ll be sure to market this horn as an evil shepherd starter kit.”

“Are you being sarcastic? Or were you not listening?” Anya asked, using the horn to sweep the smoke away from her face. “One blow on this baby would give you an entire evil farm! Just add barn! Evil cows, evil sheep, evil horses. You buy this from me for one-fifty, and you could turn it around for at least four hundred dollars. And I’ll expect a thank-you card when you do. Now, back to this Dagger of the Unkillable.”

“No! We already agreed on two hundred for the dagger,” Ripper said with a groan. He scrubbed a hand down his jaw. “For God’s sake, woman, have pity. Our very reality could come tumbling down around us at any moment. I don’t want to die in the midst of trying to prove to you that the Dagger of the Unkillable was forged in the nineteenth century to stop the rising of the demon Yoldar.”

Anya set the Ram’s Horn horn on the top of the stack of magical objects littering the glass counter beside the cash register, and retrieved the corkscrew dagger. She held it up to the light so that the runes carved into the blade sparkled. In Old Norse—which, when Anya had learned it, had been just regular Norse—the runes read die, die, die.

Or elk, elk, elk depending on which way the blade was aiming.

“You’re right,” she said, leveling the blade at Ripper’s nose. “It would be very sad if you died in the middle of being so wrong about a piece of your own inventory. Because, as I have tried to explain to you, I saw a knife exactly like this one in Constantinople in the thirteenth century while I was there getting vengeance on a man with a secret family. Before your ancestors were even a glimmer in the universe’s eye. Which means that this piece has at least a five-hundred-dollar trade-in value.”

“Goddamn it!” Ripper swore, snuffing his cigarette in the bottom of his teacup. Turning from the knife in his face, he called over his shoulder, “Oi! You lot! Track down a copy of Dram’s Encyclopedia and bring it here!”