"That isn't how the categories are structured around here."

"Okay."

He shrugs. "But perhaps you're not interested in the local taxonomy."

"If I'm going to be stuck in the - what is usually called by fairies the mortal world - for the foreseeable future I might as well pick it up."

"Reasonable. So, I am a vampire, which is a type of demon. Most nonhumans are demons. Some are gods instead. I suspect you are not properly a demon and you certainly don't appear to be a god. Degree of mortality varies widely but I haven't heard of anything that cannot theoretically die, just things whose destruction would be difficult to accomplish in practice. This planet is called Earth and it is where most humans live, and nearly all vampires since vampires are all former humans; demons who don't live here live in any number of other places categorically known as 'hell dimensions', accessible by various means but most relevantly by the Hellmouth located in the school library of this very town."

"Earth is the round thing, right?"

"It fits that criterion, yes."

"What makes someone properly a demon?"

"It's... an aesthetic judgment as much as anything," he says. "But there are practical implications. Demons as a category have a reputation for being likely to try to eat people, which reputation you might want to dodge by introducing yourself as a fairy instead."

"I don't want to eat people."

"Neither do I; it's so tedious."

"...That wouldn't have made my top three objections."

"Oh?"

"The thing that made you able to alter my orders applies if I eat anything from anyone except, usually, other fairies; I prefer to eat plants; and I have moral objections to preying on sapient creatures."

"I was forcibly deprived of my capacity to morally object to things. Comes of turning into a vampire."

"I get by all right without it," he adds. "It's not in my top three objections to the incident."

"Mm?"

"The people who did it killed everyone I ever loved, that's objections one and two, and then turned me against my will, that's three. At the time I was very upset about the prospect of losing my soul, but then it turned out that mostly what I want to do without the constraint of ethics is wander the continent halfheartedly searching for something to do with my life that will be more interesting than ending it. No luck so far."

"Oh. I'm - I'm sorry. ...Following me around and feeding me so I don't wind up envassaled to more people than I have to be probably isn't interesting, is it."

"Depends."

"On?"

"Principally on how interesting you turn out to be."

"Well, I'd be very boring for at least a few weeks if I had all the things I'd need to be boring with, but I don't really have that luxury. I don't know your interests, though."

"My interests are not especially articulable."