"Thank you," says Sherlock. "I am very fond of not being on fire. It is a state I intend to maintain."

"I agree completely," says Juliet. "Now let's go scope out the brick place and see if it's suitable for squatting in while we work out obtaining it."

Shell Bell, bending one of her fingers backward for squares again, nods.

"What are the odds we can take your truck without anyone falling out?"

"I drive careful, if no demons attack and the people in back hang on they'll be fine."

"I can teleport. With passengers. And I'm sped up and if we fall out of the truck I'll just put us back."

"Okay, let's take the truck," says Tony.

Juliet drives. Shell Bell and Sherlock go in back, Tony in the passenger seat, and she takes them to the brick building.

"It'll take some fixing," says Tony. "But yeah, I can totally do this."

"Need coins?" Shell Bell asks him. "Or are you all set?"

Juliet yawns. "Are you guys set? Because I am tired."

"I will need coins," says Tony. "I need, like - power tools, and I'm gonna have to rip out some walls, and install all kinds of shit..."

"But you do not need to do all of this tonight, do you."

"They can do it tonight, but if they're squatting, and don't need anything from me, I can just go back home, yeah?"

"Go get some sleep," Shell Bell says.

"Can you be invisible? You gonna follow me to school like Amariah did?" yawns Juliet.

"Can and will," responds Shell Bell. "Go sleep. I - here." She makes another square and hands it over. "This should wake you up enough to let you drive home safer."

The square disappears and Juliet blinks, perked up. "Thanks. I'm gonna go before it wears off. Night all."

"Night, love."

Juliet gets back in her truck and drives home.

Shell Bell bends back her finger again, and appears her squares off her bandolier for Tony's use. "Are you crashing here or back wherever you normally live?" she asks Sherlock. "I bet you're going to move in here eventually because of Jarvis."

"Here, I think," he says. "But not for a while. Need any heavy lifting done, Tony?"

"You bet!"

"I don't have to sleep at all, copied that from Stella," says Shell Bell. She frowns at her hand and switches fingers.

"...Can't decide whether that's awesome or scary," says Tony, and he starts going over the walls and muttering to himself.

"That is so adorable," says Tony.

"It's apparently what other Bells hear about me before they meet me, is that me and my Sherlock are adorable," giggles Shell Bell. She switches fingers again.

"I can see why!"

"Do help yourself to the squares," Shell Bell adds, nudging the pile that's accumulating in a rain from her entwined hands with one foot. "To make your power tools and whatever."

"Thanks," he says, and then looks at her directly and smiles. "I mean, really—thanks."

"You're welcome," says Shell Bell. "It doesn't hurt that bad, though, low end of squares, it's not a big deal."

At Study Hall, Juliet leads Shell Bell to the library, a running conversation in her head, and - this isn't as much of a revelation as her being the Slayer is, which she'll save for after school. He's already met one of her doubles. "I met a couple more mes and brought one home," she tells him casually. "Can you see this one too? She turns outright invisible."

"No," says Mr. Giles, "this one escapes me."

Shell Bell turns visible and waves. "Hi, Mr. Giles, it's nice to meet you. I'm Shell Bell."

"We know of six and there's no reason not to expect more. Me and this one and Amariah who you met, and Golden and Stella and Angela. I've met all of them now, I think I might be the only one who has - some are close, but Amariah and Angela haven't met Golden and Stella hasn't met this one." She sighs. "Unfortunately, I was caught in the bar without my big magic-coins, so I can give out lots of little ones that I can make myself, but I can't give away my kind of magic to anyone outright, I gave everything big to Angela and my girlfriend who makes most of the coins for me is home asleep."

"That... does sound unfortunate," he says.

"It is. I could explain in more detail but apparently you have librarian sensibilities?" Shell Bell says. "But I can do a few things without coins with stuff I already have set up, like turning invisible and flying and also I can add people to a telepathy network that'll go on existing even if I leave, do you want on that?"

"...Are there drawbacks?" is the first thing he asks.

"To using the coins? None at all, as long as you're good at designing wishes, and we absolutely are. The coins are just - tricky to make."

