"Are you sure leaving Luz with those kids was a good idea?" Camilia asked as she pulled her jacket a little tighter around herself. The night wasn't particularly cold, but it was hard to stop herself from shivering at all of the hostile looks she was getting as she followed Eda through the narrow aisles.

Despite her limited experience with the alien lands of the Boiling Isles, Camilia could feel how distinctly unfriendly this 'Night Market' really was. The lights were low, painting deep shadows in unlikely corners, and almost everyone they passed was either covered in a concealing cloak, or wearing an almost visible aura of menace as they prowled the streets.

Even her guide was moving more cautiously, even if the nurse sometimes found it hard to tell beneath all of the irritated bravado.

"I'm sure it's fine," Eda scoffed as she strolled down a likely looking alley, reaching up to readjust her 'disguise', which consisted entirely of a raggedy shawl she had wrapped around her admittedly distinctive grey mane. Her usual smug grin was plastered across her face, though Camilia couldn't help but notice how the woman's eyes never stopped moving as they scanned the market.

"Hooty is more than capable of keeping those brats in one piece," she continued, pausing briefly to study her reflection in a lantern lit lump of crystal. "And Luz's friends should be able to keep her distracted until we get back. Worst comes to worse, Willow's a pretty powerful witch herself; I'm sure she can keep things from getting out of hand."

"Hey guys," Amity said as she pushed open the door. "I got your scroll-note about Luz being in trouble. What's wr-" She stopped dead, caught completely off guard by what she saw inside.

"I don't got her, I don't got her!" King wailed, flapping behind Luz like a flag on a pole as she gamboled around the room.

"Luz, no!" Willow protested, vines straining as she desperately tried to hold the over-excited human-turned-dog-monster in place.

"Why is this happening!" Gus shrieked, barely keeping ahead of Luz's playful pounces as he raced through the room.

"Hoot hoot!"

Camilia jerked in surprise when Eda grabbed her by the arm, the witch's normally playful expression turning fierce. "There he is," she declared quietly, nodding at a modest stand over in a quiet corner of the market. "Tibblet-Tibblie Grimm Hammer the Third."

The stand looked like it had been well-to-do once, before someone had cracked it in half and tried gluing the pieces back together. Behind the decorations, and the impressive looking sign, it was obvious that the whole thing was one good knock away from falling over entirely.

In retrospect, it wasn't hard to believe that the entire construction had only recently recovered from being stepped on, even if she wasn't sure how seriously she should take the claims about the animated house.

"Now remember, let me do the talking," Eda muttered as she sidled over to the stand, staff held at the ready in her hands. "Tibbles will try to take us for everything we've got if he figures out how desperate we are."

"Lo que digas, bruja," Camilia murmured, trailing in Eda's wake. "Let's just get this done."

Eda was just reaching out to knock on the sturdiest looking portion of the stand when a diminutive shape leapt into view from behind the counter. "You," growled Tibblet-Tibblie Grimm Hammer the Third, his eyes narrowing behind his spectacles.

For once, Camilia found that her guide's description had been spot on. 'Tibbles' was every bit as short as Eda had implied, with a pudgy face and piglike snout that might have made it hard to take him seriously, if not for the way his curly tail was quivering angrily behind him.

"Oh no, no you don't," the diminutive merchant spat, hopping onto the counter to point an accusing finger in Eda's direction. "I only just got my shop back into order, and the last thing I need is you messing it up! Go away!"

"This is what you call back to order?" Eda asked, giving the stand a skeptic look. Even as she watched, a chunk of wood came loose, and thumbed to the ground.

"Well it was doing better before it got stepped on!" He spat. "Not to mention some wild witch bitch walking off with the money I was going to use to repair it!"

"Well then, think of this as a chance to earn some of that money back from a paying customer," Eda declared, complete with a jazzy little dance.

"Oh, you're a customer then?" Tibbles said, his eyes lighting up with mercantile interest. "Well now, that certainly changes things."

He turned around to hop down into the stand, before hopping back out a moment later. He slammed a sign onto the countertop hard enough to leave a dent, the word [Closed] painted across it in big, bold strokes. "Go away!"

"C'mon, Tibbles, don't be like that," Eda cajolled, leaning over with an ingratiating smile. "You've got a customer here who's ready to spend some big, big money. Are you really gonna try and turn that away?"

