"On top of the part where all vampires besides about a dozen of them ate humans on a regular basis before Golden took over and she was one of those? Addy really likes copying powers. They taste like things to her," explains Bella. "Before the previous vampire government found out that she existed, she sort of wandered the earth, finding witches, checking out their powers, tutoring them in making them more interesting, playing with them, and then moving on. The Volturi - that's the previous government in question - then threatened her into working for them, and her primary job was to copy and use the powers of witches who they couldn't threaten into working for them. They kept those witches in small pieces in the basement, since keeping vampires in small pieces doesn't kill them. And in her spare time Addy badgered Golden's daughter Elspeth into working on making her own power more interesting, more than she wanted to work on it, and when Elspeth tried to stand up to her Addy sent her off to get tortured by the witch whose witchcraft did that."

"Euhhhhhhh," says Ripper.

"Yeah. The fact that she's so interested in getting to taste powers makes her pretty easy to control, though. Golden doesn't really need her any more, since she has coins and enchanting and so on, which creates some tension, but - we're not big on revenge, us Bells, so as long as Addy behaves going forward and doesn't inconveniently mate to anyone who'd rather not be mated to she's probably just going to carry on as she has been."

"Yeah," says Ripper. "...Now I'm just imagining Rayne as a vampire, I should stop imagining that."

Bella sporfles. "When Jane's back I'll tell her not to send him to Aurum, shall I?"

"Yeah, good plan."

"Elspeth's witchcraft is really cool. She's basically so good at telling the truth that it's a superpower."

"...That doesn't sound like a useful superpower."

"You wouldn't think so, but it's great. She can do it without talking if she wants, across a long range, really fast, with nested explanations of context for everything she's saying. She can do simultaneous translations into any language she knows. Sometimes she just randomly says things that are true that she has no way to know. There is a distinct, definite difference between when she says true things and false things, so you can tell if she decides to lie, which she only ever does as a demonstration of this difference anyway."

"Weird," says Ripper.

"It's also weaponizeable! And it was usable in that form as a sort of faux resurrection even before Aurum had access to Downside. If she gave a human too many high-fidelity vampire memories, it was not a good day for the human's continuity of experience, and it became possible to convince the human that they were one of the vampires whose memories they had. Elspeth didn't wipe anybody herself - Addy did that. She also had all these memories in the first place because of Addy. There was another witch who copied the entire life histories of anyone he touched, and Addy touched him and then broadcasted everything she had with Elspeth's power later to a bunch of people, including some human bystanders."

"...That's a nasty kind of resurrection," says Ripper.

"Yes. It was kind of a mess to sort out once there was access to Downside to be had, but it got sorted out."

"What happened to the... extras?"

"Magic," says Bella. "Downside had the - this'll be easier to explain with an example - one of the people Addy blasted 'recognized herself' as a dead vampire without help. The human was called Paola and the vampire was called Didyme. Didyme's mate was still alive and the resurrection was high-fidelity enough to satisfy his mate bond, so they were all happy together and Didyme made nice with Paola's family insofar as she could and so on. Then, Downside was available, and as far as Downside was concerned, Didyme was dead, and Paola was the person who was going around calling herself Didyme. So the admin heard the entire story, imported the blast memories in the walking-around individual from since the blast into the dead version and took them out of the live version, and had a live vampire-bodied Paola and a dead human-bodied Didyme. Didyme went home, got turned over again, I don't think I ever heard if Paola in particular decided to go through Downside and be human again or stay a vampire but she got the option and a heap of reparation money."

"Magic," he concludes, shaking his head and smiling.

"Yep. Isn't it great?"

"Better than the alternative, I guess. Anyway, want to see the rest of the pictures?"

"Yes."

After the one where Aianon is pretending to nibble on Ripper, there is a long stretch of obvious silliness - first Aianon tickles him, and then they play-fight. Well, mostly play. Some blood is spilled. But everyone is laughing about it, so it can't be that bad.

Bella giggles.

Bella traces her finger along a former site of a mark. "I guess they patched you up before they left."