"You haven't mentioned that, no. And now I'm tempted to start speaking German just to tease you."

"You can if you want, but I know you'll understand me if I talk English," he laughs.

She blinks at him in exaggerated mock-confusion and asks, in German, "Are you sure?"

He snorts, and replies in Italian, "The weather is divine today, don't you think?"

"Good one," she says appreciatively. "I can tell we're going to get along."

"I wonder how long this is going to amuse you," he replies.

Libby giggles. "You're cute."

"I kind of expected you'd be able to understand some of this from the French. Maybe you can and aren't letting on."

She grins, which isn't informative either way, really.

It's really not. He raises an eyebrow at her, smiling.

If it is, he's not getting it. "Having fun?" he asks in English.

"Yep. I like you," she says. "You keep up. That's an important quality in people who are going to be spending a lot of time around me."

"It's really good that you like me," he says. "It'd be... inconvenient. Otherwise."

"That's one way to put it."

"It's been known to happen. But not as often as it could, which is good."

"The fact that it's been known to happen at all is kind of upsetting."

"Sometimes it's temporary, like Emily and Sam," he says. "They're happy now."

"Well, that's a little better."

"Elena thinks we just need to keep imprinting from happening outside of controlled circumstances at all, but then unimprinted guys couldn't go anywhere, see any girls besides vampires and women who can't have kids - we're pretty sure those don't get imprinted on - and family members. It's not even impossible to imprint on a puppy, turns out, and then the puppy doesn't activate when she's old enough, so we're all pretty worried about Denise now. Her wolf most of all."

"I guess there's no way to check in advance whether or not someone's going to imprint on a particular person?"

"No. The Imperial Seer can't see wolves, or she could - she can tell about vampire mates, as long as they aren't hybrids, because she can't see those either."

"Well, I know another person who can tell the future. I don't think she'd want to move here and start telling wolfy fortunes full-time, if it turns out she doesn't share that problem, but she'd probably be okay with the occasional consultation."

"There's... a fair number of us," Orfeo says slowly. "Most people who can imprint seem to imprint eventually, but it's unlikely to happen at any given time even if we travel a lot unless we're purposefully staring at lots of girls. There was a big cluster of them early on when Her Majesty activated my dad's generation in La Push but we think that's because the local Native American populations were particularly likely to be well-suited for whatever the magic's looking for. Puppy-making, probably, because of the sterility thing. If she doesn't want to do this full time I'm not sure how much help she could be."

"She could come by every so often, round up a bunch of unimprinted guys, and steer them toward imprints they'd be happy with," Libby suggests. "That'd be some help, right?"