A demon appears promptly. It waves.

The very intense twelve-year-old in front of it holds up a paper that says VAMPIRES ARE LISTENING. DON'T MAKE SOUNDS. You can use ASL to communicate things if you know it.

The demon replies in ASL: I did even before you summoned me, I get all the languages you know. Vampires? Is this a LARP? You probably shouldn't summon demons for LARPs.

She stares at him in disbelief for a second, then judges him sincere.

If you don't even have vampires in whatever demon dimension you come from then that's going to take some explaining. Skip the suspension of disbelief for now and assume that there are five normal adults keeping me locked in this house, then. They are not nice people and if they hear you then bad stuff happens.

Gotcha. I'll keep quiet.

Cool of you. I don't know what the limits of the making things thing is. If you could make a cell phone with unlimited texting then that would probably be a help in getting out of this totally normal abusive household that definitely doesn't torture people to death twice a week. I don't have a lot to trade but I know magic, knowing about magic is useful?

I can't get you on a cell network but it's possible even a phone with no credentials can make 911 calls?

Possibly. Of course then the police will come with guns, and guns don't work so well on vampires, so maybe they call the force and get us out, or maybe they don't and a bunch of police officers die and we move out of the area before anyone's able to follow up.

Who were you otherwise planning to call?

I have some vaguely reasonable cousins who aren't dead yet. And I know the number of one of the priests at my old parish who I think maybe they didn't get. Figured I could text one and get them to figure out how to contact the Council of Watchers, since it's kind of their business.

Okay. I'm happy to try the cell phone idea just in case it works, but I think it won't. Ex hypothesi how hard would vampires make it for me to just break you out of here?

This sounds like the sort of plan that's going to result in me looking back in ten years going "man, I really shouldn't have unbound that demon to kill the vampires so that it could bring about hell on earth, have I learned nothing from the story of the old lady who swallowed the fly".

I didn't say snap my binding, I don't want to kill anybody, you could let me tie them up or something!

Oh. I don't know who wins in a fight between four random vampires and one superpowered ex-slayer vampire and one random full demon with bindings on, but given my aunt's track record I'm betting she just beheads you.

My head, uh, doesn't come off? That's how demons work.

Lotta headless demons around these parts, man.

Okay, I'm trying not to tell you that you're delusional, but it's really hard to discuss the tactics of removing you from your abusive household when we have this degree of difference in opinion.

I agree that your total ignorance of basic supernatural information is tactically frustrating.

I know things! I can teach a university level course in summoning! I know about weird medical fairy tricks and how to get the most out of angel range limits and I'm not even one of those! I know parlor tricks, for crying out loud! But vampires who can behead me aren't a thing.

What's a medical fairy?

They're way less common than medical angels but they can be useful in restraining patients who need to be awake, and for some surgeries and stopping bleeding without sealing off whatever the wound is, and specialist applications like that.

This seems incompatible with any description of medical practice in her world.

Maybe you're from some kind of weird cut-off demon dimension that can't be connected to this one through normal dimensional portals. Which I guess makes it weird that I was able to summon you, but maybe nobody on this side knew the specific ritual that works for you guys.

She stops signing to very very quietly page through one of her books.

I've been summoned before. I put up apartment buildings and stuff, he says, but if she's not looking at him there's not so much he can do about that.

She looks up when she sees motion. She bites her lip.

Nobody asks demons to put up apartment buildings, although this seems like the sort of objection that isn't going to get us anywhere.

I have also done firefighting, translation, food...

I feel like these are things that most people can accomplish without demons.

We're faster.

You're also super dangerous and evil and most people don't know you exist, particularly in the developed world? - this isn't getting us anywhere. What if you tell me exactly what you think is going on here, and I tell you exactly what I think is going on here, and then we see if there's some strategy that stands a fair chance of working no matter which thing is actually going on?

People have known demons exist for about a hundred fifty years. It was simultaneously revealed all over Earth, it was a big deal.

A hundred and fifty years ago was like.... 1858? I really feel like this did not happen in 1858.

Where I'm from it's 2159.

Welcome to 2008, dude.

Even if I time traveled you should have had Revelation like last year!

...so not to torpedo my own credibility but I'm not like entirely sure about what all happened last year, it's like January and they sort of kidnapped me like eleven months ago. But I feel like the vampires would've said something.

Also I feel like it's a basic rule of kidnapping people that you don't leave summoning textbooks lying around but perhaps this is one of their rare errors.

Oh it's mostly not! It's a medieval Latin manuscript that's mostly about relations between different dimensions. My aunt's Latin is too bad to read the whole thing, she didn't know it had any spells in it. They're mostly pretty good at not letting me have magic stuff unsupervised.

There's other magic stuff?

Lots of magic stuff! Of course I don't have a lot of practice with it and I'd mostly need more materials to do anything useful. That's why this spell was so promising, I could do it without rare incense or mandrake root or whatever.

I could... make you incense? I don't know about mandrake root, that sounds like a suspiciously magical plant.

I don't have any real spellbooks here, and I wouldn't want to cast anything powerful from memory, I don't think. 

A sensible precaution.

Anyway, even if vampires are real, I don't think they can decapitate me, because I'm indestructible. I would not bet my life on being immune to whatever you do with incense and mandrake root, but decapitation I no-sell.

