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Garlic bread will be missed
Permalink Mark Unread

Maybe some vampires like the whole crypt and graveyard aesthetic, but this one thinks that's stupid. A crypt doesn't have internet access, a fridge, a microwave, running water, or a bed. Not unless she moved them in, anyway, and that sounds like a pain. Much more comfortable to just get a little affordable cottage that only had two unfortunate murders in it, invest in some very thorough shutters (that are subtly nailed shut) and heavy curtains, and call it a day. Or a night. As it were.

She didn't commit the murders, though if she'd known how nice the cottage was, she might have. It's a nice cottage. She likes it. It would be worth the headache involved with killing people to get, but luckily for her, someone else took care of that, and she didn't have to take care of the bodies. Instead, she can just sit at her desk and drink a mug filled with recently-microwaved blood, and finish working out the kinks in the code for this website she's been paid to design. Work as a freelance web developer pays the loan payments on the cottage (she'll have it entirely paid off long before she needs to get a new identity due to immortality, she worked out the math) and then the bite shop and her other freelance work pay for all of her nice things.

It's a comfortable life. Or, well. Not-quite life. Whatever it is, she plans for it to last forever.

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"...hell of a story," a familiar voice is saying as its owner comes up the path toward her cottage in the early hours after midnight. "If I didn't know better I'd think you were pulling my leg."

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"Who, me? Perish the thought," says the stranger Zeke is talking to.

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Well, isn't that interesting.

This website will keep, she's left herself enough time before the deadline. She can put it on pause for a little while. Besides, she wants to know who this stranger is, and why Zeke's introducing him to her.

She closes her laptop, finishes off the contents of her mug, and leaves it in the sink to go answer the door.

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The stranger is short, dressed in an unfamiliar grey-and-white uniform, and wearing a pair of holstered weapons that look extremely sci-fi. Modern sci-fi, too, none of that eighties stuff. The uniform has a little of the same look.

"Hello!" he says, favouring her with a wonderfully charming smile. "My name is Miles. Zeke says you might be able to help me retrieve my soul."

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"Hello," she replies, with a slight smile of her own. "Pleasure to meet you, I'm Yvette. Retrieve your soul. That's a new one. Hmm. Come in, both of you, it sounds like an interesting problem."

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"Yes, I gather it's not a common request."

In they go.

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"He appeared out of nowhere lying in the middle of an alley with both his arms broken," Zeke explains, "and he's cute, so I turned him, and then he really wanted his soul back for some reason, so of course I thought of you."

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"I'm flattered! I'll see what I have, but off the top of my head, there's not a lot on the subject. Though I remember a curse being involved..." She hums thoughtfully, and traipses off to her library.

With a careless wave of a hand as she leaves, she adds, "Blood's in the fridge if you want it."

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"Thanks! We swung by the butcher before we came here, though. I brought some extra, I can put it away for you."

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"Thank you, darling! I do appreciate it."

She finds two promising books and returns to the living room with them.

"Now," she says, sitting at the couch, "how quickly do you want it back, and how well do you want it stuck on?"

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"Soon and very, the latter being more important than the former."

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"Huh. Well, okay." She sets a book on the coffee table and begins flipping through its peer. "Why do you want it back? Mine only ever gave me trouble."

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"It turned out I was keeping all my best skills in it," he says. "But not the ambitious nature that drove me to accomplish incredible things with them. It's... an awkward situation to be in."

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"Huh," she repeats. "I can sort of see how that would work. Interpersonal skills and the like?"

(Flip flip, flip flip, through the book.)

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"That general kind of thing, yeah."

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"Sorry about the loss." Her sincerity is somewhat impacted by how she's not looking up from the book.

"So that's one available option," she muses mostly to herself, putting the still open book down. She gets the other one and starts flipping through it, too. "I was right about the curse. It's just not particularly good at sticking and can be undone by -" she moves to glance at the text, "quote, 'A moment of perfect happiness.' Which is super vague, and sounds like a shoddy job of cursemaking to me, really. And then a shoddy job of documentation." She sniffs with disdain, and returns to the second book. "I could probably fix it up to something less shoddy, but I'll need you - or Zeke, I guess, if he wants to - to foot the bill for the material cost."

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Miles glances at Zeke.

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Zeke shrugs. "Sure, whatever."

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"Ever the sweetheart," says Yvette, amused and slightly fond.

She continues reading, then:

"And now a second one that somehow manages to have even worse documentation. Round of applause. What's here looks more reliable than the shoddy curse, but that could be the lack of records. Basically, it would involve going on a field trip to Africa and do some quest... thing. It's not very specific. I think I'll have to break into Sunnydale's library to really give you an answer for what's involved with this one, it's got a better selection than I do."

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"You feel like going to Africa?" he asks Miles.

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"If I have to." A pause. "I haven't been on this planet that long, where's Africa?"

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"Other side of the world. You'd have to catch a plane."

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"Inconvenient but not insurmountable."

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"Yep. No guarantees for its reliability until I go visit the library, though, so don't book any plane tickets. Do you have a preference for whether you'd rather take a while to get your soul back on once, properly, and that's it, or if you'd rather have a number of potential false starts to get you your soul back quickly with some chance of playing soul-pong with bad sticking methods?"

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"I wouldn't mind some fussing around with it first as long as I know that when it's on for good it really definitely is."

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"Practical. A rarity, in this town." She considers him, thoughtfully. "And you are very cute. I see why Zeke likes you."

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"Thank you," he says, smiling again.

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"So, itinerary most likely to get you your soul back properly in what I feel is the least amount of time. I take a trip to the library to look up all relevant information, and start figuring out how to make the curse less." She waves a hand, carelessly. "Shit. And get you information on the soul adventure and see how likely that is. But since going to Africa takes a while, I try to pin your soul back and we see how well it sticks. If it's good enough you can skip the plane trip to Africa and we all live happily ever after, and if it's not I un-pin it and send you off to Africa to see how that does. If it's worse than my efforts, I try again and believe in myself really hard and remember that I have professional pride and honestly I'll probably get it stuck on permanently the first time, I'm very good at magic."

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"Sounds good to me," says Miles. "Thank you for your help. I appreciate it immensely."

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"You can thank me by smiling at me some more, it suits you very much."

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"Happy to oblige."

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"The smile's even better with his soul attached," volunteers Zeke.

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"Is it? What motivation, I'll get started right away."

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Zeke grins.

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So does Miles.

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"But there is the subject of paying me for my time," points out Yvette.

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"And in what currency would you like your payment? Smiles?"

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"Hmm, I don't know. What other things can your mouth do?"

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"Oh, plenty."

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"I might require a demonstration before I agree to accept payment in the currency."

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"Suits me."

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Suits her too, as it turns out!

She would let him demonstrate for the rest of the night and into the morning, because wow that is a demonstration, but she's practical.

"You," she murmurs, after a drawn out kiss, "are staying right here until I get back with various books from the library, because I would like to get to work on it sooner rather than later and night only lasts so long."

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"It's a deal," he says, grinning.

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"Excellent." And then she kisses him again, before disentangling to put on clothes and go break into a library.

 

She's back in an hour and oh, look, they still have some night left where he could be oh so graciously paying her for her time. Does he perhaps want to take advantage of this, and the fact that she's kind enough to let him stay in her cottage during the day?

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Why yes. That would be just lovely.

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She feels so very well compensated.

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That's the idea, yes.

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So the books get ignored until she wakes up next sunset, but she did not lose her sense of professionalism when she lost her soul. Even if he is very, very tempting, she has a job to do. So she gets herself a mug of blood to get to work. .... And then brings him one too, because there is a certain amount of fondness that accompanies such feats of payment. She can read the neglected books in bed and only occasionally shoot him contemplative looks.

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Miles is very pleased with his mug of blood. And with Yvette. He is very, very pleased with Yvette.

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Yes, she knows. She needs to personally thank Zeke for the gift that is Miles because damn.

Anyway, right now: work.

"For the potential Africa ensoulening solution, do you want a copy of the entire chapter, a neatened up itinerary that I write, or both just in case?"

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"Have I mentioned that I admire your thoroughness?"

(He has. Several times.)

"I think I'll go with both on that one."

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"I might have heard it mentioned," she murmurs, with a sly smile.

"I'll type it up, then get to work on the spell to stick your soul on, mm?" Oh, wow, she is getting nuzzly. He did do a number on her, didn't he. Oh well. This is very pleasant, anyway, she doesn't mind.

She retrieves her laptop and settles back down to prepare a re-ensouling in Africa itinerary, notes the lack of a copy machine in her cottage, and just decides to lean on her superspeed and typing skills to type it very quickly rather than get up to copy it elsewhere. Because, look, he did a number on her, okay, she is justified in staying in bed rather than doing things.

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"I appreciate your help very much."

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"Mmm, careful, darling, I'm trying to work here to get your soul back. Keep looking at me like that and I might take longer at it, because I want to extort another night from you."

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He laughs. "All right, I'll save the looks."

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"For later, I hope, I wouldn't want to miss out," she purrs, but - yes, work. Back to work. She can cuddle while doing it because he's pleasant to cuddle.

The documentation for the curse is - well, annoying, why doesn't everyone document their spells like she documents hers, but it's passable. Enough to start figuring out the spell's construction and how exactly they screwed it up.

"Hm," she observes, after a while. "So this is complicated, of course, but surprisingly the spell itself doesn't have the usual weird backlashy effects that I'd expect from something of this strength."

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"That sounds heartening," says Miles. "Although my inner paranoid wants to know how sure you are of that."

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"Yeah, mine too. Older spells tend to not need to reach around and do strange, squirrely things as much, which would account for the readings they documented if it were old enough. Which, it - seems like it is, it's a very old spell. But yeah. And there's not really any way to properly check for the subtle things they might not have documented without casting the exact spell they made, and if I'm going to be doing that blind anyway, I'm going to cast my version, which will be better."

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"Well, I'll trust your judgment, then."

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"I appreciate it." She reaches out to pet his hair, because it's soft, within easy reach, and it's soothing.

"I like magic, but I despise all of my predecessors for their lack of. Of. Organization and sense. It's infuriating."

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"And something tells me you're going to set that straight."

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"I will outlive them all," she sniffs, "and every bit of magic I get my hands on will be well documented and every spell I make built properly. And if eventually all of magic is tidy then I will consider it a job well done."

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Miles grins at her.

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"Behave, darling, I still haven't finished your spell."

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He laughs, but obligingly turns his smile toward the ceiling instead of toward Yvette.

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She leans over and kisses the corner of his mouth because she finds tempting him fun, but then returns to work. She'll have this spell sorted in record time.

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Yes she will. And then maybe everything will be okay again.

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Until then, he has a lovely vampire witch that finds his company very pleasant, and will work very hard to make everything be okay again.

... She does need breaks, though. It's hard to do one thing for days without going slowly mad. She might need to instead do Miles, which helps with the mental fatigue quite a lot.