"Are there drawbacks to the telepathy network?" he clarifies.

"Oh. No, not really, if someone annoys you on it or whatever you can put up a busy message and then on your end it's like it's not even there. It only supports text and talking, not, like, mind-viruses or anything."

"Then I suppose I might as well. Who else is on it?"

"Me," says Juliet, "Shell Bell and someone else we brought home from the bar, and a friend of mine you haven't met. So for your purposes, me."

He shrugs.

[Ta-da,] says Shell Bell.

"Remarkable," he murmurs.

"Stella's invention," says Shell Bell cheerily. "So I'm making as many squares as I can while I'm here and I'll be leaving Juliet a long string of them."

"That's the nickname I went with for multi-Bell purposes," Juliet says.

He looks at Juliet quizzically.

"Long story," she says. "You can go on calling me Bella."

"I am very happy to," Giles says dryly.

Juliet giggles and gets out her demonology homework.

Shell Bell does not help her with the notetaking like Amariah did; she scans the bookshelves instead. "Magic from here sounds nasty," she comments. (This is clearly a reference to her previous conversations with Juliet; she's looking at a shelf of YA novels.)

"Yes it does," he agrees.

"Long term protections against any of that would probably require a pentagon or a hex or even a star, but if there's any straightforward, relatively simple things that could stop it from hurting Juliet, we might be able to work out a way to do it with squares. A square would make her hair grow out blue forever if she wanted it; maybe it can trip some other variable on that scale that'll help? Can you tell me how it works?"

"How... what, precisely, works?"

"The magic around here being nasty. If she doesn't run into me again, or Stella or Angela, or someone else who can mint her, then it only makes sense for her to pick up the local stuff. Bells are supposed to have magic, we work best when we've got it. But maybe it could be less nasty to her with something clever I could accomplish with squares."

"...Nothing springs to mind," he says. "Unless you can make her luckier, or, or less appetizing to demons."

"Less appetizing is a probably, although with only squares I might have to find out what kind of nutritional value they're looking for," says Shell Bell speculatively. "I think any kind of permanent luck charm would take a pentagon at the least... and I don't have my amulet with me, I stopped wearing it... and I have my fire wand and I could part with it now I'm a mint, but it takes a lot of practice to use safely and I don't know if that's the best use of Juliet's time."

"It varies by the species," he says. "Handily, I have plenty of books on the subject."

"I'll go read Juliet's old notes," says Shell Bell. She turns invisible and teleports and reads fast and comes back. "Okay, I don't think I can convincingly do anything to make it seem like she doesn't have, say, bone marrow, but Juliet, how would you feel about smelling like vanilla or something all the time?"

"Does it have to be all the time? Can I just turn that off and on at will?" Juliet asks. "I'm not sure I want to be that distinctive."

"I don't think I can make it will-operated with a square. I might be able to do something complicated where it's based on the temperature or the phase of the moon and you wind up flipping through ten different smells effectively at random, but I might not."

"If you can do the complicated version let's go with that, if you can't let's skip it," says Juliet.

"But you could have made her smell like vanilla?" says Giles.

"Yes. Why, do you want to smell like vanilla?"

"My interest is theoretical," he assures her.

Shell Bell and Juliet giggle in identical unison.

He laughs a little.

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."

"He stopped eating people when he encountered me on the grounds that it would probably otherwise be hard to get me to talk to him civilly instead of trying to shoot him, yeah. After his fridge broke he started storing jars of blood - labeled from a butcher shop - in mine. Pig and cow."

"That's... civilized, for a vampire," he acknowledges.

"Yep." She decides this is not the time to mention or defend him killing Obadiah in that other universe. He didn't eat him, anyway.

"Any more surprises?" he inquires.

"Apart from Sherlock and the building and all the interdimensional goings-on and me being the Slayer and having a do-not-enter sign up on my brain, nope, all's dull and boring." Pause. "I killed a demon last night? One of those unpronounceable things you have to twist to take apart? Would've taken me much longer to figure out if not for the stalling homework, so thanks."

