"There's five magic families and the heads of them have magic and when they die somebody else in the family with the family personality turns up with it," explains Aleko. "Kiri's the prime of the Ardelays, so she does fire and spooky mind stuff."

"Huh. Suzanna'd like her, then, fire and spooky mind stuff are her specialty."

"If this is the same person as your murder friend, Kiri would not like her. Kiri does not approve of murder."

"Aw. Zanna wouldn't really care, but that's a shame."

"It's a shame that my sister doesn't approve of murder?"

"...well, when you put it that way..."

"Ah-huh. Why do you even have a murder friend?"

"Well, she was my friend before she killed people too. Then she got turned into a vampire, and, to be honest, she hadn't really changed that much except that she had a reason to kill people now. Didn't really see a reason to ditch my oldest friend over a couple of humans."

"People get turned into murder friends. I mean, into vampires. That's disturbing."

"Eh. You get used to it."

"Or you get eaten, apparently. Your world sucks. I wonder if I can get Kiri out of the library and in here somehow so she can go, I don't know, Kiri at it. Probably not. She can't read me through a wall and she'd have to burn holes in the house to get out while the door's doing the thing."

"Well, while fire and mind shit would be a decent starter on dealing with my world, you'll forgive me if I don't let in someone whose first action would probably be to kill my best friend."

"Kiri doesn't approve of murder! She would want there to be less murder. Including of your murder friend, if she can have it both ways. Kiri hasn't ever killed anybody. But I don't think I can get her in here in the first place."

"Pretty confident you couldn't get Zanna to promise an alien not to kill anyone. Well, she'd promise, but she'd absolutely refuse to give a shit. And it sounds like your sister wouldn't like that. So I'm not too put out about not getting to meet her."

"She's going to be annoyed when she finds out that this place showed up and didn't let her in."

"Maybe Milliways didn't let her in because she would've wanted to take the fight to the forces of darkness and it disapproves. Or because it wanted to give me a nice quiet drink and a talk with a confusing doppelganger instead of forcing me to handle a pyromaniac alien crusader."

"I'm personally confusing, or the part where we look the same is confusing?"

"The doppelgangerness is confusing. You're fairly vanilla."

"It's especially strange given you're not even a human."

"I mean, most demons do kind of specialize in looking like humans. Makes hunting easier, keeps them from setting you on fire with lemons."

"If I lived someplace where lemon-vulnerable things wanted to attack me I would probably just keep candied lemon rind in my pocket all the time."

"If you wanted to keep the weakness of every obscure demon in your pocket, your pants would weigh more than you did."

"Oh. Too many kinds?"

"Literally millions. Most aren't going to eat you, but there are still thousands and thousands of different kinds that will."

"Ugh."