He shrugs and says something else in his incomprehensible language. Mutual unintelligibility having been established, he regards her thoughtfully for a few moments, then beckons, indicating by gesture that he would like her to accompany him out of the stone-garden.

She looks around. There's nothing else obvious to do. If there are humans in the sinkhole - or if this isn't the sinkhole - she'd rather be at civilization than not. She follows him.

Holly is surprised and confused by the lamp, but seems to recognize books. And chairs. She sits. And peers at the book.

The boy says something. Words appear along the top of the left page, in an unfamiliar incomprehensible language. He takes his hand away from the left edge of the book. The words vanish. He puts his hand back, and points to it, and points to Holly's hand, and points to the right edge of the book.

"A weird demon ate us. I don't know what kind it was. Or if it's going to get our brother and his cohabitor next or what will happen if it does. Next thing we knew we were where you found us. How does this book work? Where are we?"

"The book works by magic. You're in Sunnydale. In a library largely devoted to the study of weird demons, in fact, although I've never heard of one that eats people from one place to another. What's a cohabitor?"

"I've never heard of one that does it either but our brother's the one who studies things like that. Why wouldn't the book translate 'cohabitor'? Cohabitor is the person who lives with you."

"The book is translating the word you're using into a word in English," he points this out in the transcriptions, "but that doesn't tell me what you mean by it. I don't think it's a concept I'm familiar with. If I heard the word 'cohabitor' from someone who hadn't just appeared out of nowhere by magic, I would expect it to mean 'roommate'."

"...Are you alone in there?" she asks.

"...Yes. Yes I am. And you aren't, I take it?"

"Once a day or so, when I am tired, I become unconscious and dream for several hours. I can't say I've ever encountered any significant problems with this approach. How do you sleep?"

"My soul has not been eaten by a klaon. Other unpleasant things have happened to it, but they didn't have anything to do with sleeping, and more importantly there are six or seven billion people living on this planet and sleeping regularly and as far as I know none of their souls have ever been eaten by a klaon."

"Well, I could say 'on Earth', but I don't think that would clarify much."

"Not at all. So the circle in the - sky - isn't the sinkhole?"

"The circle in the sky is the moon. What's the sinkhole?"

"Where I'm from there isn't a 'planet', it's just flat, and in the middle of all the flat, a hole opened up to Hell and demons came out of it. Klaonso and other kinds."

"I see. That sounds oddly familiar," he says. "But in the local case, the hole to Hell spends most of its time closed and not emitting any demons. And there are a vast number of other sources of demons, none of which could accurately be described as a 'sinkhole' as far as I know."

"Sometimes demons come up if there's a big earthquake, we heard... But the planet thing is definitely not how it is at home."

"Yes. There are some worlds that could be described as 'just flat', but this isn't one of them. I was right, you are interesting."

"Do you know how I can get home? I don't even know if the demon got Lightning. That's our brother's cohabitor."

"I don't know how you can get home. But I'm reasonably certain there is a way, and the only tricky part will be finding it. And avoiding demons who might eat you in the meantime. There are rather a lot of them, especially around here, but at least the vast majority are straightforwardly corporeal."

"Not all of them?"

"I would hesitate to say anything at all for certain about the category of demons as a whole; there are too many kinds to keep track of. But all of the common kinds that eat people do it using fangs and so on, not sleep-based magic or anything similar."

"Okay. I still wouldn't like to meet one, but." She shrugs.

He snorts.

"What, do you have friendly demons here we should like to meet?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes. You remember I told you something unpleasant happened to my soul? I'm a vampire."

"I wasn't planning on it."

"Good."

"And what sort of magic are you good at?"

"Besides demon stuff there's only the one kind where I'm from. Well, two if you count swaps and transfers as different but they aren't very. Um -" She turns up the hem of her jacket; there are a bunch of different-colored little squares of fabric sewn there. She pinches a blue one and her jacket and the swatch exchange colors. "That's a basic one, Crystal could have done that too."

"Magic here comes in countless varieties, and I don't think any of them is specifically that," he says. "Oh, my name's Sherlock, by the way."

"Seyr-lahk," she approximates. "We should probably translate our names. I'm Holly and my sister-cohabitor is Crystal. Uh, how would you pronounce those?" she asks, peering at the translation.

"Holly; Crystal," he says, indicating each on the page. "Not that I have much trouble pronouncing Pyay or Sohng, but the book seems to translate them anyway."

"In Kuigao everyone is named something that means something. Our brother is Book - he picked that himself - and his cohabitor is Lightning."

"Some people here are named something that means something, but most English-speakers aren't, myself included."

Holly nods. "We know someone from a neighboring country who's just named Namree because her parents thought it sounded nice."

"It wouldn't be odd to encounter a 'Holly' or a 'Crystal' here, but 'Book' or 'Lightning' would be strange. Why did Book pick his own name?"

"Until we explained our parents thought there was only one of us, like most people when they're born and haven't started cohabiting with anyone else yet. So they just called us all Holly. Book picked himself a name and I named Crystal. Book moved out a while ago. Found a boy he wanted to look like, that's Lightning, moved in with him."

"How does all this moving work? By magic, I suppose?"

"Yeah. It's really advanced. I might do it for a job - if I get home, I mean, I guess there's not so much call for it if you don't have klaonso."

"Yes. Transferring people from one body to another is not something we do a lot of around here. Can't say that I've heard of another case, in fact, unless you count what happens to vampires."

"Why, what happens to you?"

"Oh, we lose our souls. Replaced by some sort of demon spirit, is I think the going theory. We keep all the same memories, but our personalities change, usually not in nice ways."

"Huh. Memories and souls are attached for us, we don't have Book's memories still now that his soul's in Lightning's body."

"It might be that the relevant thing in each case is a different thing, and they're only getting the same word because of limited vocabulary. Or perhaps your world has a different sort of soul. I wonder what would happen if your sort of person became a vampire?"

"I don't know, but we don't want to try it. We have been eaten by demons enough. We wouldn't be a good test case anyway since we're unusual."

Sherlock giggles. "I won't suggest that you experiment, then. Does the cage full of mice serve some sleep-related function?"

"Yeah. Trading off cohabitors fixes mental tiredness but not physical tiredness, so the mice take that. They're good if we have an injury or get sick, too. I could use more, a bunch of ours died when we killed the first demon we met. Then - the one with the - portal face."

"You don't, strictly speaking, need sleep-mice around here. But I could look for some, I suppose."

"Sleeping seems like such a waste of time. And we do still have to share."

"I'd be more inclined to agree if vampires didn't catch fire in sunlight. Rather limits what I can do during the day. Sleeping is a nice alternative to boredom."

"It loses its content eventually, but the more of it there is, the longer it takes to fade," he says. "As I understand it. The book is not technically mine, I just happened to know it was here."

"Oh. Will they let us borrow it?"

"Good question. We could always try asking. Well, you could; I have to be back home by sunrise, and the owner of the book is not likely to show up until well after that."

"Okay. I guess with the book I could ask. Who owns it?"

"The librarian in charge of this library, I believe. Many of the books belong to the school, but a lot of the good magic-related ones are his. I've never met him, but I've gone through his desk a few times. He seems nice enough."

"Oh, this is a school?"

"Yes."

"What kind?"

"The kind that teaches a lot of largely unwilling teenagers things that they don't especially want to know."

"Oh, that kind. We got out of that a while ago. Book's still in school, but on purpose."

Sherlock giggles.

"He's studying demons and history. Well - he is if he gets home."

"From being chased by demons."