Hmm. Well, assuming this is accurate and you're not going to be the latest in a long line of demons who thought they could take on a slayer and live, that does give us more options. I dunno how many more options but I'm sure it gives us several.

I could also leave the house, if there's a wall I can quietly destroy and replace, and go looking for help if you know where to find it?

This is a really internal room, I'm not allowed in the ones that border the outside unsupervised. And I'm having trouble imagining you inconspicuously destroying a wall, especially with the cameras everywhere.

Okay, yes, if there's cameras everywhere I am much impaired in my unobtrusiveness.

Yeah. I think I taped over all the ones in this room before I summoned you, but I don't know how to inconspicuously block them in the areas that they keep lighted. 

Cam nods. He sighs. I can get you a phone and you can try it just in case but maybe you should like... name a person who would own a phone, so I can duplicate theirs exactly and hope it can fool the network.

Oooh, maybe, can you get me a copy of -

And with absolutely no warning, the door opens.

Imrainai takes in the room.

"I knew I shouldn't have let you read those," sighs Imrainai. "You're just getting so smart!"

Cam doesn't immediately take hostile action but, to inappropriately borrow D&D parlance, readies an action. He scans his binding for loopholes; his Latin is a little better than his summoner's.

"...I thought I would get in my teenage rebellion a couple years early," says Zana, weakly.

Imrainai nods solemnly. 

"Put the demon back and we can discuss possible appropriate parental responses."

"...so I'm gonna say no? Because I'm a rebel."

Cam has only read half of this Latin but he has surreptitiously tested something up his sleeve pant leg and thinks he can tie up the ?vampire? if she makes any sudden abusive parent moves.

She nods again. "All right! We can do this the hard way, then."

Imrainai closes the door on them. The door locks, and then there's the sound of a bar closing across it.

- so I think we might've blown 'inconspicuous'.

Yep. I think this binding will let me try the tying her up option if she tries anything else.

Guess that's something. I think if we don't break out she comes back with a handgun and an axe and backup.

I also think I can make you a bulletproof vest? Or is she going to shoot me, because I don't care.

Oh she's totally going to shoot you! And then try to behead you, and then maybe try magic if you haven't by that time demonstrated an ability to rip her to shreds. She's waiting until I grow up to kill me.

How confident are you that she won't hurt you? What does she need to be able to do to perform magic? Do drugs that work on humans work on vampires?

She's totally going to hurt me it just won't be fatal, ability to say words and probably access to spell materials, usually at all yes but inconsistently because they're dead and their blood doesn't flow.

I think I can fill her mouth with caramel to prevent words but the binding looks mostly pretty good on the violence-per-se front so I'm not sure I can finesse drugs unless you want to make a deal about it, I'll take, like, what do you have, title of a book you like, it has to be something but it doesn't have to be substantial.

Zana thinks very hard about which action doesn't lead to her being responsible for demons somehow breaking loose and killing a ton of people.

"I know it's still in there, Zana, last chance!"

"It takes a minute to do the dismissal!"

- if - if I give you the title of a book do you think you can knock all five of them out somehow?

I can try drugs that would do it for humans.

I guess that's -

Imrainai fires on Cam through the door instead of opening it. 

" - so I really liked The Tale of Despereaux when I was eight," she says, a little desperately.

He falls over; for one and a half seconds he has a light purple bruise. Cam can't obliterate the door under this amateurishly conducted deal, but he can do a camera in the hallway, his computer to see the feed, and then the drugs. Distributed to account for the not so much circulation thing if that's real.

"Oh, fuck," mutters Imrainai, who has about a second to notice that something is wrong with her system before she collapses.

" - so I guess you are bulletproof! That's - cool?"

I did tell you, Cam signs. I got her, I don't know how long this lasts if she's a vampire. He turns the computer display in Suzanna's direction.

Cool. Cool. We can just - um, if I break down the door now the others aren't going to be far behind so you should probably -

An axe splits through the door, indicating that the other vampires are going to preempt her on that. The display shows two of them outside.

Drugs!!!

Vampires predictably collapse. There do not seem to be any more around.

" - so I'm gonna... you think you can tie them up, you said?"

Yes. Are they super-strong or anything?

"Yeah. I dunno how to quantify it off the top of my head, but stronger than a human. And Imrainai's stronger than a normal vampire. Uh, the one with the purple hair."

Like 'tear down a suspension bridge' strong or just 'win the Olympics" strong? Because I still haven't actually seen anyone be definitely a vampire and I would sort of like them to be able to get help from, like, nurses, if I get unexpectedly sent home, but on the other hand if they can bust rope like tissue paper it seems irresponsible given my state of uncertainty to trust them to that.

"Just win the Olympics stuff. The normal ones, anyway. Imrainai's stronger than nonmagically humanly possible but she doesn't do tissue-paper ropes. Long as they're good ropes."

They can be very good and numerous ropes and still go down to a steak knife, which is what I'm going for here. Good and copious ropes appear.

"Cool."

She takes a desk lamp to the injured door until the gap is big enough for her to climb through. She unbars it from the other side and lets Cam into the rest of the complex.

Cam follows her. He is limited in his ability to talk to her from this position but fortunately has nothing urgent to say.

She drags the tied-up vampires out of the hallway and back into her room.

"We, uh, we should at some point go down to the cellar and let out whoever else they have down there. Probably."

