"Ooh," Elspeth says. "That does sound useful. Mama's bodyguard is more specific than that. But she has an extra trick up her sleeve that I don't know about, probably because I'd tell everybody."

"You are definitely the opposite of secretive," Libby agrees. "It's endearing."

Elspeth laughs. "I'm kind of like both my parents, backwards. My dad reads minds. My mama's mentally opaque - no mental powers work on her. If she tries very, very hard she can let me or Dad in for short periods of time, though. I used to work on her all the time until I developed an offensive branch to my magic and then her shield shut me completely out. And I encourage everybody to read my mind!"

"I wonder if Chris's shield shuts you out," muses Libby. "I don't think so. The truthiness part works, anyway. I encourage you not to try overloading my poor human brain just to see if that works too."

"I wouldn't do that," Elspeth says seriously. "It wouldn't physically kill you, but my power - wielded by the copying witch, not me - can and has destroyed human personalities."

"I appreciate your restraint, then."

"It was interesting what happened, actually, if you don't just focus on how awful it was," Elspeth said. "The vampire memories in the payload were the strongest, and when the humans who'd been wiped looked into the mirror, if they saw a sufficiently similar face to a vampire who'd been backed up, they 'recognized themselves'. That's how we got John and Didyme, and we used the phenomenon ourselves to salvage some good out of the other victims too."

"Has the copying witch ever been here?" she wonders.

"No. She wants to, though, of course."

"It occurs to me to wonder if she could copy powers from my world, but I'm not sure I know anyone who'd want to experiment, given the preconditions."

"Which preconditions?"

"Milliways, mainly."

"They wouldn't want to come or they can't find it?"

"Either. Both. If I know anyone who's found it independently, they haven't admitted as much, and you have to agree that news of an interdimensional time-travelling bar is a little hard to swallow even given preexisting magic."

"Everyone believed me," Elspeth says innocently.

"Gee, I wonder why."

Libby grins.

"It's a pity Milliways isn't easier to summon. That would be really convenient," sighs Elspeth.

"I've heard some people have a particular talent for getting it to show up," says Libby. "I have no such talent myself."

"It never appears when it would be really inconvenient for me," Elspeth says, "but it doesn't show up whenever I want it."

"Sometimes it's convenient, sometimes it's inconvenient, sometimes it's unremarkable, but it is never on request," says Libby.

"Unremarkable?"

"Not a really good time, not a really bad time, just a time."

"How was this time? What were you doing?"