Ah, fuck.

What'd they tell you?

A guy named Wesley Wyndam-Pryce is outside the school. He wanted me to know that I'm a vampire slayer and that he's been assigned to act as my watcher, to, uh, train me in the art of slaying and deploy me against the forces of darkness. He was very surprised that I already knew. He said he wanted to start after school, and I sorta just told him OK instead of saying 'yeah, actually I already have some people', and I think I'm gonna go with 'and maybe that's a good thing, because maybe we don't want the Council of Watchers to know everything about us right away before we've thought about it' and not 'I sort of panicked', although I think in the actual moment it might have been mostly the second thing.

Well, good call whatever the reasons. We probably can't keep it up, though. Let's both think about what we want to do and talk about it more at lunch. I ...think many watchers are, individually, all right, aside from their terrible loyalties? It could be worth talking to him for a day to get a read on how terrible he is.

He didn't seem overtly terrible. He seemed... very enthusiastic. But yeah, lunch.

She's gonna eat lunch outdoors with Dennis and Mercy and Chris, because this fall she's the sort of person who has actual friends. It would be pretty ideal if Wishbone could hang out with them, too, but she's pretty sure Principal Snyder would explode if they let a dog on school grounds. (Next year. Next year they can eat lunch across the street.)

He reads Wesley Wyndam-Pryce's mind.

Wesley Wyndam-Pryce has informed the council that Karen has been contacted and is willing to begin her training immediately. He's now in the process of unpacking books into his apartment and putting together the specific list of questions that he's going to ask Karen, to get her to realize that she may know about her destiny, but she's still quite in the dark about a long list of other things, and that she will benefit tremendously from the expertise, support, and structure that a watcher can provide. Sometimes he goes back and mentally repeats something to see if he can make it sound more impactful.

That makes this not an emergency so he should stop reading Wesley Wyndam-Pryce's mind.

- but are there any things Karen actually doesn't know, in that list?

Several, actually! Wesley does, in fact, want to usefully assess Karen's knowledge of the supernatural, so he's mixing in a few easy questions about the basic abilities and weaknesses of vampires, plus a few medium questions about ghosts and possessing spirits in general, but since he wants to impress on her how ignorant and vulnerable she is without his help, he's starting with a barrage of questions about the strengths and weaknesses of various obscure demon species that Karen has almost definitely never heard of.

Hey Wishbone, do you want to help me with something?

Oh boy, do I!

Our local representation of the Slayer manipulation and murder squad has a bunch of questions about demons for Karen. He conveys them.

Oh, easy! Not the most practical set of information ever, but all of it is information I have.

He has it off the top of his head, too, frequently with extra context on why things are the way they are.

Oh good. He passes this on to Karen during gym class.

- so as funny as me knowing all of this stuff would be, don't you think it's kinda gonna tip him off about me having several other non-council expert people in my corner? Unless that's the point.

It probably will. It's your call, I just don't like people making me feel stupid so I'll listen to them.

Yeah. Me too.

...I guess he's gonna figure it out at some point anyway.

Seems pretty impossible to hide while also letting you do your job at all.

Yeah, I guess. Thanks.

And, after school, she immediately runs into Wesley Wyndam-Pryce.

"Karen, good. Walk with me. Now, I think the first thing is to assess your knowledge of the supernatural, see how much you already understand. To that end, I have prepared a series of questions. Do you know how to kill a Magati demon?"

"Magati demons can't be killed. The most effective means of neutralizing them is to imprison their spirit within one of a few specific types of crystals - clear quartz is ideal - but you still have to keep the rock from breaking or else you're right back where you started."

"Yes. Well. Very good. Ah - you encounter a house with a history of unfortunate happenings and find that the base is surrounded by green, glowing liquid. Most likely explanation?"

"Most likely the secretion of an Ethros demon, which will have possessed one of the inhabitants. In that case the secretion will be watery, light green, and glow pretty brightly. Of course, it could also be the slime trail left by a giant Haffreek, in which case it'll be closer to the consistency of honey and more just really reflective than actually glowy. That won't explain most varieties of unfortunate happenings, but in the real world sometimes things are just coincidences, and it's important not to draw definite conclusions from just a couple pieces of ambiguous information."

"Mushrooms growing in a circle in a meadow or forest?"

"Fairy ring, supernatural status depends on the species; some fungi and flowers do it naturally and others only grow around areas that are frequented by actual fairies. Best not to disturb them unless you know whose they are. Often a good place to check for weakness between dimensions, so they can be useful places to try if you need to check where a portal was opened."

"Most likely explanation for Jack the Ripper?"