Author's Note: I have a reason for the ability listed here. Also, if I have the name of the pre-Giles magic store owner wrong, let me know.
Disclaimer: Veronica Mars was created by Rob Thomas (send your Mars Bars now! If they can save a decent show like Jericho, they can save a great one like VM!), Buffy by Joss Whedon, and the storyline by me.
X X X X X
When I went back to the magic store -- not called The Magic Box yet, that was apparently the creation of Rupert Giles -- the woman behind the counter asked me, "Run out of holy water already?"
"Nope; I'm being careful at night," I said. "But now I'm thinking if I live here I might want to start looking into other ways to protect myself."
The woman grinned. "And I'm guessing because you're here you don't mean with a firearm."
"I'd go to my father for that," I said. "And he'd say no."
"Do you have any inherent magical ability?"
"Haven't checked." While Buffyverse magic was kind of inconsistent, there were two kinds, if I remembered correctly: the kind practiced by "Wiccas" and the kind everyone could do -- even Buffy herself, in that episode where she found out what Dawn really was. I called it ritual magic.
"Well, there's an easy way to find out," she said.
"There is?"
"Yes. If you'd come over here and touch this stone, Miss --"
"Veronica Mars."
"Nice to meet you, Veronica; I'm Raven Mistwood."
I looked at her skeptically. "Your parents named you Raven?"
She laughed. "No. They called me Rachel. My last name's not Mistwood, either. But everyone expects the owner of a magic store to have a name straight out of the more drug-addled days of the 1960's. I usually go by Rae."
"Nice to meet you, Rae," I said. "So. About this stone."
"Some people have the ability to become witches. Most don't. Grab the stone and we'll find out."
The stone in question resembled purple quartz. I reached out and took hold of it with my left hand. "And now?"
"And now, you wait," Rae said.
After about thirty seconds, I was still waiting. "Maybe it's broken."
She took it from me. After about five seconds, the stone began to glow. Not strongly. But I didn't exactly have to strain my eyes to see it, either. "That says that I have a minor amount of internal magic -- more than most people, but not enough to do more than a few minor spells on my own. Hold it again."
A minute later, there was still no glow at all from the purple stone. "So what does this mean?"
"It means you have no magical ability whatsoever," Rae said. "Not even the ability to do ritual magic. The only thing you'd get out of most of my spellbooks would be eyestrain."
Well, that killed the idea of me using magic to defend myself or protect my family.
Then something occurred to me. "The holy water worked fine."
"You're not using it on yourself, I'm guessing," Rae said. "And you're not casting anything yourself." Apparently my face still showed my confusion, because she said, "I'll use an analogy. Superman could throw a grenade, even though it wouldn't hurt him if it exploded."
Hmmm. Maybe this wasn't as bad as I thought. "So I'm invulnerable to magic?"
She said, "Not quite. A powerful enough witch could pick up a rock telekinetically and throw it at you, a vampire could attack you, -- and an extremely powerful practitioner could override it. But for your average, everyday magic, you're pretty much immune." She said, "Of course, that's a double-edged sword. It can't help you, either, except like the holy water does."
"So much for my plans for giving myself a crash course in how to be untraceable through magic," I said. "Given my limitations, is there anything here I could read that would help?"
"Why are you interested?" The question was asked mostly out of curiosity, though there was a slight edge.
I said, "Look at the town we live in. I'd like to know something about what's going on beyond 'Three people dead; Monsters definitely not to blame.' I'd like to know what it is and either avoid it, or fix it, assuming someone else hasn't gotten there first."
"It's a dangerous world," Rae said.
"It was that before I even knew magic existed," I said.
She gave me a book -- the equivalent of spell recognition for dummies, probably something a first-year at Hogwarts would think was for the feebleminded -- and told me to come back if I had any more questions.
I assured her I would, and left.
Where the hell had this come from?
I doubted the Adversary had graciously decided to give me a shiny new power.
So either I would have been magic-null no matter what universe I'd been born in, or the Adversary had done this for a reason I couldn't figure out, or there was something specific about the transfer.
The only one I could directly investigate would be option three. (For the first two, I'd have to ask the Adversary directly, which isn't something I'd do willingly even at gunpoint.) For the third option to hold, Dad, the Kanes, the Echolls, Don Lamb, Abel Koontz, and even Backup would also be magic-null.
If I gave Backup the gem, he'd just look at me funny. And no one else on that list knew about magic --
Except for Logan.
Which meant, to test my theory, I needed to shuttle him down here and ask him to grab the stone, too.
I'd just add it to my list.
It would be bullet point number 457, I think.
After I left, I got into my LeBaron and drove around for a bit until I noticed a new store.
"Ethan's," the banner read.
Halloween ETA: One week and counting.
And I still didn't know what to do.
X X X X X
I'd taken precautions, unnecessary it seems, to stop Ms. Calendar from tracing the note to me through magical means. I'd used someone else's pen, someone else's paper, and I'd written it in the cafeteria at the height of lunchtime. And the only time I actually touched the paper was when I put it on Ms. Calendar's desk. I got Jonathan Levinson to put it between pages of my textbook under the pretext that my hands were full.
Dad was home; his week's investigation on the young man had revealed nothing more scandalous than the aforementioned secret girlfriend. The man who'd hired him was satisfied and paid him.
So that night, we ate out.
"I realize you've spent the weekend trailing a teenager," I said, "But I was wondering if you'd managed to do anything more on the Abel Koontz matter."
"Just today, in fact -- at lunch I made a few calls and was able to figure out who Jake Kane might be paying off." He grinned, then said, "Abel Koontz has a daughter."
