Andrew and Jonathan popped out from behind a bookcase, armed with a broom and a feather duster respectively. Despite Ripper’s disinterest in owning humans—something about a constitutional violation—the boys had volunteered to clean up Angelus and Spike’s mess. Anya had been doing her best not to pay attention to them as they bustled around the store. Their continued existence tainted the otherwise pleasurable act of haggling.

It had been centuries since Anya experienced betrayal firsthand. It was something she saw happen to other people: To her Wishers. To Best Pressed customers when Human-Mike forgot to order enough yak urine or miniature vanilla scones. She was having a hard time reconciling the feeling in herself. How had she let herself get tricked by two humans? They didn’t even have the magic of warlocks! Just pretend money and the temerity to defraud a lonely demon.

Anya’s knuckles went white against the handle of the Dagger of the Unkillable. Before this morning, her life in Demondale had been a well-established routine of work and home, void of the obnoxious gossip and one-upmanship of Vengeance LLC. She earned money, ate the newest food creations that earth had to offer, read catalogs and magazines filled with pictures of human women of her general size and shape. It was exactly the life that had been advertised to her.

So why had she felt so much more alive today?

Was it just the threat of death giving her a new zest for life on earth? Or was it the prolonged socialization? If there was supposed to be more to life than just upselling customers, then why hadn’t anyone told her so earlier? Maybe then she wouldn’t have wasted a day keeping two human swindlers alive, thinking they were becoming friends.

After some shuffling and searching the various books still strewn around the store, Andrew deposited a massive blue tome onto the glass counter next to the Ram’s Horn horn.

“Is this the right book, Mister Ripper?” Andrew asked. “The spine is pretty faded, and you had it sitting open, which is really bad for the binding.”

“This is it, thanks,” Ripper said, dragging the encyclopedia across the glass. It had a gold-stamped Art Nouveau cover of swirling vines and a human skull. The pages released a sweet mustiness as Ripper slapped through them. “Every magical object worth knowing about is in here, so long as it was discovered before 1904. Ah! Here!” He stabbed a finger into the book. “The Dagger of the Unkillable was forged in. . .” His lips pressed into an unfriendly line.

Anya leaned over the counter, peering into the encyclopedia upside down. “Constantinople!” she announced victoriously. “I knew it! You never forget a dagger once you’ve seen it shoved up the rear of a primordial Old One. So much goo came out of it. Like, an entire river of unrecognizable goo.”