"I'm not gonna kill anyone," she says, like this is a dumb thing to be worried about, and then remembers her general circumstances. "Unless that's, like, necessary."

"Honestly it kinda is? Like, we eat people. I just figure, teenage girl looking super surprised about how she just kicked a vampire's ass, probably the new Slayer, maybe if I make friends real quick she won't dust me. And I don't super care if that means swearing off eating people for a while. Most vampires would not go for that deal, they'd be trying to kill you instead."

"OK. I, uh, appreciate the cooperation. What's a slayer."

"Girl who's really good at killing vampires because something something magic destiny. When the old one dies, a new one pops up. Apparently you get, like, weird dreams about it and stuff? I'm not super clear on that end of the whole business, for like, obvious reasons. And I think there's some kinda secret society that's supposed to find you once you're called and teach you all about this stuff, but I guess they haven't caught up to you yet."

"OK. Solid." That is not solid at all and actually doesn't make very much sense, but none of this does, so that fits. "And you kill vampires how? - uh, I'll understand if you don't give me that one, but you get a ton of points if you do."

"Oh I'll totally tell you," he says cheerfully. "We catch fire in sunlight - I hate that, I miss sunlight - and if we're too much on fire we burn up and die, like, not just the way anybody would, it's magic or something? If you light a human on fire and leave them going for a minute you have a really unhappy human, if you light a vampire on fire and leave them going for a minute you have a pile of ash. Uh, crosses and holy water give us nasty blisters but I don't think we can die of them—maybe if we drank the stuff?—I'm pretty sure we don't have a problem with garlic but I admit I haven't checked, aaand if you cut off our heads or put a pointy piece of wood through our hearts, poof, now there's a pile of dust where your vampire used to be. I think that's it but I could be forgetting something. Oh! This isn't, like, directly violence-related, but we can't enter a house without being explicitly invited in, we just bounce right off of thin air and look really stupid. So like if you just completely don't want to deal with any of this, you can stay home when it's dark out and make sure nobody invites any strangers in and you'll be fine."

"OK." This's all gonna need to be independently tested because this particular source is suspect, but it's a good place to start. "I don't think I can just ignore it if people're being killed all the time? But uh - how many of you are there and how often do you need to - I assume you drink blood and stuff?"

"Yeah. There's like, tons of us, I dunno how many, but like pretty much all of Sunnydale's unexplained disappearances and whatever are vampire kills, and a bunch of them are in other places too."

She didn't even know Sunnydale had a bunch of unexplained disappearances. "How many is tons, there can't be that many of you if you kill people very frequently. If there were more than a dozen serial killers in the same town killing people on a weekly basis, then someone would notice the hundreds of bodies piling up. Unless maybe you like, move from place to place a lot or something - "

"Oh, no, literally look up the Sunnydale death statistics, nobody notices 'cause people are idiots and don't like thinking about scary things but this town is fucked."

"I'll, uh, do that, then. Why Sunnydale in particular? It can't be everywhere, the FBI keeps national statistics and I've seen those - "

"Oh, that's cause of the Hellmouth."

"Oh. Solid. What's a Hellmouth."

"It's like, a portal to Hell? It's mostly not open, but vampires and demons and stuff kind of... end up hanging out near it a lot for some kind of bullshit magic reason. And then they eat people and then you get crazy death rates."

This has so many interesting religious implications, unless it's completely wrong, which it probably is. But it's a place to start investigating. "And demons are a different thing, there're demons running around separate from the vampires?"

"Oh, yeah, there's like a million demon species. Not a literal million. Probably. I haven't counted. There's lots though. They come from all different dimensions and stuff. Vampires are, I think, technically a kind of demon? But a really weird kind 'cause we're contagious, we can turn people into more vampires."

"Great. OK. Solid." She needs to stop saying 'solid'. "How do you do that, is it like everyone who gets bitten - "

"Nah, it's like, if you let somebody drink some of your blood and then you drink all of theirs - 'you' here being a vampire - then they wake up as vampires too. After a little while being just dead. I think it's like three days? I've never turned anybody."

"That at least explains how the entire population of Sunnydale isn't already vampires, I guess. Um. I need to go home before people get worried and stuff, do you have like, a phone number or an address or can you only be contacted via smoke signals - not smoke signals, you can't go out in the day, something else suitably archaic and obscure - "

"Kinda hard to have a phone and a house when you've been dead for a hundred and fifty years and can't go outside in the daytime! I live in a crypt, it's very fashionable."

"You could have, like, a cell phone or something. Unless you don't have enough income to pay the phone bill, I guess. But I bet there are jobs you can do just at night. Anyway, uh - I'm gonna be at the library tomorrow, you can figure out directions then, I'm not gonna find the place now because it'd make me late and also smells way too much like something that could be an ambush."

"Sure," he says agreeably. "See you."

"Bye! Thanks for the info! Don't eat anyone, I'll find out and kick your ass!" she yells over her shoulder. 

Aaaaa she is going to have to do so much processing tonight.

He laughs as he walks away, which is maybe not the world's most promising sign, but he's been reasonably helpful so far, probably?

She heads home and avoids getting jumped by any more vampires.

"AZALEA we gotta talk RIGHT now unless you're busy in which case it can wait like fifteen minutes."