Juliet laughs. "Well, you won't have to come up with a combat training regimen that you can implement without me having to hit you, Sherlock's got that covered and he doesn't mind if I hit him. But I do still want to learn magic. I can't count on getting minted any time soon and a finite supply of Shell Bell's squares can only do so much."

"I still intend to teach you magic," he says. "Eventually."

"I'll try to be conservative with my squares," says Juliet dryly.

"Stella managed to force the door once," Shell Bell says encouragingly. "We don't know if it works consistently, but maybe someone will be able to come to you even if you never run into one of us at Milliways."

"Here's hoping," agrees Juliet.

Shell Bell bends one of her fingers backwards again, mouth set.

Giles frowns slightly.

"What?" Juliet asks.

He continues frowning for a moment, then shakes his head.

"I bet you want to know why Shell Bell's doing that and you're concerned she'll answer you and this will offend your librarian sensibilities," says Juliet.

"I'm right," concludes Juliet, humming, and she goes back to plowing through her demonology texts for a minute before adding, "So I was thinking of getting, like, a mask, probably a conjured one so it'll fit and have good visibility and not come off easily and stuff, and fighting demons in it. So they can't accost me at least based on my face when I'm trying to attend Latin or whatever. I was also thinking I'd go to L.A. first before fighting any demons I don't plan to completely wipe out for rumoring purposes, so it looks like I live there - within apocalypsey reach of Sunnydale but not leading would-be-Slayer-killers right to my door. I'll bring Sherlock, and Shell Bell if she hasn't gone home, they can help if I get in a spot - would it be good or bad if there were rumors I can teleport?"

"I can't, but Shell Bell can, and she can be invisible and take passengers," explains Juliet, "and she thinks faster than I do, so she can simulate my reaction time."

Shell Bell responds to this by flickering around the room at high speed.

Giles tries to follow her movement with his eyes, but almost immediately gives up.

She comes to a stop in front of him. (Floating in midair.)

"We'll be able to keep you updated on goings-on in L.A. via brainphone," Juliet says, "in case we run into something we don't recognize and want you to look it up. Sherlock's the other person on the network, by the way. I think he's probably asleep now."

"That does sound convenient, then," he says, ignoring Bell's showoffery.

"Yup," says Juliet. "I have excellent alts."

"That's true," he allows, smiling a little.

"At what time are you going to inform the Council? Will they want me on the phone too or do they only talk through you as far as I'm concerned?"

"Tomorrow morning, I think," he says. "And you're right, they won't care to hear from you."

"That would probably bother me, if I felt like talking to them," she muses.

"I don't think anyone involved in that conversation would enjoy it," Giles predicts.

"Agreed. What're you going to tell them, exactly? If I were them I'd have questions if all you said was 'found her'."

"I'm going to tell them that I found the Slayer, she's safe, healthy, and beginning official training immediately. I don't think they'll have many questions about exactly how we met; it's not completely unheard-of for a teenage girl to enter a high school library of her own free will."

"Can you get me on the brainphone to let me know if the conversation deviates from expected parameters?"

"Yes, I suppose so," he says.

"Thanks! Hey, if Sherlock doesn't object, do you want to come and watch us beat each other up tonight? See how I'm coming along?"

"Yes," he says. "If he kills me, I will be very disappointed in your judgment."

"He's not going to kill you. I mean, even if he decided he wanted to kill you, which he is not going to do unless you do something awful to me, I don't think he'd do it in front of Tony, or when Shell Bell's right there and could stop him."

Sleepily: [Yes?]

"I don't plan on doing anything awful to anyone," says Giles.

[Were. This Tony and I have been a little too busy to have any sex,] he says dryly.

[Okay, but that's still something you want to consider fessing up to. As opposed to, say, waiting for your Bell to unexpectedly fall down a flight of stairs and fetch up staring directly at you in any Tony's lap, liplocked. I realize yours is less likely to fall down stairs, but. She did mention an absence of a monogamy conversation having occurred.]

[I will tell her at the next convenient opportunity, and before indulging myself similarly again,] he says. [Thank you for the no doubt directly-from-personal-experience warning. Feel free to mention it to her in the meantime.]

