"Well, I could read you books, but I don't read aloud particularly quickly."

"I can just run low the whole time. Then I might not be immobilized by pain, either!"

"And then you could read your own books."

"Much more convenient, if less gleefully hubristic."

"A bit, yes."

"And I do enjoy being gleefully hubristic. But not if it ends with me bored to death."

"I don't know if boredom can kill humans where you're from but it doesn't make a dent in vampires."

"It's made some attempts on me, but nothing serious."

"What is your exotic pain-related deal, anyway?"

"Fairy curse: my pain never fades. Fairy blessing: but no matter how much of it there is, there's always enough of me to deal. Not always comfortably deal, mind you, but I get along. And I can pick whether to run low and be a normal person with normal-person-manageable amounts of pain, or run high and have as much pain as I've actually picked up and a proportional increase in mental capacity."

"Oh, now that will interact funnily with the vampire deal, we have roomier brains."

"Fun!"

"That worked, you can stop now."

She stops. "All right, so I don't have to do the thing when it's my turn, good to know."

"Yes, congratulations, I will be over here enjoying my perfectly comprehensible agony."

Kithabel ruffles his hair and goes to get books while Addy resumes asking magic questions.

Milan has lots and lots of things to say about his world's magic. He never studied thaumatology directly, but he read a few books on it, and he lived in that world for seventeen years and heard of a lot of things. So many things.

"...I mean, be my guest, but you might die and also you'll have to get somebody else to open the door for you because if I do it I might die."

"Ah, I see. I'll just loiter around here and find somewhere else to go check out, I'm sure more interesting people will come through."

"Have fun."

"I will, thanks!"