Weeeeeird. But he could still be doing the pretending not to hear her when she has waterfalls up because he feels bad that he can't tell her how to actually block things thing, because she's kind of unclear on how many of her thoughts she's actually sending most of the time.

Oh! Michael won't have been paying attention to them! If she brings her waterfalls up and goes HEY FATHER MICHAEL behind them, then - ?

This does not produce any effects.

Father Michael would definitely answer if he could hear. Unless possibly Alex either predicted that she was going to contact Father Michael OR read her mind and told him not to answer before she actually contacted him. But that wouldn't make a ton of sense. Alex doesn't have any reason to make her think she can block telepathy if she can't.

Ergo, waterfalls work. 

Hm.

She pictures forming words outside the waterfall and sending those to Alex. 

Anyway. I'm fresh out of parents, so I guess Azalea'll be coming to parent-teacher night this year.

I'll tell her that you are an adequate student but sometimes fail to fully apply yourself at gym class.

If I fully applied myself everyone else would know that Clark Kent is Superman.

Also I definitely figured out how to block your telepathy just now and it's mildly freaking me out and in the interest of transparency and stuff I feel like I should let you know this. Sorry.

I noticed. It's not my fault, I didn't tell you, I don't care.

Oh. OK. Solid. 

I tried to convince Matt it'd be a good idea to tell you anyway but he's hard to move on security stuff.

I wouldn't tell me secrets either. It's just hard not to poke things.

Osanwë's - friendly, it's meant to be entirely voluntary, it's not supposed to have invasive uses at all. 

Ah. ...I imagine reading people involuntarily was probably less needed in off-brand paradise, even if it was off-brand and stuff.

People debated a little whether it was okay to read little babies? But - yeah. You're getting a very skewed account of Valinor, hearing it from me, it was vastly better than Earth in every way. I don't want to suggest otherwise just because I'm mad about a bunch of stuff.

I feel like there's a lot of space between 'better than earth' and 'literally heaven'. Earth has, like, literal demons that wander around and kill people by draining all of their blood.

I mean, I also kinda think a heaven would be horrible so we're probably just not on the same page here.

Yeah. But I guess if neither of us is planning on dying any time soon then it probably won't come up for a bit. 

We go back to Valinor when we die. - I guess conceivably something weird could happen with Michael but that's where I'd go, unless I decided to hang around hoping you get reimbodiment magic.

Ah. 

For, like, forever? Because you left once, and stuff. Not that I guess it'll probably matter on my end, 'cause you're not allowed to live thirty thousand years and then die in the next twenty, and I'm pretty sure I don't get to come back.

Twice, I've actually left twice, I have died before. But yeah, you're the one we've gotta worry about. 

Yeah. I think I'm oddly bad at the staying alive for someone who's not supposed to get any second chances on that front.

He pulls in to her house. Well, take care.

And for a while things are quiet.

A few weeks later, a couple of vampires drive into town. Spike would have figured the Order of Aurelius would still in town, but they're not. In fact, the whole place seems to be almost entirely abandoned, with nary a vampire in sight. The whole thing is very depressing. Normally he'd be at least a little excited to see what had driven all the monsters away, but he's got to be careful about this, this time. He's got to think about Dru.

Eventually he parks next to a bar and gets out. It's a demon hangout, he can smell it. It's not very impressive, even so. A few of the demons inside are violent types, but they don't look like they've gotten up to any violence recently.

"Well, this is sad," he informs the room at large. "A tragedy, is what this is. Whole hellmouth under this town, and all it has is a couple dozen sorry excuses for demons that would rather play cards than wreak a little havoc?"

One of the demons playing cards looks up, then looks back at the cards, then chews on their tongue for a while, then looks back up. "I take it you're new."

"Yeh, just rolled in. Who do you kill for fun around here?"

"Cockroaches. Sometimes, puppy dogs."

       "I know a couple guys who died sticking to puppy dogs."

              "Idiots, though."

       "You take that back."

"Yeah, you rolled into the wrong place if you want any sport."

              "There's a Slayer here."

                         "There's a lot of goody-goody saviors of the world running around here."

              "It's like Cleveland."

                         "Don't get her started about Cleveland."

"Oh, is that all? Killed a couple slayers in my time. I don't like to brag. - actually, I love to brag. Where's this bint live?"