Good. Dad had figured this part out. I still needed to figure out an excuse to get into the Echolls poolhouse, so I could notice the cameras, so I could make the "logical leap" necessary to peer into Lilly's vent and find the tape of her and Aaron Echolls.
We finished dinner and went home.
X X X X X
I waited in the library, which to my knowledge had never been seen on the show. It suffered from a distinct lack of rare book cages and tomes on the occult. It was one whole floor of a two-floor office complex. One entrance made it easy to watch, but also hard for me to get out. Fortunately, I had a dark-haired wig, sunglasses, high heels, and a reversible top. The wig -- very Sydney Bristow-esque, and how long would it be before I stopped using anachronistic figures of speech? -- I already had on. Same with the heels.
Still, this wasn't someone stupid I was dealing with, and while I was a halfway decent actress I was no girl of 1,000 personalities. I'd have to be careful.
I was browsing the new book section when I saw her walk in. She looked nervous and out of sorts -- definitely atypical for Jenny Calendar, who was normally so self-possessed. She looked around the room.
Trying not to look like Veronica Mars, I walked over and, said, "You Jana Calderash?" I made sure to pronounce it Janna rather than Jonna.
"Epimetheus?"
"My name of choice for the moment," I said. "It seemed appropriate. Anyway. Are you, or are you not, Jana Calderash?"
"You're pronouncing it wrong," she said. "But yes. How did you find out?"
"I have the advantage of hindsight," I said, which was both true and deliberately obfuscatory. "So. Why did you change your name? As near as I can tell, Jana Calderash never committed any crimes and if she were in the Witness Protection Program I wouldn't have been able to find out when she disappeared and Jenny Calendar took her place."
"It's not illegal to change names," she said.
"Of course it isn't," I said. "It's just unusual. Especially --" and now I dropped the first shoe -- "Especially when one is one of the last living descendants of a once-populous Romany tribe. I would think you'd want to maintain your ties to your heritage, not hide them." Then, as though I'd just thought of it, I said, "Unless you're keeping the name obscure for a reason."
"I'm not," she said hastily. "I just wanted a change."
It wouldn't have sounded believable even if I hadn't already known she was lying. "Maybe I should spread the name around a bit," I said. "Talk to a few people. See what the Calderash name brings." Semi-bluff. I could ask around, sure, but if I asked the wrong people they'd remember, put two and two together and wonder how I knew. And of course, I couldn't say.
"Don't," she said. "Please."
As though I hadn't heard her, I thought, "Now what would the Calderash tribe want on a Hellmouth? A way to rejuvenate their tribe? They wouldn't need to be anonymous for that. Some kind of artifact of great power? God knows the Hellmouth has a lot of them. But you wouldn't need to be anonymous for that either. No, the only reason you'd need to be anonymous is because you're spying on someone." There were a lot of other reasons, but this was the right one, so I was hoping it would rattle her. So far, she showed no signs of knowing who I was.
She gave a guilty start. "So," I said. "Who?"
"Why are you interested in this?" she asked.
"Remember my name," I said.
"You don't look like any Titan I've ever read of."
"We hired good PR agents," I said. "Anyway. Hindsight tells me that you don't know the full reason why you're here. Hindsight tells me that no one else in Sunnydale that you're even here under a false name. And hindsight tells me that these things rarely end well."
"So this is a warning? This is all for my benefit?"
"I'm not allowed to warn about the future," I said. "Just the mistakes of the past. But you know how one can affect the other." And that was as close as I could get without ticking off the Adversary.
"I'll remember this."
"Do more than remember," I said. "Take action. That's all I have to say at the moment."
"It is?"
"I want to see some evidence that you've taken action -- studied the events of the past that brought you here, let people in on Jana Calderash. I'll be in touch."
"So you're dismissing me?"
"Unless you want to stick around. I think story time's about to start/"
She said, "No thanks," and left.
I sat there and read to see if anyone was observing me. It didn't seem like anyone was. Fifteen minutes later, I made my way to the quiet reading room, took off the wig, sunglasses and high heels, reversed the shirt, and put on a pair of tennis shoes. Then I put my bag into an opaque plastic Target bag, checked out a couple of books, mostly for camouflage, and left the library.
I didn't see Ms. Calendar looking for me. But then, she was smart enough to hide herself. Still, I now looked like me and not like "Epimetheus," so I was fairly sure I should be okay.
As I headed home, I thought. In addition to the meeting-Jana-Calderash ball and the How-do-I-find-out-more-about-magic ball, there was the "Why does Xander Harris wish I was dead" ball. And I don't know if you've noticed, but I don't exactly have a juggler's physique.
Going through my merged memory, I at least knew what it wasn't:
I hadn't been at the Bronze the night of the Harvest.
In fact, I barely remembered interacting with Jesse-no-last-name at all. And don't go telling me his last name's McNally. It isn't, any more than Faith's is officially Lehane. The show is canonical. Period. Joss Whedon chose to tell everyone else afterwards, isn't. That's my policy: If it wasn't on the show, it isn't canonical.
Don't even get me started on Fray.
In any event, barring some bizarre chain of events, that meant he couldn't be blaming me for Jesse's death.
And for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what else I could have done. Besides, he'd been demonstrating his contempt well before that.
How long before? I thought back.
More or less at the same time as everyone else, now that I thought about it: After Lilly died.
What if --
What if there was a causal connection?
There was no Weevil in this universe, but Lilly had still been the same person, able to genuinely love a lot of men at the same time.
What if one of them had been Xander Harris?