There is a bored blond boy leaning against a wall of the alley, next to a rusted fire escape ladder. He gives Johanna a what-the-hell-do-you-want glance.

"Hello," says Johanna sweetly. "Isn't a bit late for someone so young to be outside? Shouldn't you be home by now?" She strolls toward him in such a way as to keep the boy's escape routes limited; the alley seems almost to have been designed for just such an approach. Johanna makes a mental note to look into that.

"Seriously?" he says, looking aggrieved. "Don't you have anything better to do?"

"I don't really think I do," she purrs. "After all, safety is very important. If children are wandering the streets after dark... bad things could happen to them. Do your parents know you're out so late?"

"Ugh. Get lost, lady."

Johanna pauses. "Oh, fuck it, this whole bait idea was ridiculous," she snarls, snapping her arm upwards to bring the canister to bear. "This is a can of mace. Moreover, it's consecrated. You're a vampire. It'd be exceptionally unpleasant for you to be exposed to this. My reaction time is fucking unbelievable, and I wouldn't advise testing it. Answer my questions and we go our separate ways, maybe I'll even give you a shiny toy. Try any funny business, I melt your goddamned face."

"That's a relief," he remarks. "I was starting to think you were hitting on me. What do you actually want?"

"Ugh. I'm gay, and you look about twelve. Don't be ridiculous. Anyway, I want information on why the vampires in this town are so weird, and why so few deaths are attributed to barbecue forks, and if you've got information on a gay midget vampire and his cheerful blonde behemoth boyfriend and/or mindslave, that'd be nice too."

"Never heard of a gay midget vampire around here. The cheerful blond's bad news. If he catches you eating people twice, he punches you to death. I stay out of his way. Is he dating now? Good, maybe he'll have less free time to spend threatening people."

"Huh. He hates vampires?"

"Most people who hate us just kill on sight. Which he used to do, but he stopped a while back and started on this reformation kick."

"Well, that's... bizarre. Vampires can reform? Without Romani curses and all that? Thought the whole soullessness thing sort of meant irredeemably evil by default." She inclines her head briefly. "No offense."

"None taken." He shrugs. "I mean, I'll take pig's blood over death, who wouldn't?"

"But do you still... I don't actually know what you lot do besides kill people. Mug pensioners? Play poker for delicious kittens? Ravish young ladies, or possibly young men if your haircut's anything to go by?"

"Okay, now I'm offended. I like my haircut."

"So do I, I'm sure. Makes you look like a girl, which is worth something in my opinion. And you didn't answer the question."

"I'd have to know you a lot better before I'd start telling you who I ravish. Kitten poker's always struck me as tacky. I steal, but usually not from people who are around to complain about it. I don't know, what do you want me to say?"

"Well, really I'm just curious as to how well the mountain man's redemption game sticks. Despite my status as a nosy old bag, I don't actually give a flying fuck if you lift someone's dead mother's pearls. I'd care if you were snacking unethically, but I'm told that's not my department. Unless the usual sheriff's been mindslaved or something, which may well be. I'll light you on fire if you eat people and he's not in a position to do anything about it, in case you were wondering."

"I figured," he says. "Why do you think he's been mindslaved, anyway?"

"Mostly because I've been led to distrust vampires' ability to love minus a soul, and vampiric psychic abilities are well-documented. And while it's theoretically possible that a vampire hunter has developed a taste for the toothy side of things, this looks more to me like a newcomer moving in and sweeping the local muscle under his wing."

"Good for the newcomer, then."

"Yes, yes, you continue to be a vampire. But it's unfortunate for me, since the blonde has been doing my work for me and Tiny is by default on the opposing team. Anyway, unless you've got any particularly juicy bits of information you think I'd like, I suppose I'd better be on my way. Want an enchanted somethingorother for your time?"

"Sure," he says. "Tall-bright-'n-brawny is some kind of half-demon, does that count for anything extra?"

"...I'll go for shadows," he decides. "Shadows sounds like fun."

She tosses over a glossy, uneven sphere of obsidian on a golden chain. "There's that for you, and I'm off. Thanks for your cooperation, you've been a lovely audience, five of five."

