"Will do. Let's see it?"

So Zana gets her books and her notes and her version of the incantations. "A lot of it's in Romanian. I had Cam check it but neither of us is a native speaker."

"It's really inconsiderate of all these ancients to have spoken more than one language, you know? I'm not even good at languages, we have a buddy in Cleveland who does translations for us usually when things are complicated and I can't freeform it in good old American, but I don't think he even has Romanian. Cam, do the honors?"

I'm technically fluent but not native quality. I have machine translation, though it won't catch any idioms from the field of sorcery or whatever you call it. But he goes through and translates and explains where things are ambiguous.

"So d'you think it'll work?"

"Hrmm. I mean... it's a sound enough construction, yeah. But it's got this big honking escape clause in the middle and it doesn't exactly define a moment of true happiness, what if we put her soul back and then let her go and then she listens to the new Killers album?"

"She's like a super unhappy person. But I guess that's fair."

"And I'm not sure how to like, get that part out of the spell. Also like she's probably gonna be traumatized so we can't just leave her locked up and try to cheer her up in prison to see how easy it is to do, we're talking a surprise in seven or eight years after the therapy kicks in, more like."

"Yeah. I dunno how to fix it, though, it's sort of integral to the whole thing. Maybe there's a way of tracking her or something?"

"I do not have much in the way of magic bugs. I guess we could get a nonmagical bug but we're on a budget, our primary source of income is helping ourselves to the petty cash in vampire nests."

"I assume Cam can do a nonmagical tracker."

I can, yes, but that will only help us find her, it won't save anyone who's near her at the moment she hears the new Killers album. If she goes in for the Killers.

"I guess worst case we could just keep her contained indefinitely? That still seems better than being... what she is. But I guess that's a lot of resources."

I mean, I could build something that'd hold her, that wouldn't take me too long, but if there happens to be a better way to ensoul a vampire that seems worth looking into.

"I've heard rumors but nothing really credible."

"I... guess we could try to find the vampire who has a soul now, assuming he's still around? See if he's figured anything out? But I haven't heard anything about other methods, I don't think I can help on that front right now."

"Oh, yeah, if there's one who's already had this done kicking around I super want to talk to him before I try casting it, see how much of a problem he has with it knocking loose. Do you know where he is or anything?"

"Not currently. I read some stuff the Council has on him but it's not like they're super keeping track of his whereabouts. Last known location was in New York City. Which is, like, a city."

"Do you know his name or anything? I might be able to figure something out."

"Given name Liam, assumed name Angelus. Cursed in 1898, looks like."

"Okay, I can try it. I've got a few tracking spell variants for finding vampires and demons and stuff and if Cam makes me a bushel of pinecones I can even use the good one."

Zana double-checks whether she has any other useful info on Angelus (she mostly doesn't, unless descriptions of puppies he's killed are useful), then waits for Soph to make use of her pinecones. 

"I found this one minor deity that's nuts for pine cones," Soph confides, "it's very handy when we're out in the middle of nowhere and it's a piney nowhere, it can't do oomph but it can do search." And she fetches a couple of tools out of the car and sacrifices the bushel of pine cones and an also-Cam-provided atlas of the United States. Only a small scrap of the atlas remains, and it's a little square of Manhattan. "I can do that again with more pine cones when we get there," she says.

"OK! We, uh, have a spaceship. If you don't want to drive that far."

"Keen!"