"A bit of an overreaction," Oz offered once Xander had left, "but no rope burns, so it's okay."
Willow blushed even harder.
"A point in our favor, I'm sure," Giles said sarcastically, though obviously amused.
"At least we know Xander isn't playing with magic," Buffy offered.
The doors to the library burst open and Cordelia stormed in. "I need a book on magic, pronto!"
Oz exchanged a look with Buffy and held up the rope.
Buffy nodded.
Giles groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Sarah examined herself in the mirror once more and cursed her genes. Girls like Chase and Kendall had trim athletic bodies and were blessed with huge racks, while she was short, dumpy and had… Okay, even she would admit she had a decent pair of breasts, even if her butt seemed to be designed as a counterweight for them.
She adjusted her white babydoll nighty and checked her legs, thankful she'd shaved them just the other day so they were still perfectly smooth.
Turning away from the mirror she looked around her room. She'd done as he'd told her, set up scented candles, used vanilla scented body spray and even placed a thin red handkerchief over her lamp to help set the mood.
She pushed aside her doubts. She'd asked him for help and part of his price was… a very romantic night together. Harmony and Aura were just a quickie in a supply room, he wanted more from here, he wanted the kind of night she only read about in romance novels and he expected her to give it to him.
She shivered a little and went to turn up the heat. She wanted everything to be perfect. He'd be here in just a couple of hours to… Oh, yeah. She'd completely forgotten about Roger or whatever was pretending to be him.
What had been an inescapable death sentence for her was something that didn't even merit a raised eyebrow from Xander. Damn, but that was hot!
It was a couple of hours until Xander was due to arrive, so she decided to see what other ideas she could come up with to make it even more romantic.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Xander looked at his watch. He had almost half the day left before he had to meet up with Sarah, so what to do now?
With a large wad of cash burning a hole in his pocket, he could practically hear the comic book shop calling him.
10 minutes later…
"– using ultraviolet lights to burn vampires is a valid tactic," Andrew whined.
"Moonlight should burn them as well or at least give them a tan than!" Jonathan argued.
Xander looked over at the Gamer's table as he entered his favorite den of nerdity and geekdom, and saw the ever present alpha nerds arguing as usual.
"You need to leave your jacket and backpack off while you browse," the owner, Bob a balding, middle aged man reminded him, as always.
"On it," Xander agreed, dropping off his stuff at the Gamer's table.
"Xander, tell him ultraviolet lights are a valid defense against vampires!" Andrew demanded.
"No, tell him that makes no sense as vamps can walk around on heavily overcast days even though the clouds don't block ultraviolet at all!" Jonathan snapped back.
"Blade?" Xander asked, recalling vamps getting burned with ultraviolet lamps in the movie.
"It looked really cool!" Andrew said excitedly. "And only Dracula walked around during the day in his stuff."
"It looked really crazy," Jonathan replied.
"Blade was mostly a techno-thriller, trying to use hard science," Xander said, recalling the Scoobs' watching the movie and picking it apart. "Science is the problem, Science is the answer. In a tech driven world, despite the whole blood god thing at the end, ultraviolet works. In a supernatural world like Dracula, all it would do is hurt his eyes."
"Hurt his eyes?" Jonathan asked.
"Yeah, the slightly glassy look vamps have is because of an increase in the reflective surface on the back of their eyes allowing them to see in the dark. The wider vision range makes them more susceptible to ultraviolet than we are," Xander explained, having listened to Giles lecture to Buffy on the subject. "It's annoying but lacks the power sunlight has, because the sun is holy, being the first object of worship by humanity."
"Why doesn't moonlight burn vamps?" Jonathan asked curiously. "It's just reflected sunlight, right?"
"The moon was most often worshiped by people in favor of all the ghouls and beasties," Xander replied, "meaning the spiritual component is different."
"Makes sense," Jonathan agreed.
"What if you get your ultraviolet light blessed?" Andrew asked.
Xander paused. "I don't think anyone has ever tested that. If I ever find out I'll let you know."
"Find out?" Andrew asked confused as Xander vanished into the racks of comics.
Jonathan and Andrew exchanged confused glances.
Seeing a glint of silver and a bulge in one of Xander's jacket pockets, Jonathan looked around before reaching over and pulling out Xander's stake. Jonathan and Andrew stared at the stake in shock for a second before Jonathan hurriedly put it back.
Andrew stared wide eyed as Jonathan peeked in Xander's backpack.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"Satisfied?" Cordelia asked.
"Yes, you have no traces of magic on you," Giles agreed.
She examined her arms as Oz untied her. "You're good at this, I don't even have rope burns." She glanced over at a bright red Willow and muttered, "It's always the quiet ones."