"Yeah, nice being threatened by you," he says agreeably, catching the sphere and tucking it into a pocket.

Johanna puts her bag back over her shoulder and backs away cheerfully, only putting the can at her side at ten feet away. She then strolls out of the alley resolving to figure out what in God's green hell is going on in this town. And to ask Chris about those magic lessons. She has a feeling she might need some quick-twitch firepower.

"Hello," says Mark, emerging from a shadowed alley.

"Ma-" Ari begins, before a jaw-crackingly enormous yawn rips free from his mouth. "Mark. Hi! What's up?"

"You look fucking exhausted, is that my fault? Also that bitter middle-aged woman from the mattress shop is interrogating stray vampires about us, thought you should know."

"Eh, wouldn't say it's your fault. My fault for going to sleep at a human hour due to you being excessively great, really. Also, that's not good, but... who? All I really remember from the mattress shop is mattresses and kissing."

"Were you not paying any attention to your surroundings? She kept glaring at us for unclear reasons, which I initially assumed were related to me climbing all over you in public, but then just now I overheard someone threatening a vampire and it was her. Neither of them seemed to have a clue who I was, which isn't surprising, but he told her you're a half-demon and that you've been threatening the local vampires to get them to quit eating people, and she gave him a pendant that makes shadows cooperative - or at least that's what she claimed it did - and left. Oh, and her pet theory seems to be that I've hypnotized you somehow with my psychic vampire powers. Do I have psychic vampire powers? I haven't noticed any."

"I pay attention to my surroundings when I'm on patrol. I've got a good reaction time, if a Par'tak had leapt at us from behind a bedframe I'd've had it halfway through the floor before it could do anything. And that's some pretty basic information, really; saying 'half-demon' is like saying 'mammal'. Vampires have been known to have psychic powers, but there's only a handful of recorded cases less than a millennium old. So, possible, but unlikely."

"Good. I would be very upset if all this turned out to be because of psychic vampire powers."

"Aw." That merits a kiss. The kiss turns into a yawn halfway in, but it's the thought that counts. "I don't think they happen unconsciously, anyway. And this whole thing definitely doesn't ring of mindfuckery, Sally can confirm this is totally in character."

"Oh good." Kiss! "So should I find out what the hell's going on with that woman?"

"Yyyyyyeah. If she can casually pay people with shadow artifacts, and she's suspicious of us, and she's confident enough to interrogate stray vampires... Best to keep an eye on her, I think."

"Will do."

"I'd offer to take you along on the rest of patrol, but that's how I got into this mess in the first place. So... kisses and then stalking?"

Mark is unaware of the broader context, but he thinks perhaps the mystery woman is having personal troubles of some kind. Well, she can keep 'em. Now, can he locate her name in a building directory of some kind? Why yes! Yes he can. For whatever good that will do him. This whole century is annoying. On any civilized planet he'd already be reading her bank statements.

Well that's an interesting coincidence. Maybe a coincidence. Probably a coincidence. Possibly a terrible conspiracy of some kind, but that seems unlikely.

The fogginess of her background only goes up if he goes after her through the Internet. There are two hundred search results for her name; the majority seem to regard the anthologist of a collection of German children's stories, who looks absolutely nothing like her, while a few are for a poet of little note with no picture available. There are two relevant-looking results. The first: the website of the British Museum lists her in an administrative position, featuring a reasonably up-to-date photograph of her bearing a polite rictus. There's also an article from 1986 in the newspaper for a small town in the English countryside, showing a young woman with a mohawk being escorted into a police car, covered in ash. She appears to have set an all-night grocer's on fire, claiming it was staffed by demons. The girl's face is slightly indistinct, but bears a strong resemblance to the current Johanna.

Aww. He's starting to like her.

Not knowing his thoughts, Johanna has no comment! Young bemohawked Johanna also has no comment, but may be assumed to hate him on principle, as she does everyone else.

Despite having been on Earth for a little less than one quarter as long as Johanna, Ari has around seventy search results for his name - registries, a graduation date, and a rather anemic page on something called "Facebook". Forty of these results are arrest records. (He has also burned down an all-night grocery, though he looks much more cheerful and much less bemohawked in his soot-stained mugshot.)

"Hi."

