Halloween
It's Halloween at the Hellmouth-a slow time for vampires, but not for mischievious mystics. Ethan's Costume Shop is the newest store in town, and many buy their costumes from there-including Buffy, who wants to dress up like the noble women Angel would have known two centuries earlier, based on drawings she and Willow see in a purloined Watcher diary. However, the shop owner, Ethan Rayne, has other things in mind. Invoking the Roman god Janus, he casts a spell that turns everyone who purchased a costume at his store into the persona their costume represents. Xander becomes an army grunt(with a real machine gun), Willow becomes a ghost(the generic nature of her costume meaning she, at least, keeps her personality, but it physically completely insubstantial), Buffy becomes an actual eighteenth-century maiden, and little kids become demons. Spike sees the resulting chaos-and the fact that the Slayer is now useless in that particular role-and decides to party. Cordelia's lack of transformation reveals that only people who got their costumes at Ethan's were changed(Cordy obtained hers at Party World). A trip there finds Giles confronted with old friend Ethan-and the ostensibly stuffy and befuddled libriarian proceeds literally beat the method of reversing the spell out of the costumer, just in time to save Buffy from Spike's teeth.Angel and Buffy's semi-date is ruined by Buffy's lateness thanks to actual vampire slaying, but later end up kissing in her bedroom. Xander an Cordelia have a brief moment of bonding over Angel and Buffy, as Xander tells Cordy that there's no chance of getting between them, as he knows from bitter experience. The first hints of Giles's dark past are dropped here. Cordelia is told that Angel is a vampire, but she doesn't believe it, but when the vampiric demon inside Angel defeats Eyghon in "The Dark Age" indicates she found out some time prior to that. Oz and Willow continue to fly by each other, first bumping into each other while Willow's in her ghost suit, then Oz passing her in the street later on, again wondering who she is.
Email: jonlaframboise@yahoo.com