"Try me," he spat, turning his back on her with an angry huff.

Eda opened her mouth to try again, but was cut off when Camila stepped forward instead, hands clasped in front of her chest. "Please," she said, her voice quiet but earnest. "Please help us. There's nobody else who can."

"I'm sorry, have we met?" Tibbles asked, craning his head around to glare at the human nurse.

"My name is Camilia Noceda," she said. "We are here because my daughter, Luz, is very sick, and Miss Eda said that the only person in the whole world who could help her is you."

"Luz? You mean your little apprentice girl?" Tibbles asked, slowly turning back around with a thoughtful expression.

"Yeah, what of it?" Eda said, his voice wary, fingers clenched tightly around her staff.

"Nothing," Tibbles said, before he started giggling. "It just tickles me pink to know that I'm not just denying you, I'm also dooming your little pet! It's like snatching someone's wallet, and finding a diamond ring inside!" Tibbles' laughter filled the Night Market, and more than a few passing demons glanced his way, before moving on in a hurry. Eda, in turn, felt her grip grow tighter and tighter on her staff as her temper boiled over.

Camila wasn't done though, stepping even closer to all but prostrate herself before Tibbles' stall. "Please," she said again. "I beg you to reconsider."

"Why should I?" he said with a sneer. "I screw over the human, I screw over the Owl Lady… Maybe you don't understand simple commerce, human, but the best part of running a seller's market is getting to refuse service to anyone you want! The fact that I hate you both just makes this a case of win-win for me!"

"No, you're the one who doesn't understand," Camila countered, her distraught voice dropping away to reveal something a little darker and colder. "This isn't a win-win situation, it's a lose-lose!"

She lunged for him before he could react, snatching him straight off of his counter like a stuffed animal. He shrieked, a wild gesture trying to summon a weapon, but Eda shut down the attempt with a spell of her own, leaving the demon to wiggle helplessly in Camila's grip.

"You see," the nurse continued, her conversational tone entirely at odds with the way her grip steadily tightened on Tibble's collar. "My daughter really, really needs this cure. If she doesn't get it, she's going to be disappointed. So disappointed, in fact, that I'll just have to make my daughter her favorite food as a consolation gift." Camila pulled her victim closer, until he could see nothing except the wrath dancing in her eyes. "Something like fresh. Pork. Chops."

Tibbles looked up into her eyes, and saw his death staring back at him, with an apple in one hand, and a roasting pan in the other.

"Now, now, let's not be so hasty," he spluttered. "I'm sure I can help you find everything you need, and more! With a discount even!"

"How wonderful!" Camila said, her wrath vanishing behind a sunny smile. "Maybe if the price is low enough, I'll be able to pick up some meat from the day market instead!"

Eda watched as Tibbles' panicked grin shrank, and bit back a chuckle. "Oh, I like this one," she murmured to Owlbert's inanimate form. "D'you think if I feed her, she'll want to stick around?"

"Is this what being a parent is like?" Willow gasped, lying flat on her back with her legs up in the air, mostly because she was too tired to tug them off of the couch. "Oh god, I hope not."

"Hey, it could be worse," Amity gasped back, lying back against Luz's fuzzy, snoring bulk. She was the most put together out of all four of them, but she was nonetheless exhausted. So much so, in fact, that the fact that she was practically lying on top of her snoozing crush had barely managed to draw a blush out of her. "There could have been two of her."

"Don't tempt me," Gus muttered from where he was sprawled face down on the couch, gesturing weakly with one hand before giving up halfway. He managed to summon up enough energy to turn his head to one side, peering blearily at the others. "How much longer until you think Eda is gonna be back?"

"I wish I knew," King whined, briefly struggling before giving up again. Somehow, in all of the confusion, he had ended up pinned beneath Luz when she had abruptly decided to take a nap. A prolonged and largely futile struggle had mostly resulted in him being used as a living teddy bear, clutched against Luz's chest by her oversized forepaws. "Guess it depends on how much they end up having to squeeze Tibbles."

"Right." For a little bit, the only sound in the room was Luz's snoring, and the last bits of wreckage slowly settling into place. Then Gus licked his lips, and said, "Luz is...she's gonna be okay, right? I mean, Eda is gonna fix this?"

"What? Yeah," Willow said, opening her eyes just enough to shoot a reassuring smile. "Eda's the best witch on the isles, after all. I mean, she managed to fix me up just fine."