(And also finish that website, because she has a deadline and she keeps those, but that hardly takes much time at all, in comparison to Miles and his spell.)

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Miles is very happy to help her with her mental fatigue.

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Excellent, she appreciates his attention so much.

Two nights later, she wakes up (.... in his arms, because he's comfortable to snuggle) with a subtle edge to her. Something like impatience; she fidgets and readjusts where she sits and occasionally taps the back of her laptop, before noticing she's doing it and stopping.

There might, perhaps, be something up.

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He notices.

(He knows what he would've said.)

"You all right?"

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"Mmm. Magic's addictive, it's kind of hard to be a serious practitioner of magic without getting a bit hooked." (Tap tap tap tap - she notices, and stops.) "I am not going into what are properly withdrawals but it's slightly uncomfortable and makes me twitchy."

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"All right."

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"I'm almost done with this, so it's a bad idea for me to just cast something small, when I'm going to cast something much larger soon enough," she says, partially to herself.

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Seems like a reasonable occasion for him to take her word for it.

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Until then: slightly jittery vampire, stubbornly working at this spell.

 

".... Okay," she says. "Done. I just - need the materials and then I can cast this."

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"Do I need to help acquire the materials, or just encourage Zeke to cover the cost?"

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"Either's fine, I'm even willing to go buy them now myself and hand somebody the receipt and say, 'That. Pay me that.'"

Impatient, isn't she?

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"I am happy to promise that your expenses will definitely be covered. And once I have my soul back, that promise will be extremely reliable."

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She hums an agreement and then tilts his head to the proper angle to kiss him.

.... And then pulls away soon after because she is having trouble keeping herself still, now.

"The magic shop should still be open at this hour. I'm going to take a quick shower and then go buy the things I need."

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"Sounds like a plan," he says agreeably.

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Little smile, and then she goes and does that.

 

She's back soon enough with a paper bag filled with various magical effects.

"Right," she says, setting the paper bag down on her dining room table, "so if this messes up it's going to mess up in the soul direction. Not - hurt it or make it impossible to have a soul stuck on you, but it might settle in some sort of weird requirement for what causes your soul to flee your body in terror. I'm pretty sure I prevented that, but I might have messed up somewhere and there could be an opening for it to flee in terror through."

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"Just as long as you'll be able to tell if that's the case."

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"Yeah, I'll be able to figure out where the failure points are once it's on. Just - can't predict them in advance with absolute accuracy."

She starts moving her coffee table and couch to make room in the living room for magic.

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"Seems like I'm all set, then. Thank you again."

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"Mhm," she says, a little absently.

She focuses a little single mindedly on setting up the ritual. Magic. She will be done with this annoying growing withdrawal, and now. Still, she sets everything up carefully and checks over everything twice. She will get this right.

And then she has everything set up, and properly checked over. It should work. She doesn't know why it wouldn't.

"Okay. Please sit in the center of the pentacle."

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"Sure thing."

Into the center of the pentacle he goes.

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Good, excellent.

She retrieves the ring and necklace enchanted to monitor ambient magical energies and monitor how she's affected by them, respectively, and puts them both on.

Then she gets to casting.

It starts with only slightly ominous chanting (in Latin, because that's Yvette's preferred language for magic) and the hairs on the back of Miles's neck starting to rise. Nearly innocuous. As she continues, a breeze picks up inside the house, subtle at first but picking up in strength as she continues. The lights flicker, and her voice takes on an echoey, otherwordly quality. She doesn't shout, or raise her voice, but all around them falls quiet, as if waiting in anticipation for... something.

At what seems to be the apex of the spell, the wind wails through the confines of the cottage, there's a rush of energy. Yvette shivers from the euphoric high of powerful magic, not letting it cause her voice to waver as she steers the summoned magic towards its recipient -

Her eyes widen with realization and alarm as it doesn't go into Miles. Oh, she thinks, alarmed. Oh, shit. In retrospect this was an obvious way for it to fail. But hindsight's always twenty-twenty, and she can't put this particular beast back in its cage now that it's out.

The candles arrayed around the pentacle go out, the unnatural winds still. The lights flicker back on just in time to reveal Yvette gracefully sliding to the floor with a whimper.

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...that did not give Miles his soul back.

But clearly it did something

"Are you all right?"

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"N-not, not really," she says shakily from where she's a heap on the hardwood floor, still shivering from aftershocks of magic.

"I-I-I have never -" She laughs, just a little. "- been so happy for shitty documentation in my life, oh my god."

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"...You just gave yourself your own soul back, didn't you."

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"Yes," she giggles, "yes I did."

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A thought occurs to her, and her expression goes dark.

"...... Right, okay, let's. Let's see how well I s-stuck it on, c'mon please please please have been competent enough even while you fucked up so badly you re-ensouled yourself..."

She starts making a wobbly attempt to stand.

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That's not a promising expression.

Miles stands up and offers her a hand.

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She takes it with a small smile, and a quiet, "Thank you." With Miles's help, she makes it to the couch, where she can stop relying on legs that currently resemble jelly.

"Okay," she says, taking off the necklace, "I should just be able to check this and see, instead of doing the scrying thing, actually."

She hesitates slightly, then murmurs a phrase in Latin. The gem in the necklace glows, and she shudders, but focuses on the gem with a single mindedness and a growing trepidation. The glow fades, and she lowers the hand holding the necklace to her lap, looking pensive.

"So, that's not ever coming off accidentally, good, that's - that's good." And yet her expression still looks pensive.

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Miles watches her with... slightly distant concern.

"I get the sense there's more going on here than the obvious," he says. "Anything I can do to help?"

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"There is. And. And maybe, I don't know. I - I should definitely get you your soul back sooner rather than later. I just - just got a reminder of how important they are, and I didn't even want mine back. Sorry, I swear I don't usually mess up in such a dramatic fashion."

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"I believe you," he says.

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"If I, did enough of a good job with the sticking I should just - be able to cast it again and you have your soul too with no risk of potentially losing mine again in the process. But I'm going to want to be sure, because, if I lose it again I'm probably not getting it back unless someone holds me down to shove it back in me."

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"...Yeah."

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"I mean on the bright side I didn't make a terrible soulless vampire. I don't think I even killed anyone."

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"Oh, congratulations. Neither have I, but then I've only had a few days. And I'm motivated to avoid being disappointed in myself forever."

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"I don't really know what you're like with a soul, but I don't think you've disappointed yourself." After all, mostly what he did during those few days was oh right they did do that didn't they. She glances at him, opens her mouth, fails to form words, and closes it, instead opting to turn slightly pink. She looks away.

"I'm going to - start checking to reassure myself that my soul's stuck on well enough for putting your soul back. If it isn't, I bet we can find a non-vampire witch powerful enough to cast it on you and that will definitely work," she says, because that is easier than talking about - any of that other thing.

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Ah.

"Sounds good," he says.

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"I - should probably hold off on casting it tonight, though. Unless you particularly want to deal with an incredibly incoherent and mumbly witch high out of her mind on magic."

Though that wouldn't really be a huge difference from the other ways he's seen her incoherent and mumbly okay no shutting down this line of thought right now.

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"I don't particularly object, but I'll understand if you don't want to get high out of your mind in front of a near-stranger."

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"I mean, honestly I think I've already been in all sorts of compromising positions in front of the aforementioned near-stranger," she says, deadpan. "But it might be incredibly awkward to have your soul back and immediately have to deal with me being high out of my mind."

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"I'll roll with it, trust me."

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She considers.

".... I'll see if it's safely castable, and if I'm very sure that it is, it's better that you have it back sooner rather than later."

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"All right."

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"And luckily," she says, lightly, "I don't have to go shopping for more materials, because I had been planning to subtly extort you and Zeke by buying extra supplies and footing the both of you with the bill."

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...he laughs. "I wouldn't have complained."

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She giggles.

"I'll pretend I was definitely being preparatory and thoughtful, and not self serving and greedy, then!"

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"I feel like the absence of your soul gives you a pretty ironclad excuse for dubious motivations."

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"Yeah, fair enough. But my motivations are less dubious now."

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"Oh good."

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She smiles at him, and then gets to checking over how sturdy her soul is and how much her records of the spell's effect would disturb it.

 

In about two hours she concludes that her soul is not coming off for anything less than someone trying very hard with a spell specifically designed to rip her soul off, and that her soul-sticking spell wouldn't disturb it at all. It's just trying to find and fill the first available vessel, and it just so happens that the caster will always come up first there. Which makes sense, really.

"So," she says, once she's very, very sure of this, "Time to try this again?"

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"Yes please."

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Smile. ... Then the smile fades.

".... If my sister comes by while I'm high out of my mind," she says, hesitantly, "tell her that I botched a large spell and stubbornly cast it again, shortly after, to get it right. And that she can ask me about the details later when I'm less incapacitated."

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"...understood," he says. "Should I not ask?"

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"Depends. How good are you at lying?"

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"Extremely."

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"My sister turned me, and will be very unhappy about the state of my re-ensouling. This is because she knows that while I have one and she doesn't, I will absolutely stop at nothing to kill her or put it back. She's by far the most terrifying soulless vampire I have ever met and is making a very good bid for world domination."

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"...can you adapt your spell to target her at a distance? Because for that I will absolutely wait on mine."

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"Probably, but it will take long enough that it's honestly better for me to just put your soul back now, and then try to figure out how to make the spell work at a distance."

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"All right."

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"Since I stuck on my soul so well, she'll probably opt to just kill me rather than try to drag me to a competent enough witch to desoul me again. And she has super strength and a truly impressive amount of combat experience due to formerly being - uh, what amounts to 'the chosen one.' So. Yeah. Let me set up the pentacle again."

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"Good plan," he says. "When I have my soul back I'll be much better placed to help you."

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She smiles, and then gets to setting up the ritual again.

 

"Okay. Moment of truth. Let's see if I was wise to bet my soul on this. Into the pentacle, please?"

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Into the pentacle!

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Ominous latin chanting. Wind effects. Lights flickering. Feeling of growing power, everything but the spell falling silent -

Then a final rush of energy and an extinguishing of candles, and this time, the correct vampire gets a soul.

Yvette makes a sound Miles had really only gotten the pleasure of hearing when they were in her bedroom, and promptly pitches to the side to tremble like a leaf on the floor for the second time tonight.

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Miles barely hears her.

For a second he thinks he might faint. He was expecting the rush of intense relief, but he wasn't expecting the pain that went with it. Getting his soul back hurts. It's like waking up from a nightmare knowing that everything you dreamed was real. He was pretty devastated while his soul was gone but he managed to defer the worst of it, and now all those bills have come due at once. Ow.

 

Okay. Okay. He's fine. He's functional. How's Yvette doing?

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Still slumped on the ground over there, shivering and softly giggling to herself.

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Could be worse!

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Probably!

