AN: Yes, yes, we know; we are terrible people and we take too long to post and we suck. That is the way of things and we are willing to accept it. Anyway, Chapter 3!

Chapter Three: It's Witch Craft

Willow pulled into the small plaza's parking lot and killed the engine before it died on its own. Her old Cheverly Silverado was, as Dawn was want to say, "Not fuel-efficient, cost-efficient, environmentally-efficient, nor even aesthetically-efficient, and it's only held together by rust, a holding spell of dubious quality, and duct tape. A whole lot of duct tape." But despite these short-comings, both Summer sisters—and pretty much every other friend Willow had—thought that the truck was one of the cutest things about the red-head.

Climbing down and slammed the door—not too hard, and not too soft but with the only amount of force that it would actually stay closed with—Willow spotted Tara who was walking up the sidewalk, arms precariously full. Willow rushed over to help the other girl who was trying to balance her purse and two pastry boxes in one hand while riffling through her coat for her keys. She managed to alleviate the other girl's burden just as the keys were finally located.

"Thank-you," Tara said through a shy smile.

"No problem. What is all this stuff?" Willow indicated the boxes she was now carrying while both women headed toward the corner building of the plaza. It strangely resembled a English thatched roof hut, but the thatched roof was clearly plaster the paint on which was chipped and sun-bleached. The sign over the glass door said Angel Prints in overly stylized Old English type.

"Huh." Tara looked up from sifting though her monstrous key ring. "Oh, it's just some doughnuts and Jiffy© Blueberry muffins—those are for you, 'cause I know you don't like doughnuts so much." Finally finding the right key she unlocked the shop door and let herself and her co-worker in.

"Oh, that's nice." Willow said in a distracted manner.

Instantly, Tara knew something was wrong. Jiffy© Blueberry muffins were Willow's absolute favorite and the girl could be kind of crazy about gratitude for thoughtfulness. And muffins for that matter. "Okay," she asked setting down her keys, "what's wrong?"

"What? Oh nothings wrong." Willow's reply came in that same distracted tone she'd used earlier.

"Something's wrong."

"No really. . . ."

"You have wrong face."

"What's wrong with my face?"

"Oh, n-no. . . I didn't mean that. It's just that you have y-your 'something's wrong' face on. With your nose kind of scrunched up and worried eyes. And you're about to eat a doughnut." Tara laughed a little as Willow scrunched up her face at the offending jelly-filled pastry.

Willow brushed raspberry jelly off her hands with a paper towel from behind the counter and began setting up for the day. "Nothing's really wrong with me," she began "It's just Buffy. . ."

"Buffy, your best friend Buffy? The same Buffy who's dating our boss Buffy? You didn't. . . d-did you two have a fight?"

"Well that's just it. She used to be Buffy my best friend Buffy. The same Buffy who's dating Angel Buffy, but now she's only the latter. . . wait, latter?" Willow's breathless rant degenerated into an incomprehensible grammatical rambling. "I never remember if the first one's former and the last one's latter or if the first one's latter and the last ones former. . . I think it's the former; yes former! Former Buffy."

Tara blinked a few times. "Normally I can translate Willow-speak, but huh?"

Willow began to explain the events of the previous night, her words running together and changing direction mid-sentence in an even more incomprehensible manner than before. When she paused to take a breath, Tara stopped Willow's rant calmly saying: "Stop. Breath. Now, tell me what happened. Slowly."

"Angel broke up with Buffy," she said simply.

"Oh."

"In public."

"Ah."

"At the most romantic restaurant in town."

"Ooh."

"And she thought he was going to propose."

"Ouch."

Before Willow could elaborate, one of the customers neither girl had noticed spoke. "Girl, you should have seen it."

Willow and Tara turned to see a trio of friends, a tall, round and obviously gay young man on the left, a gangly young woman in a school girl outfit in the center, and a short—only 5'8—brown girl dressed like a boy on the right. The girl in the center nodded. "Yeah it was pretty bad."

The girl to her right just shrugged. "Eh, it won me 20 dollars."

"Julia!" both the boy and other girl admonished.

"Pop yourself a pill of compassion!" the girl growled. "People's lives have been flipped upside down here."

"Hey, I'm compassionate. . . sometimes. . . when I feel like it. Anyway, it did win me 20 dollars and Buffy's loss is Nick gain, right, Nic-Nic?"

"JULIA!!" Amanda cried. Nick just smiled thoughtfully.

At that moment, Angel brooded in pausing when he noticed the trio standing in his store proving him wrong that his day could not possibly get worse than it was. Not bothering to acknowledge either of his employees, he stormed into the back room and slammed the door.

"Oooh, he's sexy when he's mad," Nick commented with a bit of a growl in his voice.

"Nick!" Amanda and Julia reprimanded.

"I was joking about this whole thing being a gain for you, you know."

"Yeah. He's not gay," Amanda agreed.

"I love it when they're feisty," Nick continued ignoring his friends, "That usually means they're spit-fires in bed."

"NICK!" Julia cringed. "I do NOT need that mental image."

Tara and Willow looked at Amanda expecting some inappropriate comment but she just buried her face in her hands and shook her head thinking, Why do I hang out with these people

Tara sighed and glanced from Willow to the three loonies. "So everyone in town knows about this, I take it?"

Julia smiled reassuringly, but the words that followed were anything but. "Well, we were there, so we naturally have all the sordid details. Which details, incidentally, are published in the gossip column of the Sunny Dale Daily. By line: Me!"

Amanda smacked Julia in the arm. "That isn't true, she's too lazy to type up the story and submit it in time. At the same time it is a small town and some people won't keep their mouths shut about things that are none of their business." This last comment was punctuated pointedly with looks in Julia's and Nick's directions which they just as pointedly ignored.

"Buffy's not going to like this," Tara said nibbling her lower lip.

"Oh, I don't know," Willow dissented with an odd mixture of mischief and anxiety, "I think she might be able to bear it with some fortitude."

Tara's eyes went wide. This can not be good! "What did you do?"

"Well. . ."

AN: So, this is not the complete 3rd chapter. It turns out the the 3rd chapter was too long so we're breaking it up into two or three peices which will be up dirrectly. We wanted to post something as quickly as possible though. As always read and review and read our individual stories too under Bandgeek and MARSHMELLO.