[Will do if there's a suitable lull in the conversation. Mr. Giles is taking everything very well, by the way, wants to come watch you spar tonight.]

[Must be the drugs,] he says. [Sure, why not.]

"Sherlock says it's fine if Mr. Giles wants to supervise," Shell Bell reports.

"Oh good," says Juliet, grinning. "I look forward to showing off for a larger audience. Not that Sherlock's not appreciative."

Giles reaches into his pocket for his glasses-cleaning cloth, pulls it out halfway, and then changes his mind and puts it back.

"If I wished your glasses permanently clean," says Shell Bell, switching fingers to bend, "that would probably defeat some purpose, wouldn't it."

"Go ahead," he says, deadpan, "but don't tell Juliet."

"I heard that," says Juliet. "Waste of squares anyway. I only get as many as Shell Bell can make before we find her a door."

He chuckles.

"Going as fast as I can," says Shell Bell, but she pushes a little harder on her bent finger.

Giles decides not to ask. Not that he doesn't have a pretty good idea.

"I can't teleport large objects with me anyway, unless you're picking them up, which wouldn't be very good for your truck," Shell Bell says.

"Mr. Giles, you want to come home with me and meet Sherlock there? Shell Bell can just be invisible and fly. Or you could meet us later at the abandoned building I want where our extradimensional guests are squatting."

"If you don't mind," he says, "I think I'd rather meet the vampire after he's had his breakfast. Where's this building?"

"I could teleport you there," offers Shell Bell.

Juliet just gives him the intersection.

"Thank you," he says. "When should I be there?"

"Half an hour," says Juliet, packing up her belongings. And out she goes, Shell Bell turning invisible and following in the air.

[There is a thing you'll wanna know,] says Shell Bell, [and your Sherlock said I could tell it to you.]

[Yeah, what?]

[In general, Sherlocks and Tonies have sex. With each other. It's not the best surprise to get, so when I thought of it I asked your Sherlock, and this world's not an exception. Your Sherlock and Other Tony haven't with each other, too busy so far, and your Sherlock says he'll clear it with you beforehand if an opportunity even crops up. So, note that when you have your monogamy conversation.]

[Uh. Okay. That's one reason to reject the "brothers" descriptor.]

[No, not really. Mine are actually twins, same deal. I fell down the stairs before they expected me to arrive on their floor and spotted them making out. It led to a difficult conversation.]

[I'd imagine. Okay. ...You can probably imagine my questions.]

[My Sherlock loves me,] says Shell Bell in a sigh. [So much. She loves Tony too, she loved him first, but she loves me. Sometimes I open that up in my mindreading and I can barely breathe. It's okay. It's really okay.]

[Okay,] says Juliet, after a silence. [Thanks for letting me know. You're right, that would've been a hell of an awkward surprise.]

[Thank you.]

[You're welcome. You almost here?]

[Nearly, yes.]

Shell Bell zooms out to intercept his path and trail him back to Juliet's. She imagines he can smell her; this is fine.

He gives her a little wave.

"Ooh, remind me to kiss Tony in front of him, then," he says brightly.

"I don't think offending Mr. Giles's librarian sensibilities is the object of this evening," snorts Juliet, "is it?"

"Only in fun, harmless ways," he assures her.

"All right. So I guess that was our version of the monogamy conversation, was it? Are there -" She gestures vaguely. "Rules, to this? Expectations that should be clarified?"

"Unless you object, I pretty much plan to fuck who I like and tell you about it as it comes up. You're free to do the same, although I am almost certainly going to find out whether you tell me or not. If you have other rules or expectations, we can of course talk about those."

"I think it'd be awkward if you wound up screwing anyone or anything I'd feel obliged to kill if I met," she says after a pause. "Whether or not such a meeting is likely."

"Hmm, really?" He shrugs. "All right."

"I think it'd require significantly more processing to disentangle suspect motivations," she shrugs. "Nothing else leaps to mind, I guess." Pause. "I'm glad it'd matter if I objected."

He gets a kiss on the cheek for that as they approach the brick building. It's about when Giles is due to meet them.

