"Mildly. What has historically fascinated you, then, if a demon from another world planning to cure colony collapse disorder with a discovery made in 2044 doesn't cut it?"

"Damn little. It's a problem."

"It sounds it. Do you know if bees are in fact currently having mysterious problems off the top of your head or do I need to look it up?"

"Off the top of my head, I'm afraid not. I don't pay much attention to bees. Their involvement in my food chain is several steps distant."

"Oh well. I don't think I got your name, by the way."

"Sherlock."

"Is that a typical name here?"

"Not remotely."

"Are you by any chance named after a fictional detective or did your folks just like the sound or what?"

"I am in fact named after a fictional detective. In a sense."

"In a sense?"

"I had an extremely unusual childhood. Among other quirks, I didn't have a name until I took it upon myself to pick one."

"All right. I'm Cam, I don't think I said. If introductions to people who have ordinary names for ordinary reasons isn't too mind-numbing for you."

"I appear to have survived the experience."

"Congratulations. Immortality would be a sad thing to waste. How far is your crypt, anyway?"

"Not much farther." The jug of blood is mostly empty by now; he peers into it, drains the last little bit, then tosses it over a wrought-iron fence into the third graveyard they have passed since leaving Sunnydale High. "And don't get your hopes up. I am running out of ways to avoid becoming fatally bored."

Cam looks mildly askance at the littering but doesn't raise a fuss. "Well, you may be out of luck with escaping it. If the system of the afterlife that I'm familiar with applies, you may have becoming some kind of daeva to look forward to upon dying in a less ambulatory fashion. To the extent of my ability to survey the relevant populations only people who never summoned anything end up in Limbo, but also people from the wrong year never seem to end up in Limbo, so maybe you had something else to look forward to before and now that you've got me on your resume you're going to be a wingy-thing later."

"Oh, joy," he says, with extreme sarcasm.

"Well, I was pretty thrilled over I got over my prejudices about having died and woken up in Hell specifically, but it sounds like you might do better to find a way to spend extended periods of time unconscious if it comes down to it."

"Sounds like far too much effort if you ask me."

"I can't do anything about it. I might've warned you if there had been any way to do that before you, you know, summoned me, so I'm warning you now; make of it what you will."

"Bitter complaints. Bitter complaints are what I am making of it."

"So it would seem." Cam cracks his knuckles. "Maybe I will just become ever more fascinating. Or something."

"There are a lot of graveyards in this town."