Currently, Tessa is looking for them in Seattle. She called one of her tracker "friends", but the only one who could give her advice without having met the girl himself is barely better than nothing. She punches a tree, and it breaks.

"Hello. You wouldn't happen to know any trackers, would you?"

"Several. What are you looking for?"

"Human. Supposedly my mate, though at the moment she seems a bit confused with regards to the concept."

"Let's see. I know someone who can find her if you have something that belonged to her and I help her out, and I know someone who can find her if and only if she has a unique name in all the world but he can't do it twice so it wouldn't be useful if she's on the move, and I know of a precog who rumor has it turns quite neatly to this sort of thing but I'm not sure you could get her to help, and I used to know of an excellent scent tracker who could probably work with anywhere she's set foot in the last month plus the good odds that you and your mate will have complementary smells but he's dead. The first two people both live in the Phillippines."

"Ugh. I might as well just stick with the idiot I've got, at least he's local. I know she's in the state, which is decent, it's just that there's so much damn state! Why do these people think they're not separate countries, again?"

"Oh, who is it you found locally?" wonders Addy. "I'm something of a student - even a conoisseur - of witchcraft. Sometimes I can make useful suggestions to help people do more with their powers, and it would probably be faster than going to the Philippines."

"His name's Steven, he's a few hundred miles to the east. He can find anyone who you can specify, which sounds quite useful until you realize that his definition of "find" is literally "figure out the country they're in". At least he can narrow it down to territories in big enough countries. Still, he's nearly as useless as a resource as he is as a man."

"Now, that's a limitation that sounds fixable if ever I heard one."

"If you can make that man competent, you're a goddess. I'll pay you in virgins."

"Oh, no, the work is its own reward. I can find my own nibbles. But I do appreciate the sentiment. Say, are you a witch?"

"Yes, in fact. I have enchanting beauty. One target at a time, but it can paralyze them or make them carry out my will or any number of wonderful things. It's great fun. And it's very good for my ego to have beauty that drives men mad."

"Oh, how interesting. Does it only work on men?"

"Sure. Hit me."

"Sorry."

"No, but why did you touch me, did you just steal my power or something, do I need to dismember you and get it back?"

"No, no, you still have it! It's right there. I copy, I don't steal."

"So you do have my power. But that wasn't an attack." She exhales, presumably for effect. "Please do not touch me without asking first. I have had over two thousand years to get very good at dismantling people."

"Sure. I'll keep it till I touch another witch, is how it works, if you wanted to know. It doesn't feel, mm, very malleable, no surprise if you're two thousand, so I probably won't even want it again after."

"Ooh. And she's still human, those are almost always the best at growing. I would love to help your tracker find your mate but I want to boop her nose and give her lessons when it's done."

"Hm. She's not going to like you if you're a package deal with me. She came off with the impression I was... "paranoid, egotistical, and reeking of batshit." In her words. I don't think she'll want to touch me with a ten-foot pole until her heart stops beating."

"Oh, so much the simpler. Tracker and I find her, I go say hello without mentioning you at all and play with her magic, then I bite her and deliver her to you. Yes?"

"She has an accomplice of some kind, so it might not be so much simpler. He smells terrible, like wet dog and hate, and he moves fast. I think he might be as fast as a vampire. He's clearly not, but he could be a threat."

"Huh. Also a witch, or...? Well, I'll see what I can do, at any rate. If I get what I want I have no problem delivering what you want, so you might as well let me help."

"I've got no idea, but he barely smells human. Not a Child of the Moon either, not that I'd believe any of them escaped Caius' clutches; they had no scent at all, except for the blood they were always covered in. And I'm glad of your help, as long as she eventually gets to me."

"I'll do my best. Tell me everything you know about her, give me your phone number, and point me at your tracker."

Tessa lists off a phone number, obviously memorized only by virtue of vampiric recall. She gives Steven's rough location (he hangs around a certain national park, usually.) Then she sighs, looking crestfallen. "Her name's Suzanna Richardson, her hair and eyes are brown, fair but unhealthy skin, she failed her calculus final, she has a plane ticket to Italy in her purse unless she got rid of it. There, you now know as much about my mate as I do."