"Do you really need to keep bringing that up?" Amity groaned, cracking open an eye to glare at her former best friend and current… friend? Frenemy? A girl she had mixed feelings about, for sure.

"Yes, yes I do."

"...okay, fair enough," Amity grumbled, wriggling into a more comfortable position. "Honestly, I'm not actually worried about the curse at all," she added, before interrupting herself with a big yawn. "If Miss Eda could survive with it for so long, so can Luz. What I wanna know is who cursed her."

"Well, are you sure that it was on purpose?" Gus asked. "I mean, are we sure that the curse isn't contagious or something?"

"That's not how curses work," Amity snapped. "They're not a disease, they can't be transmitted person to person, and they definitely can't happen by accident. Somebody did this to Luz deliberately, and when I get my hands on them I'm gonna…" Her following gestures were both graphic and lethargic, such that she resembled an enthusiastic murder by a particurlarly furious sloth.

Gus and Willow exchanged a quick glance, before the plant mage said, "How do you know so much about this sort of stuff? Did you...?"

"What?" It took a moment for Amity to understand what she was getting at. "Oh, nonononono, I didn't, I mean I'd never…" She spluttered to a halt, turning away with a pale face. "I just… My parents tried to make sure I knew about the...dangers of high society. Curses were...a big part of the curriculum." Her quiet laugh had very little to do with any sort of humor. "Apparently, hitting someone with malicious magic meant to cripple them for life is standard practice when you're a Blight."

Willow and Gus exchanged looks. Willow hadn't told him everything about what had gone down in Willow's memories, but she hadn't hidden a lot from him either. A brief description of who, exactly, had been responsible for breaking Willow's first friendship apart had been part of that explanation.

King, on the other hand, was completely oblivious, so there was nothing to stop him from demanding, "Well, if you're such an expert, why don't you tell us who did this to Luz."

"I wish I knew," Amity said, biting her lip. "Curses are...they're some of the hardest magic out there. I mean, you'd have to be a member of the Emperor's coven at least to have a good chance of pulling one off."

Willow gasped, finding the energy to turn over and stare at Amity. "Oh no," she moaned. "Miss Eda's a criminal. What if the Emperor's Coven did this so that they could catch her?"

"Those morons?" King scoffed. "Eda could fend me off with one hand tied behind her back. Nah, I bet it was the Principal Bump guy. I never trusted him for a second!"

"What about fixing her?" Gus asked, rolling over on his side so that he could see them clearly. "I mean, there's gotta be a way to get Luz back to normal, right?"

"I..." Amity turned away again , one hand reaching up to fiddle with her hair. "I don't know. Curses are supposed to be permanent, but my parents never mentioned if they could be undone, they just told me how to avoid getting cursed in the first place."

"Then…" Willow's voice was soft and hesitant, filled with a slowly growing horror. "She could really be stuck like this...forever?"

"Hey! Stop that!" King snapped, stabbing a stubby claw in their direction. "Eda's been beating this curse for practically her whole life! If she could do it, so can Luz!"

"...King is right," Amity finally said, her expression firming into one of determination. "Worrying about Luz isn't going to fix anything. Eda's trying to track down a treatment. That means it's up to us to take care of Luz until she gets back, and maybe track down the culprit."

"Are you sure?" Willow asked. "Maybe if one of us was in the Oracle track, I could see us pulling it off, but it's not like any of us has any experience at finding people. How would we even figure out who the culprit was?"

"Well, whoever it was that cursed Luz, they must have had to get pretty close to do it," Amity explained. "Close enough that she probably saw whoever did it. Who else spends more time with Luz than we do? If we compare notes, I'll bet we' figure out who's responsible."

"And when we do, we can hunt them down and bring them to justice!" Gus declared, throwing up a triumphant fist, which gave up halfway and became a weakly exhausted wave.

"Or we can just tell Eda, and let her take care of it," Willow pointed out. "I don't think we're really qualified to take on someone good enough to be in the Emperor's Coven."

"Either way, we'd have a name, and a target," Amity said. "Even if they don't have a counter-curse, or some sort of cure, we'll at least be able to...to avenge Luz." She reached up to stroke her fingers through the soft, shaggy fur. "Because anyone who could do something like this, to someone like her, is a complete and utter monster!"

