The blonde rounded the corner, made sure no one was looking, then disappeared in a violet cloud of obscuring smoke. She returned to existence on top of the currently-vacant Sunnydale High. Just Cordelia's looks alone would keep her beautiful for at least another year. However, for a sprite-in-exile, a tenth of a century was a few idle yawns away. The impermanence of stealing glamor had kept Cathaertis from enjoying her time in exile; by killing one of her sisters, she was forced into one of the least beautiful dimensions she had ever seen as punishment for snuffing out her sister's life. (As if Aphrosia was -that- big of a loss! Cathaertis was sure she was -much- more beautiful than her.) Now, instead of doing what a sprite should, radiating true beauty at all times and occasionally letting those of other dimensions catch fleeting glimpses, so as to incite worship, her gifts had been reversed into a curse. Since she arrived in this plane, her form was constantly drawing perfections away from others, into her! Those she passed by on the street would find zits disappearing and a healthy glow appearing on their cheeks, sudden bursts of weight loss, even developing newly-found social skills; after a few days, Cathaertis found her once perfect body developing rolls of fat, and for the first time in her life, she began to smell a little ripe and needed to bathe.

However; she still knew her kind's spells, usually reserved for warfare or used in return for sacrifices from those of other planes. By enchanting personal objects, she could create a locus of glamor, draining all the beauty in the vicinity into the object and absorbing it. Unfortunately, magic had its costs; if she used the spell too much, Cathaertis would likely become tolerant to the spell, no longer benefiting from it but still having all the enchanted objects sucking charm and beauty away like black holes. Cathaertis was not unintelligent and quickly came up with a plan to remedy this problem.

She had chosen locus spell's first victim for a reason; the mortal girl Cordelia was not only beautiful, resulting in a greater amount of energy stolen, but she was also popular and attended a high school on a hellmouth; as long as she kept that mirror with her, it would begin to drain other girls as it drained (and continued to drain) Cordelia. It would work much slower than the initial burst of beauty transfer that had sealed the enchantment into the mirror, but after a while Cathertis was sure the whole school would be exposed to it from sitting near Cordelia, passing her in the hallway, sitting near her at lunch, the possibilities were endless!

Content with her work, Cathaertis began sunbathing and waited for the arrival of the first day of class.