dragonyphoenix

Title: Thirteen Moons
Fandom: BtVS
Prompt: 474 - Cheerful
Rating: PG
Summary: Another chapter for Shanshu
Word Count: 1955

They'd driven to the magic shop. Of course driving was faster, but that wasn't the real reason they'd taken the car. The things Angel had said he do if they left him behind, well, Willow hadn't even known you could do that with a leg, even if it was detached.

If anyone had asked, Willow would have bet Andrew could ramble on just about the name of the shop during the entire ride over. She'd have won. “It's called Thirteen Moons,but there's only one moon on the sign, and I asked because you'd think there'd be thirteen moons on the sign since that's what the name of the shop is, but they said that thirteen moons really wouldn't fit on the sign and that, you know, the sign would have to be huge to show all thirteen moons, and so I said that maybe they could call the shop Full Moon but that might get confusing because werewolves come out on the full moon and you wouldn't want to attract werewolves to the shop. So I thought maybe New Moon because the whole Pagan renaissance is sort of this new thing so it would reflect the rebirth of the old beliefs …”

Even before the car had stopped moving, Angel jumped out and, covered by a blanket against the sunlight, raced for the door. Wesley and Andrew followed pretty quickly but Spike stood there in the sunlight. It sort of looked like he was just letting it soak in. He certainly wasn't rubbing in Angel's lack of Shanshu no matter what Angel was saying or at least Willow didn't think he was. Spike seemed sort of sad, as if he were saying goodbye. “Hey, this'll work. We'll get rid of the artifacts and then there'll be no demons after you.”

“Thanks, Red.” He didn't look reassured but before Willow could come up with something that might convince him, Spike picked up her hand and kissed it. Boy, it was a lot, um, tinglier than she would have expected, you know, if she'd been expecting it. Willow stood there, staring as he walked into the shop. Once inside, he turned and asked if she was coming.

“So, this shop is awfully, um …” The shop was full of crystals and, okay, indium nitride did make a pretty crystal, and it had some interesting physical properties, but magically it was something of a wash. Plus, there were unicorn and fairy statues all over the place. Willow couldn't see unicorns without thinking of Harmony, who'd never been very magical, not in a real magic kind of a way. “Are we sure we're going to find all the supplies we need here?” Hey, all of those incense cones were synthetic. “Or even any of the supplies we need?”

The assistant walking up to them, wearing a Punjabi suit even though she didn't look Indian, frowned at Willow's comment. Her name tag, the rainbow background vibrant against her pastel outfit, named her as Amber Morningstar. Putting her hands together in a prayer position, she bowed. “Andrew. It's been too long.”

Andrew bowed in a quick, jerky motion. “Namaste. We'll need the back room.”

“Of course.” She smiled at Andrew as if she didn't find him as annoying as, well, pretty much everyone else did. “Follow me.”

As Amber led them past a good dozen customers and through a beaded curtain into the back of the store, Willow still wasn't sure they were going to get what they needed. The room was so small that the six of them barely fit. The shelves along its back wall were full of books that Willow hoped weren't also displayed out front. She was pretty sure not even the new agiest of new agers would buy The Kitchen Witch's Guide to Your Spice Rack: A Year and a Day's Worth of Magical Recipes. The sconces on the two side walls each held a fake candle. Willow was about to speak up again when Amber titled one of the sconces and the bookshelves split down the middle and shifted to each side, leaving a doorway in between.

The stairs were awfully dark and narrow, but all in all it seemed exactly like the kind of magic shop Andrew might bring them to, which wasn't exactly reassuring, Andrew being Andrew. The climbed down a lot further than Willow had thought they would. She felt as if they'd gone past three or four sub-basements before they came to a door. The room on the other side didn't have that bright cheerful look the upper room had, but it felt a lot more magical. In fact, the dim lighting was reassuring because magical herbs tended to loose their power in a harsher light. The jars down here were much more along the lines of what Willow had been expecting and, ooooh, look, mummy hands shifting about in their jar, and why was it that mummy hands would never keep still?

The assistant who approached, a young man of mixed European and Asian descent, didn't wear a nametag. His worn jeans and t-shirt with an image of Michelangelo's Vitruvian man and the words “Man Was Meant to Fly” suggested the kind of geek Willow would expect in a real magic shop. “What can we do for you today?”

“Hey, Dave,” Andrew replied. “There's a list, uh, somewhere.” Turning to Wesley, he added, “You did bring the list, right?”

“I certainly wasn't about to make it out in the car and leave it there.” Oh, and Wesley seemed a bit snippy, but he did hand over the list.

“Living Flame. Sure, we can do that.” Wow, that Dave guy sure knew his stuff.

As Dave fetched ingredients, Willow moved closer to Spike. “It'll be over soon.” He didn't look reassured exactly, but he did smile back at her. At least he looked less grouchy than Angel who'd been not at all casual when asking, on the drive over, what Spike had done to deserve to Shanshu.