She seems to gather some resemblance to having a presence of mind to attempt to push herself to a sitting position. It... doesn't work. But she does manage to flip herself onto her back for less muffled giggling.

"Hi, Miles," she mumbles, with a tiny finger motion in an approximation of a wave. "Did I - soul sticker you?"

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"You did!"

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"Yay," she says, with a tiny smile. "Could write a book now. A soul sticker book!!" She seems to find this hilarious, and giggles accordingly.

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Miles laughs softly.

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Giggle, giggle.

"I should bed," she says, attempting seriousness and sort of missing.

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"Are you going to need help getting there?"

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She screws up her face, considering. Then, she attempts to sit up again, this time taking her time. She manages it, too.

"Yes," she decides imperiously. "The motors are out to lunch and have taken their skills with them."

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He laughs. "Okay," he says, getting up and offering his hand again.

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She takes the offered hand, but doesn't move to get up, considering him seriously.

"I think I have no motors," she says, in a very serious tone.

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"Does that mean I should carry you?"

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"Or leave me to make friends with the floor." She pats the floor, in a friendly fashion. "Good floor."

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"It's a fine floor but I'm not sure it's capable of sustaining a lasting friendship."

He leans down and scoops her up.

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"Eee!"

Then she giggles and snuggles closer to him. "It might! I got the long lasting varnish."

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"But can it offer you emotional support?"

He carries her toward her bed.

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She doesn't struggle or squirm, though she does nuzzle.

"I don't think that comes in a can," she observes dubiously.

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Here is Yvette's bed! He sets her down on it.

"Not usually," he agrees.

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"How would you even fit it in there?"

She settles down on the bed, smiling a little.

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"Truly a conundrum."

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"Mmmmmmmmm no don't care right now. Cuddle me?"

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He smiles at her. "Sure."

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"Eee!" she says, and scoots over so he'll have room and opens her arms invitingly.

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Snuggle!

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Snuuuuuggle. She makes a little contented sound, nuzzling again.

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Cozy.

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"You're not disappointed in yourself, are you?" she wonders, after a while.

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"Huh? No, not at all," he says. "I handled it admirably."

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"Mhmmm!" Nuzzle. "You were very impressive." ... And then she giggles, looking away.

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...Miles giggles too. "Um. Thank you."

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"You're welcome," she mumbles shyly, squirming a little so she can rest her head where his neck meets his collarbone.

Slightly muffled: "It was nice." Pause. "... I shouldn't try to relationship while I'm a kite."

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"Yes, that sounds like wise advice," he agrees.

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"I am a smart kite," she declares, proudly. Giggle. "With a soul sticker!"

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"Yes you are." Snuggle.

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Snuggle!

"I like your sticker," she decides.

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"Thank you! I'm pretty fond of it myself."

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"It makes you all..." She scrunches up her face, trying to find words. "Warm and toasty. Like a little fireplace?"

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...awwwwwwwwwwwww.

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Happy nuzzle.

"Fireplace sticker!" she declares, apparently pleased with this designation.

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"A title I shall wear with pride."

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Giggle.

"I think without my sticker I was." She hums, thoughtfully. "A house. And the sticker's like the people. It's nice enough without them, but if you don't have a house that's lived in, why bother?"

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"...huh. I see what you mean," he says thoughtfully.

"Following that line of reasoning, I think I was a fireplace with no fire in it."

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"Well you were inside me," she agrees, blithely.

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...Miles is pretty sure he's blushing. What even is the point of being a vampire if you can still blush?!

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Giggle.

"I make good metaphors! Fireplaces go in houses," she says sagely. .... She's probably doing this on purpose, by the smile.

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"Yes, I, ah, I follow the logic."

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More giggling.

"You're cute in brick." And then she boops his nose with a finger.

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He squeaks affrontedly, then bursts out laughing.

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She giggles along, delighted with the laughter.

"And I am an adorable kite."

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"Yes you are."

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"Thank you." And then she nuzzles him, a little sleepily.

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Awww.

Snuggle.

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Snuggle!

 

....zzzzz.....

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Okay, he can snuggle the sleeping witch.

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The sleeping witch is very snugglesome.

 

She's not going to wake up until he moves, or next sunset.

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Miles eventually dozes off too. It's all very cozy.

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So cozy.

 

She'll still be snuggled in his arms in the evening, fast asleep. Sleeping off her magic-high, probably.

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Hmm. Well, he doesn't have to get up right away...

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Someone knocks on the door.

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Yvette stirs at the knock, making a vaguely unhappy sound. She opens an eye.

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"Should I get it?"

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"Yeah, please." She disentangles from the snuggles to rub at her eyes.

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He scoots out of bed and goes to get the door.

"Hi, Zeke."

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"Hi! So have you just been in bed for the past three days straight?"

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He laughs. "No!"

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...Zeke peers at him.

"Oh hey, she did it! She totally did it! Nice!"

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"I am so good at putting souls in things," she says, a little groggily. "You have no idea."

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"...are you serious? Miles, is she serious?"

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"She did indeed restore my soul," says Miles. "And apparently doing big spells gets you high! Who knew?"

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"I did, and it's terrible, and I'm not getting out of bed and you can't make me. But I put his soul back and I did a much better job than the curse thing, it'll stay now."

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"Cool," says Zeke. "Can I borrow him for a while to celebrate? We'll bring you back some blood from the butcher."

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Uh.

"..... sure," she says, after a noticeable pause. "Yeah, go ahead. Thanks, I'll appreciate the blood, we uh. Kind of used up a lot of my stores."

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"You got it!"

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"Do I get any say in the nature of this celebration?" he asks as he follows Zeke out and down the path.

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"Bet I can guess what you're going to pick."

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"Maybe I want to go to a poetry recital, how about that?"

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"And where are we gonna find one of those?"

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"I'm a resourceful man."

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"Wow, you definitely have your smile back."

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Is she uncomfortable with this? It's kind of hard to tell, she did just wake up. And it's not like she has any sort of, of claim on him. She doesn't. She's aware of that. It's completely ridiculous to feel anything weird about this at all. And yet: feelings.

She buries her head into her pillow and tries to figure out what she would even want from a hypothetical relationship that doesn't actually exist right now. And bemoan the lack of vampire Tylenol. She thinks she has a post-magic-high headache coming on.

 

After a little while, she recalls the part where her sister is probably going to want to kill her the moment she realizes that she's got her soul back. She really doesn't have time for relationship drama. She needs to prepare.

She crawls her way out of bed by sheer force of will, has a mug of blood (the last in her fridge) and then figures out a list of things she'll need to protect herself from the most terrifying vampire in the world. It's a respectable list. Luckily a lot of the things she was saving for are no longer relevant, she can sink some money into 'not dying.' She writes a note explaining that she's going shopping, leaves it pinned on the door with a magnet from her fridge, and then goes to shop.

The store itself is small and a bit cramped, but it's a good one, and she knows it well. She's of course recognized by the cashier, and replies with a sedate wave. Then she starts systematically working her way through the aisles, picking up things as she goes with careful efficiency. She probably looks about as anti-social as she feels, with her hair a mess and the 'don't talk to me' look on her face, but she'll optimize her path through the store to avoid people anyway. Because, ugh. People.

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People seem to be picking up on her mood really clearly! Absolutely no one bothers her. It's a miracle.

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She is so pleased. There wasn't likely to be many people here anyway, but - yeah, she doesn't want to people right now.

She doesn't get everything on her list, because not everything on her list is here, but that's okay. It's better than nothing.

... She will put in orders for things, though. This list, please, she can pre-pay if necessary - oh, pay when she picks it up, that's fine. Excellent. Thank you.

And then she's free to go home and crawl under her covers again, excellent.

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As Yvette leaves the shop, she passes a girl browsing the herbs. Looks to be in her late teens, human, wearing jeans and a jacket.

The girl hesitates for a few seconds, then follows Yvette out. "Hey," she calls quietly. "I couldn't help overhearing the on-the-run-from-the-mafia shopping list, and my aunt's big into protective magic, do you want an introduction?"

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Yvette peers at her, frowning slightly.

"... I might, yes," she hedges, cautiously.

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She catches up to a more conversational distance.

"Sorry for following you out of the store like a weirdo, but - it really sounded like you could use some help. I try not to let those opportunities pass me by."

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Okay, but is she the Slayer. She's the right age for it...

"Fair enough. It's fine. Do you tend to help a lot of people?"

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"When I can."

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"So are you the Slayer or...?"

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"Yes, and I've been keeping an eye on your friend Zeke because he tried to eat me last week and seemed unusually responsive to the suggestion that he stop doing that, so I noticed that he'd turned a guy and then I noticed that they went to you to get the guy's soul back and now here you are needing a lot of protection in a hurry and under the circumstances I would really genuinely prefer you not die."

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Well that's remarkably straightforward and honest, how wonderful.

"Yeah I'd really prefer me to not die, too," she agrees, blinking. "... I'd offer to invite you home to talk but Zeke wouldn't appreciate walking in on you in my living room."

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"I bet I could talk him down, but fair point. My place? Where you will also find the aforementioned aunt."

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She considers.

... The Slayer did just admit that she knows where she lives, if she wanted to set up a trap she could manage it in a less obvious fashion than this.

"All right," she agrees, a little tentatively. "But let me drop off my purchases at home first?" And write a note.

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"Yeah, no problem."

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Yvette smiles. "Meet - uh, here, or...?" She considers. "There's a park about a block to the north that's somehow not near any graveyards, that could also work."

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"I know the place. Sure, that works."

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"All right. See you in - about half an hour." She waves, and takes her various magical goods home.

Are Zeke and Miles back yet?

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Doesn't look like it!

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...

Okay.

She adds a note on the fridge explaining things, leaves the note on the door, puts all of her magical things away, then goes to meet the Slayer.

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The Slayer is in the park!

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Oh, good. Here is Yvette, also in the park.

"Hello."

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"Hi. My place is this way."

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"Sure." And she follows!

"I'm Yvette, by the way."

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"Liesel. Nice to meet you."

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"Nice to meet you too. Provided you don't, uh, stake me. Please don't stake me, I'm a nice vampire, I swear."

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"I'm not going to stake you. Promise. I'm very impressed with what I've seen of your social circle and as far as I'm concerned the world needs more vampires like that."

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"Thanks. I think so too." There's more to that than she's saying, but she's not saying it here.

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Yeah.

It turns out to be a pretty short walk to Liesel's place. She opens the door, steps inside, and says, "C'mon in," over her shoulder.

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Oh, good, this would be awkward if she didn't get invited inside and just had to hover at the threshold. In she goe-

....

Oh holy shit this place is a fortress. She doesn't even have a particularly finely tuned sense of magic (she tends to rely on baubles and minor spells, because they're more precise) and wow okay. That's. That's a lot of protection. ... She's kind of jealous, actually. They are very lovely protections, from what she can clumsily feel.

