"Well. If I do suddenly become boring, can I have a head start?"

"If you suddenly become boring," he says, "I will not eat you, I will leave. Which probably still works out to killing you, but at least not actively."

"I do appreciate the distinction," Bella says dryly. "Maybe I can manage to take long enough about it that I'll know how to handle myself in close quarters by then. And then I can aspire to live to the ripe old age of twenty-six. Or I suppose I can move to Renée's and pretend not to be the Slayer and let somewhat more people die."

"As you please," he says cheerfully. "In this hypothetical scenario I won't care a bit."

"Understood. Just thinking aloud. I do that, especially when I'm driving and can't think into a notebook instead," Bella snorts.

"In the likelier event that you retain your natural tendency to be interesting, I expect we can set a new record for Slayer lifespan. Thirty, perhaps," he jokes.

"I want to live forever," says Bella, hands tightening on the wheel.

"Slightly more troublesome. I know of only one method, and apart from its many other problems it only prevents you from dying of some things. True immortality is beyond my means."

"Yeah, and it has that inconvenient personality revision problem. I want me to live forever, I don't want some superficially similar creature to live forever."

"I consider myself to have continuity with the person I was, but I know not all vampires do. The objection is fair."

"What exactly do souls... do? I mean, I know what usually happens when the soul is removed. But it's apparently not consistent, I don't know the psychological mechanisms involved, and I'm wondering what function precisely they tend to serve."

"Interesting question," he says. "I could tell you what mine did for me, I suppose. Or try to. I've never exactly thought of it in those terms."

"Please do." She parks in the driveway at her house but doesn't get out of the car.

"It was a source of some distress on lonely nights, yes."

"Your working definition of 'real person' having been what?"

"'Not me'. If it were a rational worry I would still be having it."

"Yeah, that makes less sense than half the things they tell me in my Government class, and let me assure you, many things they tell me in Government are nonsensical."

He snorts.

"What's the... shift in ethical feeling... like? I have a rudimentary understanding of what it might be like to be that way, but less of what it would be like to become so - to wake up and find one's brain rearranged."

"I hardly noticed at first," he says. "I was ocupied by other concerns. It did occur to me while waiting for Obadiah that while I would have thought about torturing him to death before the change, I probably would have left out the torture in the end."

"But you would've killed him either way?"

"I reiterate that he had my entire family murdered. Yes, I would have killed him. I'm fairly sure he assassinated Tony's parents, for that matter."

"Oh, yes, I understand completely. Under the circumstances I can barely manage to blame you for the torture, let alone the killing. Just wanted to confirm. Tony's parents? They'd be genetically yours too, whether or not you ever met them. I confess I am quite ignorant about how clones slot into their creator's families."