They have more people?

"Yeah. I didn't mention it 'cause getting to the cellar would've been harder if we weren't gonna take out the vampires. I'd've come back for them. Uh - how squeamish are you about recreated medieval torture devices?"

I... went to demon medical school?

"...OK. I'm gonna head down and if you need to duck out to barf then that's cool."

Okay.

The cellar is down a hallway and some stairs and a through a heavy metal door with a key code that Zana has collected and memorized. There are six bodies in it. Three of them are thoroughly mutilated corpses, but three of them appear to be alive - two young adults who are tied to beds and who appear to have passed out from blood loss, plus a little kid who's hanging from the wall by a pair of nails in his hands.

Please let me fix that, I need freer rein to fix that.

"...I'll give you another book title if you fix it," says Zana, quietly.

The nails detach from the wall and the kid falls unconcisous into Cam's arms. Something appears over Cam's head that covers his eyes; it might be a microscope because he looks closely at the nail wounds through it and fills them in. He checks the kid over for other injuries, then moves on to the blood loss cases and blood types them with more spontaneously appearing equipment and tops them off with blood and fixes up whatever else they have going on. Then he checks to make sure the dead people are for-sure dead.

The dead people are super dead. 

"The nuns aren't here," says Zana, staring uncomfortably at the walls. "There are two of them who're still alive, they must be locked in their rooms. We should - find them and make sure the last two vampires haven't done anything and then ask the nuns what they want to do and then call the police. And get gone before the police show up. I guess."

Nuns?? signs Cam as soon as his hands are free. Okay, lead the way.

"Yeah," says Zana, leading them back up. "Imrainai was Catholic, before the whole - before she died? So her evil tends towards desecration of the sacred even more than it does for other vampires. This place used to be a convent before she took it over. 'S why almost nobody visits. They ate most of the former inhabitants but they kept a couple of them for... reasons."

Gotcha.

"Mhmm. ...uh, so books, the Goosebumps books are silly but I guess I kind of like them anyway? Imrainai used to read them to us when we were really little. Before stuff happened. And tell us which parts of them were fake and which parts were like reality, and what to do if you ever ran into a zombie for real. And stuff."

Thanks.

"Feel like I'm getting the better end of these deals so far, honestly."

The nuns are, in fact, in their room. Zana closes herself in the room with them and comes back in a couple minutes to report.

"They don't know where the last two vampires are. They'd prefer to stake the ones we have, but they're willing to let us load them into one of the cars and take them before they call the police, if we really want to. ...I, uh, I don't really know how to drive. Because I'm twelve."

I can drive.

"OK. We should... probably go back to Sunnydale, there're still a couple useful people there she didn't kill. It's in California and we're in Iowa. We can load them into Imrainai's car, I guess."

It's going to be crowded if she doesn't have a minivan.

"Oh she kidnaps people all the time, she totally has a minivan. Turnabout's fair play or something."

All right then. I can't readily carry people but would be happy to make you a handcart. Do you want me to hide or remove the wings?

"That would make things much less weird if we get pulled over. Or have to stay at a motel. Or interact with society in any way."

I figured. I'll hide them for now, it involves less blood. He adds a shirt and long leather coat to his ensemble.

"Nice. Uh, I'm Zana, by the way. I'll give you a third book title for a handcart."

I'm - He spells: Cam. He makes a handcart.

"Cool. Cam. I hope you know you've given me unrealistic standards for any and all other demons I might ever have to summon."

She wheels the vampires to the minivan. They're still unconscious and it's still dark, so this takes more effort than ingenuity. She retrieves the keys from Imrainai's pocket, goes back to toss some really old books and some notebooks and some clothes and some snacks and the money on top of the fridge and her toothbrush and the Wii and Imrainai's laptop in a suitcase, and then she's packed.

You should really be more careful if you have to summon more. I can give you a circle that will just get you me under some more sensible set of bindings, he offers.

"I guess that would be good to have. And I'm not planning to summon more! Summoning demons is really dangerous and I'm a careful person! Up until the point where my aunt turns into a murderous demon and locks me in a convent and starts sacrificing babies to dark powers, I guess then I get less careful."

Yes, that makes sense. We're driving these people all the way to California from Iowa? I sure hope vampires don't need bathroom breaks.

"Not unless they eat stuff."

I sure hope they don't need to eat stuff, then. Does drinking blood count as eating stuff?

"Nah, that's this whole mystical thing, it gets absorbed. They don't need to eat people food but Imrainai keeps doing it anyway."

Do you suppose she'll confirm that when she wakes up? Since I still haven't seen any magic I didn't do myself, and all.

"Hmm. Well she did try to shoot you, so she can't go too hard on me being totally delusional? But she will probably go as hard on me being delusional as she thinks she can get away with. I guess she can't go out in sunlight without burning up, that's a thing."

Garlic? Crosses? Running water? Compulsively counting spilled rice?

"Oh, right, crosses. One minute rundown on vampires: you kill them with fire, wooden stakes through the heart, beheading, or sunlight. Crosses and holy water and certain Catholic relic thingies burn them. Garlic flowers repel them but the bulbs are useless, and honestly the flowers don't pack very much punch anyway. They can't enter houses without being invited in, but once you invite them in they can't be uninvited without this whole disinvitation spell thing. They don't need to breathe or eat. They do need to sleep. They make more vampires by drinking someone's blood and making someone drink their blood before they die. And they're evil soulless versions of the people they used to be - like, you lose your soul and you get a demon in its place, and the demon likes cruelty and mayhem and generally being villainous. I'd show you the cross thing but I don't have any on hand anymore, they got rid of them all."