She hesitates briefly after entering, but continues on shortly after.

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"I'm home," she calls up the stairs.

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The fabled aunt descends.

"I'm Chris," she says when she comes around the turn of the landing and sees Yvette. "Nice to meet you."

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"Yvette," says she of that name. "Pleasure to meet you, too. Your house is lovely and so are its protections."

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She smiles. "Thank you! So, Liesel tells me you're in some unspecified kind of trouble and could use my help? What do you need protection from, exactly?"

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She glances at Liesel, then says, "My sister was the Slayer. For a while. I was her helpful magical support for years, then a person we were unfortunate enough to trust decided she'd be better with fangs. And then she decided I would be, too, because she knew that while I had a soul I'd try to stop her. So then I was a relatively harmless soulless vampire who mostly just wanted to live and practice magic forever comfortably, and then I got my soul back yesterday by accident. And when she realizes that I have it back she's probably going to opt to try very hard to kill me."

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"You're Cyrille's sister?"

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"Ouch," says Liesel. "Well. This is going to be fun, isn't it."

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"I am, in fact, Cyrille's sister," agrees Yvette. "And. Yeah. You see why I wanted the protection."

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"No kidding. Okay, so you've ensouled two vampires so far. How much time and what supplies would you need to manage a third? Is that the direction you want to go with this?"

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"I want to try to figure out how to ensoul my sister at range, because that seems - easier. Than just about any other option. And barring that, I want to kill her, by whatever means I have available to me. I have a supply list for what I need for the standard ensouling, I - shouldn't cast it that often, once a week maybe."

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"It's not my usual line, but it's possible I could help out with the ensouling," says Chris. "Freeform spell design is my other specialty."

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"Given who's after you, it might be prudent for you to stay in my house until you're done with the ensouling," says Liesel. "Thoughts?"

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"... I'm pretty up for it, really. I'd want to go get my stuff - the magical supplies and books in particular - but otherwise, yes, I would love to live in a fortress for a while. And I'd appreciate any help offered with it."

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"Do you want to go get your stuff or do you want us to go get your stuff? Again, given who's after you. I may be being excessively paranoid, but from what I've heard, I don't think so."

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"She's not after me yet, but - no, you're. You're not being excessively paranoid. I do think I want it to be me, though. I'd want to quickly wrap up some of my affairs, write a convincing note to her to try and buy us time, and I think she'd notice if someone else packed up my stuff for me, as opposed to me packing up my stuff. She knows me very well."

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"Yeah, that's fair. In which case, I think Chris should cast a protection or two on you before you head out."

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"Wholeheartedly agreed."

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"For maximum effectiveness... Yvette, if you were a chess piece, which one would you be?"

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"Depends on the board," she says, seriously. "And the opponent. Uh. Bishop, queen, or knight, maybe? ... Bishop and queen over knight, I think. Long range and highly specialized versus most powerful but therefore most vulnerable. Both are rather fitting."

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"Liesel, what's your take?"

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"...Pretty accurate," she says. "I'd say a little more knight and a little more king than she thinks."

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Chris nods thoughtfully. "I can work with that."

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Yvette smiles. "Honestly I hadn't considered the king an option - they'd be as a stand in for the player making the strategies? .... Yeah, okay. Fair enough."

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"I base my magic on chess metaphors. I am a rook," Chris explains. "Rook-as-tower, to be specific. Solid, protective. Fortresslike. Liesel can do knight, king, or queen, but she works most naturally as king and queen at the same time and since that's a powerful and versatile combination it's how I most often use her."

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"I'm not actually a spellcaster myself, but you don't have to be to sit for a chess spell, it's all about... the way your presence interacts with the metaphor."

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"Huh. That's interesting. Does being a spellcaster help strengthen the magic?"

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"It can, if you choose to participate in the casting directly. Otherwise it's usually irrelevant."

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She nods.

"... I'll probably opt out on participating in casting, actually. I uh. Ensouled two people yesterday and was for a little while high as a kite and should take it easy."

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"That's reasonable. Well, would you like to come upstairs to my workroom?"

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"Certainly."

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Up they go!

The workroom has a floor laid out with a fascinatingly complex geometric pattern of different woods. Against the far wall, below a huge window, there is a long counter with assorted boxes and containers on it. There are also two armchairs, pushed against opposite sides of the room. Apart from that it is empty.

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Oh, this is fascinating.

"How long did it take you to assemble all of this?"

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"Designing the floor took about a year," she says. "Installing it took about a month. I can achieve most of the same effect with chalk or masking tape if I need to work away from home, but the advantage of the floor is that I can just put down the layout directly and the lines are already there, almost no matter what layout I'm trying for."

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She nods.

"Clever. The layouts I usually need to use are less predictable. Do the chess metaphors make it - at a guess I'd say more geometric, following the ways pieces on a board move?"

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"Chess magic does work with geometry a lot but the movement of pieces doesn't usually come into it. I suspect all my layouts are heavily rook-influenced anyway. Hmm."

She gazes contemplatively at the floor for a few seconds, then goes to the counter under the window.

"Square within a square within a square," she says to Liesel, giving her a double handful of chess pieces. "Black rooks east/west, white rooks north/south, then you and me and queen and king, then knight and bishop and king and queen. I'll do the decoration."

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"Got it."

She studies the floor for a moment herself, then beckons to Yvette. "If you could have a seat right there, facing the window?"

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"Certainly." She sits where told. "This is really orderly instead of the usual mess, and I'm kind of geeking out about it, and will have approximately ten thousand questions for you later."

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Liesel grins.

She puts a white glass bishop in front of Yvette, a king on her right, a queen on her left, a knight behind her, all together forming a square. Then she puts a red glass queen to the right of the white king, a red glass king to the left of the white queen, and the four rooks form the outer square.

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"I look forward to it," says Chris. She's laying out tumbled stones along the lines of the floor in between the chess pieces. When she's finished, she steps into the diagram and hands Yvette a medium-sized river pebble. "Hold this, please. It's the focus stone."

The pebble is... fortresslike, in a way strongly reminiscent of the house, and of Chris herself.

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She holds the pebble, of course. While peering at it in fascination. She's starting to see the logic here, and wow it's so much tidier than the complicated hybridized reach-arounds she usually has to do.

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Chris smiles.

She sits down in a space in the diagram in front of Yvette.

"And now I'm going to talk to the rock in mediocre Old English alliterative verse for a while, and you will see interesting mystical visions, and afterward you will be as protected as I can make you on short notice."

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Yvette snickers.

"Sounds good. Liesel mentioned it's about how my presence interacts with the metaphor, should I aggressively try to be as myself as possible, or just leave it all to you?"

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"For the most part, what you actually do doesn't matter very much as long as you stay put," she says. "But there could be minor benefits from being extremely yourself, so feel free. Ready?"

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She takes a deep breath, tries to summon up the Essence of Yvette from the corners of her subconscious, and then nods.

"Ready."

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Chris talks to the rock.

The mystical vision begins deep underground, in the glow of magma. Then up, up through the roots of mountains, over long ages as the land reshapes itself in its slow dance, until the stone emerges at last into the light...

A tower wall takes shape around the outer square of the diagram, built of grey stone blocks, translucent but somehow still intensely solid. A pair of translucent figures, both strongly resembling Liesel, appear standing over the red king and queen, facing inward toward Yvette; the red queen has a silver sword, and the king a golden crown.

And then Yvette's metaphors join the show.

In front of her, floating above the bishop, a book. To her left, above the queen, a pen. To her right, above the king, a castle, standing tall and strong and bustling with activity, with guards on the parapets and wagons trundling in and out of the open gates. Her knight's metaphor is behind her, so she can't see it.

Chris keeps talking, barely hesitating, weaving all these things into a narrative. The inside of the tower becomes a library, full of books, with Liesel as king and queen standing guard while Yvette sits in front of an open book, a pen set on one side of it ready to write, a knife on the other side ready to defend her from intruders. The walls are still solid stone, imbued with the strength of mountains. Nobody's burning this place down anytime soon.

After a few more stanzas of description, Chris thanks the rock and ends the spell. The visions fade.

"Bishop as book, queen as pen, king as castle, and knight as knife," she says. "Interesting assortment you have there."

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... Yvette laughs.

"Thank you," she says. "Knight as knife. Well. My more knightly tendencies did involve surprising people with knives."

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"And you've got a strong general protection now. Hostile magic will fail unless it can smash its way through, which most things can't; you will tend to be extremely difficult to physically harm, although I can't say exactly how the difficulty will manifest and it's not a guarantee against any particular kind of possible attack."

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She nods.

"Thank you. I appreciate it."

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"You're welcome."

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"Well. I'll go grab everything from home, then. I shouldn't be too long; I'll be back by sunrise."

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"We'll be here to let you in."

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"Thank you," she says with a smile, and then off she goes.

Home is right where she left it, and no sister in sight. What about Zeke and Miles?

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She passes them on the way there, actually!

"Oh hey, what's up?"

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Don't be weird. Don't be weird. Don't be weird.

Also: don't reveal enough information that Zeke could be killed for it. She would rather he didn't get killed.

"Hey. Went shopping for magic supplies, then decided to go for a walk, because I've been locked in my house for three days straight."

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He laughs. "Yeah good plan. Anyway we're done celebrating and Miles would rather stay in your house than my crypt, no accounting for taste, that cool with you?"

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Oh god Zeke, why do you so casually confront her with subjects she is not prepared to handle. Is it just a superpower? Her sister got super strength and you got 'able to accidentally stumble headfirst over every awkward subject Yvette is not prepared to handle'?

Okay. Okay. How would she handle this without a soul?

"For now, yeah, but I'll be annoyed if he leaves dishes in the sink," she says, deadpan. And she'd probably say something about him earning his keep but oh god no she can't do that right now nope nope nope.

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"I would never," says Miles primly. Then he laughs. "Thanks, I appreciate it."

And he takes the brown paper bag with several plastic tubs of blood in it from Zeke.

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"That's me outta here, then. See you!"

He waves and turns back down the path.

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"Bye," she replies, waving back.

She - looks at Miles. And then she looks away from Miles.

"C'mon," she says, because she's always better at not being weird when she just focuses on being clever and silly, "my fridge is in danger of mutiny if we don't fill it soon."

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"Can't have that!"

Into her cottage they go. Into the fridge goes the blood.

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Yvette removes notes from the front door and the fridge, respectively. The first gets thrown away, the second gets carefully folded up and put in her pocket to throw away elsewhere because maybe her sister wouldn't go through her trash but maybe she would.

Ugh. Being paranoid sucks.

And now she has absolutely no idea how to approach this conversation.

"So, um, hi," she attempts, lamely.

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"Zeke remains ignorant of inconvenient soul-related facts. You all right? My priority here is your safety; how best can I help with that?"

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Oh that makes things much simpler. Thank you, Miles.

