“Completely. What can I do for you.”

“So I told the priest at St. Mary’s about vampires, and it turns out he already knows about them, and also knows about slayers, and also knows about the sort of training that slayers are supposed to get, except for whatever reason the group that’s supposed to train them hasn’t caught up with me yet, and also Father Michael says that’s a good thing so we're not going to let them know right away, but he does think that I should have a - he kept calling him a bodyguard? Someone to make sure that I don't get myself killed fighting vampires while I'm still figuring out how to do that. And I thought that if that was going to be the situation then I should probably let you know."

"...I appreciate how many syllables that was."

"Are you really worried or just a little worried?"

"I'm... you understand that you're fifteen years old, right? That's old enough to do a lot of things. I do not know that it is or should be old enough to go to war."

“I’m not going to war! I’m just, you know, doing - training-wheels superheroics, instead of starting with a motorcycle and probably wiping out and killing myself.”

“…you’re going to try to save people from vampires no matter what I say, aren’t you.”

“Yes.”

“I suppose that under those conditions it makes sense for you to have some kind of backup.”

“Yes.”

“I want to meet this person. And Father Michael. And anyone else who thinks it’s a good idea for you to go around - doing these things.”

“Does that include Zeke? Because I haven’t asked him directly but he seems to condone it and I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to meet Zeke right now.”

“Zeke is your vampire friend.”

“Yeah, the one who told me all the stuff.”

“….meet the damn bodyguard. Invite him and the priest guy over to dinner sometime. Give me some advance warning so I can make something in the way of an actual dinner.”

“…OK. Thanks. Are you mad?”

"No. You’re fifteen, it’s your job to be reckless and idealistic. Or nihilistic, whichever. But I’m twenty-four, and it’s my job to turn in my cool card if that’s what it takes to keep weirdos from hurting you.”

“That seems kind of backwards.”

“I know, right? Who decided to let me be the older sister? Dinner’s refried beans and leftover mashed potatoes.”

So she eats dinner, and she stays up until two AM reading her books, and then she wakes up at six AM and does half of her homework in a panic and tells herself that maybe she can finish the rest during lunch. (She does not finish the rest during lunch.) One of the kids who's noticed her being shifty asks where she's going after school, and, having failed to think of a more plausible cover story than the one she was given, she reports that a distant cousin is coming to pick her up for ice cream.

The kid predictably finds this doubtful.

After school, she and the kid can be found on a nearby bench conversing really, really slowly in broken Latin, waiting for whoever it is to find them.

He looks like - well, whatever sort of being Father Michael is, he is obviously the same sort, though they don’t otherwise look all that much alike. He glances around, sees them, and lopes over very gracefully. “Karen?”

"Hi! Yeah that's me."

Wow, he's not even a tiny bit plausibly Korean. Technically she has family members who aren't Korean but she does feel like this would have been less suspicious if there were anything resembling a family resemblance whatsoever.

"Your cousin," says the kid next to her. "Your last common ancestor was who, Noah?"

"A very distant one," she says, solemnly shutting her Latin textbook.

“So technically what happened was that my grandfather remarried after my grandmother died and had four more children, and Karen’s on that side. We don’t get on with our half-cousins and that’s what everyone but Michael calls them, half-cousins, but he’s all serious these days so I guess he decided it was Christlier to drop the “half-”. Who’re you?”