AN: Oooh! Yeah us! We got part two all up 'n' stuff and it only took a couple of days! The next part of chapter two might take a while, but we'll do our best to geet it up post-haste. Please read and review.

Chapter Three: It's Witch Craft (part two)

Not far away from where Willow was trying to explain to Tara about exactly what she did—and in such a way as to not get yelled at—and where Nick, Amanda, and Julia were trying to get their pictures developed, a young shopkeeper was trying to move merchandise.

The Magic Box on the outside looked like an exceptionally gaudy Gypsy wagon, all violently violet, outrageously orange, and speckled with evenenty-million stars. On the inside, however, it wasn't so cliché. It had the look and feel of a library at first glance. Everything seemed to be made out of aged wood and worn leather. At second glance, it proved to be much more than that. The shelves, though lined with a great many old, tatty, and well-loved books, also contained strange artifacts of mystical design and glass jar whose contents were always bizarre, often odorous, and sometimes still moving. The place was cozy and welcoming in a profoundly eerie way.

Also welcoming in an eerie way was the aforementioned shop-keep. She buzzed about the store smiling just a shade too brightly at the surprising number of early-morning customers and offering once-in-a-life-time deals with oddly cheerful candor.

It was with this scene that Buffy decided to begin her day. Her makeup was going a long way to conceal the fact that she's spent the better part of the last twelve hours crying but was being out paced. She was grateful to the dim lighting. She was also grateful that she'd refrained from telling Dawn about this excursion; the girl had an unhealthy fixation on the store, for some reason, and accompanied Willow when ever she came, saying something about the attractive atmosphere. Buffy didn't want to make this trip into a grand production, and having stepped into the store, found it gave her the major wiggins.

"Good morning, Miss," the aggressively cheerful sales clerk as she bounded over. "My name is Anya. How may I help you spend your money?" Despite the fact that Buffy had never been a morning person, especially riding on 15 minutes of broken sleep, she found herself instantly liking Anya.

Buffy looked around the shop, curiously wary. "I'm looking for a. . . um. . . a spell."

"You'll have to be a little more specific than that. This is a magic shop. It's full of spells."

"Oh, right. Um, I want something. . . You see my boyfriend and I just broke up and I—"

"Ah! A vengeance spell. My favorite kind! We have some truly great stuff here, most of which just went on special." She indicated a table display of voodoo books, artifacts, and supplies, of which the less that's said, the better. "We've got practically everything you need to get back on that cheating bastard from the exotic like a de-boning to the classic like boils on the penis. Oh! And here's something that'll—"

"No!" Buffy rushed to forestall anymore nightmare options Anya might come up with. She wanted to sleep again sometime this month. "I was actually thinking of something less 'boils-on-the-penis-y' and more 'make-me-stop-feeling-this-way-ish'. Er. . . um. . . Did that make sense?"

"Oh, absolutely not," Anya replied vigorously nodding her head with her brighter-than-it-aught-to-be smile plastered on her face. "But, you are the customer and as I always say, 'The customer is always—"

"Right?" Buffy finished.

"What?" Anya paused, confused. "No. The one with the money," she corrected.

"Right," she replied drawing out the word.

"So what you're thinking is you love this guy, right?"

"Um. . . ."

"But," Anya completely ignored Buffy's attempts to break in, "what you're also thinking is 'How can this happen when I've dedicated five years to this creep and you really thought you loved him and the sex was amazing and he's always telling you he loves you only what you later find out is that he also loves Linda and Mable and Janice and Gertrude and what the hell kind of name is Gertrude anyway when you get right down to it? And another thing. . . ,'" Anya seemed to notice Buffy for the first time and stared at her confusedly. "What were we talking about?"

Buffy, who was by this time more confused than her sales clerk seemed to be, blinked a few times. "Um. . . a way to make me feel less sad and confused and hurt and all."

"Less sad?!" Anya scoffed. "Oh no, Miss, what you need is something to make you feel empowered something to make you realize just how worthless men are—except of course Xander but you can't have that one—and I have just the thing."

"You do?" Buffy was both pleased and a bit wary. She liked Anya well enough, but she wasn't entirely certain the girl was all there.

"Yep!" the clerk grinned bouncing back toward a shelf toward the restricted books section to dig through a hastily stuffed disorganized variety of what looked to Buffy like nothing so much as museum rejects and junk. "The boss sent away to Italy for these bead things, Julean Jewels they're called. Make a person realize their full potential—for two and a half years at any rate—then they're kind of useless to that person even fatal—I'd watch out for good friends with sharp knives—but you won't have them that long. The best part is, you can sell them back to us, at a small price reduction, of course, when you don't need them anymore. Ah! Here they are!" She held aloft a medium-sized burgundy jewelry box.

Buffy eyed the box skeptically; it looked rather beat-up and she couldn't imagine it containing the answer to what's one and one let alone her current conundrum. How does it work? And what does that mean, 'realize full potential?' Does that mean I'll, I don't know, become a famous writer instantly?"

"No. Or at least I don't think so. To be honest, I'm not really the magic person around here. I mostly deal with the money. And that's a good thing too because those boys don't have a clue when it comes to that. Will practically gave away a toe of warthog—and those are pretty rare—to that red-head. Anyway, I think it means you can become a famous writer if it's in you to do so or get over that loser Christopher and his barrage of bimbos. I can't believe he. . . I think I've gone off topic again. What were we talking about?"

"Ummmn. . ." Buffy shrugged. "Some beady thing and how it's supposed to empower me?"