"I'm kind of a mess, really, but I'm coping. Thanks. I um. When I was shopping for magical protection supplies the - you recall how I mentioned my sister was basically the chosen one? She's not anymore now that she's a vampire, so there's a new one, and she said hi and we made friends."

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"...Well that's convenient."

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"Her aunt's a witch and is really good at protection magic, and the both of them have invited me to live with them in their fortress-home."

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"Even better! D'you think they'll mind if I come by to introduce myself? Maybe help you carry your stuff there?"

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"I don't think they would, no."

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"Then I think I'll do that."

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She smiles a little, and then it fades.

"I need to make this as convincing as possible," she says absently, turning away to start packing up her stuff. "Which is made more complicated by how I'm not particularly flighty..."

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"What exactly are you trying to convince her of?"

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"That I left town, but there's nothing to be concerned about and she shouldn't bother to come looking for me just to check up on me."

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"Hmmmm," he says. "Met someone who was passing through, they were headed in an interesting direction, you decided it was worth chasing after them immediately? What sort of a person bearing what sort of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity might they be? Magical theory expert on their way to a conference of same, maybe, conference to be held in secret location over extended period of time, liked the look of you enough to invite you to come along?"

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"Too interesting, she'd want to know and crash the party."

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"Hmm. What else, then?"

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".... I could say I met the Slayer and got spooked," she observes.

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"Would that not tend to send her after the Slayer?"

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"She's already going to be trying to figure out where the latest Slayer is, because she doesn't want to get blindsided with the chosen one. I - uh, think she's already killed one, actually. If I made a point of saying that this Slayer is very talkative and understanding about vampires..." she trails off, then sighs. "But yes, that might tend to send her after the Slayer, and I'm probably just rationalizing it so it sounds good, I'm good at that."

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"Hmmmm. Met something else spooky? Is there anything of the right magnitude such that you wouldn't be in any specific personal danger, but you'd still want to clear out for a couple of months just to be on the safe side?"

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"Probably, but I wouldn't clear out for a couple of months without a danger I was very sure of, and if I were sure of it I'd give her proof and an explanation so it could stop being a danger. And I. Don't know of any dangers of that magnitude currently floating around."

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"Damn. Hmm. ...fell in love, went spontaneously travelling with new partner, no forwarding address but here's what to do if she doesn't hear from you within six months?"

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"I. That could maybe work," she says slowly.

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He smiles.

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"I mean, I'd have to sort of play up the narrative, and attempt to sound lovestruck, and the travelling wouldn't just be a globe-trotting sex-filled honeymoon, it'd probably be involved with some other things because I'm efficient, but. It. Could work."

Permalink Mark Unread

At 'globe-trotting sex-filled honeymoon', he cracks up.

Permalink Mark Unread

... Yeah, in retrospect, that sentence was pretty funny. She indulges in a giggle.

"There'd probably be something about me being a huge magic nerd in there, too. Going to older cities to try to piece together the earliest examples of magic used, and while there, uh." She coughs, and waves a hand. "Couples bonding in new and exciting places."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sounds about right. Would you like any help inventing your imaginary lover?"

Permalink Mark Unread

Well there is this one obvious candidate -

"Yes, I'm. I can envision myself being willing to go on an incredibly nerdy globe trotting honeymoon, but uh. Since I actually haven't..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So this imaginary lover should be someone high-energy, restless, and very attractive..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Um," she says, eloquently. "Yes?"

Is she blushing. It looks like she is.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

Now Miles is blushing too.

Permalink Mark Unread

 


"... I mean it would make narrative sense, we did sort of spend three days locked in my house...." she points out.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, that's true... all right, I guess I'm your imaginary lover who's taking you on a globe-trotting honeymoon. Imaginary me is very pleased with himself, let me tell you."

Permalink Mark Unread

... How does she even respond to that. How does anyone even respond to that. That is clearly not a thing that can at all be responded to, by anyone that ever existed anywhere, in all of history.

She attempts to form words and sort of only manages a vaguely positive-sounding set of syllables, and then stops attempting that because clearly it's not working.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Um. Sorry. I may have gotten a bit ahead of myself there."

Permalink Mark Unread

 


"Do you want to just pause the actual serious tactical considerations of how to trick my sister for talking about our silly relationship drama? Because um, I kind of do, if part of our narrative's - um." Handwave.

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Yeah that seems valid. Okay. Um. ...we seem to suit one another kind of absurdly well."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I um, feel I need to get to know you with your soul attached a bit better to really say for sure, but, yeah kinda?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not completely certain but I'm sure enough to be going on with. I like you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How convenient, I like you, too." Smile. "Though I'm - I think I need to know what we'd be to each other? I'm - I'm not upset about," it's the return of the handwave, "Zeke, but I was kind of. Uncomfortable with not having any idea of what I was to you while also - Zeke."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...He kind of - caught me while I hadn't thought anything through yet, so I defaulted to continuing in established patterns. Sorry. Um. What would you like us to be to each other?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Apology accepted, he sort of caught us both by surprise. I probably should have done something instead of mentally freezing up and doing the social equivalent of fleeing the scene. And - I don't know, I've been a soulless vampire for four years and everyone I love is either dead or going to want to kill me, what openings are available?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I arrived on this planet a couple of weeks ago from what is almost certainly an alternate universe with no magic in which it's the thirtieth century. I have no local loved ones to speak of, and the prospect of ever going home is an enormous mountain of complications piled on complications. I'm... really not sure."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, on the bright side, we make the most bizarre angsty young adult fiction protagonists."

Permalink Mark Unread

...He laughs.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean really, what genre even is this! You have a ray gun, we're both vampires, and I'm a witch! We're either the worst or best novel ever."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They're not 'ray guns'," he snorts.

Permalink Mark Unread

"And yet I think that, miraculously, my point still stands."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay, yes."

Permalink Mark Unread

She smiles at him.

"More seriously, I think I want..." She hesitates, fidgeting with the hem of her shirt. "I'm having trouble putting it to words. The thing you did when I was high out of my mind. Where you followed along with my strange trains of thought and bantered pleasantly and kept me company but ultimately made sure I was okay."

Permalink Mark Unread

...he smiles.

Permalink Mark Unread

"It was really sweet and I only remember about a third of it, it's very sad."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It was - a good thing to be doing," he says. "I could definitely see myself being a - that."

Permalink Mark Unread

Giggle.

"And I don't want it to just be one way, I want you to feel like I'd take care of you if you needed me to, too?" Pause. "... Because I would."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah," he says. "I believe that."

Permalink Mark Unread

 


"Also we should definitely have," she says seriously, "so much sex, oh my god, it was ridiculously amazing."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

Miles blushes.

"Um. Yes. Definitely."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not that it should be a major basis of our relationship or anything, but, we should not pretend it doesn't exist, I feel that would be a travesty!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Agreed."

Permalink Mark Unread

Permalink Mark Unread

"Anyway, um, actual serious relationship talk - polyamory versus not, thoughts?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I... would've thought of myself as strictly monogamous until recently. I also would've thought of myself as strictly heterosexual until recently. I have had to rethink both of those assumptions. I don't think polyamory is an option I need, but it does seem to be an option that exists."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm bisexual and not particularly interested in casual relationships when I have a soul. From some, uh, let's go with 'soulless experiences,' I can see myself comfortably in a polyamorous relationship, but I don't need it either."

Permalink Mark Unread

"As far as I can tell, I've always been bisexual and losing my soul just made me finally notice. As for polyamory... I like Zeke. I wouldn't marry him, for a number of reasons, and I wouldn't be heartbroken if I had to stop carrying on with him, but I like him and we've got a good thing going and it seems like everyone's better off if that sort of thing can continue."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, Zeke's sweet. I think as long as I feel secure in what we are I should be fine, but maybe take it slow to see if I'm attacked by horribly jealousy gremlins or something... Though um. He's probably best not informed of me having a soul or anything we don't want my sister to know."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, I agree. I actually wouldn't be astonished if he had a sudden attack of loyalty when threatened, but I wouldn't count on it, and I wouldn't count on him not to let something slip by accident even so."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Right, and the sudden attack of loyalty would um. Probably prompt some retributive violence of varying degrees proportionate to the loyalty, and honestly, it just seems easier to spare him from the whole mess. I'd rather not get him killed."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah."

Permalink Mark Unread

"My sister's not random in her violence," she says. "If that's. Any reassurance. If you do what she wants she's even pleasant and kind of charming."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's some reassurance."

Permalink Mark Unread

"She's much better when she has her soul."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Seems like most people are."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You did okay," she points out, with a little smile. ".... And I should pack while we talk, excuse me as I go do that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I was a disaster without my soul, I was just really good at hiding it," says Miles.

Permalink Mark Unread

"A disaster?" she repeats, a little incredulously. She starts picking out choice books that would conceivably come with her while on a globe-trotting honeymoon.

Permalink Mark Unread

"A constant simmering cauldron of misery and frustration."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Aw," she says, and she flits over to kiss his cheek before going back to the bookshelf to resume picking out books. "I'm glad I prioritized it so highly, then, that sounds awful."

Permalink Mark Unread

...he smiles.

"Yeah, I was, uh, pretty relieved when it turned out I could get my soul back using only skills I still had."

Permalink Mark Unread

.... Yvette cracks up.

"And here I thought it was my charm, wit, and stunning good looks!" she snorts.

Permalink Mark Unread

"You certainly had all those, but you also definitely asked me to sleep with you in return for my soul and that was a bargain I was delighted to make."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I um. Yeah, I, I definitely did ask you to sleep with me in return for your soul, when you put it that way it sounds horrifying," she observes, embarrassed.

Briefly, she distracts herself with picking out the best books to bring, and then realizes what she's doing and focuses on the less pleasant topic again.

"Uh, Sorry? About that?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's honestly completely fine," he says. "Do you want any help with the packing?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes please, I have some luggage bags in that closet over there, can you bring them over and pack my clothes while I get all of the magic stuff handled? I'm not super picky on what I bring to wear." Accordingly, she gets to handling the magic stuff.

"Granted, if you didn't seem up for it I also would have accepted money, but. Uh. You're very attractive and I'm a terrible person without my soul."

Permalink Mark Unread

He fetches the luggage and starts packing clothes.

"I really truly do not mind a bit. I can see how it could've been... sort of unfortunate, but it's fine."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay! I'll take your word for it and stop apologizing. And it was pretty good motivation for soulless-me."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It was a pretty good way to spend my few days of soullessness."

Packing!

Permalink Mark Unread

Giggle.

"I'm flattered, and pleased I could make the few days of soullessness as pleasant as possible."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You did, you really did."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Excellent. The evil plan, that I decided upon around the time I went off to get the books, was to incentivize you to come to me for all of your magic needs. I am declaring you a happy customer and feeling summarily proud of myself."

Permalink Mark Unread

He laughs.