Buffy raised an eyebrow, but Oz gave a small shake of his head while Willow hid her face in a book.
"Why do you want a… magic book?" Giles asked.
"While making sure Doofus hadn't been casting any spells, some spell that was cast on me broke and I want to know what it was," Cordelia stated.
"If you went through the same cleansing ritual Xander did, it will have wiped all traces of the spell from your person," Giles replied. "I'm afraid there's not much we can do at this point."
"What?! But it was weird and freaky! There was all these little orange flakes, like Simpsons' dandruff coming off my skin!" Cordelia complained. "It better not have harmed my complexion or someone is going to pay!"
"Orange flakes?" Giles asked, suddenly paying close attention. "Similar to fish scales, perhaps?"
"Yeah, only more…" Cordelia agreed, searching her mind for the word.
"Tangerine," Giles stated.
"Exactly!" Cordelia agreed, focused on Giles.
"Sounds like you know the spell," Buffy said.
"Indeed I do; it's used when you wish to ensure a girl remains a virgin either for sacrifice or marriage," Giles stated.
"She's a virgin?!" Willow sputtered out in stark disbelief.
Cordelia rolled her eyes, but didn't even bother to respond.
"Someone wants to use her as a sacrifice?" Buffy guessed.
"It's possible," Giles agreed. "The standard spell has to be recast every three months to remain effective and unless one of her parents is a magic practitioner or has hired one to keep her 'pure', it is the most likely explanation."
"Miss Calendar said the spell was cast on me when I was a child because it was almost completely… submerged in my aura," Cordelia said.
Giles looked at her in shock. "I… I suppose it could have been cast on you as a child, but the amount of magic needed would be enormous, possibly more than could even be gained by sacrificing you!"
"Yay," Cordelia deadpanned with a sigh. "How would it keep me a virgin anyway? Does it make my hymen bulletproof or something?"
Oz blinked and stared at nothing while Giles smothered a laugh.
"No," Giles replied. "It would encourage things to go wrong so sex would not occur. It would start off simple, like things to ruin the mood, a run in your stockings or a spilled drink on your blouse. If you continued on, it would manipulate you emotionally, making you see everything about the boy in a negative light. Finally, if even that failed, it would work on the emotions of those around you causing strife and discord to separate you."
"You mean the reason I couldn't keep a serious boyfriend was this stupid spell?!" Cordelia demanded angrily.
"More than likely, yes," Giles agreed.
"I dumped Xander on Valentine's Day!" Cordelia said suddenly.
"Yes, I'm aware," Giles said irritably, still annoyed with everything that had occurred because of that event.
"Yes… and the spell wasn't removed until a little while ago," Cordelia said with a pointed glare.
Giles blinked and blushed. "Ah, yes. That would have been a likely reaction from one under the spell if they were planning…"
"Planning?" Buffy asked, causing Willow's eyes to widen in shock and horror.
"Confucius say, Virginity like balloon, one prick all gone," Oz quoted, heading off the rising tension.
Cordelia was the one to blush and turn away this time, before quickly recovering. "Well, if magic broke us up, then it's not my fault. In fact, I don't accept being broken up! Now if you'll excuse me, I have to give an unfaithful boyfriend a piece –"
"Of your mind?" Oz broke in.
Cordelia stopped. "That too," she agreed, before storming out of the library.
"We've got to stop her!" a wide-eyed Willow told Buffy before the two chased off after the departed teen.
"You know a lot about that spell," Oz noted, once the girls had left and it was only him and Giles in the library.
"As I said, it was often used for ritual sacrifices and the more old fashioned watcher's families were known to cast it on their daughters," Giles said, suddenly finding cleaning his glasses to be of great interest.
"What's the easiest way to break the spell?" Oz asked.
"Swallow a live goldfish," Giles replied reflexively. "One goldfish, doubled per day you need to shorten the length of the spell, since scales from a dead goldfish are one of the core ingredients for casting it."
Oz raised an eyebrow.
Giles put on his glasses and cleared his throat. After glancing around to make sure the girls really were gone, he said with a smirk, "I held the record with a mate in college for most live goldfish swallowed."
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"Damn it, where could he be?!" Cordelia exclaimed angrily.
"I'm out of ideas," Buffy admitted. "Willow?"
Willow sighed. Somehow her plan to stop Cordelia from defiling Xander had evolved into trying to help Cordelia find Xander and she had no clue how that had occurred. "We've tried all the places he normally hangs out, obviously he's somewhere else."