"Um. Hi. I'm, uh, calling about those... magic lessons? I could use some. I think."

"Sure," Chris says agreeably. "Did you want to meet up later today?"

"Sounds good. My place? It's got all my stuff."

"Um. Yeah. Sure. Sounds good?"

Chris helpfully provides her address.

Naturally, Chris has no idea about any of this.

Chris lives in a cute little house with her cute little car parked out front and protective runes hidden in the pattern of the interestingly geometric lace curtains in the windows. The overall magical impression, for those with the discernment to see it, is... fortresslike. But in a very subtle way, mostly not apparent until you're already standing on the doorstep.

Johanna packed her glasses today, which not only help her see, but also pierce illusions and allow her natural magical senses to sense more than "this object is glowy and likely magic!" (She doesn't usually wear them. Walking around Sunnydale seeing magic in detail is a good way to end up with a serious headache.) Chris' witchy credentials having been distinctly established by her fortressy wards, Johanna rings the doorbell.

"So. Introduction to chess magic?" she suggests. "If you were a chess piece, which one would you be?"

"Bishop is a possibility. Common metaphors are the book, the arrow, and the throne. If Liesel were here I'd ask her for a second opinion; she's good at sorting people. But your introductory chess spell can be a pawn promotion, if you want; that'll give you a good sense of what your strongest piece is and which of its metaphors suit you. The basic components of chess magic are chess pieces representing metaphors, and spell participants are associated with whichever pieces resonate with them. My natural aspect is rook-as-tower. Protection magic."

Johanna nods, understanding absolutely nothing. "Yes."

"Your interior decorating fu is strong. I bow. What do we do?"

"You come over here and pick a pawn," says Chris, opening a box which proves to be full of chess pieces. "And then sit on the floor - I'll tell you where - and I'll sit across from you and speak Anglo-Saxon for a while. Do you speak Anglo-Saxon?"

"Enough to get by," Johanna says, selecting a pawn for herself. (It's shiny.)

Johanna cooperates. "I may have mentioned that this is not, actually, my first magic lesson? I use Hebrew."

"Sure. Sounds like fun."

"So your primary metaphors seem to be bishop-as-arrow and bishop-as-book," says Chris. "And now you know something about chess magic. It does make more sense once you've seen it, doesn't it?"

"Oh, yeah," says Johanna. "Very, eh, tidy. Metaphysically neat. You can figure out easily what you're going to get out from what you put in. High-input, though, I don't know it'd be the best for a novice."

"The flexibility's my favourite part, I think. As long as you can put the available pieces together into an appropriate story, you can probably get what you're after. And it's not too materials-heavy; the floor helps, having a variety of chess sets also helps, crystals and other mystically significant objects help, but all you actually need is a chess set or, in a pinch, a few pieces of paper with chess pieces drawn on them."

"Oh, I meant energy-wise, I wasn't thinking of- power within the pieces themselves. But that makes sense. I'm used to, you know, eye of newt and all, but there's no reason you couldn't just infuse objects in and of themselves. That's very clever. Kudos."

"Thanks. I'm interested to see what chess magic looks like from a major practitioner who isn't me; I've taught it before, but not very thoroughly, and I didn't really keep in touch."

"Ha. Sorry to disappoint, but major I am not. I have enough juice to clean my teeth and lift an end table off the ground. I've met fifteen-year-olds with more raw power."

Chris shrugs. "I didn't quite mean it in terms of power. More... fluency, if that makes sense. Although power is nice too."

"Fluency... maybe. I'd be more confident if it was a divination-based discipline. With sight, I'm so fluent I might as well be fucking Shakespeare. But I may turn out competent here. It'd be nice, certainly."

"I haven't had a ton of luck getting divination out of chess magic, but it's not exactly my personal strong point. And theoretically it fits both of your primary metaphors. So you might be able to work with that. Which would, in fact, be exactly the kind of thing I'd be interested to see."

"Ooh, I could be interesting! At any rate, it's always nice to get another angle of penetration to layer onto my glasses. Not that anything can properly hide from them anyway at this point, but I do like to cover all my bases."

Chris raises her eyebrows. "Magical glasses?"

