"Magic show, huh?" you muse, before waving your hand and letting your energy flow. "Funny you should mention that."
What appears before you, with a conveniently-placed largish rock between it and the crowd, is an image of the least-threatening Hyrulean creature you could think of - a fairy, one that bears a certain resemblance to Briar. Amy blinks at it and gives you a startled glance; Cordelia and Larry both stare. On a whim, you have the illusion giggle and pose, giving a victory sign and a wink.
Briar, having fluttered over to see what her favorite humans are up to, glares at you balefully. "I do not act like that," she mutters, crossing her arms and looking pointedly away.
"As it happens," you continue, ignoring the fairy for the moment and stepping over behind the rock yourself, "I have a few tricks of my own."
Then, clenching your jaw to hold back the scream - which still escapes as a gasping grunt - you turn into a monkey. Well, some kind of non-human primate. You regard your friends with wide, shining eyes, say "ook" once just because it feels right, and reach out to Amy with one leathery paw, knowing that she is the least likely to freak out. She obliges you by taking your "hand" in hers, though even she looks a bit stunned.
"I didn't know you could do this, Alex," she says faintly.
Cordelia doesn't miss the emphasis on the word "this," and immediately rounds on the other girl. "Does that mean that you knew he could do- o-other weird stuff?"
"Ook," you say again, more firmly than before. Cordy flinches, Larry just sort of stares vacantly. Frowning, you walk over and give the other boy a poke in the leg; he rocks back slightly, then returns to his original position. Huh. Hopefully you didn't break him. You look at the girls. "Ook?"
"Uh, Larry?" Cordelia says. "Still with me?"
"Yeah, Cordy," he replies faintly. "Only I must have gotten some bad meat in those burgers, because wow, this is one seriously funky daydream."
You reach out and yoink the half-eaten burger from Larry's hand. The threat to his food immediately prompts a more conscious response.
"Hey, give that back, you- you- monkey." Larry trails off and stares at you, not as dazed as before, but with a certain wildness about the eyes. "A monkey stole my burger. Alex turned into a monkey, and he stole my burger."
"Good to see you're keeping up," Cordy mutters. Then she expands her glare to encompass both you and Amy. "Alright, start talking. What. The. Heck?"
With a brief primate squeal, you turn back to normal. "The short answer is, magic is real."
"...bullshit," Larry retorts feebly.
Your rebuttal is to give him back his burger, and have the Fake Briar settle on his shoulder and scold him for using bad language.
"Oh, come on," Briar protests.
It takes several more demonstrations and quite a bit of arguing before your two previously-ignorant friends start to accept that maybe they aren't nuts, and you aren't pulling some kind of elaborate con. In the interim, you levitate another, not-so-large rock about a foot off the ground and let both Larry and Cordy try to push it back down - Larry actually manages it, before you flex your magical muscle and yank the stone out from under him. You make Moblin disappear, reappear, and change color. Without ever touching the material directly, you raise the kind of elaborate sand-castle that would have taken a team of experts at least an hour to slap together - and then, as an encore, you blow it up, using just enough force to completely level the thing, but not so much that the blast would be overheard by the rest of the party. That provokes more wild looks.
"It can be dangerous," you say calmly. "It can be scary." You let them have a brief burst of your aura, set to Intimidate. "It can be really, really weird." You summon a Chuchu not much bigger than Briar. It oozes over to Cordelia and gloms her designer sneakers, getting a fierce defensive kick for its troubles and immediately dispersing into a shower of rapidly-evaporating goo. "For all those reasons, and others besides, most people with magical ability try to keep it hidden from everyone else. Some do it because they don't want their friends and family to be scared of them. Others do it out of fear they'll be burned at the stake, or something just as nasty. A lot are just lazy, selfish, and mean."
"And which are you?" Cordy asks.
"Mostly the first two," you admit. "I can be a jerk sometimes - no comments, thank you, Cordy - but my family and friends are important to me. Plus, I really don't want to die."
"Oh, come on. You can't honestly think we'd try to hurt you!"
"Cordelia Chase, you could destroy me in the eyes of the whole town if you really wanted to, without ever laying a hand on me, and we both know it - but you're not who I'm worried about really hurting me. There are other magic-users out there who wouldn't hesitate to force me to work for them, or try to steal my power outright. For that matter, there are organizations of regular people who generally live normal, magic-free lives, and then spend their off hours doing everything they can to hunt down and destroy every magic-user, magic item, and magical creature they can." You fix her and Larry with your most serious expression. "And then there's the creatures themselves. They're everywhere, hidden just out of sight - sometimes right in plain view, using their own magic to pass for human, or just turn unnoticeable - and the overwhelming majority of them think of us as somewhere between toys and food."
"Monsters," Larry sums up.
"Most people call them 'demons' these days, but yeah, 'monsters' works."
"...so why tell us?" Cordelia asks.
With that, you give them a quick overview. How Sunnydale was, for whatever reason, built on the Mouth of Hell. How it attracts demons, who prey on the human population in countless ways. How people generally refuse to admit the truth, partly because some of the dangers can be avoided or reduced if you simply don't know they're real, but mostly because everyone's afraid, and there are so few ways to defend themselves.
"And that's why I'm telling you now," you finish. "I have a lot of natural talent for magic, and I was amazingly lucky that the first person who found me out was willing to help me learn how to use it, and to help me go unnoticed by most of the people and things that would try to hurt me, without trying to hurt or exploit me in return. I've still got a lot to learn, but I'm good enough now that I can not only look after myself, I can start helping other people - like my friends - stay safe."
There is a long pause.
"I know it's a lot to take in," you say, "and I'm sorry for just dropping it on you like this. I just couldn't think of any really good way to say it. Something like, 'are you enjoying the party, thanks for coming, and oh yeah, the adults are lying, magic and monsters are real, please pass the ketchup,' didn't really seem appropriate." You snort at that mental image. "If you want to forget that this ever happened, or start ignoring me at school, I won't stop you. All I'm asking is that you think about what I've said and shown you before you make your choice. If you decide you want to hear more, to learn how to keep yourself, your families, and your other friends safe - just tell me."
With that, you turn and walk off.
"Nice ultimatum," Briar notes as she follows in your wake. "Big with the melodrama."
You don't answer. You're too busy hoping that you'll still have three human friends when you get to school on Monday.
Then you stop abruptly, as something fairly important intrudes on your awareness.
There are footprints in the sand. Tracks that lead from the crowd to the near side of the big rock, and then back to the group with the kind of narrowed, deepened, widely-spread footprint pattern that indicates a run.
Somebody was eavesdropping. Somebody, some kid who's probably never gotten a moment's training in the art of stealth in their entire short life, managed to sneak up and spy on you, the former King of Thieves. You're torn between embarrassment, grudging admiration, and irritation.
What do you do?