Matt decides to try to keep watch on the vampire for the night, which amounts to – in the end – him staying up with the vampire for most of the night after calling his parents and having a surprisingly-not-that-long discussion with them.

And the next day is a Thursday, which means Matt really should be in school, but there are only two days left.

So he isn't.

Neither is Sadde.

Knock knock.

Matt gets the door. On seeing it's Sadde, steps out of the way of the door to let her in.

Theo is in the kitchen. Sitting at the counter.

Yaaaayyyy.

"Hi. How're you two?"

"Okay," he says.

Not like he can complain. Not like he can even say he can't complain, because that would be complaining.

"Bit tired, you?"

"Alright. Any more experimental results to report?"

"I don't sleep much," says Theo. "Four hours last night."

"And you didn't go after an abandoned building or some such?"

He shakes his head.

"So what'd you two do all night?"

"Not much."

"He went and recapped French," says Matt. "Because of his new memory."

"Well that's kinda adorable."

Theo smiles a little and shrugs. "I'm not really sure what to do today, though."

"Well, hmm... You apparently can't enter residences, I'm not sure there are any tests left to run that aren't just, like, checking that this or that herb repels you, or testing your regeneration and resistance to pointy wooden things, which I'm not a fan of testing right now."

"Not a fan of testing because it'd be boring, or…?"

"...because I kinda don't wanna cut your hand off and see if it regrows or have to explain to your mom that yeah you were alive but we kinda turned you to dust."

"I wasn't clear that you meant chopping off my hand or staking me, thought you just meant small wounds at various places on me."

"Well, I guess we could test wood in general as small wounds but I don't expect that to work."

"To work to– permanently injure me?"

"Or at least not recover as fast, or whatever."

Nod. "We haven't tested holy water yet, but since the crucifix didn't do anything I'm not sure that will either, and running water doesn't seem to have caused anything yet but maybe I should jump over a river to check."

"Know of a river nearby? You're the local."