"Unless you want to experiment with being on the receiving end of your own power for kicks, I'll get going."

"Not particularly, and it's barely effective on mated vampires anyway. Feel free to leave."

Addy traipses off in the direction of the tracker.

It is a very tasty sort of face. Addy goes up to him and makes it clear that she believes him and says she has a cousin in the government who can handle this kind of thing will he please show her where in the woods. Then she eats him. Then she follows the wet dog smell.

"Please don't kill me," says Addy. "I don't want to kill you. There was somebody who couldn't keep his mouth shut raving about having seen you; do you need help lying low?"

"I don't want to kill you," the girl sighs. "I'm just aware that you're a vampire and I'm potentially a tasty snack. And help with lying low would be lovely; I tried to shut that guy up but I missed and killed a tree instead. What's your angle? Vampires aren't usually very altruistic."

"Oh, I ate him, don't worry about him, or yourself, I'm not hungry now," says Addy. "I'm not altruistic. I'm a magic nerd. I can copy witch powers! And often improve them, too, with a simultaneously insider and outsider perspective on how they work. Do you want references? I have given lessons to and then left totally unharmed lots of human witches. Off the top of my head there's one with a phone and a pack-a-day habit that makes her very definitively not a vampire from sound alone, if that helps."

"Anyone with human contacts they haven't killed is safer than most of the greater vampire community," mutters the boy, slowly relaxing out of his crouch. "And it helps that you're not pretending to be nice. We'll want that phone number, though. And maybe another one for safety's sake."

"Cigarette lady's only four time zones away since her study abroad ended, do you want me to call her now? Before this I was in Asia for a while, Europe before that. They'll be asleep and don't speak English, and people I met before that have likely changed phone numbers or died of old age already. Do either of you know Czech? I know a nocturnal Czech."

"Yeah, I took it in ninth grade between Urdu and classical Persian."

"We don't know Czech. We would love if you called your raspy friend, but we can wait a bit on any other English speakers based on the fact you aren't actively hostile right now and we have superior firepower."

"Hi, Lauren, was it? We were approached by your sparkly friend, and, yeah, we just wanted to know that she has surviving human acquaintances."

"That'd be me. And whoever else, I guess, I have the impression she does this a lot? I think she turns some of them but I said no thanks and she didn't bug me about it," says Lauren.

"Even more helpful, I hadn't thought to ask. Thank you, you are in fact a peach." She hands back the phone.

"Thank you!" Addy chirps to Lauren, and she hangs up. "I can start waking up Vietnamese witches at some more civilized hour, unless otherwise you'll kill me, or something similarly incompatible with civilization."

"No, no, we're fine. If she was actually a vampire with sound manipulation or something I'll applaud your forethought, but even a shaky reference gets you out of DEFCON Whatever. We'll still be uncivilized if the teeth come out, though, I think that's a reasonable agreement. So, what was that you were saying about improving witchcraft? Because I'm all for that if it's available."

"Oh good! I love your enthusiasm. I shake your hand or boop you on the nose or whatever you like, and then I have your power, and I can tell what it does. I can usually do this better than witches themselves, especially if they don't know they're witches, but I might not be able to add a lot of diagnostic quality for you in particular; we'll see. Then I figure out what its limitations are and how they can be made to go away."

"Excuse me, are we now on good enough terms with the strange vampire to give up our firepower advantage? Because I don't remember making that vote."

"Are you a witch too, or just a peculiar sort of something?" Addy wonders in his direction.

"I'm the other half of the firepower advantage. And the tactics guy. And not telling you what I am, because I also happen to be a suspicious bastard."

"It's Leo's job to have a bug up his ass about my safety. Ignore him; he's twitchy, but he doesn't pull the trigger unless he has to."

"I don't mean her any harm," Addy assures Leo. "I am a magic geek of a vampire mimic-witch. That's more or less all there is to me."