"I was planning on beating info on Xander out of Willy. I can see if he knows what Xander's up to now, though he probably doesn't know anything," Buffy admitted.
The three climbed in Cordelia's car and headed for the demon bar near the docks.
"Just because you were under a spell doesn't mean it was responsible for your actions," Willow said, recalling what she'd done while under the effects of the love spell Amy had cast and how some of them were things she'd actually planned on doing if she ever got up the courage.
"I dumped him on Valentine's Day, in front of everyone, during the school dance, just after he'd given me a beautiful necklace and let me know how much he cared," Cordelia replied. "I had plans for the night that would have made any new insect ladies ignore him completely and instead I dumped him in the worst possible way on some flimsy pretext about Harmony and the girls. Looking back on it, none of it made any sense."
Willow slumped in the back seat. She'd hoped… but it looked like Cordelia was serious about Xander.
"He cared enough to cause every woman in Sunnydale to try and go all black widow on him," Buffy pointed out.
"He did," Cordelia agreed with a grin. "His plan was to make me fall in love with him so he could dump me in front of everyone."
"That's horrible," Buffy said, making a face.
Cordelia beamed, completely unfazed.
"And you aren't upset," Buffy noted and thought about it. "You aren't upset because by doing that he was basically confessing that he loved you!"
"Loved me, was hurt enough to cause major chaos and I have to admit, when he gets all vengeful…" Cordelia trailed off as she licked her lips.
Willow's mournful sigh was swallowed up by the wind.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Sarah rushed to the door when she heard the knock, pausing to catch her breath before she opened the door. "Xander! I have everything ready and I made us some food while we wait."
"Thanks," Xander said, trying not to trip on his tongue. He'd planned on using her as a distraction so the fledge wouldn't notice him, but he'd never expected her to be this distracting!
A car pulled up just as the front door closed.
"We just missed him," Willow noted.
"We can just go in, we're not vampires," Cordelia said, glaring at the house.
"And then we'd never find out what he was up to," Buffy said.
"I know exactly what he's up to!" Cordelia hissed. "She's somewhere around five two!"
"Xander doesn't just randomly boink girls and had his backpack with him," Willow pointed out.
"He's in the kitchen," Buffy said. "They're eating."
Cordelia could just make out a silhouette through the kitchen window from where they were. "I say he's there to cheat on me, what do you think he's there to do?"
"I don't know, that's why we're here," Buffy said firmly.
"Plus, you broke up with him, even if he didn't know it might have been magically compelled," Willow added.
"Fine," Cordelia said with a sigh. "We'll wait and keep watch."
"What are we watching for?" Willow asked, after a couple of minutes had gone by.
"If I knew that we wouldn't have to watch him," Buffy replied.
"Someone's coming," Cordelia noted, gesturing towards an approaching figure.
"Everyone down," Buffy hissed and ducked down.
Willow laid flat on the back seat and Cordelia slumped in her seat with a put upon sigh.
After a minute Buffy whispered, "He's going around the back, I think that was a vamp."
"Think that's why he's here?" Willow asked.
"Maybe," Buffy agreed. "Not sure why she's dressed that way if that's the case."
"A couple of girls said something about having to go in together to afford his rates this morning," Cordelia said, not wanting to reveal it was Harmony and Aura who'd gotten Xander when she still hadn't. "They were going to give him a wad of cash to do something for them and that something turned out to be them!"
"Girls are paying Xander for sex?" Buffy asked in disbelief.
"Quite a bit too," Cordelia grumbled out. "He gave them a cut rate because they both agreed to go at once."
"How much?" Willow asked curiously, calculating how much money she had available at the moment.
Cordelia's glare could have melted steel.
"I'm just curious!" Willow defended herself.
"From the size of the wad of cash she held, as a discount mind you, I doubt you could afford his full price," Cordelia said, a twinge of satisfaction in her tone.
Willow's eyes drifted to Buffy, who blinked and then looked back in shock, clearly thinking Willow was considering asking Buffy to help in getting a discount. Willow quickly shook her head, though the image of her and her two breast… erm, best friends was now stuck in her head.
"Let's follow the vamp and see what's going on," Buffy said quickly, trying to push certain scenes out of her mind, like when her and Willow were alone in Mantis Woman's basement with Xander chained to the wall in just his boxers and she' been revved up from battle...
Cordelia was out of the car before Buffy finished with her suggestion, the other two having to rush to keep up.
As they rounded the corner of the house, the vamp exploded into ash outside a bedroom window and they heard Xander say, "Sorry, watching's extra."
The window slid shut and music started playing.
"Is that Barry White?" Willow asked.
Typed by – Sitheus Maximus, the easily distracted.