"Nnno. I'd say to check out local magic shops, but not all of those sell real magic, and a lot of the time it's mixed in with the fake crap. I don't see any really good ways for you to tell the difference every time."

"I'm tempted to find such a shop and offer to make fifteen of any single item suggested by the proprietor for them, but that has obvious prospects of backfiring."

"Yeah. They could be shady types and suggest, I don't know, the Gem of Amara. Don't make any Gems of Amara. It's supposedly a jewel that confers absolute immortality on any vampire who wears it. Completely useless to you, it'd make some scheming bastard rich, and then there'd be fifteen unkillable vampires in the world."

"Is the jewel itself indestructible?" wonders Cam.

"It hasn't been seen in a couple centuries, and I'm remembering a book I read about it when I was ten. My information's not that specific."

"Okay. So, yeah, not going to do that, it was mostly thinking out loud anyway. The Gem of Amara sounds unfathomably useful to vampires. Has no one bothered to make something equally cool for use by other species?"

"Apparently not. A lot of 'unfathomably useful' stuff like that is old, so old nobody remembers when or how it was made."

"Damn. Is this place designed specifically to be inconvenient?"

"Yes," he says dryly. "The whole world exists just to piss you off."

"That explains everything. I am currently tempted to go with the strategy 'anonymously go around doing things until caught, wing it on the assumption that nobody knows anything about me even if I don't know anything about them either'."

"Could work. Could go horribly wrong somehow. Probably won't go that horribly wrong."

"Can I count on you and Rayne to dismiss me if I ask or a certain date passes, if I tell you how and also give you instructions to summon and then promptly dismiss a fairy apiece so you can both definitely be summoners?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Okay. Getting rid of me's not hard. You just focus on wanting to for about a minute. Nothing arduous or costly that it's extra inconvenient to have both of you need to try. And here is a circle you can use to get a random fairy, who you dismiss the same way. Optionally after having a brief chat with them, but please don't try getting them to clean your apartment. Or do anything else. Just summon and dismiss." Cam makes a sheet of paper with an appropriate circle drawn on it.

"All right." He takes the paper.

"You want to come along while I fix the ozone layer? This is likely to be boring except for the part where it involves being in a spaceship. I could also drop you off at home on the way."

"Well - was there also something we were going to talk about while we're not on the same continent as Rayne and he probably can't hear us?"

"Oh, yes, it had slipped my mind, I get very excited about having things to do. But you could be something to do if you like."

"I most definitely like."

Kisses?

Most definitely kisses.

And wing-wrapping, does Ripper also approve of that?

Hell yes he does! It's so cuddly!