That makes it sound less like an e-mail address and more like a summoning ritual.

She's tempted to ask whether the lawyer experiences these messages as receiving an actual e-mail, or as receiving the message in his head, but that feels too much like getting sidetracked.

"Um… Thanks, but not right now." She'd be worried about him responding to that by showing up. "Maybe after we've gone our separate ways? I'll let you know. By the way, are there any consequences to using his name in any other context?"

Meredith believes he gets the message like an e-mail and also gets magically notified of someone trying to get his attention.

He’s less likely to show up for Meredith than for a new person because Meredith has called him or sent him messages an excessive amount of times but it still makes sense for Sanna not to want to risk it.

“Sure, my phone’s at home anyway.” She didn’t need it when she was out for a hunt. “It depends on how you use it. Just mentioning or writing it doesn’t usually do anything but he might show up if you say it with the intention to call his attention.”

Ooh. Good to know. "Thanks. So just reading it or thinking it in your head doesn't do anything?"

“Based on when I’ve tested it, no.”

"Okay. And if I were to say that I've changed my mind about not wanting my contact to be a vampire, who would be your top suggestion? If we're limiting it to people who'll do e-mail, I mean."

“Oh, think there’s someone you might like.” Meredith smiles, she hasn’t been very good at guessing Sanna’s preferences so far but she does believe she has a good suggestion this time. “My old mentor would love to explain things to you.”

Sanna suppresses a much bigger sigh than usual.

Of course Meredith didn't bother to mention this earlier. Perhaps she just didn't view it as in her interest to suggest this person if Sanna didn't ask, but honestly Sanna suspects that it's just because her mind doesn't work that way. Sanna said she didn't want a vampire, and a normal person might have said 'If I think your best option is a vampire, should I mention them or should I not bother?', but Meredith isn't a normal person and it's becoming clear that she doesn't think like that. Every switch is either on or off, there's no fuzzy logic there. (She's going to have to keep that in mind…)

Sanna might have been overly suspicious if she'd mentioned this person right away, though — she would have assumed Meredith was trying to steer her towards her own ends — so maybe it's just as well.

"…This is a different person than the person who turned you, I presume?" Since that person is supposedly dead.

Vampirism and nuance don’t usually get along, in Meredith’s experience. To a lesser extent, the same is true for most supernatural species (she hasn’t found anything conclusive about this fact being tied to magic itself).

“Yes, it’s a different vampire. The oldest one I’ve met, in fact.” Which might be why he’s better at interacting with humans but the sample size is was too small and it could be pretty much any other factor. Way too many experiments have that problem in the context of magic, actually. Meredith does not appreciate that.

“He’s a college professor and has more practice with humans, you’ll probably find him easier to deal with.”

The oldest vampire she's met… Wow…

"How old is he? And what's his fixation?" If he's a college professor, maybe it's something to do with teaching.

“He’s over two thousand years old, he was a mathematician and philosopher in Ancient Greece. His drive is teaching and the preservation of knowledge.” Meredith can’t understand how he manages to keep himself from revealing the existence of magic. She guesses that he leans hard on the things he’s allowed to teach instead but, if she were in his place, she thinks she would need to be bound by a coven.

Wow, okay. Sanna figured he'd be at least an order of magnitude older than whoever turned Meredith, and not just a couple hundred years older. But it's different hearing it confirmed.

"I presume this one speaks English?" Even if he happens to still live in Greece, if he's that old then surely by now he's learned enough English to be getting by. "And what kind of payment do you expect him to ask for?" Sanna won't complain if he's so hyped about teaching things that he'll give her a bunch of information for free, but she's not banking on it.

"…Oh, and does he have some magic way to hurt me via e-mail? …Or some non-magic way for that matter, for all I know he's an amazing hacker and he just loves to track people down and stalk them or doxx them or something." She can imagine someone parlaying a 'teaching and preservation of knowledge' fixation into leaking perfect strangers' personal details for no reason.