"Hi, Mr. Giles," says Juliet. "This is Sherlock. Sherlock, this is Mr. Giles." She knows that they could both figure that out, but it's polite.

"Hello," says Giles.

Sherlock grins toothily, but doesn't show fang.

"Yeah. Let's go in. There's room for it in the front bit," says Juliet. She opens the door. "Hi, Tony!" she calls. "We brought my Watcher. This is Mr. Giles."

"Hi, Mr. Giles!" calls Tony's voice from upstairs. "Don't mind me, I'm just ripping out a couple walls!"

"Do you need more squares?" calls Shell Bell, stepping into the building and becoming visible again.

Mr. Giles puts himself as far from the action as possible.

"Nah, I'm good for now," comes Tony's voice drifting down the stairs.

Sherlock is happy to oblige.

It doesn't count as showing off if Giles doesn't know how good Sherlock is. She passes up one opening early on and lets the fight go on a little longer - she's good enough to have that flexibility, now, useful if she ever has to favor an injury or stall for time - and only pins him after a solid minute and a half. (He winds up with his face on the floor, so there's no question of whether Mr. Giles's librarian sensibilities will also have to live with a certain amount of kissing.)

"A pleasure as always," he says, slightly muffled.

Mr. Giles observes this, but doesn't comment.

"Again?"

Giles raises his eyebrows, but doesn't comment.

It gets to be rather late. "I usually call it around this time, depending," says Juliet, checking the time on her phone and taking a swig of water. "And go home and do some modest amount of minimally-demonic homework and crash for the night. Does that sound reasonable to you?" she asks Mr. Giles.

"Entirely," he assures her.

"Excellent, I was worried you'd stomp all over my well-oiled routine," says Juliet. "I hope you are satisfied that Sherlock does not plan to eat any of us, as well."

"It doesn't seem to be on his to-do list," Giles agrees.

"Questions or comments before Sherlock and Shell Bell respectively walk and fly me home?" inquires Juliet.

"I'm going to look into buying this building tomorrow," he says. "Perhaps I can spin it to the Council as a handy training room. I'm hardly going to have you punching a bag in my library, after all."

"Bags and demons have little in common anyway. Thanks," says Juliet.

"In the meantime," he says, looking around, "I don't think you'll have any trouble moving in."

"Neither do I."

"There's a reason abandoned buildings are called that," Juliet says, nodding sagely and putting her crucifix and messenger bag back on.

"Really? I thought they just assigned the label at random," Giles says innocently.

"Nope. The term has a lengthy and noble history." She cleans imaginary glasses. "I can loan you seventeen books on the subject," she adds in a bad English accent, "but some of them are in Latin."

He snorts.

"Your accent is fucking terrible," Sherlock informs her kindly.

"Yes, I know. Out we go," she says, making for the door. "Oh, and as long as Shell Bell's still here tomorrow, she can teleport us to L.A., we won't have to go early and put you under a tarp after all."

"How convenient."

"Very." Strolling ensues.

So too do invisibility and flying.

And handholding. That too.

Yes indeed. "You didn't wind up kissing Tony in front of Giles," observes Juliet, when they're out of the Watcher's earshot.

"Tony was busy," he says serenely.

"How's Jarvis's installation coming along, anyway?"

"First Tony must be satisfied that the house will not fall down," he says. "Then he will install the nonessentials and check them over. Then he will conjure and install the crucial hardware."

"Ah, I see. So he's doing architecture first," laughs Juliet.

"Yes. Architecture and swearing."

"I bet the swearing is essential to the process," says Juliet, nodding.

"You are correct."

"I wonder how long it'll be until we find Milliways again for them," asks Juliet, more soberly.

"To be honest, I've been trying not to think about it."

"Sorry."

"It's all right."

There's her house. "I told Charlie this morning on my way to the morgue. He wasn't thrilled but he'll live and not shoot at you," she says, and she gives Sherlock a kiss goodnight.

"To anyone who isn't me, yes," he says.

"Spiffy."

"I was thinking about the scent thing, and as long as I'm there, I can just flood the room with vanilla or whatever," says Shell Bell. "Also, do we know where we're going any more specifically than L.A.?"

"Yes."