She didn't realize that she was raising her voice until she felt Luz startle awake beneath her, the transformed human looking around her in curiosity and surprise. Her tail started wagging like it had never stopped, and all four of them let out a groan when they saw her falling into a playful crouch.

"Way to go, Amity, you woke her up!" Gus grumbled.

"Nah, I got this," said the recently freed King, who trotted over to a partially intact pile of debris. "I'll keep her under control with the power of…" His tiny paw darted into the pile to pull out a small pen, decorated with a glittery, glimmery jewel. "The shiny thing! Now go back to sleep, Luz, and we can all yawp!"

King's rant was cut off with a squawk as he was promptly buried by an appropriately enthusiastic Luz, her eyes locked firmly on the pen as it was sent spinning away. "Oh, this was a bad idea!" King squealed as he was scooped up in her wake. "Someone, anyone, help!"

The three of theme exchanged looks. "Onetwothree not it!"

Eda hadn't gotten more than a few seconds into her explanation of Luz's symptoms before Tibbles was hopping onto the counter to get right into her face. "Two beasts?" he demanded, his earlier foul humor almost forgotten in the face of his sudden enthusiasm. "You're saying that your little human pet had the characteristics of a hybrid?"

"Well, yeah," Eda said, leaning away. "She looks a bit like the owl beast does, but there's a lot of canine in her too. Why, does it matter?"

"Oho, I certainly think so!" Tibbles declared, hopping away to start digging through his wares. "Seeing as how that's not how the True-Beast spell is meant to work in the slightest."

"The true-beast...wait, you mean you know what this is?" Eda demanded, slamming her talons on the counter. "You actually know what curse this was?"

"Why yes, yes I do," Tibbles said, shooting her a smug look over his shoulder. "As a purveyor of truly rare and fantastical artifacts, I make it my business to know all about the more...unique treasures to be found on the Boiling Isles."

He pulled himself free of the shelves with a disappointed grunt, leaping up onto a higher level. "I'll admit that I never actually got a copy of the spell itself," he said as he continued his search. "But the general gist is known to me. What the curse is meant to do is call up the 'beast-within', if you'll forgive the flowery language. All of a person's worst, and most destructive qualities, manifested in a physical, animalistic form!"

"My worst qualities, huh?" Eda said, her mind drifting back across past accounts of previous transformations. "Yeah, I can see that."

"But my little Niña isn't like that at all," Cammila protested from where she was watching the two of them, when she wasn't worriedly scanning the rest of the market grounds. Nobody had taken any untoward interest in them so far, but she couldn't help feeling nervous. "She's happy, and friendly...maybe even a little too friend-"

She cut herself off when she realized what she had been about to say, and Tibbles' cackled in response. "I didn't say that the curse makes the victim mean and grumpy, I said it takes their worst qualities and turns them up a little… or even a lot. A fierce witch, turned into a ravening beast… or a happy-go-lucky human, turned into a bumbling, overenthusiastic puppy!"

He leaped down, the solid thump of his landing rattling the stand. "Which is why I was so surprised by your description, Miss Eda," he continued. "If the curse was working properly, I expect your human would have been turned into some sort of clumsy canine, and we wouldn't be having this conversation. As things stand now, however, I can only assume that the caster managed to botch the spell, which certainly explains your current difficulties."

"Why?" Camila asked, walking back over to the stand. "Why would botching the curse make it harder to cure? Shouldn't it be the other way around?"

"No, no, he's got a point," Eda pointed out, thoughtfully rubbing at her chin. "Think of it like a lock and a key. Normally, the lock is either open, or it's shut; it's the same thing with spells. With most of em, they either work, or nothing happens, with no real in-between."

"A botched spell, on the other hand," Tibbles chimed in with a giggle, "would be like a lock that got jammed halfway, Mrs. Noceda. For one reason or another, the spell can't go forward, but it also can't go back, so it just sits there, stuck."

"Which would explain why the elixir didn't work," Eda concluded with a triumphant smile. "It's pretty potent stuff, but it's not designed for something like unjamming a spell."

"But why are you so sure that someone really did mess up the curse?" Camila insisted. "Maybe my nino's inner animal is just supposed to be some sort of bird-dog thing."

Tibbles and Eda exchanged a smug look, for once in complete agreement about a subject. "You see what I've been dealing with here?" she snorted. "Humans have the weirdest ideas about magic."