Willow wasn't quite sure how Andrew had even heard Angel's complaints over his own babble, but he must have because he seemed to be trying to make Angel feel better. “So, I wouldn't worry, you know, about missing out on the Shanshu and all. I mean, at least this way you still have that whole immortality thing going, never growing old and stuff. I mean, I know I worry that I'll someday lose my appearance of youth, and do you think I'm getting a wrinkle here at the corner of my eye? I've been trying a cream but you can only hold back the decay …”

“Andrew.” Even Dave looked up at Angel's shout. The next words were quieter. “Why don't you help Wesley prepare for the ritual?”

The only word for how Andrew moved was bounced. Andrew bounced to the table as Wesley glared at Angel who, back in brood mode, pretty much didn't seem to notice. “So, what are these?” Andrew rummaged through a small box and held up something small and dark.

Spike relaxed enough to grin. “The heart of a dove.”

Andrew yelped and dropped it back into the box. He glared at Spike for a moment, as if it were Spike's fault he'd picked up the heart in the first place, but then Andrew turned back to the table. Picking up a bag of something that glittered, he said, “This looks pretty.”

“Yes,” Wesley agreed. “The Seeds of Time are rather decorative.”

“Thyme? Oh, that's really good when you're cooking. Just the other week, I was making …”

“Time, not thyme.”

“I don't get it.” Andrew put the bag down and turned to a bowl full of a milky substance, but before he could poke a finger in, Wesley stopped him with a shout.

“The Tears of Eternity are quite sensitive. If you disturb them, the spell will fail.” Apparently Wesley'd had enough of Andrew. “Perhaps you could peruse the tomes.”

Andrew's step was a little less bouncy but he moved to the bookshelves willingly enough. “Oooh, the Necronomicon. Is that a real book because I thought it was just part of a story. I was thinking of doing a parody, the Jedi Comic Con. I'd sort of already worked it out but if the Necronomicon is a real book, maybe I should base my parody off of …”

“No,” Wesley shouted.

“No?”

“No.”

“Okay.” Andrew moved over a couple of steps, picked up something else, and started reading. Given how much trouble he could have gotten into with the Necronomicon, Willow was sort of surprised nobody was monitoring his reading. She could have gone over herself but, well, Spike needed the support. She wasn't leaving his side.

Dave finished laying out the last of the supplies. “You need any help with that?”

“I believe we can manage,” Wesley said.

“I've made it before,” Angel added.

Living Flame was pink in color, rather like the shade of the outfit Amber had been wearing upstairs. It may have been pretty, but it had no effect on either artifact.

“You must have made a mistake,” Welsey snapped.

“I didn't make it wrong. I've done this before. I know what I'm doing.”

“Then why didn't it work?”

“I don't know.”

Spike's words cut straight through Angel and Wesley's bickering. “Right then. You'll have to kill me.” Even Andrew looked up from his book.

“No.” Willow made sure Spike knew exactly what resolve face looked like. “No killing you. We just saved you.”

Apparently resolve face didn't work so well on Shanshued ex-vampires. “I died once to save the world.”

Willow wanted to say something about having used up his quota, but, well, Buffy had died more than once. “We could just hide the artifacts really, really well.” She didn't need to see Spike's look of scorn to know that wouldn't work.

“You death does seem a tad premature. Research may yet turn up a way to destroy the artifacts, or it is still possible that Angel made a mistake.”

“There was no mistake.” Spike said it before Angel could. “If there was one thing Angelus was good at, it was magical rituals.”

“If Living Flame can't destroy the artifacts, it's unlikely anything else can,” Angel said quietly.

“Well, yes, there is that,” Wesley admitted. “But we shouldn't give up hope just yet.”

“No, there is another.” Andrew spoke from the far edge of the room.

No, we should give up hope?

“Another Shanshu?” Angel asked, and boy was he obsessing about that Shanshu.

“Another way to destroy the artifact?” Wesley's question made more sense than Angel's.

“No, there is another,” Andrew whined.

Why would Andrew sound frustrated? Oh, oh. “Star Wars. Obi Wan says 'That boy was our last hope.' and Yoda replies 'No, there is another.' And what would that have to do with not killing Spike?”

Andrew brought the book over to the table. “There might be another way. Spike wouldn't have to die and the world wouldn't be in danger, or I'm pretty sure this'd take care of the danger.” He pointed to a line of Aramaic and stared as if waiting for them to get it. “Don't you see? Just make it so Spike's not the Shanshu.”

“Turn Spike into a vampire?” Angel's tone suggested he really, really didn't want to put up with vamped Spike for any number of centuries.

“You said he wouldn't have to die,” Willow added. “Technically, wouldn't vamping him, or uh vampirizing him, or …”

“The word you're looking for is Turn,” Wesley said.

“Right, thanks. Technically, wouldn't Turning Spike kill him? As in make him dead?”

Spike looked intrigued so, good, at least he was off that kill me meme. “The word you're looking for is Undead.”