Johanna takes them off (with some relief at no longer having to look around the sparkles) and hands them over for inspection. "They may not work so well for you, but I've got the teensiest little drop of divine blood in me that gives me a couple of powers. One of which is that I can glow very prettily-" she demonstrates the very pretty glow - "and another of which is a bit of witch-sight. I have a sixth sense dealie for magic, and the glasses focus that into properly seeing the nature and form of spells. Plus they let me see through illusions. And I can see like a hawk with them on. I've got another pair I call the 'reading glasses,' for tougher cases; those on, I can understand every magical detail of whatever I'm looking at, no matter how well hidden. But they give me migraines for fucking weeks looking at anything worth looking at. So I usually leave them in my bag."

"That is a very pretty glow! Well done." Chris inspects the glasses, peers through them, shakes her head, and hands them back. "I'm useless for any divination that isn't wrapped in chess metaphors, so it's no surprise these don't work for me."

"Huh. I'd've expected them to work decently for anybody with power, but maybe they're more personalized than that. And. Uh. Thank you."

Chris smiles.

"Well, I can probably put all this away for now. Is there anything you'd especially like to accomplish? I'm better at constructing spells when I have a real goal in mind," says Chris, getting up to return the various chess pieces to their box. "It probably makes me less effective as a teacher."

"Well, I, um, maybe we could do, like, a ward? Watchering is pretty high risk. And it's your specialty and all."

"Sure. I can do those. Specifics? Warding what against what? On you directly, or on a focus object you can carry?"

"Hm, I've got- maybe a ward against bullets? I'm good on anything the Sumerians thought needed protected from, but they were notably lax about firearms."

"Sure," Chris says cheerfully. She picks out Johanna's bishop (glass), its twin, their frosted-glass counterparts, and all four rooks from the matching set. "I'm afraid I can't tell you much straightforwardly about my system for placing pieces; it's all by intuition at this point. But for this purpose I'm thinking either square within a square, or alternating octagon. Probably square within a square. For really concrete physical things like this, it's more important to be tightly focused than smoothly integrated."

Johanna tries to follow. So... the shapes... she can see it, kind of. She certainly understands the focus of the square-in-square, doubling and shrinking in. The octagon works too, it's- elegant. It is what it is. "What if you did a four-way symmetrical long cross form? That seems like it'd be sort of... very narrowly focused in. Maybe not robust enough for a ward, though, probably more- a divination, a curse- no, curse would be outward. Maybe the call for a summoning. Or an analytical divination. Yeah?" She sketches out what she's thinking of on a notepad.

Johanna looks sidelong at a bit of asymmetry, but it seems good overall. And it's putting together their strengths very neatly. "Sounds like a plan. I like it."

"In that case, you can help me lay it out," says Chris. She digs up all the matching pawns and starts placing the rooks in a square surrounding the center of the room. With enough squinting and imagination, it's possible to see exactly where in the geometry of the floor every piece should go.

Johanna does rather a lot more squinting than Chris, but lays down her pieces in turn. "I'm sure this floor arrangement is very useful for your purposes, but I think when I grow up and become a big scary witch I'd rather just use chalk. This thing gives me a headache."

Johanna nods. "I've got a wand in my purse that's attuned to me, I haven't used it in years but it should still be a good starting point. D'you want me to take it out now or just do your rookery bit?"

"Rookery bit first, I think. I'm not sure yet how to plan for combining metaphors."

"Well enough."

"Take a seat then, facing me." She indicates the center of the diagram.

She does so. This is a good opportunity to look at Chris, which is an enjoyable activity!

"And that was without any guidance for your bishop-as-arrow. If you wrote up a spoken metaphor to complement my wall with your web, I think we'd really have something."

"Yeah. I- I should, uh, figure out how to ramble about the strength of interwoven threads and breaking through the thousand layers of- can I use Hebrew? Is mixing languages okay?"

"Yeah, absolutely. Knock yourself out."

Johanna sets about thinking very hard about how to poetically Hebrew about threads and arrows and the lattice of foresight and subtle power. Poetry has never been her strong point, but she can try, at least.

Chris fetches the notebook and contemplates how to alter their layout for the change in focus.

It's likely they could continue working comfortably in this manner for quite some time.