Jonathan drew the Shirley Temples to his chest and fished the cherries out of both. “I don’t know. It feels weird to take a job that should be Warren’s when I, you know.”

“Murdered him with your shrink ray?” Angelus offered.

Jonathan winced. “Yeah, that.”

“You’re going to have to let that go,” Anya said. “It was an accident. And you tried to bring him back to life. The Powers That Be stopped you. Things happen.”

“Besides,” Andrew said, “if Warren’s Ascension had actually worked, he wouldn’t have kept working at City Hall. Would the Scorpion King answer emails and fetch coffee? I don’t think so.”

“The Mayor isn’t going to wait on you forever,” Willow said. “He already has a new Jeff, who is as obnoxious as the old Jeff. And somehow also named Jeff. You’ll need to hurry if you want to get into City Hall before the election. Who knows who will replace the Mayor when he becomes governor?”

Even after a month of having more friends than just Andrew and Warren, Jonathan found that this much attention made his insides squirm. Five people all staring at him—half of them apex predators who could snap his neck as easily as give advice—activated his inner coward. He daydreamed about creating an invisibility ray so that he could disappear just long enough for everyone to lose interest.

But he’d miss them if they all gave up on him.

“I’ll consider saying yes,” he promised, taking a long pull from his drink. The bubbles tickled his nose. “I guess it would be nice to spend all day with full-size people instead of refereeing fights between Tucker and the Fyarl.”

“The Fyarl’s name is Gershman,” Angelus said, helping himself to a bite of the bloomin’ onion.

Andrew hushed him. “If we name him, it will be that much harder to give him back once we figure out how to make him full size.”

“If we figure out how to make him full size,” Jonathan muttered into his straw. So far the embiggening technology was twice as effective at exploding as the shrink ray. In that it embiggened its targets zero percent of the time but exploded them with 100-percent accuracy.

A stool screamed against the ground the next table over, drawing the group’s attention. Even with the collar of his leather jacket flipped up, the bleached-blond hairdo was instantly recognizable. And not at all unexpected.

“Hello, Spike,” Drusilla said, wiggling her fingers at her ex. A wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows as she spotted his companion. “And Spike’s blond friend.”

“It’s Harmony,” the girl said, loud and slow. With some difficulty due to her skintight pink minidress and the blended drink in her hand, she hoisted herself onto a stool. “We’ve met before, Drusilla.”

“And we will meet again,” Dru said wearily.