I continue to be a demon.

"I don't super know what's up with you. I don't think all demons are evil, Imrainai knew some who were OK before she died. But vampires are really terrible. They're not all as terrible as Imrainai is, but they're not... good."

I mean, I don't think my particular Hell normally has contact with this Earth, I would have heard about it. My kind of demon vary like humans, pretty much.

"Huh. ...anyway, I think we should go to Sunnydale as soon as we can, and not take extra vampire potty breaks, because I really don't want to deal with them getting loose and killing anyone. If you wanna see the cross thing we can duck into a Christian bookstore in Omaha or something."

When I say I'm a demon I mean I can make a cross, unless it has to be manufactured by a true believer or something.

"Ohhhh. Duh. OK. Yeah, I'll give you a fourth book title for a cross? And I think I still owe you number three."

I'm not super itching for the title, and if you did happen to not pay up the gag is the first thing to break down. But you might not want to trust me on that. Anyway, accepted. He makes a little gold cross.

Zana touches the cross to Imrainai's forehead, on the grounds that she doesn't know about the other vampires, but the real Imrainai would totally take an eensy little burn to prove the existence of magic to people. The site of contact starts smoking.

Yikes. Okay.

"One hundred percent certified no-longer-free-range evil. Annnd - man, I should be giving you good books. The best ones for learning about vampires are the slayer handbook, technically titled Vampyre, with a Y, and Lyman's A Primer on Unnatural Creatures."

Cool. I'll stick it on my computer and have it do text to speech audiobook while we travel, shall I?

"Yeah."

Cam construes this as summoner permission and does the thing.

Some hours past morning, a very unhappy vampire wakes up under a pile of blankets.

"...Zana? I've told you that you're very smart, right?"

"Many times."

Hmmm. They clearly haven't been handed over to the police or the council, and they haven't been killed, which means that Zana isn't planning to kill her. She peeks out from under her blanket and observes that the person driving the car looks like probably the demon that Zana summoned earlier.

"Zana, I'm sorry, I was really worried about you and I didn't know what else to do to get rid of the demon before it could hurt you. The last time you summoned something it nearly killed you."

Cam sticks his computer in the cupholder where Suzanna and Imrainai can both see the display. I can't sign while I'm driving safely so this is how I'm talking now, he says, and the computer bleeps.

"That's good? It would be really bad if you were signing and we crashed and Zana died. Very depressing ending to this whole adventure."

I agree.

"Anyone want to fill me in on where we're going, or is it very important that I be kept in suspense?"

She suggested Sunnydale, California.

"Ah. Naturally." 

Zana isn't really giving her anything, here. She could try pretending to be a responsible caregiver, but that seems unlikely to work, given what Zana's probably informed him of thus far. She's really very smart. Maybe she can go for honest villain, that's more useful than dishonest villain.

"So, who are we being kidnapped by, exactly?"

My name's Cam.

"Not a very demonic name, but I suppose we all have our faults."

I can't say I expect vampires to be named Imrainai.

"Well, if you pick a name people have heard of, you invite comparisons. If you don't, then if you succeed, you get to be the person people are compared to, and there's never any confusion about who they mean."

I see.

"Are you going to tell me what you want, Zana?"

"Pass."

"Well I don't know how you expect me to cooperate if I don't know what I'm supposed to be cooperating with."

Easy. You continue to be tied up. When you want some blood, you let me know and I can appear it in your stomach, or I guess in your mouth if you relish the culinary experience. I'll take requests if you prefer A-negative virgins or something.

"I suppose there exist less considerate living situations."

I do try!

She sighs. "I am sorry for what you've had to deal with, Zana. I only ever did any of it because I cared about you."

"You know that doesn't add up, like, at all, right?"

"All right, admittedly, some of the ritual sacrifices were for me and not for you, but on the whole? Our entire living situation, Zana, all because I wanted you to become the most powerful version of yourself you possibly could."

"I'm sure on some planets that's considered thoughtful."

She sighs again, sounding very much like a parent near her wit's end whose rebellious teenager simply will not see reason.

She takes a nap. At least seeing Sunnydale again should be fun.

Eventually her minions wake up and offer their own commentary on the situation. Both of them seem kind of confused about the situation, since you don't normally kidnap vampires, you stake them. Eventually they give up on trying to figure out what's happening and end up playing twenty questions with each other, occasionally noting that they are incredibly bored.

Cam listens to vampire books on tape, either on headphones or as ambient background as the other car occupants prefer.

One of the minions thinks it's annoying. Zana likes listening to it and also thinks that annoying the evil vampires is a just punishment for their crimes.

It doesn't seem rehabilitative, comments Cam, or likely to have a strong deterrent effect. You can have headphones too if you want.

"You're annoyingly non-evil. Headphones please."

He gets her headphones and they listen to Vampyre. Would the vampyres in the back like music or anything?

"That sounds good. Maybe orchestral film scores or something."

Cam compiles some orchestral film scores and puts headphones in her ears. Minions?