Tibbles at least had the manners to give Camila a polite smile before hopping away. "An interesting theory, Miss Noceda, but I'm afraid it doesn't work like that. The curse doesn't bring out the victim's 'inner animal', whatever that is, it just brings their worst qualities to life."

"In a way, you could say that it brings out their inner demon," Eda interjected, before slapping her knee with a guffaw.

"The point is," he continued, raising his voice over her racket. "A mixture of different animal qualities simply goes against the nature of the spell. It would be one thing if your daughter had been transformed into a winged doom hound, which are quite common around this area, but Eda specifically described her as a hybrid. Would you say that this matches your own recollections?"

Camila, who was still getting over the realization that winged dog monsters were apparently a thing around her, stammered out, "U-um, I guess? I mean, I don't know what a winged doom hound is, but…" She managed to calm down the whirling in her thoughts long enough to flip through some of her more recent memories. "Her fur," she finally said. "The dog parts were colored differently than the...the owl parts."

"As I expected." Tibbles leapt clear across his entire store in a single bound, from one side to the other. "The logical conclusion, therefore, is that the curse was meant to turn your daughter into some sort of canid, but that outside forces managed to interfere halfway, hence the botching."

He tossed a few items aside, before hopping down to a lower shelf. "The simplest explanation, of course, is that the curse is meant to work on witches, but your student is a human. So the curse tries to do what it's supposed to, but it has trouble making it work, so it takes inspiration from a previous example already present."

Eda shifted uncomfortably, looking away from Camila with a guilty expression. "So you're saying that Luz's curse might have imprinted on mine?"

Tibbles nodded without looking away from his search. "It's a neat little theory, certainly, though hardly the only one. As you yourself have pointed out, it's likely that the one who cursed your little human girl is also the one who cursed you. And if they were unaware of the curse's true purpose, they might very well have expected Luz to become an owl-beast as well, warping the effects of the spell."

"Then, of course, there is the girl's youth."

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" Eda snapped, glaring up at the diminutive demon. "I'm not that old, dammit!"

"Yes, well, you know what they say," Tibbles replied, now actively pulling things out and tossing them aside. "You're only as old as you look." He cackled out loud as Eda turned away with a grumble and a pout.

"But no," he continued once the joke had worn out. "What I mean is that even when you were first cursed, you were more a woman than a girl. You knew who you were, what you wanted, had a good idea about what you wanted your future to look like…" At last, he plucked out a single tiny flask, it's silvery surface shining wetly in the dim lights.

"Your apprentice, on the other hand," he said as he hopped over to counter, "is still young enough that she's trying to decide who she wants to be. Trying new things, outgrowing old ideas, following the examples of her mentors…" His shrug was nonchalantly non expressive, a casual piece of punctuation to fill out his statement. "It wouldn't surprise me if the curse had noticed young Luz picking up traits from you, and reacted appropriately."

"So basically, what you're saying is that this whole mess is definitely my fault," Eda grumbled, folding her arms across her chest. "You better hope that your little potion is more useful than your advice, Tibbles."

"Oh, most definitely," he giggled. "Honestly, you're just lucky I still have it. I picked it up from a band of wandering Heffalumps who dropped by Bonesborough almost two decades ago, but I never found a worthy customer."

"Meaning someone who could meet your exorbitant price," Eda said, leaning on the counter to get a closer look at the vial.

"That's a seller's market, for you!" Tibbles agreed with another giggle, before brandishing the vial in a chubby hand. "Now, this potion is basically a repair kit in a bottle. Give it to your pet, and it should straighten out the curse enough for the elixir to do its job. Of course, I can't guarantee what her final form will look like, and you'll still have to dose her, but your current issues should be solved."

"Sounds good, we'll take it!" Eda reached out to grab the vial, before Tibbles snatched it back.

"Ah, ah, ah," he tutted, hiding the potion behind his back. "We haven't discussed my price yet!"

"Oh yeah?" Eda retorted. "How's about if you give me that little bottle of bird's teeth, you'll never have to see me again."

"Tempting," he acknowledged with a nod, "but I'm afraid you're not the one I'm charging. After all, Luz may be your student, but she's not your daughter." He rounded on Camila with the last word, dangling the potion in front of her eyes. "What do you say, Ms Noceda?"

