"It's a good idea to have someone who knows, or there wouldn't have been a sane, live version of Shell Bell for the dead one to fold back into because her Sherlock wouldn't have been able to wish on an evil," says Golden. "Two of Stella's staff know, my Edward knows, I don't know who Angela and Amariah may have told."

"Can I get you to give us the executive version of Shell Bell's story? I've been coming here on a daily basis trying desperately to run into a mint since I ran out of squares from her and I guess Milliways has been temporally stretched through that time or something because I didn't see anything about it. Or should I just read the book?"

"Shell Bell was assassinated, and the dead one of her was captured, kept in a basement, and tortured routinely for twenty-five years with no access to any form of recordkeeping until she could remember nothing, not even her name beyond 'Shell', and then she was released for some forty years of aimless wandering and intermittent further torture, until she found an alt of Sherlock who she'd looked up in Downside's directory immediately on waking who happened to remember her and where she was supposed to reside. He showed her to her apartment, which perhaps would have been sufficient for her to recover her sanity if not her memories, but she promptly found a door to Milliways, went through, and found her Sherlock. She and the live Bell worked out a merger protocol and are now a single entity."

"How fine-tuned are these merger protocols, do you suppose?"

"Arbitrarily so. Shell Bell wanted to be mostly sane-live-Bell and not so much less-sane-dead-Shell. One of my staff members - Nathan, who was holding the door - also underwent a merger after he managed to get himself killed, and his parameters are different."

"...Are you going to be able to agree on whether to have a soul?" Juliet asks.

"Not if it's a binary proposition, I imagine."

"Many of the effects of soullessness are ultimately beneficial to me, but I'm not wedded to all of them. If we could transfer the perks and leave out the rest..."

"I would recommend," says Golden, "that whichever one of you currently possesses the desired end state of soul-ness attempt to wish up the desired cocktail of features before trying to merge, to ensure that they can all coexist, and then we can just specify that that one's relevant characteristics are the ones to be present in the merged Sherlock."

"Um," says Juliet, looking away. "The one who's not a vampire never even met me before today - how does - will -"

"I don't have a specific case study to refer you to," says Golden apologetically. "Obviously Shell Bell met her Sherlock - and her Tony, for that matter - before she was killed, and that Sherlock has never died in any sense of the word. Nathan's dead version's afterlife affections never escalated to a point where he was uncomfortable with trading them in for a mate bond again in the merged version. But anything they can agree on is presumably workable."

Juliet peers between Sherlocks, shrinking slightly.

Sherlock makes a 'speak up' gesture at Sherlock.

"The end result is going to have the complete set of both our memories," says Sherlock. "It's not as though I've had time to develop a competing interest in the half an hour it's been since I died. Whatever reasons he has for being fond of you, and it's obvious there are many, are going to transfer just fine."

"Dear Juliet," he says, hugging her again. "I am going to continue loving you whether I merge with him or not."

She throws her arms around him and hugs as tight as she can, which is not very tight, anymore. "I love you so much," she murmurs, "and I am so, so sorry, and I am going to vivisect my mind and find where she was hiding and kill her again, and I love you."

"I love you too," he says. And now they are back to snuggling.

"Is my presence still required?" Golden asks. "I had several evils on my person and gave a handful to Juliet, so she can pull off the merger as long as she reads Shell Bell's notes about it and you decide amongst yourselves how to design it. Can I be of any further help here?"

"Only if you want to wait around to see if more Bells show up so we can storm Downside," says Juliet, still snuggling Minus-Sherlock. "And even if they do, I'd want a while before taking on a project like that. I'm kind of a mess right now, and I'm missing - most of my superpowers. And I have done no minty things with Sunshine yet."

"I don't believe you're needed," says Sherlock to Golden. "Thank you for all your help."

"Goodbye, then, all," says Golden with a wave of her hand, and she departs with the perfect-level walk of "diamond" vampires.

"Bye, Golden."