The minions want to know if he could make a TV or something so they can watch all the action movies Imrainai never lets them pick.

Sure, he can do that. They get headphones too and a TV mounted to the back of the driver's seat.

The minions figure this is probably about as good as it gets when you're in the middle of being kidnapped.

"Do you need to, like, sleep at any point?" Zana asks him, eventually.

Nope, I can keep going with coffee forever and usually do.

"Huh. Whatever works, then."

She sleeps in the car and eats the snacks she grabbed and notes whenever she needs a break to pee. They make it to Sunnydale in a little more than a day.

"So I think we're best off heading to St. Mary's, on the south end of town. I dunno if Father Alex is still there, but I'm sure that someone who knows what's what is, they can't have all forgotten in the last couple years."

"Oh, not a church, I hate churches. I should've burned that one down before I left."

We all have regrets, remarks Cam blandly. He seeks St. Mary's.

St. Mary's is a brick building with a cemetery and an attached school that closed down years ago for lack of funds. Evening mass has just ended, and the parking lot is mostly but not entirely empty. A few people are still talking outside.

Cam parks. I'm not sure what I'd add to a conversation with a priest, but I'll come if you want, he tells Suzanna.

"He probably doesn't know ASL. Guard the captives, I guess."

Yes summoner, Cam says, saluting.

She heads off in the direction of the church. She comes back several minutes later with a young priest and a very old woman.

"Hello, Karen," says the old woman, sternly, when Zana opens the door. "I understand that you've made some poor decisions."

"You know, I'm fine being kidnapped, but I'm really not here to be lectured about the error of my ways."

"I've definitely seen the error of my ways," puts in one of the minions.

"The basement's equipped to hold vampires, if you wanna help us get them there," says Zana.

Cam stuck the handcart in the trunk. He goes and gets that.

"I can just walk? That seems significantly less humiliating."

I am under enough binding to have some worries about my reaction time if you decide not to just walk. Would you like to be draped in a sheet so no one knows you aren't a life sized sculpture?

"You know, as considerate as that is, I think I'll pass."

Vampires enter the church in handcarts.

Vampires are annoyed, but neglect to try anything before being locked in the basement, which has at some point been remodeled to contain a bunch of vaguely concerning-looking little jail cells.

That is indeed concerning-looking. What happens with imprisoned vampires down here?

"Nothing, not lately," replies the priest. "When we had more resources we used to keep them down here to talk to them, attempt to sort out which ones could be helped and which ones were beyond us. Unfortunately many of the larger facilities have been burnt down in the recent past. Several of them by Karen and her followers."

If Zana wants to let me I can rebuild 'em for you.

"We would certainly appreciate help. Ah, I don't believe that we've been introduced?"

I'm Cam. I can make things.

"I see. Well, thank you for bringing them back, anyway. Perhaps we should discuss our next priorities upstairs, out of vampire earshot."

Cam obligingly tromps upstairs.

Zana follows the old lady and the priest back up to the parish office, once she's satisfied that the vampires are secure.

"So I'd love to give an account of the last year," she says, before anyone can ask her why exactly she kidnapped Imrainai instead of staking her, "because it sucked in very interesting ways, but I kind of have some stuff to take care of first. I know Imrainai's - Karen's not one of the chiller vampires, and I don't really think we have the resources to rehabilitate her the old fashioned way, if that's even possible in the first place. And I know that we've had zero luck with non-lethally exorcising vampires in the past. But I've been doing research, and I'm pretty sure there's a way to get vampire souls back. It's just not, like, recorded anywhere that I can find? So I'm going to have to do more research, because I feel like if we're going to fix her we're gonna have to do it the so-old-fashioned-it's-been-lost-to-history way."

Name some books, Cam suggests. Title and author or a comparable amount of information.

" - oh right, we can get - can you get back copies of books that don't exist anymore?"

Cam nods.

"Can you get me, like, the card catalog for the St. Ignatius parish library before Imrainai burned it down?"

Need a token exchange.

"I can... give you a list of books for learning about dimensional transport?"

That's better than token, sure. Where do you want the catalog?

"Put it in the school, nobody's using it! I'll come back with a short list and a long list of books when I've gone through it, OK?"

Where in the school?

"I can show you!" she says, before dashing off. "Have I mentioned that you are my favorite person who is not currently dead? Because you are."

I mean, that sort of depends on your definition of dead.

"I feel like Imrainai super doesn't count right now. Or like, if she did she would no longer be my favorite? Maybe I'll forgive her for the continuous torture stuff after I'm done with this and can think about stuff and see what a vampire with a soul even is."

Oh, no, I mean I might count as dead.

"Oh. OK, well, I definitely want a summary of that after I figure out how to fix Imrainai. This room is good for the card catalog."

Card catalog!

Zana is so pleased. 

She tears into the card catalog and starts writing down two lists of books, one for books that might get her closer to re-ensouling Imrainai and one for books on dimensional transport. She hands both of them to Cam after a while of looking.

Thanks! I'll make you these books for something. You could also just make a deal for my long term assistance if this is getting tedious, which I have hesitated to suggest in case you think I'm evilly attempting to get more leeway.

"This seems plausible. I guess I don't know that you're not an evil serial killer who's taking out other serial killers for trust points and who is just really good at acting like crucified kids bother him."

