"Two different powerful demons claimed to have found and killed her, but as far as later research could tell, they were both lying. For those few years, there effectively was no Slayer. All the resources that weren't put into finding her were put into dealing, inadequately, with the chaos caused by her absence."

"Have you considered lying? Tell the Council 'found Slayer, but she's shy and wishes to remain otherwise anonymous', let them publicize the misinformation, produce occasional reports. You don't need to be the Slayer to cut the vampire population. I got hold of a key to the morgue and I've been surreptitiously pounding slivers of wood into every cadaver that passes through police hands practically since I moved here."

"What?"

"I don't know how you think this works," he says. "Pre-staking the corpses is, is brilliant, but I can't imagine any way that lying to the Council would help. It's not the Council that needs to know there's a Slayer on the job, it's the demons."

"How do the demons usually find out, if the Council isn't issuing a press release or anything? Lie to whoever tells the demons. I mean, she's super-powerful, more efficient as a source of demon control apparently than anything else the Council could be doing with its time, I'm assuming bitey things don't usually tangle with her and live to tell the tale until one manages to actually kill her? Fights to someone's death all, yes?"

"You have a strangely idealized view of all this for someone who lives in Sunnydale," he says. "Demons frequently run away from her, and she can't possibly hunt down and kill every single one. Leaving aside the times when she loses a fight but escapes with her life."

"I've only lived here a couple months," says Bella. (But except for Sherlock, who is special, she's never confirmed a vampire's vampirehood without dusting it. Although she supposes some demons did run from Sherlock. If Sherlock were a girl like Shell Bell's version, would rumors be circulating even now about a Slayer in town?) "...Am I just completely off base on the fireballs thing?"

"...Yes?" he says. "What fireballs?"

"I mentioned fireballs twice when I was guessing what exactly Watchers are supposed to teach the Slayer to do?"

"Oh. Sorry, I didn't catch that. No, no fireballs."

"What powers does she get, then? Telekinesis? Care Bear Stare?"

"A supernatural aptitude for physical combat."

"The entire demon world is terrified of someone who is good at punching things," says Bella flatly, deadpan skeptical. "That is ridiculous. Vampires are good at punching things, eighty percent of demons are good at punching things, is she even appreciably better than them or does she just have an unusual affordance to get training on how to punch things?"

"An untrained Slayer with a stake in her hand can kill most vampires as easily as you would wipe your nose."

"So if her existence and approximate location are public knowledge from all those demons who flee from her approach chattering into the grapevine, wouldn't she just scatter the bitey critters, not drive them into outright hiding? She can't teleport, she can't do one thing in Munich and another in Sao Paulo at the same time. Why can they coordinate well enough to spread the word but not well enough to do whatever they want with sardinelike safety in numbers?"

"I don't know," he says. "Perhaps you'd like to find a local demon and ask."

"Am I irritating you?"

He takes off his glasses and cleans them. "Being questioned about the Slayer as though I am personally responsible for every aspect of the situation from the actions of unknown people or gods thousands of years ago to the behaviour of demons across the planet does start to wear, yes."

"Sorry," she sighs. "How'd you wind up throwing in with the Watchers, anyway?"

"They were the opposite of my first crowd in every possible way."

"That's a why, not a how."

"The how isn't very interesting. Family connections," he says. "I knew they were there, so that's where I went."

"To be perfectly honest with you," he says, "I'm hoping she shows up and makes herself obvious somehow, because I am out of other options. I'm a Watcher, not a spy. I'm good at, at cataloguing books and deciphering illuminated manuscripts. I'm not good at questioning teenage girls to see if they've developed superpowers recently."