Camila took a moment to glance at Eda, who chopped a hand across her throat in the most blatant warning the nurse had ever seen. "What do you want?" she finally asked, arms wrapped tight around herself to ward off the evening chill.

"Oh, it's nothing much," Tibbles said, reaching beneath the counter to rummage for something. "I just want these." The magazine that he tossed onto the counter was one of the ratty old ones that accumulated wherever people had time to waste and nowhere to go, like doctor's offices and government lobbies. Only in this case, someone had wedged a startling amount of bookmarks between the pages, such that it naturally fell open somewhere in the middle.

Camila found herself staring, caught somewhere between disbelief and surprise when she saw the powder blue baby suit plastered across the centerfold in glorious high-definition, complete with a little cap and boots. "You want baby clothes?" she blurted out, completely nonplussed. Now, maybe if he had been asking for actual babies she might have understood, but clothes? Just clothes?

"Oh yes," Tibbles responded, so promptly it took her a second to realize that he wasn't responding to her thoughts after all. "And not just baby clothes, either. I'm thinking men's clothing, women's clothing, suites, dresses, jackets, those weird pants that are wider at the bottom than the top, everything! I want it all!"

"Seriously?" Eda snorted, throwing her hands up in the air. "That's all you want, those weird human rags? I could have gotten those for you any time you wanted, why're asking her?"

"Because I'm looking for human fashion, not human trash," Tibbles retorted. "If I ever want the contents of the local dumpster, I'll come to you. But right now, what I really need is someone on the inside, who can get me the best of the best."

"But...is this really all that you want?" Camila asked. "Just clothes? Really?"

"But of course!" he cried, almost bouncing from excitement. "Do you know how tapped out the local clothing market is these days? Everyone dresses the same way, wears the same clothes, day after day, week after week. The last time I got my hand on some decent earth garments, they ended up flying off of the shelves, and I mean that literally! I had to start tying them down to keep customers from swooping off with them."

"Unfortunately," he continued somberly, "I'm afraid that my current resources are a tad tapped out. I still have a few more articles, but if i'm going to build up my business again, I need more...which, my dear, is where you come in."

He hopped closer to her, rising up on his hind legs to look her in the eye. "You're the key I desperately need, someone with the access and no-how to get me a steady stream of quality goods. Agree to supply my stand, and I'll give you the elixir with my compliments."

"For how long?" Camila asked, mostly for the formality of it. She already knew she was going to agree, now she just needed to avoid getting trapped into a lifetime debt.

"Mmm, it depends," Tibbles said. "Let's say that we'll subtract the value of the clothes you get me from the price of the vial, and call it square once you hit zero, with the option to continue trading in the future."

Before Camila could open her mouth to agree, she found herself cut off by Eda's staff. "Whoa, whoa, whoa," the witch interjected. "Are we talking profit or cost here?"

"Eda!" Camila protested.

"This is important, Luz's Mom," Eda retorted, looking over her shoulder at the human nurse. "If he says cost, then you'll still be paying full price for the vial, you'll just be doing it the long way by spending the money on clothes instead."

The way her head twitched around to face Tibbles again was more than a little disconcerting, and disturbingly reminiscent of her namesake. "But if we're subtracting the *profit* instead, it means that every snail he makes off of the clothes is a snail he'll knock off of your debt. And if the clothes market is as hot as he says it is, then I expect he'll be making four or fives times what the clothes are worth, easy."

"Yes, well, I'll still be supplying the labor, the location, the customers," Tibbles said, folding his hands across his belly like a fat lord watching a bird baste itself for roasting. "If anything, I'd say that Camila has the easiest part of the job."

"Not the point, shorty," Eda replied, waving a pointy finger in his face. "If you're just going to charge us full price, we might as well work up the cash and save ourselves the trouble!"

"Like you could possibly afford something like this!" the demon spat.

"Oh, it wouldn't be easy," Eda admitted. "But there's a few favors I haven't called in yet, and a buried treasure or two I might be able to uncover. I'll admit, it'd sting a little, burning through that much cash on a cheap con-demon but Luz is worth it. Besides, running out of funds would be way less trouble than being in debt to someone like you." Even at his best, Tibbles could never have matched up to the way the most powerful witch on the Boiling Isles loomed over the counter, burying everything beneath her shadow.