Yeah. We can keep doing piecemeal for book titles - or songs or strands of your hair or whatever - if you want.

"Sounds good. I'm still concerned about your ignorance of how things work. All of these books for an encyclopedia of demons rec?"

Cam nods again and makes the books.

She hands him a piece of paper with an encyclopedia rec on it.

It's going to take her a while to figure out where the precise information she needs is, and longer to piece together the steps she needs to take to actually ensoul Imrainai. She gets her stuff from the car and settles in to research stuff for pretty much as long as it takes. Occasionally she asks Cam to make something else for her - another series of old books, a particular decoding codex, a Romanian to English dictionary.

The parish secretary brings them food and occasionally expresses that perhaps they should go home with someone at some point.

You know what, Cam says, I should look myself up. I might exist in this world at this time, and if I do I have a mom who is the sort of person who adopts random kids - I don't know about her current husband, though.

"You mean, like, a different you that isn't you? Is that a thing that happens?"

This is an Earth and I can tell you spell it 'color' so I assume you had Noah Webster, so why not look for me?

"I guess that makes sense, if you think you're in like an alternate timeline and the split was later than - wait, are you like a dead human?"

Yes.

"Huh. OK, look you up, then. Do you need a thing to be allowed?"

I could just use the internet if there's a computer around.

She passes Imrainai's laptop to him and gets back to reading.

Cam looks up public school teachers in Jacksonville and police officers in Forks, Washington.

My parents both exist! No sign of me, but I'd be unlikely to take a public-sector job by default, I suppose.

"Neat. D'you know Romanian? I think I want someone else to check this decoded incantation for me and see that it at least doesn't have any obvious errors in it. Also I need an Orb of Thesulah but I still dunno whether you can make things that are magical, or how magical a thing needs to be before you stop being able to make it, or whatever."

I do know Romanian, though not perfectly, I've never gotten a native speaker summoner. To my knowledge I cannot make magical things, but I've never had the opportunity to copy preexisting magic things like, apparently, Orbs of Thesulah, so I can try it if you want.

"Cool. You should try it. Ritual text is here. List of ingredients is here. The other stuff is all pretty nonmagical. I'll give you another book rec for it."

Cam tries the orb.

Orb's not happening. Is the rest of it still useful without, can you get one at Walmart?

"Doubtful, but there are non-Walmart places. We could go try the local magic shop, I guess?"

Sounds fun!

"Cool."

The local magic shop does not have Orbs of Thesulah. It does have recommendations for where they might find some. The shopkeeper is a little concerned about what a twelve-year-old might be doing with Orbs of Thesulah, given that they're primarily used in dangerous rituals involving the undead, but she does give them a list of places they might look. The closest is an address in LA.

Road trip?

"Seems like the thing to do. Hope you don't have, like, a life to get back to or anything."

Nothing I'll miss for a few years.

"Very convenient. We should maybe see about restoring your powers of speech at some point, but I guess it's not super urgent?"

This is more than summoners usually let me do.

"I guess that makes sense if you think a demon's going to talk you out of your soul or something. Souls are very important."

Yup. I'm not in the habit of collecting them but that's the ostensible rationale.

"Real hassle to get those things back," says Zana, nodding.

The LA magic shop does, in fact, have Orbs of Thesulah. Its shopkeeper is totally willing to hand them over to twelve-year-old girls, on the grounds that the Orbs of Thesulah used to be dangerous, but since the related ritual has been lost it's not like anyone can do anything with them.

Just out of curiosity, do you have any sort of tutor or supervisory senior magic-doer or anything going for you here?

"No, no, I just read stuff obsessively. We might want to find a real actual witch to actually cast the thing. Somewhere."

Yes. Do you suppose the magic shop has a bulletin board or anything?

"There are like, networks? But a lot of the people in the networks are deeply sketchy."

Well, if we can find someone who is expensive instead of sketchy I can bribe them?

"I feel like you don't become an uberpowerful witch if money can buy the stuff you're interested in. Though I guess you do have a lot of stuff on hand that money can't buy."

Where I'm from it's 2179!

"Yes, this is an advantage. Though I don't actually know how to sort the sketchy people out from the non-sketchy people. It's not like doctors or lawyers or whatever where you just go to the person with the best credentials and the highest price and figure that person must be on the up and up. Spellcasters can be sketchy in lots of dimensions besides not knowing what they're doing or trying to cheat you out of money."

Yeah, I can see that being a thing.

What are the actual risks associated with the spell?

"Difficult to get specifics. The person who created it was an elderly Romani witch who probably knew way more than I do. The warnings in the secondary texts suggested that an incorrectly performed spell could backfire on the caster, and that an inexperienced caster who tried to perform it could - 'open a gate that could not be closed', I think was the phrasing? Possibly you lose control of the magic and then the magic is in control and it doesn't make the greatest decisions."

This sounds like a pretty serious deal. I can't make you do anything, since you can banish me on sixty seconds' notice, but I think it deserves a thorough search of potential help and maybe getting better at magic in general on background, first. How long is St. Mary's prepared to hold the vampires?

"Couple weeks. They don't really have the staff to hold them indefinitely, and - well if you're gonna try rehabilitating vampires, Imrainai's not really the first person you'd pick to spend your resources on. But she's - if it was me she wouldn't give up. So..."

