"I have yet to come up with a way to explain it that doesn't sound incredibly shady," she says wryly, "but it isn't really all that shady. Libby collects useful people she's on friendly terms with, and then once in a while she asks one of them for a favour. She looks out for us, too. See above regarding me not getting whisked off to a lab again. The reason it's such a big secret is because things like her ability to make sure nobody tries to do science to me would take a big hit if it was common knowledge that she was doing it at all. Well, that and the magic."

"Are any of the favors she can do useful to the sort of person who's equipped with plenty of her own magic?" Bella asks frankly.

"Sure," says Bridget. "Depending what exactly you want to do. But just as an example, even if I somehow had the wish power and could somehow make coins with it, I probably couldn't keep myself out of the hands of unscrupulous experimenters nearly as well as I can by asking Libby to keep an eye out."

"And 'Libby' is not the type to... say... put you back in a lab if you should displease her in some way," Bella says. "Or to have put you in one in the first place so she could rescue you. Or to take undue advantage of her power in any coercive way. Is that the story?"

"Exactly," says Bridget. "She takes care of her people before anything else. If you deal fairly with her, she'll deal fairly with you."

"I was getting at how she treats people who are not yet hers - or who used to be hers," Bella says. "How sure are you she didn't put you in the lab? I mean, it was pretty effective at buying your loyalty, and you're making it sound like the kind of situation she could manufacture. How sure are you that she wouldn't squirrel you away in one if you felt like defecting?"

"Very and also very," says Bridget. "I know how I ended up in that lab. Libby isn't old enough to have built that mess from scratch. And I've turned her down before when she asked me for something. She argues; she doesn't threaten."

"Fair enough. What sort of disaster would have her reveal your... spyingness?"

"She didn't say, which suggests to me that it's an ongoing emergency."

"Did you ask? Do you know anything about why she wanted me spied on in the first place?"

"I generally don't ask," says Bridget. "And I'm pretty sure she tries to recruit every recruitable magical person she can find, just because having us on her side is preferable to the other option. But I still don't actually know that you're magical. Also, spying implies I was reporting on you in some way, which I haven't been unless you count a few iterations of 'have you broken it to her yet?' and one of 'is she dead?' And no, I didn't ask what that one was about, either."

"...When did she inquire if I was dead?" Bella asks.

"Why do you ask?"

"Because I want to know? I don't think I've spent any time looking dead recently."

"Sometime in the last month. I didn't exactly mark it down on my calendar."

"I don't suppose you have an email record of it?"

"It wasn't an email."

"Mm." Argh, why doesn't everyone have an eidetic memory? "How long have you been in this vaguely sinister organization?"

"Do you mean, how long have I been friends with the person who rescued me from a very unpleasant place? A few years."

"How big is it? The vaguely sinister organization? Or I suppose I could ask how many friends Libby has, but perhaps she does not... employ... all of her friends in this way."

"Why do you keep calling it a vaguely sinister organization?"

"It sent someone to spy on me?" Bella suggests. "Are there non-sinister reasons to spy on college freshmen? You could've walked up to me and said 'Hi! Do you believe in magic?' and laughed at me when I lied."

"We really don't like to ask just anybody if they believe in magic," says Bridget. "There's always the chance we could've guessed wrong. And I don't think that telling Libby you're probably not dead qualifies as spying."

"Maybe you weren't sending her detailed reports, but -" Bella's not going to reveal that she knows she was being otherwise stared at - "you set out to meet me because someone else took an interest in me without - I assume? - having ever met me in person. It's not like Libby decided to introduce us because she's pals with us both and thought we'd get along. How are you characterizing her motives as anything other than spying, even if it happens that the only question she asked you is whether I died?"

"Because the motive she actually gave was that she wanted me to recruit you?"