Spike chugged a pint so briskly that Jonathan couldn’t even tell whether it had been beer or blood. Belching, he said, “Fancy meeting you lot here.”

“It’s Tuesday,” Jonathan said. “We’re always here on Tuesday.”

“And you always run into us,” Willow said pointedly.

Spike pretended not to hear her. He knocked on his table, making the pineapple slice on the lip of Harmony’s drink wobble. “Me and Harm are out celebrating. My girl got a promotion at work today.”

“It’s true,” Harmony tittered. “You are looking at a full-fledged vengeance demon!” She squealed, sticking out the green gem pendant she wore around her neck. It looked nearly identical to Anya’s, although the silver—a thousand years newer—was untarnished. “Couldn’t you just die?”

“It would be difficult. And yet I am tempted,” Anya said, her face pinched in disgust. Angelus rubbed a consoling hand down her arm. Anya grasped his fingers like a lifeline. “I also have work news,” she announced.

“Are you coming back to Arashmaharr?” Harmony asked, setting a scandalized hand to her chest. “Hoffy didn’t tell me anything about it.”

Anya’s nostrils flared. “No, my other job. My earth job.”

From the plastic bag she’d brought with her from the Magic Shop, she withdrew a gleaming purple conch shell, bigger than both of Jonathan’s hands put together. It had a tightly coiled spire and wide-open mouth revealing polychromatic insides. Even in the Bronze’s dim overhead lights, it had a pulsating inner glow. Jonathan thought he could hear the shell faintly singing, calling to him. Serenading him with a melody it felt like he had always known and never remembered. Drusilla shrilly trilled along with it.

“What’s that?” Andrew asked, transfixed.

“It’s the sister piece to the Ram’s Horn horn,” Anya said. “This is the Conch Clarion. We just got it in at the Magic Shop. It summons all the monsters from the waters of hell. Octopus-spiders. Krakens. Globsters. God only knows if it gives them the ability to breathe on land or if it just drops evil seafood on people.”

“Like in Watchmen when Ozymandias teleports the squid,” Jonathan whispered. Stroking the side of the conch, he shivered. It was smooth and cold, as though still underwater.

“Hey, watch it!”

Onstage, Sweet’s music cut out. The red-faced demon was being shoved out of the way by a dark-haired girl in a tight black tank top and low-slung jeans. Beside her, a bespectacled man in a suit and tie had a crossbow leveled at the crowd.

“Nobody move,” the man in the suit said in a quavering British accent.

Andrew snorted. “Get a load of this nerd.”

“What are the chances that another Brit would move here?” Jonathan asked. “It’s like every new person we meet is from the same island.”

The dark-haired girl grabbed the microphone. Licking her red-painted lips, she bared her teeth in a bloodthirsty smile.