"Oh, I'm sure. In the same way, all there is to me is "Zanna's overprotective childhood friend." We'll be fine."

Addy looks at him, then holds out her hand, leaving it to Zanna to complete the contact.

"Oh, yum," says Addy. "Now this you could get really creative with if you were careful and thoughtful. It'd be better if you turned - I'm not sure I've ever seen a power that would more obviously be better after turning - but better to get all the obvious practice out of the way first, it'll come faster and stick just fine..."

"I am very, very interested in turning. However, I'm also very, very interested in not being saddled with the mind-controlling crazytrain who is apparently my mate. So until she's dust in the wind, I remain tragically unsparkly. It's very irritating. In the meantime, practice sounds great."

"I'm not actually sure that you won't just wind up mated to her anyway even if she kicks it first," says Addy. "You'll like her if you do turn, you know."

"I already like her, are you kidding? She's hotter than hell, she's absolutely ruthless, and she acts like she owns the Goddamn planet. That's beautiful. But when she panicked, she decided that mind-bending me was a better choice than convincing me of her point. She assumed that when I loved her forever, I'd forgive her for that. But I won't forgive anyone who tries to walk over me. If she thinks that just because we're fated eternal lovers or whatever I'll be second to her, I'll turn her into gravel. And if that means I live forever missing half my heart, it won't mean a damn thing."

"Huh. Well, you could pulverize her, good and proper. I'm nnnnnot sure if you can get this to generate enough friction to set things on fire, but I'm not sure you can't, and anyway there's always matches, plus whatever Mr. Secret Weapon packs."

"There are always matches."

"Makes no difference to me. 'M not sure you're thoroughly considering her perspective, but that doesn't make your magic any less yummy. Want to know what it tastes like?"

"I'll let her explain her perspective when I've got more backup than Leo in case she just hits me again. And, uh, yes? Of course? Yes?"

"Beer! Strong dark stuff."

"What am I not getting here?"

"We stole some beer from his dad's fridge when we were twelve. He took one sip and declared it disgusting, I downed the whole bottle to make fun of him and then threw up on his shoes. I have learned to appreciate beer. He has not."

"Because it's disgusting."

"Well, neither of you are ever going to have this particular synesthetic experience, although if I find a beer that seems like it'd match I'll recommend it to you."

"Hopefully by the time you find one I'll have no more reason to drink it than you will. Leo could, but I'm sure he'd be repulsed."

Addy shrugs. "Was your would-be mate your first exposure to the concept of vampires?"

"Huh. How come you weren't turned already, then, if you're so keen? Hoping you'd grow another inch? Wanted longer hair? Couldn't find anybody who wanted a witch in their coven?"

"...Blaaaatant lies. They won't execute you for turning anybody fourteen or up, and you can make a case for twelve if you get caught with one of those and the twelve-year-old is well-behaved and the Volturi like you or want you to work for them or the kid's a witch. The problem is out-of-control immortal children who charm the pants off their keepers and wreck architecture like little Godzillas and drink entire barbershop quartets in front of the media, not the modern day age of majority."

"No, you will yell at her and I will help you yell at her."

"I will smash her head into little pieces."

"That's allowed."

Addy snorts. "And now you have a mate you don't want when you could have been all mutually infatuated when she lays eyes on you. Very inconvenient."

"Exactly!"

"What was she trying to whammy you about, anyway?"

"I mentioned I was going to visit Volterra. She's apparently under the impression that Aro is her archnemesis, which is obviously not true because she, you know, still exists. She tried to tell me I couldn't go because if he saw her in my head he would hunt her down and burn her alive, I took offense to her tone, and she blasted me. And I blasted her right back. And if I'd been told about vampires by someone who hasn't hated me since I was six years old, that wouldn't have happened."

"What were you going to do in Volterra? Fancy being in the guard? If they can get you working for them by finding and killing your mate they will find this very unconventional, but I don't think they'd blink. Bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy on her part..."