Bella sighs. "Look, I know you deal with idiot fourteen-year-olds all day. But can you be a little more charitable with me? I know not all non-face-eating individual demons would want to hang out with me and braid each other's hair and protect each other from the forces of darkness. Not all humans want to be my friend and a billion of them I'd have to learn Chinese first to even get to know and I assume the situation with demons is even worse. But you're sufficiently down on magic as a solution to sardinehood that I'm asking about other options. If the non-face-eating demons are in a careful balance of politics such that not leaving them alone turns Demon Switzerland into Demon Cold War Russia or Demon Space Invaders, you can just tell me that, and I will not bother the demons you have ruled out. If the non-face-eating demons are non-face-eating because they have a religious prohibition and faces aren't kosher, you can tell me that, and I will, if I encounter any such demon, be very careful if the discussion should turn to theology. If the non-face-eating demons are presumed to be non-face-eating only because the grand total of four people to ever visit them were wearing the color red, then you can tell me that only four people have ever visited them and I am perfectly capable of deciding not to be a demonic early adopter. I am not stupid."

Bella turns back to her book, huffing a small sigh.

"I'm sorry," he says as he puts them back on. "The truth is, there are not as many books on neutral species, and I can only speculate on why that is. My speculation is that demonologists have been historically wary of finding out too late that the reason for someone's apparent neutrality was along the lines of your examples. But I can't know for sure, because it's just not in the literature."

"And there are only neutral species as far as you and your books know? Not Species We Invite To Our Christmas Parties or anything, just Species That Don't Seem To Eat Faces But Don't Object That Much When Others Do?"

"'Neutral species' is the term. For all I know, there could be several of them who would behave themselves perfectly well at my Christmas parties if I had any. But I'm not willing to bet on it, and apparently neither is anyone else."

"That is extremely disappointing," sighs Bella.

He shrugs helplessly.

Bella's phone beeps. She packs up everything at once. "Home I go," she says. "See you tomorrow - I probably won't be done with more than a third of this stack, though, this thing is huge."

"See you tomorrow," he says.

Bella drives home. She works through Mr. Giles's books diligently. And as dusk falls, she heats up a jar of blood for Sherlock.