Permalink Mark Unread

She grins.

Packing occurs!

 

"Okay," she says, when everything's ready for transport. "So. Time to figure out our touching romance and how to make it as convincing as possible in note form."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well. Imagine you are your soulless self, and you've just met, uh, me, and I'm delighted by everything about you and I want to take you on a globe-trotting sex-filled honeymoon."

Permalink Mark Unread

She snickers, then composes her expression to something more imperious.

"I am of course delighted by everything about you, and amused and delighted with your enthusiasm, especially towards a sex-filled honeymoon, but sort of leery of dropping everything to just go sightseeing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You don't have anything that important going on, and we could find sights to see that appealed to your interests, and of course I'm so very exceptionally delightful and enthusiastic and, what was it I said, high-energy and restless and attractive?"

Permalink Mark Unread

Oh, this is surprisingly fun.

"You are definitely all of those things, and they are all very appealing, and I am leaning in favor of you being more attractive when we're having a globe-trotting sex-filled honeymoon, which is an incentive to go looking for other reasons to go. Are there places you have your heart set on going, or do you just find the idea of sleeping with me in interesting places fun?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"The idea of sleeping with you in interesting places is certainly fun, and I'm also just genuinely very interested in seeing interesting new geography, particularly if it has mountains on it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There are a number of mountainous places we can go to that are likely to have interesting magical things to look at, and a few things in Tibet in particular I'd been planning to try to look up but haven't actually bothered to act upon."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Perfect! Our globe-trotting sex-filled honeymoon will be both entertaining and useful!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Cue celebratory sex for coming to this conclusion," she says, deadpan. "Yeah, this is plausible."

Permalink Mark Unread

He giggles.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I would be, hm." She considers. "A bit embarrassed to relate to my sister the globe-trotting sex-filled honeymoon plans, but not want her to come to the wrong conclusions and ultimately not be particularly ashamed of my feelings for you or how I choose to act upon them. I do have a concern about the hormones wearing off, and if I introduce you to her it'll be after I'm very sure that I want to, um." Blush. "Spend the rest of eternity with you and I think a globe-trotting adventure is a good way to help get a feel for how we'd work out long term in a number of situations. I am probably going to gush about you a bit and maybe add some speculation about the eternity thing but ultimately keep it to a minimum because I have confidence I'll find out and too much speculation will drive me mad."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sounds about right," he says.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'll get to writing this up, then, and try to think soulless thoughts."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sounds good. Should I be distracting you the whole time for extra verisimilitude, or would you counterfactually have told me to shoo while you wrote your note?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Would you stay shooed if I took too long on the note?" she wonders, amused.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Depends how seriously I was shooed."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Probably not very seriously."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Then you might have a distraction for part of this note-writing process."

Permalink Mark Unread

She giggles, then picks up her pen and starts writing.

"Do I get a hint for how long I have?" she wonders.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hmm... as long as it takes me to complete whatever minor chores in need of doing I can detect around this house." He looks around for things in need of tidying or similar.

Permalink Mark Unread

There are a few things! But not that many, this house is kept pretty clean.

(Write write write.)

Permalink Mark Unread

So he can only occupy himself this way for a few minutes before he ends up orbiting back to Yvette and kissing her on the cheek. "How's the note coming along?"

Permalink Mark Unread

She smiles fondly at him, then focuses back on the note.

"It's coming along okay, I'm trying not to overthink it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Reasonable."

He leans against a table and smiles at her.

Permalink Mark Unread

Well that's just distracting.

She takes it as a challenge, smiles slyly, and then attempts to pointedly ignore him while writing her note.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

He comes over and hugs her. And kisses her on the cheek again.

Permalink Mark Unread

She giggles a little and leans into him, but otherwise focuses on the note. ... And adds an affectionate aside in the note about how someone's bored.

Permalink Mark Unread

Giggle. Hug. Nuzzle.

Permalink Mark Unread

You know, actually, she's pretty sure this is the optimal way to write notes. While being hugged by Miles. Pity about all of those other people that don't have access to one. Sucks to be them. Snuggle, write.

"There," she says. "Done. I think it's pretty convincing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Excellent. Off to the Slayer's house with all your stuff?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yep!" Pause. "... We'd probably let Zeke know we were running away together to Tibet and other assorted places, wouldn't we. Since he found you and you're involved with him."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hmm... yeah, probably. Should I go lie to him for you after you and your stuff are safely with the Slayer?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, sounds good."

Permalink Mark Unread

"All right, will do."

To the Slayer's place!

Permalink Mark Unread

Yes, all of Yvette's stuff in tow.

Yvette knocks.

Permalink Mark Unread

The Slayer answers the door.

"I see you brought a friend," she says. "Hi, I'm Liesel."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm Miles. Pleased to meet you. I might have to hide out in your house for a while too, because we're supposed to have run off to Tibet together."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nice cover story. Plausible," she says, glancing between them. "Come on in, then. Need a hand with the stuff? We have a guest room in the basement."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thank you," says Yvette, smiling. "If it's not too much trouble, I'd appreciate it. Miles is the other vampire that I ensouled."

Permalink Mark Unread

"No trouble at all."

She helps them haul Yvette's stuff down to the basement.

Permalink Mark Unread

"And now I'm off to lie to Zeke," says Miles. "Back soon, I hope."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hopefully before sunrise, or you'll be extra crispy," she says, amused. She gives him a quick goodbye kiss, and then he's free to go lie to Zeke.

Permalink Mark Unread

He laughs. And off he goes.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Back so soon?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I felt like I should probably tell you, me and Yvette hit it off and we're going on a globe-trotting sex-filled honeymoon. Probably back in a few months or something, damned if I know."

Permalink Mark Unread

Zeke cracks up. "Of course you are. Of course. Do I get a goodbye kiss?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Naturally."

Kiss.

"See you!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Bye!"

Permalink Mark Unread

And back to Liesel's place he goes, in plenty of time to avoid the sunrise.

Permalink Mark Unread

Excellent, Yvette much prefers the original recipe Miles.

Yvette has already settled in to the basement and put all relevant stuff away, they can just flop onto the guest bed for cuddles.

Permalink Mark Unread

Cuddleflop!

Permalink Mark Unread

Eeee!

"I feel like I should possibly be embarrassed that Liesel ruled us running away to Tibet together as 'plausible' after approximately thirty seconds of seeing us together, but. You know I'm really not." Snuggle.

Permalink Mark Unread

"It was closer to five seconds, and I'm not embarrassed either."

Snuggle. Snuggle snuggle.

Permalink Mark Unread

"It is very plausible," she agrees.

She can't help but notice that all of the humans are asleep (or trying to get to sleep) and are on the second floor, while they're in the basement. Alone. Hm.

Permalink Mark Unread

Whatever shall they do about that?

Permalink Mark Unread

Gosh, it's a mystery. She has absolutely no ide-

Yeah, okay, that's a dirty, dirty lie. She knows exactly what they shall do about that.

 


Souls turn out to improve the experience.

Permalink Mark Unread

They really, really do.

Permalink Mark Unread

 


The next evening, there is an expanse of road.

A sign next to it says 'Sunnydale: 11' and occasionally, cars speed by.

Permalink Mark Unread

There is a person walking along the side of this road. He's dressed a little oddly, and watching his surroundings with a thoughtful, curious expression, the look of someone who doesn't quite belong.

Permalink Mark Unread

Someone on a motorcycle spots him and slows down to stop a little ways in front of him.

Permalink Mark Unread

 

He looks at the person.

"Yes?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hey, you okay?" says the rider, taking off her helmet. "There usually aren't hitchhikers around here, especially at this time of night."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I am abundantly bewildered but not in danger or distress."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, all right. What's bewildering you?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"This time a week ago I was in a different solar system and, I am beginning to suspect, a different century."

Permalink Mark Unread

".... Huh. Well, it's 2016. What solar system were you in?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"2995, passing through Escobar."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Haven't heard of it, sorry. Do you want a ride to town? It's kind of a long walk."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That would be helpful."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sure, I've got a spare helmet with me, and you can fit on my bike. Do you need a place to stay, too? I'm spare on spaceships, sorry, but I might be able to secure you a couch."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That would also be helpful, thank you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"No problem."

Helmet! Bike.

"So how long have you been a vampire?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Four days."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sire was a bastard?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"He had some sort of cult and they summoned me as an offering and when I killed substantial numbers of them despite being temporarily deprived of my senses he decided that instead of eating me he would prefer to make me his immortal lover. He turned me. We fought. I won. I discovered by experimentation how to kill him."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Wow, that's. A really shitty way to get a sacrifice. Congrats on the killing, sounds like they deserved it. But the entire experience sounds unpleasant, I'm sorry you got dragged into it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thank you," he says. "It's been... novel."

Permalink Mark Unread

Snort.

"That's a word for it, yeah. And no idea how to get home, I'm guessing?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not the faintest. Plausibly impossible. Not sure I care."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Why's that?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Long story."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Fair enough." Pause. "I haven't had a home in a while, personally, after I turned I've been kind of - bouncing around a bit of everywhere. Not settling down anywhere in particular."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I've been in a similar state these last few years. If home is an emotional state, I have never personally experienced it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hey, you have eternity now. There's time."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do I?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, there's the three S's for a vampire to avoid. Sunlight, stakes, and the Slayer. And then anything holy, which I suppose could be - spiritual? Salvation? Hm. Whatever. Holy water, crosses, certain blessed objects - those hurt and will burn you, but probably not actually kill you unless very well aimed. And fire can kill you if it's not put out in time. Oh, and beheading, but I'm guessing that was the one you figured out? Otherwise, enjoy your immortality."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, beheading was the one I figured out. I also guessed sunlight from the layout of the building. Who or what is the Slayer?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"So because the world is dangerous, there's always a vampire-slaying 'chosen one' in the world, and because the world is bonkers, this person is always a teenage girl. Well. Unless she makes it to older without dying, but the record's 26. They drop like flies. Dangerous, dangerous flies."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I see. Why vampire-slaying in particular?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Vampires tend to eat people."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The first one I met was unpleasant but he seemed plausibly an outlier, and I haven't undergone any noticeable personality changes..."

Permalink Mark Unread

 


"Really? None at all?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"No. Is that unusual?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Very. Usually we get all - 'bleh, bleh! I vill drink your blahd!' Or at least a bit - colder, and more okay with murder."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I was already unusually cold and okay with murder relative to the general population. Maybe that has something to do with it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Huh. Maybe. You could also have a weirdly shaped soul, or not have one to lose due to being from - Escobar, was it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I grew up on Earth, actually. London."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh. All right then. Then maybe you didn't use your soul for anything?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Plausible."

Permalink Mark Unread

"My sister's kind of like you, actually. She didn't use it for much. She's perfectly happy to just live forever and practice magic, it's cute."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Living forever and practicing magic seems a reasonable ambition."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. She lives in this town, actually, I was going to visit her. And probably ask her to let you borrow her couch."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I hope she will be amenable."