"Oh, right." Anya's grin was back instantly. "I think all you have to do is wear it." She took off the lid to the box and pulled out a long strand of iridescent beads. "And look: pretty. A great fashion accessory."

Buffy took the strand from Anya and was inclined to agree with her, it was absolutely magnificent and she was already planning several outfits to build around the piece. It was the way Anya said it, in that voice of a person who, though enthusiastic about fashion, didn't fully grasp the finer points. It made the shorter girl a little leery about the purchase. "Exactly how much do these beads cost?"

"The priceless Julian Jewels are a steal at $52.76. And you can even sell them back for $8 when you're done with them. Assuming they're undamaged of course. Isn't that a great bargan?" As she spoke, Anya lead the way back to the front of the store so she could ring up the sale.

"Actually, it's a. . . ." before Buffy could finish her sentence—which would have ended "load of shit rivaled only by text book buy-back rates and if that's your final offer you may feel free to sodomize yourself with it vigorously thank-you very much and good-day to you"—she was greeted with the memory of sitting in a very romantic—if snooty—and very cozy—if crowded—French restaurant all in the mood and anticipating a betrothal followed by post-betrothal boot-knocking only to be dumped, publicly humiliated and stuck with the outrageous bill. The image elicited an angry growl from her and she rushed to slap four bills—two twenties, a five, and a ten—on the counter, grab the box and beads, and rush out leaving an angry "keep the change" behind her.

She was slowed down in her exit by the enternce of three other customers just long enough for Anya to call a delighted "Thank-you for your patronage" after her.

The three customers Buffy nearly ran over in her haste to escape the store stopped just inside the door one-by-one and turned one-by-one back toward the street.

"Hey," commented Nick who was closest to the door, "wasn't that. . . ?"

"Looks just like her," agreed Amanda from the middle.

"Yeah, it is. That's the. . ."

". . . Girl from Cruel Intentions!" Nick exclaimed.

"No!" Julia and Amanda both dissented.

"It's that chick from Simply Irrisistable," Amanda corrected.

"No, no, no!" Julia cried. "It's bipolar girl!" The other two just blinked. "From last night?"

"Oh. Her," they said rather stupidly.

Julia was unable to comment on their stupidity, however, because Anya chose that moment to try to push her merchandise onto the trio. "Good morning! How may I help you spend your money?"

"We're just looking, thank-you," Julia replied kindly before turning to riffle avidly through the voodoo display.

Anya's smile became rather fixed as she struggled to hold it in place. She hated window shoppers. "Oh, that's fine," she replied stiffly.

Amanda, spotting the reaction, instantly moved to be the peacemaker. "We've never been to a Magic store and don't really know what we want."

The words weren't even all the way out of her mouth when Nick asked, "Got any erotic candles or stamina spells?"

"Nick!" Julia and Amanda reprimanded.

"What?" asked their ever-clueless and over-sexed friend.

"Please come back latter and purchase any and all kinky sex stuff you may wish to get," Amanda pleaded wishing she could scrub the mental images out of her mind that his request dredged up.

"Yes, by all means," Julia agreed. "I so do not need to know how you lure in all those unsuspecting, guileless youths and subject them to your heinous acts."

"Are you objecting to the idea of my having sex with another boy?" Nick demanded huffily.

"Certainly not. I'm objecting to the idea of you having sex period. Especially the part where I have to hear about it."

"I happen to be very pretty."

"And I'm the Queen of Sheba."

Amanda, again seeking to make peace and end the debate—which would have been stretched out indefinitely, the group being prone to argue about the most ridiculous things including, but not limited to the sexual orientation of a cartoon character, whether Post-it or sticky-note was the proper term, and whether or not a TV character was a "muffin person"—held up a random jar grabbed from the shelf nearest her. "Hey, you guys, check out all this stuff. Weird jars with weird stuff like 'Newt's Eyes'."

"Isn't that supposed to be 'eye of newt'?" Julia asked completely forgetting the almost-argument.

"Does it matter?" Nick puzzled looking at another jar. "'Toe of warthog'." He mulled that over a moment. "Is that possible? To have a toe of warthog, I mean. I thought that warthogs feet were cloven."

"Well they are!" Amanda agreed.

"And you should know," Julia said cheerily.

"What?!"

Julia blinked innocently at Amanda's indignation. "'Cause you're all biology girl 'n' sitch."

"Oh." Amanda didn't catch the sly grin Julia shot Nick when she turned her back.

The trio scattered around the shop poking around with Anya's ever-watchful gaze on their backs. Unfortunately, they were too spread out for her to watch all of them at once. Because of this, Julia was able to grab a book from the restricted selection while Anya was eying Nick's perusal of the shrunken head display.

Julia randomly opened the book and began to read. "Bara Bara Himble. . ."

"NO!" Anya cut in, and before you could say "Jemination" she'd jumped the counter, sprinted to the back of the store, and grabbed the book and slammed it shut in Julia's face. "Restricted!!" the frantic shop-keep exclaimed. "These are the 'DON'T TOUCH' books. Can't you read the sign!?!?"

Julia glanced to her right where Anya was pointing at a large poster board that read "Restricted Book Selection: Please neither remove nor read from without consulting shop owners" in vibrant, clear blue lettering. "Oh."

"Sorry about my friend," Amanda apologized to Anya. "She can be a bastard some of the time."

"Yeah, well, there should be a rope or something to separate the area," Julia grumbled completely unrepentant closing the door behind her.

There are two more sections to chapter 3 and hopefully they'll be posted at the same time.