"You're going to have to actually tell me. I'm the one who can teleport," says Shell Bell.

He gives an intersection, and names the northwest corner.

"All right. Indoors or out? I can't make you guys invisible, I can only do that for me. Am I taking you separately so Sherlock can just pretend to be some random vampire not in any way affiliated with Juliet?"

"That would probably be best. Outdoors will do; you can check first if anyone is watching, I assume."

"Yeah. I could do that even better if I went visible - Stella had a problem with spies one time and I batch-copied her powers when I met her - but we don't want Juliet's face involved, and I have it. So I'll just scope out the place. I'll do that now." Shell Bell vanishes, and then she vanishes in a different sense.

"So what have we got me walking into?" Juliet asks Sherlock.

"A nest of bored, complacent vampires," he says. "By the way, Tony keeps forgetting to mention it, but he brought you half a dozen laser pointers. He's got them squirreled away somewhere. You probably won't even need the one you've got tonight, provided you bring something wooden and pointy."

"A supply of them is still good. I'll hold it in reserve; we're already going to produce the rumor that I can teleport, so after I can't back that up anymore it'll be nice to be able to produce the rumor that I can make a vampire burst into flames at a hundred paces to supplant it. How many vampires?"

"Fourteen," he says cheerfully.

"You think some of them will bolt while I'm dusting the others, or will I have to explicitly let somebody go?" she asks, reaching under her mask to scratch her eyebrow.

"Some of them will bolt," he assures her. "If they are all foolish enough to continue attacking you, I suppose you can kill them all and we can find you another batch."

"Mkay. There's more spots in L.A.?"

"Plenty."

"Spiffy. I'll hit one every weekend and most holidays, I guess, and a few on random Thursdays or wherever just to keep them on their toes."

"Delightful," says Sherlock.

Shell Bell reappears in both senses of the word. "I looked around and I went in real quick - scentless, not breathing, they didn't notice me. There's fourteen vampires in there, just sort of lying around, one's asleep. On the street there's one homeless guy sitting around but he's so high he could probably see you teleporting in even if you didn't. Nobody else, although someone could come around the corner if we wait, are we ready to go right now?"

Juliet conjures a stake, polished with a grip designed to fit her hand exactly, and says, "I'm ready. Sherlock?"

He nods.

"Who's going first?"

"Me."

Juliet is landed right into the nest - Sherlock is her backup; if she can handle this without people wondering who her friend is it'll be clearer she's the Slayer. She dusts the first vamp before anyone knows she's there. Shell Bell has killed the scents in the room and the air has a weird tastelessness to it even through her mask. Juliet lunges for the next nearest vampire.

They're all ascramble, evenly divided between those who want to run and those who want to take her apart. She stakes the second one, whirls and blocks a grab from the third before dusting him too, and then says to Shell Bell [Now,] which is Shell Bell's cue to teleport her across the room. (This is part of the rumor they're spreading, of course.) She dusts two more vampires who weren't expecting her in that section and then she stalks menacingly towards another, who joins the knot of them all trying to get out the door at the same time. He's not fast enough. He gets a stake in the back.

...Well, now he's just feeling inappropriately attracted to her.

Shell Bell fetches Sherlock next, and they are all right back where they came from, not five minutes later.

"Beautifully done," he says, grinning. "I'm a terrible bodyguard; I spent the latter half of that spectacle thinking about how unreasonably attractive you are."

"I didn't wind up needing bodyguarding, no harm done," she says, sidling up to him from where Shell Bell landed her. "Not a scratch on me. They were slow. Even startled they could've done better."

"I," he says, "would like to show you my nice comfortable new basement. And then make out with you in it."

"I would like to be shown this basement. And make out with you in it," Juliet agrees.

Apparently being turned on after watching someone dust eleven vampires is, at the least, a Sherlock thing. So wherever their respective things are coming from here, it all works out very nicely.

It really really does.

"How long did it take you?"

