“Back from your break so soon?” Ethan asked the taller man, his eyes bulging in a way Anya recognized as trying to silence someone without words. Her coworkers often made that face when they wanted her to stop talking. It was so much less effective than just telling someone to shut up. Demon-Mike had tried to tell her that human manners wouldn’t allow for that kind of frankness. He hadn’t been able to explain why.

The taller man didn’t seem to notice Rayne’s silencing face. He lifted his green mug in greeting and introduced himself as “Ripper Giles, co-owner of the Metaphysical Boutique. What is it you need cross-referenced? I know these inventory books like the back of my hand. I wrote them myself.”

“We need to find out about some magical items,” Andrew said, tapping the list with his index finger. “Especially this staff.”

“I’ve got this handled, Ripper,” Rayne stressed. “Go back to your cuppa.”

“You know, I’m beginning to see why that slayer popped you in the face,” Ripper said, frowning at his associate as he neared the handwritten list. “Not that I questioned it much before. I’ve said for years that you have a very punchable face—”

“The slayer?” Angelus asked, marching down the steps in the entryway. “She was here?”

“Yesterday,” Ripper said. He set down his mug and ran a hand through his hair. “She was searching for the Dowsing Rod of Vem. When she found that we no longer had the item in our possession, she got violent.”

Anya’s eyebrows went up. A dowsing rod could certainly be something stafflike. Angelus shot her a significant look that said that he was thinking the same thing. Or, at least, Anya assumed that’s what the look meant. She got momentarily lost in those soulless brown eyes, imagining how it would feel to rub her warm body against his cold one.

“There’s no proof she was the slayer. Just a girl with a powerful right hook. She could have been anyone,” Rayne said, shaking Anya out of her reverie.

Right. Interrogation, she thought. The impending dissolving of the universe. No time to get distracted by hunky corpses.

“Is there any chance that this Rod of Vem could be confused with Gandalf the Gray’s staff?” Andrew asked. “The one with the flat top, not the curved one with the Elven runes—”

“Don’t waste their time,” Jonathan told his friend in a harsh whisper, lurking near a shelf with a large sign that warned not to speak Latin in front of the books. “The curved one is obviously Gandalf the White’s staff—”

“You’ll need to be more specific,” Ripper said. “Was it birch wood or olive?”

“Olive? I think?” said Andrew. “You sold it to our friend Warren, like, two years ago—”

“And the slayer stole it from them earlier today,” Anya interrupted, cutting to the heart of the matter. Really, these humans would dance around the point for hours if they could, talking indirectly until they’d aged themselves into obsolescence. “Resulting in the death of the guy who bought it from you. I wonder who told her where to go looking for it? You did say you knew about the demon Ascension?”