Sunnydale Wholesale Beauty Supply, Chapter 27
	
	
Here's the drill. The broken mirror of Buffy's Sunnydale. OCs, bad language, and
vampires with cigarettes and skateboards.


"---hair," Mr. Giles was saying, and Willow was petting her head
like a puppy's. Sunny tried to focus, but it was hard. She was too
young for this shit, she thought. Wasn't she supposed to be worried
about boys and softball camp and stuff like that?

"If you'll let us take a sample of your hair, we may be able to find
out what kind of spell it is," Mr. Giles repeated, with no sign of
the impatience he must have felt.

Her hair. She felt it, lying loose on her shoulders. Willow, with
careful hands, pulled it back. "We can cut underneath, so it doesn't--
Giles."

"What?" he and Sunny said, together.

"It's been cut, here, see the angle?" Willow said. "Someone's cut
her hair. And so she wouldn't see it. A long hank of hair."

"Someone is accessing the magic," Giles said. "There's a powerful
magical signature all around you. Someone is tapping it." He sat
back, glasses dangling from his fingertips. "This isn't exactly an alternate
dimension. It's a time-shift paradigm." He looked at the girls, and sighed.
"You, and whoever is tuned into you, is sucked into the temporal---"

"Anomaly," Sunny said. "Yeah, it's all Star Trek: Next Gen. So, someone is
trying to access that power, and they're opening up holes in time, and
I fall in them. Should we start looking for me coming from another direction?"

Giles looked at Willow. "How is it that Xander isn't dating this girl?"

Willow looked spooked. "Uh---"

"And," Sunny said, "They weren't sure who I knew and who my friends were,
so they started leaving pieces of the chess set where I was likely to find them
or with someone who would show them to me." She put a hand to her forehead.
"Gah. I'm turning into an episode from 'Murder She Wrote.' "

"Or," Willow said,"the spell could make you experience time differently than
the people around you."

"But I got stuck at the beach a bunch of times," Sunny said. "So it isn't that I
was speeding up or slowing down. I was shifted. I like the alternate universe
theory better."

Giles cleared his throat. "Regardless of the provenance of the experience,
this is being instigated by someone with increasingly powerful magical abilities.
Someone at this school. I think, Willow, that narrows it down considerably."

"Amy," Willow said. "She's gotta have a place where she's using her mom's
spell books. Can't be at her dad's house. So, unless her old house was sold,
I'm betting Amy's up in the attic, with a whole witchypalooza goin' on."

"We can go see," Giles said. "Where's Buffy?" He picked up his jacket from
the back of his chair.

"Making up her English test."

"Er, we, we won't disturb her, then. Sunny?"

Sunny looked up inquiringly. "Yes?"

"You had better not go. Your uncle said he would, ah, cut my liver out and serve it
with chianti if I dragged you into any other schemes. Not the most original of
threats, but I found it, ah, compellingly believeable."

"Fine by me," Sunny said. "I'll check in tomorrow."



Sunny bicycled home, and felt oddly flat. So it was all over, huh? Maybe, if things
calmed down, she could go back to shampooing and learning how to give
Esorch demons blonde highlights.

She put her bicycle up in the front part of the store, and went down the hallway.
Meena waved to her, and she waved back before going upstairs. This time shifting
shit was tiring, but she'd got her homework done this time. So she could grab a
nap during business hours.

When she woke up, with that weird, hung-over feeling, the windows of her room
were dark. She yawned, rubbed her face, and went out. No one else was upstairs,
so she went down to the shop.

Meena was giving buzz cuts to some apparently human kids, but Jack wasn't
around.

"Where's the boss?" Sunny asked.

"Next door, getting coffee. Go see if he forgot, okay? I need my latte."

Sunny went out the front door, and to the Espresso Pump. She didn't see
Jack standing at the outside counter, so she went in, to the back. She could see
the top of his head, she thought, in a booth, so she eased through the yuppies
and to the back booth.

There was Jack, and sitting beside him, one arm thrown around his shoulder
in a mockery of friendship, was Angelus.

"There you are, sweetheart," Angelus said genially. "I was just about to suggest
to your uncle that he call you."

"Get out of here, Sunny," Jack said, and Angelus' hand was on his throat,
choking him.

"Oh, no, Sunny," Angelus said. "Sit down. I have some time to kill."

She sat.