"I'm not actually sure that part was widely known, at least until I went around spraying it everywhere, but even then people were mostly just vaguely uncomfortable around me..."

"Thank you. For doing what you could about it."

"You're welcome." Also she punched evil Maitimo in the face, perhaps nonevil Maitimo will find this vicariously satisfying.

Very much so. His actual real first instinct was to teleport him all the way to Revelation and leave him in bits across its cosmos, see if there's a non-Tesseract way to get instances of him to stop existing that way, but then he remembered to be responsible. Still. Good on Elspeth. He sends all of this.

Evil Maitimo also finds it continually frustrating that Elspeth doesn't like him!

"I understand why - you're very likable, and he obviously considered it a very minor flaw that people could do him the courtesy of looking past..."

"It's interesting missing half this conversation. Well, not quite half, I can sort of read a gist..."

"She does this with Edward too, and Addy sometimes, Elspeth gets along very well with mindreaders - she's sort of both parental powers backwards."

"She punched him in the face! It's not quite as good as erasing him from the multiverse but it's something."

"She mentioned that. Came home right when we expected her - I have a witch on staff whose power is knowing the right time for things, and he apparently has more interworld stretch than Alice's prophecies because he was able to finagle a return date. Or I don't know what Jake would have done."

"Yes you do," says Jake, who hasn't taken his eyes off Elspeth since they arrived.

"I assume Loki and Cam already got to all the useful magic-sharing from Ardas? Loki's got most of our songs, sounds like you've got the memory and plausibly the senses..."

"Vampires can't see infrared, but we do see ultraviolet and based on what Elspeth picked up the acuity's comparable, maybe less distance but better peripheral. Hearing's a little better, smell's a lot better, processing of all of the above is better. I actually want to try turning spellbinders unless a working memory solution is right around the corner and it doesn't appeal to any of them on its merits. And yes, there's now illusions singing to the blood berry bushes where previously I had to have actual people doing that all the time - Elspeth came home with a bunch of songs, Loki supplied a couple more, it'll be more useful once I've read through all her spells and can do my own illusions of them."

"Lovely. You might want to try on Cam's mindless bodies whether turning works on Elves, though I'm not sure it'd appeal, the main draw on Marlatia will be the immortality. Or - Cam, if you make a vampire body around a chip -"

"I'd want to try that only under more controlled circumstances. I am told that basement dwellers can move around some, vampires are very good at moving around, and, well, the desire to bite people is much more instinct than reasoned intellectual process."

"Fair enough. If Elves can be vampires I wonder if our command of our bodies helps at all with the drawbacks. I don't think any of me'd try it but I know some people who'd be interested if it's established to work."

"It might! I would prefer to try it on an interested Space fork first, and that only after testing on basement dwellers, but personally I like being a vampire even with the drawbacks. Oh - Elspeth mentioned to the Macalaurë in, what are we calling it, Evil Arda, that we could use a painkiller song. Currently that's a huge bottleneck on turning. Presumably we cannot expect to prevail on Evil Arda for favors like that, but..."

"Luthien's got sleep, does that not work?"

"We kind of really can't sleep."

"Can't be made unconscious by magic? Huh. I will add it to the list of projects - if you don't mind my asking, how many people affected by getting it to you a week sooner, it affects our prioritization..."

"The waiting list isn't astronomical, but we could relax some of the requirements for even getting on the waiting list if our anaesthesia options weren't 'do without, scream for three days' or 'exactly one witch, or Addy can take a shift but that exact one witch still has to be available in case the wrong person brushes against her'. Whereas vampires are quite competent singers and there are lots of vampires. It is still more like hundreds than like millions, for the week sooner question, though."

"Thank you! It's been added."

"Thanks!"

"You should probably give the song a go just in case, too. It works on Valar, and they don't sleep either."

"Sure. It wasn't among the songs Elspeth brought home, but some people miss sleeping." She doesn't seem to be one of these people.

It would be nice if that worked. Turning is no fun.