"About a year, but I could only practice at odd hours - I was holding down a job and sometimes showing up to school and poaching on the side and while there was plenty of beach there wasn't plenty of deserted beach. I can just teleport us all to the nearest - nighttime - beach with nobody around to watch you play with fire for hours," says Shell Bell, "and I'll help, too, I got instructions ahead of time but no in-the-moment teaching. And before you ask: no, it won't break, it can't, and you have to know something about how it works to use it at all so even a random demon who suspects it's a fire wand and gets it away from you won't be able to make even an uncontrolled fire with it unless it knows how to concentrate on it."

"Exciting," says Sherlock.

Shell Bell winks at him. "Very," she murmurs. "I'm going to duplicate the power the next time I have my hands on a hex."

This doesn't go unnoticed. "Oh, is that why he's coming along," Juliet snorts. "I don't know if it'll be so much fun when I'm fumbling around with the fire and periodically stop-drop-rolling in the surf, but whatever floats your boat."

"Failure is cute. Success is sexy. Either way, I am pleased to be a spectator."

"My Sherlock was nearly only interested in people who could beat her up, and then she watched me burn down a train station," says Shell Bell merrily. "The Memorial Dome a bit later didn't hurt either."

"I think I've cleared that barrier already, but sure, spectate away," snorts Juliet.

He laughs.

"If it doesn't need fuel, can it burn in places where you wouldn't expect it to be able to?"

"Yeah. I used to practice cooking minnows from the inside - I couldn't do anything out where the bigger fish swim, but you can put fire inside of a demon if you want, it'd look funny on an autopsy but it'll add to your aura of mysterious power."

Sherlock giggles.

"Kickass," says Juliet. "I always wanted an aura of mysterious power. What else do I have to know?"

"You probably want to learn the usual temperatures of fires that burn on various substances. You don't have to know it in degrees or anything, which is good because this comes from a world that doesn't use degrees I recognize and I sure don't know if they match yours, but if you've been near something burning it'll be easier to refer to it."

"I've been around wood fires, but not, like, thermite," says Juliet.

"If you want to have a thorough knowledge of the behaviour of all kinds of accelerants and explosives, talk to Tony," suggests Sherlock. "When he is less busy."

"It won't be necessary to start with anyway, holding the temperature constant at wood-fire levels will be good for initial practice," Shell Bell says.

"Okay," says Juliet. "Should we just start now, then? Find a beach in this time zone for me to throw fire at?"

"I think so," says Shell Bell, and she teleports all three of them to the largest unobserved beach on the west coast of the United States.

Sherlock claps his hands.

"Ooh. Pretty."

"How distracted?" he inquires brightly.

"...Well, eventually, in-melee-with-enough-demons-that-busting-out-the-fire-wand-is-a-better-idea-than-hand-to-hand distracted," she says. The fire doesn't die when he talks this time. She starts coaxing it taller until she's got a ten-foot column of the stuff.

"In that case, I foresee you setting things on fire while making out with me."

Shell Bell laughs and laughs. "But then it'll be hard to look what she's doing. Try the back of her neck or something."

"I'm not sure I want you making quite as many suggestions as you're making," Juliet says mildly to Shell Bell, swaying her column of fire back and forth with unnecessary motions of the wand to remind her what she's doing.

"Regardless, I suggest not getting into the habit of moving the wand if you ever want to be able to use it without letting everybody know that you're using it," Shell Bell says, unapologetic.

Sherlock just snorts.

Juliet flips the wand around in her hand so she's still clutching the handle, but the wand is pointed backwards along her arm, and she stares down the column of fire. She splits it, not all the way down - she wants it contiguous - but she forms it into the bright warm equivalent of swaying blades of grass, adding one at a time until she's managing ten at once and loses all of them.

"You're doing really good. If you want tendrils like that, try to find a way to think of the shape in a higher-level abstract pattern," says Shell Bell, "move a few of them in parallel if you can, or lean them all counterclockwise at once, or whatever."

Sherlock listens with interest.

Practice continues, and Juliet improves considerably, although when she hands the wand back to Shell Bell and asks for a demo, she's blown away by the fire-octopus Shell Bell has dancing through the air, all different colors informed by the heat of the flame.

