"That's great for you, but like, you're the Slayer, I'm still not telling you where I live," says Zeke.

"Okay. So I will hope they don't urgently come in swarms, I guess."

"Good luck," offers Miles.

"Thanks." She seems to be free of shards now. "Later." And off she goes.

So they steal some cash from the mattress shop and also a mattress because why not, right, and maybe they get a little distracted testing mattresses, it's important to be thorough, but then they go back to Zeke's place and Miles rereads the chapter and Zeke gets bored and goes to the Bronze and doesn't hunt because he's full anyway but does kiss some cute people in alleys and then he goes home and distracts Miles some more and they sleep through the day and in the evening after the sun sets they're back at the butcher's shop.

Bella's there, pacing, looking pretty recovered from her glassy misadventure. "Nest," she says.

"Talk tactics to me," says Miles.

"Followed one of 'em, under an orange grove a drive from here there's some holes in the ground. I didn't jump in because apparently all the ways known to kill the things involve stuff I can't get. I don't know how many there are but if you cover me I can kill whoever's controlling 'em."

"I'm not totally sure I shouldn't just be running a solo infiltration and assassination, if all this person has on their side is lots of the big lumbering things that wipe the floor with you in a fair fight but go down to nerve disruptors," he says. "At least assuming that this person would themselves also go down to a nerve disruptor. I can cooperate with you if that's what you think would be most effective, but it sounds... awkward."

"I don't know if it's a human, a demon, or what," she says. "No idea if it goes down to nerve disruptors or not. Almost certainly knows magic besides 'summon lumbering things'."

"So you're the expert in local phenomena and I'm the expert in military operations and the only available weapon that works on lumbering statue people. That doesn't point to an obvious answer for who should be commanding this mission."

"Is this the sort of problem I solve by suggesting that you are a mercenary and I'm hiring you for your pick of the perp's loot or what?"

"Normally my employer doesn't take field command. Normally I'm also a genius at field command. I'm still pretty good, I haven't lost every relevant skill, but there's definitely an edge I'm missing. I am interested in discovering how to maximize our combined effectiveness and I genuinely don't know whether that looks like me in command, you in command, or establishing no firm structure and hoping for the best." Pause. "Full disclosure, even when my social skills aren't broken I have a huge insubordination problem."

"I'm not unwilling in principle to send you down a hole alone," she says, "but if you die and your nerve disruptor's down there with you I have to jump in blind to get it to finish the job."

"And does that sound better or worse than coming along and hiding behind me while I disintegrate untold numbers of screaming statues, then maybe or maybe not popping out to contribute to the murder of their creator?"

"...Is there some trick to hiding behind you that eludes me?"

"And we can now tick 'short jokes' off the list," Miles sighs.

"Sorry, that was uncalled for. Anyway, I can hang back and be ready to pick the thing up if you drop. I don't feel a strong need to give orders, just information if I discern information, and I consider 'duck' valid advice from most sources, including from anybody who's shooting things on my behalf, will that do?"

"Probably good enough to be going on with. God I miss my soul so much."

"Do you tolerate people who quip when they're adrenaliney better when you have a soul? Car's this way," she adds, waving him over.

"Do you have, like, a list, so I could avoid them better, or what?" She hops in the driver's seat.

"You'll have to be more specific, we're lousy with hells around here."

He laughs. "No, sorry, it's just - I was going to say, 'I can't imagine why you would take me prisoner and hold me in a room with the lights on all the time', and then it finally occurred to me that - you remember I told you about those prisoners who were being psychologically tortured - I spent six weeks among them before I managed to free them, undercover as a fellow prisoner, and for some reason I'd been going around all this time since then thinking that since I'd only been pretending, it obviously didn't count as real psychological torture in my case, and I have now recognized what utter bullshit that whole line of reasoning was."