“What about the Gandalf staff—I mean, the dowsing-rod thing?” Jonathan asked. “Why did the slayer want it so badly? All it ever did for us was roll off tables and try to point itself toward the coast.”

Ripper came out from behind the counter and pulled a moldy leather book off the closest shelf. With a few expert flicks through the pages, he held up an illustration of what looked to Anya like a regular old walking staff. A long tree branch with a flat top and some curvy stick bits at the top.

“The Dowsing Rod of Vem,” Ripper said, tapping the picture with his index finger. “Otherwise known as the Sycophant’s Staff. It points the wielder toward the closest source of most potent evil.”

Angelus popped the collar of his heavy leather jacket, lips drawn down in a smug smile. “Then why didn’t it bring her to me?” he asked.

“Us,” Spike amended. He inclined his head to Ripper and Rayne. ”You’re looking at what’s left of the Whirlwind.”

“The Whirlwind?” Andrew asked. “Are you guys in a band? That’s so cool. If you ever need a different sound, I play panpipes and the ocarina and—”

“Basically any instrument you can play in Legend of Zelda,” Jonathan finished for him.

“Nuh-uh!” Andrew said. He gave a self-conscious shrug toward Angelus. “I never learned how to play a harp.”

“We are not a band,” Angelus said.

“We’re a family,” Drusilla said.

Spike flashed a predatory smile at the human boys. “The most bloodthirsty vampire family to ever cross the Atlantic.”

“Oh, how I miss Grandmummy,” Drusilla sighed. She pulled free of Spike’s grasp, clasping her hands and swooning toward Angelus like a child begging for candy. “Can’t we ever go bring her flowers?”

“I’d rather sunbathe than set foot in that bastard’s mausoleum,” Angelus growled.

This was exactly the kind of exclusionary history that Anya had wanted to avoid. The vampires didn’t seem to care that no one but them could understand this undead doublespeak. It was just like when a group of Anya’s vengeance coworkers had gone on vacation together, then spent the next hundred years making jokes about the screaming frogs of Acheron Cove.

“So what if,” Anya asked Ripper and Rayne, “the slayer got ahold of this Dowsing Rod of Vem and the infinite reality-hopping power of the Marnoxon gem, for example. Would that be a coincidence or, like, real bad news?”

“The Marnoxon gem?” Ripper repeated. He set the leather book on the counter and leaned back. “The bit of Creation that vengeance demons use to grant Wishes?”

“No duh!” Anya threw up her hands. “The slayer went a’murdering in Arashmaharr and stole it. She’s got it screwed into the top of that staff—very tacky if you ask me—and has been using it to portal-jump. . . .”

Both warlocks paled. A feat for two pasty-faced Brits. Ripper reached into his back pocket and retrieved a pack of cigarettes. Fishing one out with his teeth, he lit it, surely contaminating the books and relics sitting out in the open air. Drusilla danced in the trails of smoke.