"Yes," she says, "just to be sure, before finding out what you really did. I wouldn't like to start reading people's minds without their explicit permission, but I'd do it, if I thought I needed to."

"See? Short but sweet," he concludes.

She shrugs. "If that's to your taste, sure."

"It's not to yours?"

"I was thrilled when the nemesis I thought I had turned out to be a well-intentioned lady with a miscalibrated sense of personal boundaries who was happy to help me become the Empress of the Stars by teaching me some more magic and operating as my personnel department. Enmity is not intrinsically fascinating to me. You'd hate Mars the way I made it. Even Alice won't live there; he just can't get comfortable in a place where the local laws of physics have been bent so no one could suddenly decide to hit him with a baseball bat and successfully manage to connect it with his nose."

He bursts out laughing.

"So no. Your games are not to my taste. But talking about them passes the time while I wait for Alice to finish talking books with that girl he spotted reading his favorite."

"Anyway," he says, "if I wanted to play you, I wouldn't rig a bomb. I'd kidnap your boyfriend. And he'd like it."

"He would like it. When he stopped liking it, he'd teleport away. I wouldn't even have to be involved if that was all. If I had any suspicion you'd actually kill him - if I thought you could - or if this went on too long, I'd tell him to come home because I need him, and I think he would do it."

"Not a betting woman."

"I can tell."

"Besides, he's got a present waiting for him at home, and this would be a distraction."

"Ooh, presents. Is it a secret?"

"He wants it to be a surprise. I'm not sure if you're the sort of person who'd spoil it for him if you had the chance."

He puts on a look of utmost innocence. "Course not."

"Alas," says Bella. "You have not successfully made me sure."

"Could I?"

"Maybe. Not easily, probably."

"Mm." He smiles. "How?"

"If I tell you a sequence of actions to perform," Bella says, "they lose most of their communicative value."

"Nnot if the sequence in question is, 'Pretty please, read my mind,'" he suggests. "For example."

"That wouldn't rule out the possibility of you changing your mind. If anyone knows how to be sincere in the moment and less so a minute later, I'd bet on you."

"Smart cookie. So no, I can't convince you," he says. "Tell me anyway."

"No," Bella says. "It's a surprise. If I'm feeling particularly friendly towards you at the time I leave the bar I might conjure you a note when you won't have an opportunity to spoil it for Alice, but I might not."