"Quick. Detect the Volturi witches, ignore the rank and file. It's an emergency."
He closes his eyes and attempts to pretend that the Volturi are after him for his power and will rip him away from everyone he cares about. Demetri hasn't seen him yet but he needs to make sure he never does, right this second, the longer it takes him the more likely he'll be screwed. Killing Demetri is impossible, he's guarded by Jane. The best way to win is to run, but run in a way that won't get him spotted by the one that could actually chase him forever, he needs to out-track him, c'mon -
Augh, doesn't go, his search doesn't accept 'Volturi' as a valid concept - vampire witches, he can do that, he got vampires and he got witches, those are doable, combine damn it.
Have personal opinions on vampire transition/good for playing with magic with?
It does one after the other, vampires then witches, he can pay attention to what lights up twice, but that's vague and directional and prone to messing up, he can only really detect them all if it does both at once, c'mon it's an emergency work damn you I need you to work.
He tries again - there's a bit of an overlap period, brief but definitely present, that's almost it, yes, come on, don't even lie and say you can't he knows he can multitask -
Two at once, again, push - and they overlap and both stay. Now detecting vampire witches.
He opens his eyes, blinking.
"... Got it. Couldn't get Volturi specifically, but I got vampire witches."
Boop. "Think you can do arbitrary intersections or just the one?"
Understand mate bond/in heavy mourning?
It's tricky and he has to push, it's not as easy as just looking for one, he slips the first time he tries it and just has a brief overlap, but his second try he gets it to go.
"They're more difficult, I slipped a bit and just had a brief overlap instead of both of them going the first time, but I got it on the second."
Boop. "Maybe it'll smooth out if you try more things."
He tries more things.
It's not easy, but he can start consistently not slipping if he keeps pushing at this. ... Clearly he needs to practice at it more, but that's doable, he can practice at it more.
"I can make it stop slipping but it's still difficult to do. I think I'll need to practice at it a lot."
"Yes, magic teacher. Is there an - ideal amount of practice that's best?"
He's thinking specifically of an ideal workout routine, actually. He vaguely recalls that this was a thing.
(Funny, he didn't remember his last name. Or his sister's name. Human memories are so bizarre.)
"Depends on the person. I am getting a one hour twice a day vibe from you, and my vibes maybe expected to be unusually accurate this afternoon."
"I can do one hour twice a day," he says agreeably. "Hell, it'll even be easy, I like my power, it's fun to play with."
"Lovely! Are you going to stay local for the time being?"
"I can stay a little while longer if you think it'll help, I'd rather not do something that might permanently stunt my magic, but my coven's probably going to start missing me soon."
"Oh, I'm sure you can find me easily whenever you start to plateau. No need to alarm your covenmates. The risk is that you'll start to find the existing avenues of exploration boring and you won't do your hour twice a day."
"Oh, you're not going to be able to sort anyone by blood type. Probably wouldn't be able to get there even if I'd caught you earlier."
"Yeah, it's too personality based to ever do anything like that. I see the pattern of logic for getting it to work now, trying to bash it into doing what I want won't work."
"Yes. Although some witches can pivot. They get thing A, and teach it to do thing B, and then stretch all the way to thing C which is like B but not A."
"You might be able to get more precise location information. And you might be able to sort by absence of feelings - you currently get people who have strong opinions about things, but sometimes it might be expedient to have it the other way 'round. And I think you could definitely learn to pick up more detail faster from a cold start."
"Yeah. I think I also want to see if I can talk an 'or' out of the intersecting search function, eventually."
"Possible! Might be easier to pivot from the absence-of-feelings thing. Other conjunctions: not both, exclusive or."