You're a minor she was responsible for. I'm not sure it's a good idea to hold yourself to that standard in reverse.

If the set of my parents here have a me, he's probably up to his eyebrows in magic. Do you want to try looking for him?

"That's what Imrainai'd say, you know. But she's not here, and she doesn't get a vote. And I miss her. And I'm not done being a rebel. But I think rebels are allowed to get help so they can accomplish their rebellious objectives without blowing their faces off. So... yeah. Let's do it."

You up for another road trip to Forks? Or I could make a little spaceship, that'd be faster.

"That sounds kind of attention-calling. Car's probably fine."

Car it is.

Cam drives north.

Zana is driven north! She reads more old books on the way, because that's sort of what she does.

Cam listens to more books likewise.

After more hours and hours on the road, they pull up to a little house with a cop car in front.

"D'you want me to go in with you, or...?"

No, I don't think so. He's home, this shouldn't take all that long, I think. Can I have permission to make small harmless objects as a demo and I'll give you, I don't know, an ice cream cone or something?

"I like ice cream. Accepted."

She gets an ice cream cone. Uh, I feel sort of weird about leaving you alone even just in the car, so I'm going to leave a rolled-up nearly-complete circle that will get you me under a more sensible binding in the back seat, okay? Please don't try to summon anyone else, you don't have the training to do it safely.

She nods.

He leaves her the circle.

He goes and knocks at the door.

The man who answers him does resemble him enough to be his father, but doesn't seem to recognize him. Eventually Cam talks his way into the house anyway.

Zana stays in the car and reads over the circle Cam left for potential loopholes that could be used for acts of naughty evil.

It's in English, and it's better than the Latin binding, but it does let him speak and do things like self-caffienate without permission.

Seems sensible. It would be more of a stain on her honor that she doesn't know how to do this right if literally any non-demon in this dimension did.

She waits for Cam to come back out.

It takes him about an hour.

So, this one doesn't have a son, he says. Instead, he has two daughters. But I remind him very strongly of the older one, so it's possible that she's my local counterpart, just a girl. The bad news is, she has some kind of magic disability and spells don't work for her. The good news is, her little sister picks up the slack in that department. The other bad news is, he doesn't know where they are at any given time, because they live in a Winnebago and do not file travel plans with their dad. However, he holds up a slip of paper, I have their cell numbers.

"Sounds pretty useful for finding people! Although we still don't have a cell phone with a plan and stuff."

Yeah, I made him a bunch of groceries and fishing equipment and he gave me some cash, so next stop is to buy one.

"Sounds like a plan."

This is a tiny nothing town but they might have cheap ones at the convenience store. However, I haven't been here in a hundred and fifty years so it might take me a little nosing around to find it, bear with me.

She gives him a thumbs up.

Cam locates an electronics store before he locates a convenience store. This computer I'm using for speech to text and controlling with my brain is state of the art in 2159, so I think you should probably make the transaction, if necessary signing at me to demonstrate adult approval.

Zana can do this thing. Cell phones are only mildly dangerous objects and twelve-year-olds are totally allowed to buy them with adult approval.

She loads the numbers in as contacts, and then - "D'you wanna be resummoned so you can, like, talk on phones?"

You know, I would, but it's - it's weird that I hadn't heard about this place before if summoning my kind of demon works normally here, you know? So, circle in the backseat is there if it ever makes sense to try, but I'm not a hundred percent sure it would, in fact, work.

"Yeah." She looks thoughtful. "There are definitely some dimensional pairs that you can only travel between under really special conditions, or during certain times. I wonder if yours is like that and we only got lucky. So - you want me to call your other self for now?"

I'll start by texting her. I got Charlie to call her about me, they might even still be on the phone.

She nods and hands him the phone.

And Cam texts Bella, and there's a delay.

Zana waits.

" - so how does magic determine what a harmless object is?"

Are you trying to be retroactively paranoid? That is not the most significant opportunity for mayhem I've had. In this case the binding has some stuff I am categorically not to do, and some stuff I'm not to do outside of a task; it doesn't actually have a definition of small or harmless per se.

"I think I gave up paranoid about when you fixed the dying kid. I can do paranoid, but it's really tiring. Or maybe I can't do it when I've been doing it for a year and now it feels less urgent than it did. Or something. I'm just trying to figure out how this magic interprets language."

I'll give you an introductory summoning textbook if you promise not to summon anyone but me before passing a licensing test.

"I promise. And thanks. The Latin one was confusing."

There's a section in here about how you should only write circles in your native language! He hands her a book.

"I didn't think it'd work if I translated it," she says, before opening the book and settling in to read it.

They sit in the electronics store parking lot until Bella texts him back.

Bella and her sister are actually on their way to Sunnydale, he remarks. But from the east so we can't catch up to them. We can meet them there.

"Huh. All right. Let's do it."

Definite no on the little spaceship?

"...does the spaceship have cloaking? And space for the car?"

I could make one big enough for the car. And cloaked against radar and stuff, though it won't be literally invisible.

"I guess if we fly up high enough it won't be that likely to call down the attention of the X Files team. Well, anyone who isn't the X Files team, anyway."

Right, off into the woods we go for discreet takeoff. I can even make us cloud cover if you like! And he drives them out of the parking lot into the copious nearby forest.

Eee spaceship! Hopefully she's only being moderately irresponsible!

