“What a horrible tease,” Drusilla said, folding her arms across her chest and tromping through the gutter. The heels of her boots stabbed at every piece of litter she passed over, each clanging footfall announcing her displeasure. “Water, water everywhere and not a drop of blood.”

“If you needed a snack, there was plenty of blood back at the Bronze,” Spike told her.

“You know it tastes better when the fear is fresh,” Dru said. She gnashed her teeth at Jonathan. When he flinched, she threw her head back with a throaty giggle.

“Look!” Andrew announced. He hurried forward, pointing at the sky. For a moment, Anya expected to see a bigger threat overhead—blood rain or giant murder bees or a falter in the sunshade spell—but instead she was faced with a drab gray awning that read RIPPER AND RAYNE’S METAPHYSICAL BOUTIQUE. “This is the place.”

“Hey, we know you!” Anya said. She elbowed Andrew in the side and pointed to the man behind the counter. “Look, it’s Medium Green Drink with Extra Honey and Bee Pollen!”

No one at Best Pressed remembered any of the regulars by name, only by the fussiness of their orders. The last time Medium Green Drink had sent back his juice, demanding more kale, he hadn’t been sporting the black eye currently swelling the left side of his face.

“My name is Ethan Rayne.” The painful-looking bruise didn’t stop the reedy British man from looking down his nose at the assembled party, despite them being the only customers in the store. “As it says on the sign, I am one of the proprietors of Ripper and Rayne’s Metaphysical Boutique. How may I help you?”

While thin on customers, the Metaphysical Boutique was packed with magical artifacts and spell ingredients, most of which even seemed to be authentic. Towering dark wood bookcases were crowded with relics. Human skulls carved into candle holders and gnarled monkey paws were prominently displayed on a table with a 10 PERCENT OFF sign. Unlike the other downtown shops, which tended toward the bright, cheery paint jobs of the world before the sunshade, Ripper and Rayne’s walls were a dour shade of charcoal. Like a particularly sad tweed coat.

There were cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling and dust on the apothecary jars, as though the boutique had always been there. Anya doubted that the Sunnydale before would have had much use for a magic shop selling Sobekian blood stones or Orbs of Thesulah. It was entirely possible that the warlocks aged the place through magic, decorating it in grime to give the appearance of history. Warlocks were tricky that way. Anya had once wrought vengeance against one who magicked wrinkles and white hair onto himself to pretend to be his own father and escape his wife. Anya cursed him to stay the age he pretended to be, inflicting upon him all the bodily ailments of the geriatric—backache, gout, incontinence, impotence, debilitating nostalgia. The human body was a treasure trove of self-inflicted punishments.