"My deepest apologies," the old man said, picking up the phone. "Let me call the manufacturer right now. These costumes, there's always some back-up incantation or something. Otherwise they'd get sued to death!" He laughed at his own joke.
Anna smiled and glanced at Joe. "See?" She whispered. "Everything's going to be all right." Joe tried to smile back, but his snout wasn't really made for small expressions anymore.
"This may take a few minutes," the old man said. "I'm so sorry for the trouble again. Pick something out under $30 – it'll be on the store." He gestured out to the store before talking on the phone in a language neither of them recognized.
Joe snorted. "Some apology."
"Hey now," Anna said. "It's gonna get fixed. And even though this thing didn't really pan out, a magical sex shop has got to have some other interesting things, right?"
Joe snorted. It sounded disturbingly bovine. "At the very least, can we walk away from Spider-Man over here? He's really creeping me out."
The man in the superhero shirt jerked his head, as if he had been eavesdropping, and suddenly became very interested in the tea jar he was holding.
As much as Joe was loathe to admit it, the store was fascinating. There were other animal costumes, sure – Halloween-style sexy cats and mice, a banana-hammock with what looked like a donkey's tail – but also things that he had never considered before in his vanilla sex life. A pair of sexy dice promising "a reality-shattering good time!" Candies that promised to turn your sexual juices into chocolate. A drink mix that makes breasts grow bigger (Would that work on just the top two, or would the udder too?).
And so many dildos! Human, animal, anything in between. The teenaged boys were laughing at (but also a little fascinated with) something called an "ovipositor." He found himself pausing on one called "The Ferdinand," with a cartoon of a minotaur on the packaging. Something shifted inside of him, a kind of butterflies feeling that wasn't entirely unpleasant. Joe shuddered. At least this was almost over with.
After a few minutes, the old man called them over. "Well, I have some good news and some bad news," he said. "The good? It's reversible."
Joe let out a deep breath. "Oh, thank God."
"And the bad?" Anna asked.
"Well..." The man paused. "It's not an incantation. Taking the costume off requires a magical key which needs to be shipped to you. Should be there in four to five business days."
Joe let out an involuntary, anguished bellow. The old man smiled sheepishly.
"Sorry," he said. "I can bump your free item up to $50. Have you picked anything out yet?"