BEHIND THE SOFA CUSHIONS IN HELL
by perletwo
The three sleeping young people were awakened by a cowbell. Joan stirred and tried to snuggle deeper into Randy's chest, but the bell clanged again and again, and after a few seconds of silence another clatter arose.
"Bloody 'ell?!" Randy groaned as he sat up.
"Doorbell, guys," Dawn chirped, bouncing up behind the counter. "Hi, Mr. Giles! **sigh** Hi Alex..."
"Think she's always this chipper in the mornings?" Randy growled to Joan, who rose rubbing her lower back.
"Oh, I hope not. Are you as stiff as I am?" He just looked at her, and she winced. "All right now, I meant it innocently enough. I meant, my back's sore from sleeping on the floor. All that fighting probably had something to do with it too..."
"...'M fine..." Randy's closed fist drifted around behind her, and he ran his knuckles lightly up and down her spine at the small of her back. "....mmmMMM..." He gazed in awe as her head fell back, eyes closed, pure bliss on her face.
"A-AA-A-HEM!" Joan startled away from Randy's hand guiltily, and Randy sat up a little straighter. Willow and Tara entered together, Willow a few paces ahead of the taller girl slouched behind a curtain of long hair. "We found some things out last night, fellow amnesiacs!" the redhead said with pride.
"I bet you did," Dawn snickered.
"DAWN!" Joan shot the girl her sternest look. "Willow, Tara, I'm sorry, it turns out my sister is a brat." Dawn stuck her tongue out at her sister, who glared.
"Th-that's OK Joan," Tara replied. "When we all left last night, Willow and I compared student IDs and it turns out we're roomies. We live in a big house over on Revello Drive, and we think you and Dawn must live there too - at least, there's a girly room with Backstreet Boys posters all over the walls, and pictures of you and Willow and Alex and a bunch of other sorta familiar-looking people in another room. There's bedding on the sofa and a bag of guy-stuff, razor, shaving cream, like that, on the table next to it, so somebody else is crashing there too."
Willow stepped forward and picked up the story excitedly. "More importantly, there was all this burned-up stuff in the fireplace and on the hearth, and we think it's magic stuff! And up in the big room we found a spell book with the page marked to this, Anya..." she handed the open book over to the blonde, who passed it over to Rupert.
"Forgetting spells...well, we've certainly all done *that*. I wonder who cast it, and who it was directed against?" He glanced around at the four young women. "I put my money on Dawn."
"ME?!" the teen shrieked. "WHY?"
"Well, you are at the right age for, ahh, experimentation, aren't you?"
"So are *they,*" Dawn jerked her head at the two older girls, and Joan yanked at the teen's elbow with a firm hand. "Ow! OK, sorry."
"And the rather outre results of the spell seem to suggest a certain, ahh, a certain recklessness that I should think would track with the personality of a teenager," Giles finished. "I ought to know," he sighed with a glance at Randy, who smirked.
"See, this is the part I think is probably important, Mr. Giles, right here. It says the spell is focused on an object in the possession of the caster of the spell, usually a piece of crystal," Willow said.
She pointed out the passage to Giles, who adjusted his glasses as he read. "So if we find the crystal, maybe we can get our memories back?"
"You mean crystals like these?" Everyone turned to look at Randy, who had pulled a box of white crystals from a shelf behind the counter and was sifting them in handfuls.
Joan groaned. "Needle in a haystack. Of course, whichever of us cast the spell probably got their supplies right here..."
"Well. Has anyone found a piece of crystal actually on their person, last night or this morning?" Willow, Tara, Alex and Anya all shook their heads. "Nor have I. You three slept in your clothing -" Giles cleared his throat in embarrassment, glancing at Randy and Joan's slightly disheveled outfits. " - and I think you should search yourselves."
"Oh sure. Jumpin' right to it, Pops. Just 'cause you sodding well say to, you old git -"
"Randy -" Joan rested a hand on his arm, and her friend lost his train of thought as he stared at it mesmerized. "It's OK. The quicker we find the crystal, the quicker we can get our memories back." She glanced over her shoulder. "Right, Dawn?"
The girl sighed. "Prime suspect, reporting for searching," she said, throwing her arms above her head. Then she brightened. "Hey, can Alex frisk me?"
Alex grinned. "I kinda like the view from here," he said as Joan spun her sister roughly towards her and began turning out her pockets. Anya looked at him a bit strangely, an odd pricking sensation starting at the back of her neck. She shook her head and the pins and needles disappeared.
"Nothing," she reported, and started checking her own. "Nothing here either. Randy?"
"Oi, why've I got to have more pockets than any of you lot?" Randy passed his suit jacket to Joan to rifle while he checked his pants pockets. "Nothin' here, mates." Joan shook her head and handed him the jacket.
"That crystal could be *anywhere,*" Joan moaned.
"Not necessarily, Joan. I think it's still got to be on the premises someplace, or at least close to us," Anya said. "Wouldn't it lose its effectiveness if it went too far away from the spell's intended, uh, victim?" This was met with blank looks on seven other faces, and she shrugged. Alex, Tara and Willow began scouring the floor, shelves and other surfaces looking for loose crystals.
"Darling, where's that book we were looking at last night?" Giles brushed past Anya to flip through a stack of books on the table behind her.
"Izzat what they're callin' it nowadays?" Randy snickered, and Giles hit him with a freezing look.
"I thought I saw something in here....ahh! Here it is! There's a spell in here to tell if an object has been enchanted within the last 48 hours. We mix up this potion and put a few drops on every crystal we can find in this place, and eventually one will react to the potion." Giles smiled.
"Assuming we find it within the next 48 hours," Anya said nervously.
"36, now, thanks to that little sleep break," said Alex, his face grim. "We'd better get started."
Randy brought the box of crystals over to the table, and Giles passed the book to Anya, who began gathering the ingredients for the potion.