"Of course you do," says Amariah merrily, retrieving from her shopping bag a canister of salt and beginning another diagram.

"So - what kind of a spread are we looking at here, in... Bells?"

"Well, there's me. There's Shell Bell, who's a human from a nasty little dystopia called Panem, but she ran into Stella and got Stella magic and so I imagine she's got the placed all fixed up by now. There's Stella, who has a Whistle called Alice, and she has the most overpowered magic ever, although it has this one eensy drawback - her magic system converts pain into wishes - so it's lucky she's got a Whistle, isn't it, because he's utterly thrilled to help her with that. Stella left notes in the guestbook about one who we're calling Golden who hasn't been by in person yet. Golden's a vampire - not the same kind as you have here, her kind sound like a much better deal all around I have to say - and she's married to a nonduplicate named Edward and they have a kid named Elspeth and she runs a secret vampire empire. I just met Angela today and she's an angel - I mean she literally has great big speckly wings coming out of her back - and she's kind of a personality outlier, kinda sheltered, I feel like she's editing herself farther upstream than the rest of us do. Which makes sense. She lives in a theocracy and she wants the local god to name her the next Archangel. And she grew up in a childhood of useful luxury, so that's as far as her ambition seems to go at the moment, can you imagine?"

"Useful luxury," repeats Juliet. "Yeah. I could see that being a developmental left turn. What does she get to do that's useful?"

"Angels where she's from fly around and pray for weather, or sometimes medicine or seeds, by singing," says Amariah. "The place otherwise has nearly unlivable weather. And she is good at singing. I'm almost surprised she harbors ambitions that go as far up as Archangel, although I'm not sure if the living conditions for the non-angels are quite where she'd like them to be, so there's that."

"What's the significance of useful luxury?" asks Sherlock.

"Okay, think about it," says Amariah. "We are both selfish and altruistic to the point of near-contradiction. Usually, this results in taking over the world. Golden was a revolutionary, I think Shell Bell's going that way too, Stella's going a sort of sideways route by colonizing Mars first, I've got a longer plan underway but it's definitely on the agenda, Juliet's still in the point in the Bell life-cycle where she's collecting resources and not moving forward on world takeover but I bet it sounds pretty good to her too."

"Not gonna deny it."

"Being the benevolent dictator of the world is kind of the pinnacle of useful luxury, altruistic self-interest, power and service. Empress Bellas are comfortable, they are surrounded by people they like who acknowledge that they are in charge, they get to accomplish all kinds of valuable results for their worlds while also getting to wear elaborate crowns to boot. But we've all done this from a starting point of mediocrity. Most of us have divorced parents; Shell Bell's and mine are together, but Shell Bell grew up in oppressive poverty and my parents have this disastrous on-again off-again marriage. We attend public schools that are only adequate judged against other public schools. I've been half in witch culture, which is better - I get to learn magic and fly and stuff, which I'm good at - but there aren't any real affordances for doing things. Experiencing stuff, sure, I can always hop on my cloud pine and see the Taj Mahal or whatever, but doing stuff out in the world? Useful stuff? Fewer obvious routes, so of course I'm going to just claim the entire planet as my own, piecemeal, and declare the entire thing my responsibility. But Angela..." Amariah shakes her head. "Angela's parents are happily married. She never had to move or split herself between cultures or summer at one parents' house and spend the rest of the year at the others. She has friends, close friends, who she's known since she was born. She's high-status and she can fly and sing and all anyone wants from her is for her to fly and sing. Her god has more to say on the subject of how to live a good life than any of my goddesses do, so she's got an absorbing self-improvement project. She was born with everything she needed to ascend to the highest political office of her land and all she has to do is something she's good at, something she enjoys, something that visibly helps people who need it, under the direction of people she respects. I'm not surprised she wants to be Archangel, but I'm also not surprised she doesn't aspire beyond the standard-issue twenty-year term after the current Archangel is good and done with his."

"World conquest. Oh, what fun," says Sherlock. "Don't tell the Watchers; they'll have kittens."

"Mum's the word. I'm not even at that point in my life-cycle yet," snorts Juliet.

"That just makes you sound like some manner of insect," he says. "A monarch butterfly, perhaps."

Juliet cracks up.

"There's no analogous period spent in the chrysalis," laughs Amariah. "It's a smooth transition from caterbella to bellafly."

...Sherlock cracks up.

Amariah, meanwhile, has finished her next diagram. She summons a rat; rats are not in short enough supply for this to take very long, and when it scurries up to her she seizes it, pulls her dagger, and speaks another poem before stabbing it through.

"If you two are going to be occupied with this for some time, I think I will go and fetch some tea," says Sherlock. "Please don't get eaten while I'm gone; I would be terribly disappointed."

"You said fire works? I can do fire if anyone besides you barges in," Amariah says.

Juliet picks up her laser pointer out of her messenger bag, tosses and catches it, and says, "You go ahead."

He grins at both of them and exits the crypt.

"I have no grounds for flipping. It's not like I'm dating him," says Juliet.

"Oh, I know, but he liked you first, and I bet you like him even if you haven't decided to act on it so far, and while obviously we can do nonexclusivity just fine if we want to it doesn't come standard with being a Bell. So I wanted to make sure you had a minute to process first. Whistles don't come in monogamous; I don't know if Sherlocks do, but it's not default, at least."