- I suspect the store is in fact the source of the problem.

- well, that's good to know. Should we send the feds in?

Greatly depends on how trustworthy and experienced your 'feds' are with powerful practitioners of the dark arts.

I think 'not, and trying to close the difference with guns and bodies'. Got a better plan?

Generally speaking this does seem like a problem one might aim a slayer at, though if she were not already there I would be driving over myself. I suggest not killing him, for more than moral reasons; it may become irreversible if the caster is killed.

Giles thinks you should go in. Be careful, powerful magic user.

I guess anyone who can turn random people into space police is probably scarier than the space police themselves.

She walks in, like a normal person. The store is dark. The door to the back is locked; she makes herself a little green key that solidifies inside it.

"Sorry," says the man she finds in the back, smiling at once both gleefully and nervously. "No refunds."

She summons a cage around him. And a sword, hanging out just outside the bars, because she just bets this guy doesn't know enough comics lore to be aware of the green lantern ban on the use of lethal force. 

"A-a-ah," says Ethan, no longer smiling. "If you kill me you'll never reverse it. Not a temporary spell, either, if not reversed by midnight all effects are permanent."

Hey, so, uh, what do I, like, do here.

Get him to think about how to end the spell?

"Don't believe you. In my experience killing a caster is a pretty sure way to end all the spells they've cast. I think you're specifically supposed to cut off a witch's head."

"God, do they teach young people nothing about caution these days," says Ethan, rolling his eyes. "I suppose they wouldn't, no good having the children ask questions, is it." This is a bit of a pickle, but at least Chaos will be pleased; she doesn't seem the type to know the rituals that need to be performed on the statue of Ianus.

- he informs Giles and Wishbone of this.

I can reverse it. I need to be there. With him.

You sound really certain of that.

I am. 

He's not intentionally sending that he knows Ethan and is fairly certain a few precise questions and kicks to the ribs will solve the problem, but he doesn't exactly know how to think things privately, either.

Yeah because it's convenient to know about the Watcher's shady personal connection to this nonsense. Karen you wanna pick up Giles? He thinks he can handle it.

Sure. Do I bring the shopkeeper with, or -

Guess so? I'd tell Giles to just drive but I'd feel really stupid if he gets killed by a rogue cowboy while trying to reach you.

Yeaaaah. This'll be faster anyway.

She puts Ethan in a fish tank (so that the wind doesn't hurt him; fish tanks are nice like that), pops over to Giles, puts Giles in a fish tank, and drops them both off back at the magic shop.

"You guys good like this?"

"Quite. - perhaps you should station yourself outside, to be on the lookout for transformed children who might interrupt us."

"OK. Sure."

She flies out of the building and up a little ways into the sky. She waits a moment, thinking about her weird messed-up city that insists on trying to rip itself in half every couple months.

Hey Alex?

Monitoring the interrogation - not because he's going to object or anything but because it seems bad to just ignore people hurting people in his city - yeah?

M'never gonna be more powerful than I am tonight. I'm kinda thinking that this is a really good opportunity to tell Giles to wait a minute so I can go to hell and kill Lurconis, but this seems like the sort of plan you run by people first, so they can tell you if it's obviously stupid.

- might be, but I'd do it.

Tell Giles to wait.

And she flies. Can't really check whether the ring only works in this dimension, but she checks whether there's a range limit, flying out for several hundred miles and then up into space. The built-in navigation system is good enough to take her to the planets. Her maximum straight-line speed is, in fact, much faster than light speed, if the time it takes her to reach Pluto and Charon is any indication. She picks herself up some souvenir space rocks, drops them in front of her house, grabs her lantern, and then -

- over the streets and into the sewers and down the hole in the earth that leads to hell.

She's still in range, at least at first.

Do you know where it is?

The hole? Looks like it's where we left it. I don't have a meaningful range limit, which I'd guess means the effect isn't tied to the caster, but obviously there isn't really a way to test this safely across planes, other than -

She drops her lantern into the hole. She can see it, continuing to shine way, way below her.

Costume magic keeps working in hell. This one, anyway. See you in another minute.