Permalink Mark Unread

"She'll probably grumble and ask you to do the dishes or something, and might ask for some privacy every now and then, but I bet she will."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Reasonable."

Permalink Mark Unread

"She is that!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's a good quality to have."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah."

Vroom vroom, motorcycles.

They're coming upon a cute little cottage, now.

"Here's where she lives," she says, by way of explanation.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hm," he says.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hm?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not sure."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay. Well, c'mon then, we'll see if she'll lend you her couch."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is she home?"

Permalink Mark Unread

".... No, doesn't sound like it. Hm." Up she goes to the door. She has a key, of course, she can just unlock the door and walk right in.

Permalink Mark Unread

Her hitchhiker follows.

Permalink Mark Unread

 


"..... She packed up her stuff?" she observes, in a confused and somewhat plaintive voice. "Wh- oh. A note."

There is indeed a note. She walks over and picks it up to read.

Permalink Mark Unread

Mark looks around at the interior of the cottage.

"What does the note say?"

Permalink Mark Unread

The interior of the cottage is spotless, and carefully organized. It does look like someone has taken some things, though; there are empty shelves that wouldn't make sense to be left empty. It's more reasonable to think they contained important objects, and that they were taken with the fabled sister.

The present sister seems to be having trouble forming words. "She - met someone and they decided to go to Tibet together."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is that uncharacteristic?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's, it's kind of sudden. But the way she explained it makes sense, and. She's clearly smitten with him."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Does he have characteristics?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'd be a bit appalled if he didn't," she says, attempting to return to the slightly detached calm she displayed so readily when he first met her. "Uh - he seems very energetic, enthusiastic, and earnest. And it's kind of obvious he's delighted with her too, they seem like they're cute together."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"...Can I read that?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hm? ... Yeah, sure."

She offers the note.

Permalink Mark Unread

And what does the note say?

Permalink Mark Unread

Cyrille,

Sorry about the surprise and the short notice of me not being home, everything's been kind of a blitz lately. I'd have called you, but you continue to not have a reliable cell phone number, so really, you only have yourself to blame. I didn't want to put all of my plans on hold until you eventually showed up. So I guess you'll get this note when you get it.

I decided to do a bit of travelling with someone I recently had the pleasure of meeting - you know that magical tradition that originated around Lhasa when Songstän Gampo was reigning as Emperor of Tibet? The one I have about six pages of some badly translated poetry on, but looked really promisingly non-explosive? Yeah, I finally decided it was worth the trip to investigate. Partially because it'd actually be really useful to know, but admittedly mostly for the company.

So you don't have a new brother-in-law, and I kind of want to wait for the hormones to wear off before I say anything concrete, but at the very least, he's worth going to Tibet with. His name is Miles, and he's um - actually kind of hard to describe. I worry that trying to pin his energy to words would just cause the paper they're written on to bounce off of the walls and ceiling along with him, but that's surely what paperweights are for. He's bright and brilliant and funny and honestly kind of nuts - but then, so am I. To say the least, I like him. Being around him makes me feel like I'm more myself. Not caught up in some fantasy of what love could be, or dragged along for some insane ride, but like I can go further in what I want to do, reach farther, think harder. Like if we just sat down together and figured it out, within a week the both of us could leap off a cliff and fly. I'll pack the parachutes just in case, but somehow I think we'd have a better shot than you might think.

Anyway, the trip was his idea, something about wanting to take me to gorgeous and exotic places? I think he just wants to have an adventure or two with me. It seems like as good a start as any for - something. Whatever this is. I'd be tempted to speculate, but somebody's run out of things to do. I'll spare you the conjecture for when I have a crossword or something for him.

Then there's a vague sketch of their possible plans, and where they're likely to be found if they don't show up again in six months. This is followed by assurances that she will definitely be back, because all of her books are there, and that she's fond of her adorable little cottage by the ever so scenic Hellmouth.

It's signed Love, Yvette.

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When he reaches the name, he starts laughing softly.

"Your sister's run off with my brother," he says. "I really should've guessed. Not that I had the slightest indication he was present in this universe until just now, but I should've known that wouldn't stop him."

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"Your brother?" says Cyrille, blinking. She aborts a line of questioning for being too pushy and paranoid, and then a second, and settles on, "... What's he like?"

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"Miraculous. Astonishing. Indescribable. Also subclinically bipolar, I'm fairly sure."

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And likely to persuade sisters to run off to Tibet -

No, no, that's not a useful line of conversation.

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"Well, I hope they're happy together."

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"They seem to be. I wouldn't know. But people are happier around Miles, generally."

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"That's a useful quality."

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"Yes."

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"Anyway, if she's away for a while - probably shouldn't crash on her couch without her permission. It'd annoy her. The traditional place for a vampire's a crypt, and there are a number in town, but that might not be your style..."

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"I don't have a style."

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No, you're as boring as she's pretending to be, it's really annoying.

"Well, we can go crypt hunting if you like, I know the town well enough." And Cyrille can learn where you sleep, you suspicious little personality vacuum.

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"That would be helpful."

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"Sure. Do you want something out of the way, or nice, or...?"

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He puts down the note and gazes into the distance for a moment, sharply focused on nothing at all.

Then: "On second thought - you've gone far enough out of your way for me already. Thank you."

And he looks at her directly, and -

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- smiles, a transformatively radiant smile -

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- and puts the smile away and walks out of the cottage.

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"No problem, happy to help. Have a nice night, and welcome to Sunnydale," she calls, perfectly amiable.

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"Thanks."

He walks into town. He scouts for unoccupied crypts.

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For some reason there are a lot of graveyards in this town, which means a lot of crypts.

There are a number of empty ones, if he would like to choose from the available selection. Is he looking for something in particular?

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How about the one he has to leap a twelve-foot fence to get to? That looks about right.

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Excellent, then the crypt is now his. It's not very homey, but then, it's a crypt. It'll keep the sunlight out, anyway.

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So that was interesting. Mostly it was annoying, the conversation was dull as dirt and she kind of wants to kill him now, but it was interesting too. Especially that thing at the end with the smile that seemed distinctly not in line with anything else he had been previously displaying. Some kind of uncannily good actor? That sucked at actually emoting without a part to play? Because he so very clearly sucked at actually emoting, and what actor would willingly be that? It makes some degree of sense.

Nothing else does, though. Her sister's too smart to get fooled by anything less than one really good actor, and also smart enough to manage to slip in an 'I'm in trouble help me' into a letter while still sounding perfectly innocent to anyone else. And she definitely wrote that letter. It was like, the most Yvettey letter she's ever read. So - what then? Paranoid plot of a league of terrifying actors out to get her? That seems insane, she's paranoid but she's not that paranoid. The bit about being from a thousand years in the future was - weird. All of it was weird. She's missing something, and she doesn't want to make any moves without knowing just what's going on. Even if she does kind of want to kill him.

He struck her as observant enough to notice being followed, so she doesn't follow him. Even if she really wants to figure out where he sleeps. To kill him. Whatever, it's fine. She bets she can figure out where he's staying while he's too trapped in a crypt on pain of inflammation to really notice. Should she get someone to keep an eye on him...? Hmm. Maybe. She'd need someone decent at the job, and she'd rather it not be traced back to her. She'll remain the friendly motorcyclist that gave him a ride. He obviously didn't like her, but he seemed to sort of tolerate her.

Still. Too early to really make conclusions. She thinks she'll go check out his cultist story, she has an idea of where the place he came from would be.

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For the second sunset in a row, Yvette gets to wake up with her soul and snuggled. This second time's better than the first, because there's no annoying knocking and no post-magic-high hangover, but there's an awkward sensation of waking up in a strange bed in an unfamiliar place. She has a brief moment of supreme confusion, followed by a briefer moment of supreme dismay because no no she has a soul again she doesn't want to have a one-night stand -

And then of course she remembers, and feels kind of silly. She snuggles Miles for comfort. He is very comforting.

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Snuggles! Sleepy snuggles!

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Yes that is very soothing, excellent, the terror of briefly thinking she'd lost her soul is fading nicely now.

"Good evening," she murmurs.

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"Hi."

Snuggle.

"I have to say, this is a pretty excellent way to wake up."

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She smiles and kisses his nose, because that seems the thing to do. "Yeah, it is. I need to get used to it, I had a moment of confusion and came very briefly to the wrong conclusion."

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"And which conclusion would that be?"

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"One-night stand, I was dismayed."

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He giggles and hugs her. "Oh dear."

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She snuggles back, of course.

"Yep. I need to get used to having a soul again. It's a good problem to have, as problems go."

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"Yes it is."

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Flomp. Snuggle.

".... Okay so now I feel guilty for not flinging myself at getting my sister her soul back as soon as possible, that's great, thank you self. That's not self destructive at all, nope."

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Hug.

"Time to get started?"

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"Yeah." Kiss, and then she goes to retrieve the greatest tool for witches everywhere: a laptop.

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"I think I'm going to read every book in this house," Miles decides after a few seconds of thoughtful silence. "Wish me luck."

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Yvette looks at him, blinking in confusion.

"To combat boredom?" she clarifies.

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"Yes. Everything we did was strategically optimal but the end result is that I am going to be spending more time cooped up in this basement than I would strictly prefer. Reading every book in the house is the first line of defense, I'll come up with something else if and when I have to."

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"Fair. Luck. ... If there are books on magic in this house, which there probably are, could you start with those and report anything promisingly long ranged and person focused? Actually, I could probably give you other things to do, though we're somewhat limited by only having one laptop."

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"Sure, I can do that," he says. "Reading every book in the house can be the fallback."

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"Excellent, I'll get you a list of books I already have copies of, and leave you to find the books on magic I don't have. I'll want to talk magic nerdery with Chris later - which by the way you should get a protection spell from her - but I'm going to compile all of my notes for the ensoulening spell itself so I can figure out where exactly I can combine it with something that'll make it long range. Or if I have to find workarounds for parts of it so I can - sorry, thinking out loud, I can stop if you'd rather."

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"I like it when you think out loud."

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"Oh, well. Then I'm compiling my notes on not just the things I actually did for the spell I used for us, but things I marked as potentially useful and then didn't end up using for one reason or another, because I might have to account for other bizarre factors. I have high hopes that Chris's magic will just make friends, it's unusually and fantastically tidy, but something might explode on my spell's end instead of hers. Because magic's a clusterfuck. So I need to figure out how likely that is and where the failure points will be if there are any."

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"I bet you're really good at that."

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"I have a spreadsheet," she says, smugly.

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"Of course you do."

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"And a program that'll help me timeline where different magical practices got started and how they branch off from one another!"

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"That's amazing."

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"Thank you! It's actually why I learned programming."

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"It's a pretty good reason!"

