The paper wants his opinion on import taxes for rare magical ingredients. They dance around him almost certainly not being able to admit to having anything to do with a certain trade company wink wink nudge nudge.

...uh what? Trade company...? Why would—he arrived, like, last week...?

(He is a vampire and he was already a pretty good liar before he turned, they will not be getting anything other than perfectly genuine-looking confusion.)

They keep pushing despite his great acting. He'll probably have to hang up on them.

He will hang up, then, after growing increasingly exasperated about the whole affair in a very convincing way, exactly like he were some rando who got contacted by weird people who were convinced he had given birth to the Christ.

He gets another call from the same newspaper - which is cut off and replaced with a call from 'Charlescomm Service Department'.

Uh huh...?

"Hello, sir. We're terribly sorry to bother you. However, it appears you have potentially become a minor celebrity or otherwise attracted media attention. We know this can be very stressful for our clients, so I'd just like to know if you want me to block and filter incoming calls for those likely to be harassing or repetitive."

"I'm curious about how people are even getting this number."

"I couldn't comment on that aside from the fact that our routing system is very secure. Presumably someone you gave it to told others, or else it was overheard or seen in their notes or something of that nature."

"I see. How do you decide which calls to block?"

"Statistics. Known media outlets. We also provide a white and black list to always or never receive, and keep a log of all blocked calls, with this service. We can also simply provide you a new number if you wish."

"I see. And this costs how much...?"

"Basic badcall filtering is twenty Kavased per month, however I don't expect it to meet your needs as it only excludes main media outlets and has only individual listings on the whitelist and blacklist. Plus badcall filtering is fifty per month. It includes enhanced filtering features and a log of blocked calls. Premium badcall filtering is recommended for VIPs and comes with a personal account manager, for two hundred and fifty per month, as well as customized notifications of potential problems and the ability to return up to six different prerecorded messages to different sorts of media calls. The first new crystal number, if you wish to take that route, is free as a courtesy. Further ones will be approximately sixty to one hundred depending on circumstances and other account details."

"And is this a limited-time offer?"

"I can't guarantee the rates will be the same, but the services themselves will certainly remain available."

"I see. I'll keep my number like this for now, and contact you again later if I change my mind."

"As you wish, sir. Does this mean we should not contact you to offer badcall filtering again?"

"Under what conditions would you normally do it again?"

"It varies, but generally the system will flag your account for another offer if there is a consistently large number of incoming calls from known or suspected badcall numbers for several days, especially if the system flags the calls as being rejected or short."

"That sounds reasonable, you can contact me again then."

"Thank you. Is there anything else you'd like to discuss while you have me on the line, or should I just wish you a nice day?"

"I think that will be all for now, thank you."

"I hope you are enjoying your service with Charlescomm Communications Corporation, and have a nice day sir."

Click.

...okay it's time to be a girl, yes, good, she's feeling better now.

She calls Terel, again.

It goes to voicemail.