Tibbles wavered, took a step back, and quietly reassessed his chances. "Half profit," he finally spat out. "That way, we both get out ahead!"

"Hah, no," Eda snorted. "You take the full profit from any human clothes sold here out of the debt, and you agree to give Camila half the profit from any clothes she brings you after the debt is cleared."

"Are you seriously trying to beggar me? Again?" Tibbles spat.

"Hey, you're the one who said that the market for human fashion was booming," she said with a shrug. "Look at it this way, chances are she'll need an easy source of cash if she ends up sticking around. You could end up with near exclusive access to human outfits for years, maybe even decades. I'll bet a clever demon could use that sort of thing to become the richest man on the isles in no time at all."

Tibbles squirmed in place, the struggle between his greed and his pride clearly visible on his face. "Fine," he grumbled as he held up the vial in one hand. "The elixir, in exchange for the deal just described." He leaned forward to offer his other hand, before Camila interrupted with a polite cough.

"I'm sorry, don't I get a say in all of this?" Camila said with a single raised brow.

Eda and Tibbles jerked back with an identically embarrassed expression. "Right, sorry, sorry, bit caught up in the moment there," Eda said, hands waving wildly throughout her apology. "Anyway, it's probably the best deal you're going to get. I wasn't lying when I said that I could get my hands on the money, but it'll take longer, and I can't guarantee that there won't be people chasing us afterwards."

Camila took a deep breath, and, after a moment's thought, let it out in a long sigh. "Alright then," she finally said, stepping forward until she pressed firmly against the rickety stall. "How are we going to do this? Is there a contract for me to sign, or will you just take my word for it?"

"So you accept?" Tibbles said, giggling wildly when she silently nodded. "Then just hold out your hand, and I'll handle-"

"Oh no, please," Eda said as she smoothly slid between them. "Allow me!"

Tibbles frowned, but didn't otherwise protest as he watched Eda transcribe a golden, glowing circle between them. "Do you both agree to abide by the contract as previously described?" she asked, her voice taking on an odd formal tone even as she stepped back to give them room.

"I do," Tibbles said, reaching through the circle.

"Um...I do?" Camila said, reaching out to grip his hand in hers. She let out a gasp when she felt her hand start to tingle wildly, a subtle glow flowing out from between their clasped fingers. "What just happened?" she demanded, snatching her hand back.

"Everlasting oath, way better than any contract," Eda explained, before stabbing a finger at Tibbles. "We're still gonna want that contract drawn up, though."

"Of course," the demon said with a shallow bow. "I'll have the paperwork dropped by the Owl House in the morning. A pleasure doing business with you Eda, Miss Noceda." He held out the vial, allowing Camila to pluck it from between his fingers with ease.

"Oh thank you, Mr Tibbles," she said, cradling the vial in both hands. "I'll get you that first load of clothing by the end of the week. I think Target was having a sale…" Camila turned to go, in a rush to get back home, only slowing down when she realized that Eda wasn't keeping up. "Miss Eda?" she asked.

"Go on ahead, I'll catch up," Eda said, waving her away. "Just want to have a last word with Tibbles here before we go."

"Okay," she said, her words hesitant as she slowly walked away. "But please hurry up. I don't think I could find my way back without you."

Tibbles watched her go, before returning his gaze to Eda with a smile. "You should probably go with her," he said. "The Night Market isn't the safest place to be on your own."

"Yeah, yeah, this won't take long," Eda said, arms folded and her expression dark. "I just wanted to say that if your so-called cure doesn't work, if it does anything other than helping us beat this curse, I will come back and personally make you regret the day you met me."

"What, are you gonna threaten to turn me into bacon too?" Tibbles taunted, only to jerk back when he found Eda abruptly shoving herself into his face.

"Nope," she snapped, baring her fangs. "Because that would require me to *cook* you first!"

"Understood!" Tibbles said, leaning away from those sharp, sharp teeth. "And don't worry! All of my products are only of the best quality!"

"They better be," Eda said, squashing his nose beneath a single pointed talon. "Because if they're not, then I'll. Be. Back."

Tibbles didn't let himself relax when she turned around or walked away; in fact, he didn't let himself move a muscle until she had disappeared from view entirely, vanishing into the darkness. Wringing his waistcoat between his fingers, he finally said, "Maybe I won't sell them out to the Emperor's coven after all."