Chanting a stream of Latin, Warren was reading aloud from the last of the Books of Ascension. The five ancient tomes contained dark and complex magical rituals that could transform an ordinary human into a full-blooded demon. One of hell’s most powerful. An Old One. More powerful than any of the human-tainted monsters that roamed the earth.

The Trio had spent the last month following the steps detailed in the first four Books of Ascension. Warren had paid tribute to the most powerful demons—some with treasure, some with his own blood. A giant pentagram had been burned into the grass in their backyard when their sacrificial goat had kicked over a candle. And yesterday, Warren had been made impervious to pain after a Book Four spell involving some ancient Sumerian, a bowl full of tarantulas, and yet more candles. Jonathan and Andrew had a lot of fun testing out his invulnerability, smashing him with various household objects.

Today all those rituals would culminate in Warren’s final transformation. Today Jonathan—and Andrew—would have the coolest, strongest best friend in the town formerly known as Sunnydale.

At this point in his Ascension, however, Warren was pretty much still just Warren, except with an elongated torso and a thickening exoskeleton. His gelled hair was still pointing up.

Static buzzed in Jonathan’s headset just before Andrew’s voice came through. “Breaker, breaker. We’ve got a stray bumping into the security table.”

Climbing off the folding chair, Jonathan turned away from the camera, whispering into his own headset mic, “I thought you were supposed to be guarding the magic stuff.”

“Um, no,” Andrew said, tone sharp with annoyance. “I’m in charge of turning the pages for Warren and restocking the snacks table.”

The partygoers threw their hands overhead as the song changed, jumping up and down to a Mario Kart theme remix. Shielding his face with the camera, Jonathan squeezed between their pogoing bodies.

“Who cares about the snacks table? The guests can’t eat anything!”

“Okay, but you keep helping yourself to Chex mix whenever you pass the bowl,” Andrew scoffed in his ear. “You think it just refills itself?”

“Someone move the damn robot! Now!” Warren’s voice growled through the headset. Halfway through the ritual, his growl was significantly growlier than it had been the day before. Enough so that neither Jonathan nor Andrew reminded him that he’d forbidden the R word on the recording. The whole point of throwing an Ascension party was to make themselves look cool. Warren hadn’t wanted the world to know that the three of them didn’t have enough friends to fill a dance floor without building the crowd by hand. Now, it seemed, he was too far gone to care.

Ever since they had come together as Sunnydale High’s inaugural Klingon language club, Warren Mears had been their de facto leader. He’d even named the group, shortening the nickname their peers had given them—the Trio of Losers—to the more streamlined the Trio. It was Warren who had first suggested that they look into villainy, inspired by Mayor Wilkins revealing that he was actually an immortal sorcerer with designs on creating Hell on Earth. After the Mayor blocked out the sun with a magical shade that created perpetual midnight, cracked open the Hellmouth hidden under Sunnydale High, and changed the WELCOME TO sign to say DEMONDALE, vampires and demons moved to town in droves. New businesses opened, catering to bloodsuckers and hell spawn.