They are in no way shot down by the Air Force and the trip to Sunnydale takes less than an hour.

Neat.

"So how far out did Bella say she was?"

A couple hours.

"OK. Cool."

She's sort of inclined to just sit here and fidget, but that's a waste of time, so she's going to read more of the summoning textbook.

Let's get a hotel room and I'll make us some non-car-food, I don't think there's likely to be crash space in a Winnebago.

"OK! That makes sense. Probably. I dunno exactly what a Winnebago is. Like an RV?"

Yes, it's a brand of them.

"Oh. Hotel room sounds good, I guess. I don't think they let kids buy hotel rooms, though."

I am your mute uncle and you are my interpreter, of course.

"Very believable. I think people in Sunnydale don't ask a ton of questions, so it's probably fine."

Zanna and her mute uncle successfully acquire a room at the Mariott. Cam makes them salmon and potatoes and asparagus.

Zana is easily impressed by food. Mostly the nuns have been making her food for the last few months, and they haven't really been in a state of mind that lets them care very deeply about the results.

Hopefully she's impressed enough to eat her vegetables.

Bella texts when they're approaching Sunnydale, and parks in the Mariott parking lot when she gets the location from Cam. She comes and knocks on the door.

Zana answers the door.

"Hi! I'm Zana. Are you Bella?"

"That's me! My dad says that you have summoned a friendly demon who might be an alternate universe version of me or something?"

"Yep! He's in here. Also he's temporarily mute for reasons."

"Yes, Dad said. It's all right, I'm literate. I'm not going to ask if I can come in because I've ever read a book on vampires and that would set of all kinds of alarm bells, I'm sure." She slips past Zanna. "Hi, Cam."

Hello, says Cam through his computer.

"Is that what you actually sound like?"

No, this is synthesized voice option Paul 7 with a manual tweak on the nasals.

"I see. So you're from the future of an alternate universe, and you're a demon, but the kind who was a human and then died and went to hell, which isn't customary here?"

Nod.

"Cool. I'm Bella the Vampire Slayer, please don't tell any elderly British people or their friends."

"Ohhh, is that where the other one is. That's a weird coincidence."

"The other one?"

"....so the main reason we called you here is that Cam thought you'd know a bunch about magic, and we have a spell that can probably return a vampire's soul to it, but we don't have someone skilled enough to cast it. And I wanna restore my aunt's soul, because she's a vampire now, but I think I can fix it. And before she was a vampire she was the vampire slayer. Well, a vampire slayer. There's supposed to be only one, but she drowned for a bit when she was fifteen and so there've technically been two for a while. Except right now I guess there's only one. Hi."

"- okay. Uh. I have a tragic magical disability, so my magical prosthesis, Soph, will be along shortly to consult on that. Right now she's topping us off on gas."

"Makes sense."

"We have not previously gone in for restoring vampire souls. You have a way to do that?"

"I'm pretty sure I do? There's at least one previous recorded case of it working, though I dunno where exactly this souled vampire is right now. Uh, Cam does this thing where if you tell him what to make he can make things, including copies of old books that've been burnt or destroyed or whatever, so that's how I was able to get all the information together. It's technically a curse that was created to make this one vampire really miserable about his crimes as this whole vengeance thing, but if you can get vampires their souls back then that's worth trying, right?"

"Seems like it to me. Especially with unlimited ingredients. How much do you need to know for this ritual about the specific vampire and how long does it take to do?"

"I don't think it takes very long? You need to set up a sacred circle and recite an incantation and catch the soul in an Orb of Thesulah, and then you say another incantation to move the soul from the orb to the vampire. You need to specify a target but I don't know how specific you have to be or what happens if you're not specific enough. This thing doesn't seem to have a long history of being, like, used. I can show you all the notes I took on it, though."

"Soph'll look them over. I have a sort of strategic understanding of magic but it just isn't - efficient - for me to study it in more depth."

That must suck real bad.

"Yeah. It sucks real bad."

"...do you want, like, a hug or something?"

"No, but thanks. Cam, I wanna double-check you, whaddaya got."

Cam pulls up pictures on his computer of himself with his parents. He shows her a page of his notes, angled so Zanna can't see. He informs her that he picked up violin after he died and makes her sporfle. He hesitates, and then claims credit for Revelation, not that Zanna has the context to appreciate that.

Zana does not, in fact, have the context to appreciate this. She does feel like it's the sort of thing that Imrainai would approve of, taking your random happenstance and trying to do the very very best you can with it. 

She hugs her knees on one of the hotel room beds and waits for Soph to show up.

Soph shows up while Cam is still in the middle of explaining Revelation. "Hey demon bro," she says.

Hello, the sister I never had.

"And you're Zanna?"

"Yep!"

"Nice to meet you, I'm Soph and I will be your witch this evening, how can I help ya."

"We wanna re-ensoul a vampire."

"Gosh. Never done that one before, not sure where to start..."

"She's got an old book Cam grabbed for her, you're just gonna have to look over the spell and stuff."

"Yeah, I have it all written up. It's supposed to be dangerous if you don't know what you're doing, very powerful magical stuff here, but I think I have the instructions and the incantations right."

"Okay, like, how sure are you of that, because no offense but you look like you're maybe thirteen."

"I'm twelve. You can check my work if you want, I would."

"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?"