"You can get this good," says Shell Bell. "It'll just take practice. And you don't need it for lightshows, anyway," she adds as her octopus swims in a lazy bright circle. "Just for fighting. I could cook swimming minnows reliably after just a couple of months practicing half an hour a day on average. And it's not like it's boring, is it?"

"Not boring," agrees Juliet. "If I swipe the wand from you now does the fire go uncontrolled or just out?"

"If I drop the wand, it goes uncontrolled. I'm not sure what happens if I hand it off. Try taking it, the octopus is over the ocean now, no real danger."

Juliet takes the wand out of Shell Bell's hand. The octopus stays, although she doesn't try to move its tentacles or retain the colors, just focuses on the shape and place and woodfire-warmth and that it should not consume fuel.

That is fun. Sherlock smiles.

"Fun things often are."

"It's true." She makes a more modest shape - a snake - and starts flying it around over the water, rippling patterns of heat/color along its length and undulating it in a sine wave. She manages a minute and a half. "I think I'm getting tired."

"Don't operate the wand tired," says Shell Bell at once. "I'll take us home." And she does.

"What special terrors occur if you operate the wand tired? Or are you just more likely to fuck it up?"

"More likely to fuck it up, less likely to notice right away if it goes out of control," says Shell Bell. "I don't have any permanent scars but I did have to dive into the sea a couple of times."

"Aha."

"I will avoid wanding when I'm tired," says Juliet. "Unless it's an emergency and I have at least one square on me. Square can probably conjure a fire extinguisher or just outright kill the flame if it splits up out of control, right?"

"Yes, unless it's really huge, then you might need a couple," says Shell Bell. She's been continuously bending various fingers backwards throughout all this time; her hands would certainly be swollen with accumulated distress at this point if it weren't for her regen.

"I bought you a house," is how Giles chooses to return this greeting. "It's officially in my name, but you can do what you want with it, since I assume that turning part of it into a training area is on the agenda."

"Yup. Install the AI, have Sherlock move in, beat each other up in it, when I'm good enough with the wand that I don't have to practice on the beach I can do that there too." Pause. "Shell Bell, do you think squares could conjure copies of arbitrary demonology books?"

"I could probably conjure a copy of Johanna Mason's unauthorized biography," says Shell Bell, "even though this universe doesn't have any copies and I have never read it before, so I assume demonology books that have actually been written in Sunshine would only be easier."

"Uh, sure," says Shell Bell, amused.

"Try it on one book first, to make sure it works," snorts Juliet.

He rattles off a title as though he has been waiting for this day all his life.

Shell Bell switches from bending her finger to biting her cheek, so that she can catch the conjured book and present it to him. "Is this what you were looking for?"

"Yes it is," he says, and immediately hauls out pen and paper to start composing that list.

"Er, please do remember that Shell Bell's only here for a finite amount of time, can make only a finite number of squares, and every book you request will cost a square of its own," says Juliet. "I might or might not find another me with mint powers before I run out even if I only use them for emergencies, since Slayers encounter, you know, lots of emergencies. And the squares and the fire wand are the only safe magic we have access to right now."

"That," he says without looking up from the page, "is why I am not just naming titles as fast as I can think of them."

"It's not any more expensive to conjure a big book than a small one, so if any of them might have been omnibused or otherwise combined..."

"Your conservatism is appreciated, Mr. Giles," says Juliet.

Shell Bell conjures him a stack of those fifteen books, easy as pie. They appear on his desk. "There you go. I hope they help!"

"Immeasurably," he assures her.

"What sorta books did you pick out?" Juliet asks, peering over her shoulder instead of at the book she's currently notetaking from.

"Ones I wouldn't be able to get any other way, but that I know exist. and want to own. Not all of them are demonology; a few are about magic."

"Ooh." Pause. "It's possible I should have mentioned earlier that we think the reason I haven't gotten magic from here to work for me is that various demonic-and-or-divine entities cannot inspect the contents of my skull to figure out what I am trying to do."

"...Luckily, I don't think that will have too much impact on the usefulness of the selection."

"That's good! What kinda magic books?" inquires Juliet.

"Historical, theoretical, and one practical. Just one. But I think you might find the theoretical more interesting."