"Don't touch the owl," Amariah adds. (This has become its own word, all strung together, she's been in Milliways warning people away from her daemon enough now.) "Um, so, I'm an alternate of the Bella you know from another dimension. I can't teach her magic because my kind only works for my species, but I came here to help her out by casting a few blessings on her, and now I'm hanging around until I can get back home."

"It's... good to meet you," he says cautiously. "How do you two... know each other?"

"Okay, I'll spare your librarian's sensibilities and omit the fine details," snorts Amariah. (This is code for okay, I won't.) "But in the non-fine-details department - the interdimesional hub collects alts of lots of people. I've met three others of us and heard about a couple more beyond that. This isn't even the first one I've visited at home."

"My sensibilities are very grateful," says Mr. Giles. "I've never heard of this interdimensional hub, but I'm well aware I don't know everything."

"If you ever open a door and it appears to lead to a bar, instead of whatever you were expecting," says Amariah, "that's probably Milliways. Right now, no time is passing in my home world at all. When me or Juliet finds a door back in, I'll just visit the room our template shares to make some notes in the guestbook and let myself out, and my boyfriend'll be waiting for me at home like no time has passed."

"That sounds convenient," he remarks.

"It is! So that's what I'm here and why I was following - well, we can just call her Bella, since there's only two of us and I don't even go by that when I'm home. She can see through my notice-me-not just fine. How did you do it, though?"

"I have no idea," he admits.

"Do you have some kind of anti-mind-affecting-magic artifact or something?" asks Juliet.

"...No..." he says slowly.

"Nobody else saw her, or at least reacted to her, and she's been following me around all day," Juliet says. "There must be something up with you."

"Yeah, we know why Bella can see me. Shell Bell or Stella or Golden would've been able to, too," says Amariah. "But you're unexplained. If there's a hole in the spell I should work out something heavier-duty or just find someplace to hide out instead of accompanying her."

"That might be true," says Mr. Giles.

"Well, I could go sit up on a bookshelf and she could recast, and you could see if my Isabella is less noticeable that way," Path suggests.

"Does it not make a difference whether or not I expect her to be there?"

"I'll recast, leave the room, and come back without Path and you say when you think I've done that," decides Amariah. "If you can tell, then it's not him. Dried parsley," she says. She takes the parsley handful from the air, tosses it, and mutters her non-English spell. Then she lets herself out, Path finds someplace out of the way to sit for a few moments, and, after a minute's wait, Amariah walks back in alone.

Juliet studiously refrains from reacting to any of this after the spell is cast.

"Hello again," he says without missing a beat, as soon as she walks in.

"Rats, that's not it then," says Amariah. She holds the door open and Path flies to her arm and she pokes Giles again to break the spell so he'll be able to converse with her unimpeded. "Do you have any ongoing magical - properties?" she asks. "Do you care if I invent a verse-and-herb to check for it if you don't know? My kind of magic is perfectly safe unless I don't want it to be."

"...I won't ask you not to," he says, looking slightly uncomfortable.

"She cast like a dozen things on my yesterday evening," says Juliet. "They all worked exactly like she said they would."