Shell Bell returns to browsing. She gets through a noticeable fraction of the section, reading at superspeed.

Shell Bell checks for supervising presences besides Mr. Giles before reappearing.

"All clear?" Juliet asks Shell Bell, and at the replying nod, she says, "So... Mr. Giles. I'm... the... Slayer. Thought you might want to know."

"Yeah, I figured you had an inkling. I didn't know right away. I'm mentally opaque so I don't get the dreams, which is great, they sound awful. A Power That Is dropped by one night and explained some stuff. I think this is also why the Watchers couldn't find me when I activated."

"No, you were kind enough to tell me in advance that you had to do that, so I'll stay put, although I'll be really irritated if they do something like replace you with someone I haven't vetted for being personally compatible."

"They're not likely to," he says.

"That's good. Can I tell you something else without it getting back to the Council?"

"...Yes," he says, with some reluctance.

"I have acquired a friendly vampire boyfriend who has been teaching me to fight and has not tried to kill me even a little bit. I will be very annoyed if anything happens to him."

"He's an alt of my girlfriend!" volunteers Shell Bell. "It's a nice template."

"...I feel compelled to ask," says Giles, "even though I know the answer: are you sure he isn't plotting to kill you in some horrible way?"

"If he's running a con, it's a long con, that held up when we went to another world and he met an alt of his dead twin and that involves teaching me to beat the crap out of him even though I started out unable to hit him with a crossbow bolt and held up even when he got surprised by my porch lights that one time and doesn't involve trying to wheedle his way into my dad's house and is wholly compatible with him introducing me to alts of myself who'll share their magic with me and leaves him acting recognizably like the non-vampire alts of him we've met including Shell Bell's girlfriend."

"Also, he's Sherlock Holmes."

"...Er," says Giles. "In what sense?"

"You didn't hear about this? A couple years back the heir to Stark Industries produced a twin brother out of nowhere who called himself Sherlock Holmes. Then Tony died under mysterious circumstances and Sherlock's body was never found. For the obvious reason. He had to tell me to look him up too, I never really followed corporate celebrity types."

"No," he says, "I must admit I missed that one."

"It's all on the internet if you want to check."

"I'll take your word for it," he decides.

"Okay. So does the Watcher's Council actually fund Slayers, because I want to buy an abandoned building and it'll be less of a waste of squares to take their money than to have Shell Bell conjure a lot of jewelry and clear out the tills in all the pawn shops in town."

"...We... usually don't fund Slayers directly," he says. "What do you need the abandoned building for?"

"To install an AI in. Also Sherlock will probably move there," says Juliet. "The AI was also killed, when Tony was, but we brought a copy home from another world for the local Sherlock."