Anya turned back to Dram’s Encyclopedia, willing her skin to stop burning. Maybe reading about the Demon Lance of Ezeria would calm her loins. The Demon Lance was cursed to turn its victims into jelly after it impaled them. Nothing sexy about that.

“The slayer still has the staff and the gem,” Spike said, kicking the leg of the nearest display table. “We’re bloody doomed.”

Andrew held his hands up. “Please don’t break anything! We just got everything back to normal!”

“Who gives a shit about how tidy this shop is?” Spike asked. “That dowsing-whatever-the-slayer’s-carrying will take her straight to Glory’s temple. The fate of the world depends on a giant purple goddess protecting the Black Flame flag rather than staring at herself in a mirror all day.”

“Drusilla and Willow could still defeat the slayer,” Jonathan said, sneaking over to the pizza box to help himself to the last skinny slice. “That was the Mayor’s plan, right?”

“What does the Mayor know?” Angelus sniffed. “Drusilla’s insane, as likely to sing the slayer a little song as she is to fight her. And Willow’s a fledgling. She’s had her fangs for less than a year. Who’s to say she even knows how to use them? If real true-blue evil like me and Spike couldn’t kill the slayer, why would they be able to?”

“Should we send more vampires to help them?” Andrew asked. “The slayer had a harder time back at the church when there were all those newbie vamps throwing themselves at her.”

“You want to exhaust her by overwhelming her with pawns?” Ripper asked. “Not a strong chess player, are you?”

Pawns, Anya thought. The words itched in her mind, drawing her focus away from all other thoughts. Overwhelmed by pawns.

Scanning the tiny font in Dram’s Encyclopedia, she found the paragraph on the Dowsing Rod of Vem.

Ensorcelled in Rome in the Year of the Six Emperors, 238 AD, by the warlock Publius Vementer, the Dowsing Rod of Vem (also known as the Sycophant’s Staff) was created in an attempt to predict usurpers to the throne. Crafted from the branch of the cursed olive tree atop ancient Rome’s sealed hellmouth and spelled with divination magic, the dowsing rod leads its wielder to the most potent concentration of evil within the boundary of a single city or populous area. Vementer devised the staff as a means of protection during a time of profound political instability but was killed shortly after the staff brought him not to the newly appointed emperors, Pupienus and Balbinus, but to the leader of the mutinous Praetorian Guard, who killed the warlock on sight.