[I don't know if I can 'till I try. And: magic.]

[Stop saying 'magic' like it's an explanation,] he says flatly. [It's not. As far as I can tell, the things you're talking about doing should be impossible no matter how powerful a witch you are. I'm not going to help you if you can't tell me where you're getting all this.]

[I'm not a witch. I'm some other stuff,] says Bella cheerfully. [Glory's from far away? My magic's from farther away. It's a really, really long story.]

[There is nothing I want more than to get rid of her,] he says. [But it's just not possible.]

[If there's nothing more you want than to get rid of her, you should be all over the possibilities I am offering via fancy offworld magic. Look, how much do you know about demons and so on besides the obsequious kind that do her shopping?]

[Not a lot. And you know, I would be all over it if I had any reason to believe you.]

[What's your cheapest magic trick?] asks Ben, warily.

[I have an aura of menace. It's very impressive and makes people who don't know better think I'm a hellcreature of some kind. You'd have to really stretch the definition to qualify me as one, though. Slightly less cheaply, I can conjure up arbitrary nonmagical physical objects. Or magic ones, but they're trickier.]

[I think I'll skip the aura of menace, thanks,] he says. [...Look, if you're really who you say you are, I want to help. I just don't have any reason to trust you. I don't even know your species.]

[I'm a human. If you'd be willing for me to put us someplace where obsequious demons aren't going to walk in on us at any moment, I will be happy to turn visible.]

[...Fine.]

Her preselected Canadian wilderness is in use, so this is Nevada wilderness instead. She lands them near her cactus landmark, turns visible, and turns around once, arms out. "This is me."

"...Hi," says Ben, folding his arms distrustfully.

"Nice to meet you properly. Welcome to Nevada. I'm not going to strand you here, but in case it makes you more comfortable, there is a highway, three miles that way -" she points. "With a rest stop not far from there. So, yeah, this is me, I'm a human, I'm very magical." She hops into the air and spins around again.

"I can see that you're magical," says Ben. "Can you split me and Glory?"

"I told you, I don't know until I try it and see if it works or not, and if I'm going to try it I'd like to be a little more remote than three miles from a Nevada highway, such as Mercury, and I'd also like to have a plan for what to do if it works."

"I can't help you there," says Ben.

"You can give me information," says Bella. "Everything you know. Even if you don't have complete understanding of some thing you've heard or seen or read, it could inform my own research."

"I could," he says, "but I still don't trust you."

"...Okay, what would you like me to do about that?"

"I don't know," he says. "It's a problem."

"So it would seem, yes. I don't suppose it helps any that I clearly could do something awful - to you, to anybody - and instead I'm spending my time poking around powerful hellgods because they've been making mental patients of innocent people? This doesn't suffice to demonstrate that I have benign motives?"