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"I thought so! If you want to put off the fallback plan, you're also free to look over my shoulder as I work, and I can explain things. Probably make sense of the things you might have seen before while we were locked in my house."

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"I'd like that."

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"Then I will be more than happy to provide."

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Right. Time to investigate books.

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Yvette does not have any of these books!

But then, there aren't a lot of them.

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Yeah.

He comes back carrying all four of them.

"A cross-cultural study on the use of geometric figures in ritual magic," he says, "a different cross-cultural study on the use of geometric figures in demonic ritual magic, and two volumes on Norse runes. And that is all of the books on magic in this house."

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"... Huh," says Yvette, looking at the books curiously. "Well, they all sound interesting, but maybe not directly useful to what I need to do. ... Possibly useful for integration with Chris's magic."

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"Yeah, seems plausible."

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"Well," she says, scooting over on the bed so he can sit next to her, "my shoulder is free if you'd like to look over it."

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"I think I will do that!"

He sits. He leans on her.

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She smiles at him fondly, then returns to work. As she does, she explains what she's looking for, what factors lead to instability in spells and rituals, how they can be mitigated, and how she specifically mitigated the potential nasty effects in the ensoulening ritual.

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It's fascinating! He is enthralled!

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Well, then he can learn all about magic, and how multiple magical traditions can be hybridized if you work from common ancestors, or by this trickier method that involves math and mapping percentages of random chaotic failure and look she has a program that'll help her figure that out too!

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"Or, if you're Chris, by reading two books and picking up a chess set," Miles remarks.

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"Or - yes, that. She has to have read more than two books, though, it's not that simple. I've been imagining she went looking for the least clusterfucky magical tradition possible, which. Is not easy, see my proof, of this spreadsheet." She motions towards the spreadsheet. Color coding only mitigates the insanity. "Then from there she twisted its arm to something resembling sanity."

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"I'm getting most of this secondhand and I'm no expert, it just seems like... if inventing a new way for magic to work is that easy, why isn't everyone doing it? And on the one hand it looks like everyone did, but on the other hand magic is all so..." he waves a hand at the spreadsheet, "and if people could just sink a few years into reinventing the discipline every time they didn't like how something worked, I feel like it would be even more of an enormous sprawling disaster but the individual pieces would be less individually godawful?"

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"Yeah. I don't know what's causing it to be able to be reinvented sometimes but not always."

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"We'd really be in business if we could figure that out, eh?"

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"We really would! I feel like there's basic rules to this magic, and I don't know what they are, and everything else is just fluff on top of it. But I don't know where the fluff ends and the basic rules begin."

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"Where the hell are the basic rules hiding under all this?"

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"Miles, if I knew, do you think for a second I wouldn't be trying to pry them out from under their rock to beat all of the rest of this into submission."

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"It was a rhetorical question. Also, you are a fountain of joy."

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"Yes, I know. Thank you for noticing."

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Well now she's distracted kissing him.

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Who could have predicted this.

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No one could have predicted this, this is utterly unprecedented!

The laptop is sort of getting in the way of properly kissing him, what with it being on her lap. She doesn't want to move it and therefore stop working, but she's sort of having trouble ending this delightful kiss to actually get back to work. Instead she's in awesome kiss limbo. Mmm.

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Awesome kiss limbo is interrupted by an annoying buzzing sound.

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"Mmrh?" grumbles Yvette, disentangling from Miles to search for the source.

Oh. Her phone.

"Pass that to me please, Miles? I likely won't answer, but I'd like to see if my sister found my note and stole a phone yet."

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He picks it up, glances at it, and hands it over. "Who, uh, is 'Guess Who'?"

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"Oh, fuck," she swears.

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He looks up alertly at her face. "Um?"

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She scrunches her eyes closed. The phone continues to buzz, even as she wills it to stop.

"So I didn't really, uh, do dating. When soulless. I tended to just pick up people as they were convenient and then drop them when they stopped being convenient, because I was a bit of a bitch that way. But. Um. 'Guess Who' is someone named Serafin. He is a several hundred year old vampire prince who tortures people for magical power. He could arguably be called the closest thing I had to a sort of boyfriend. If I had those, which. Didn't. Even if I don't pick up immediately, I would call him back."

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"...um," says Miles. "Would you like a hug, and also, how do we solve this security problem."

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"Yes please, and. I. Don't know. Thus the cursing."

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Hug.

"Okay. We'll figure it out somehow. How quickly is suspicion likely to travel from him to your sister...?"

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Hug.

".... Not any time soon, he's more likely to drop by and look for me if I don't call him in a week or two than do anything that would bring him into contact with my sister. He dislikes her."

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"Okay, so... he drops by and looks for you, and perhaps learns from Zeke that you fucked off to Tibet with your new boyfriend - estimated likelihood of jealousy?"

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Wince.

"I think he'd be more pissed that I didn't think to call him, really, but. Some jealousy."

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"That honestly doesn't seem like a huge emergency unless you think he can find you and would be motivated to try."

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"Um. Highly likely he could find me, he's. Um. Powerful. He's powerful. Maybe not powerful enough to break into this house, but powerful enough to figure out that I was in it, probably. The motivation to try is - more up in the air. Depends on which way he flips with the 'pissed about not calling him.' He could decide to leave me be and see if I remember he exists on my own and ignore me until then, or he could decide that he would like to interrupt whatever I was doing and ask me what the hell I was thinking, and maybe call me a bitch to my face."

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"Well. That's inconvenient."

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"Yes."

(The phone has ceased its buzzing.)

"I really hate myself when I'm missing a soul. Have I mentioned. I should mention."

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More hug?

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So much hug.

"... Sorry for not mentioning it, I was. Um. Some combination of too busy to think about it, not inclined to think about soulless me's life choices, and not inclined to think it was going to. Be an issue."

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"I'm not inclined to make an issue of it," he says. "And I understand why you might've been reluctant to bring it up."

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"Yeah. Still. Sorry." Hug.

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Hug.

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Snuggle.

"I. Might be able to sell the Tibet story. I don't know how he'll react to my having my soul back, but if it's anything in the general direction of 'not poorly' he might be willing to help us with my sister. He really doesn't like her."

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"...Potentially useful," he says.

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"Yes. Potentially. I think I'd rather try to talk to him over hiding and seeing if he shows up to knock, or if he thinks the worst of me being in the Slayer's house and decides he's going to try to break in. I'd tell our hosts before I do, though, in case."

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"Yeah, that sounds like the best plan going."

He hesitates. "Um..."

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She shrinks a little, subtly.

"... Yes?"

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"—I just have a somewhat awkward question about tactical options, I don't—whatever you're imagining that makes you that nervous, that's not it," he says. "Um. If. If this were my questionably-ex-quasi-boyfriend, I would have 'seduce him' on the table as a possible approach if it seemed likely to help, and if you are - also inclined to see your options that way, we should probably talk about that."

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Blink. She relaxes, a little, at the reassurance, and then considers the proposition.

She swallows. "I'm a bit uncomfortable with that option, really. It. Wouldn't be the worst thing ever, and it's maybe not entirely off the table, but. I'm kind of delicate right now, and I think I want to not make that worse by throwing in confusing things like 'seducing my questionably-ex-quasi-boyfriend.' I would like my life to be simpler, not more complicated."

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"Yeah, that's perfectly understandable."

Hug.

Half-joking, "Does he like men? Should I seduce him?"

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Hug.

"I think he prefers women but likes some men." Then, in a similar half-joking tone; "Though I don't see how my boyfriend seducing my questionably-ex-quasi-boyfriend would make my life simpler, Miles."

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"You make a very valid point."

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Little smile.

"Also he tortures people. So. There's. That."

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"Yes, that's... a troubling quality in a potential ally."

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"No kidding." Sigh. Hug.

She is such a mess.

"I am such a mess."

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Hug.

"Anything I can do to help?"

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"Invent a time machine?" she half-jokes, but the last syllable cracks a little and sounds more like a hint of a sob.

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...Miles hugs her some more. "Sorry," he murmurs.

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Whimper-cling.

"I feel like I've woken up in someone else's life."

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"Yeah. Understandably so."

Hug hug hug.

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"Except it's not, not really, I remember everything I did, all of the logic and reasoning and how it all. Just. Made. Sense. It was fine to toss people aside like they were trash when they stopped being interesting and it was fine to take notes on the specific magical gain someone got from their torture victim and it was fine to play along to an obsessive controlling self-centered broken and twisted mockery of my sister not because I liked her - because I didn't - but because it was useful to have a powerful vampire that was willing to kill anyone that bothered me without me having to get my hands dirty. I was a horrible person living in a lovely little house living a tidy little life and doing meaningful work that mattered to absolutely no one but me and the rest of the world could burn for all I cared.

"And I'm distancing myself - or, well, trying to - but I can't."

It looks like she might be tempted to say more, but now she is too busy sobbing.

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...hugs.

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He is so good at those. She is so grateful.

She'll just be here. Sobbing.

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Yeah. He can keep hugging her.

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"S-sorry, I'm sorry, I hate being this much of a mess. I hate dumping it all on you when I'm already dragging you into my problems, I hate that there's no easy solution to any of it, that the best I've got is just a 'maybe everything will not be completely terrible' button that I can maybe reach if I try but I'm too busy crying."

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"Solving other people's problems is practically my life's work," he says. "I'm fine with it."

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Whine.

"God, you're so reasonable, it's terrifying."

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"I take great pride in my reasonableness!" Hug.

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Clingy snuggle.

"You could just snap my heart into itty bitty little pieces so easily," she mumbles. "That's what I was afraid of earlier, with the, the thing, that the 'um' would lead into 'actually on second thought' and I'd have another mess to clean up because I need more of those right now."

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"Well, I - would really prefer not to do that," he says. "I like your heart intact."

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"Yes, me too, I only have the one."

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Hug.

"We'll just have to take good care of it, then."

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She makes a sound that resembles an affirmative. Also a whine. Yvette can multitask.

"I also hate being clingy. Being clingy is annoying. I would like to stop," she grumbles.

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Hug.

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Yes okay fine. Hug.

She's stopped crying, at least.

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Okay.

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She gives herself some time to just hug him, and not worry about needing to have herself put back together for a little while.

 

But she can't linger like that forever, can she. She can fall back to pieces when she's done. Until then, she has to resemble functionality.

"Ugh. Well. I suppose that was going to happen eventually anyway," she sighs, squeezing him and then releasing him. "Pity I can't schedule my emotional breakdowns in advance or anything."

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"Yes, emotional breakdowns are notoriously inconvenient that way."

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"So annoying," she agrees, with a ghost of a smile.

She considers him, and the smile loses its phantasm to become more fond.

"Thanks. I'm - I'm not okay, precisely. I'm not going to be okay for a while, I think. But that helped, and you're wonderful, and thank you."

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"You're welcome. I'm glad I could help."

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I love you, she thinks, with absolute certainty. And - doesn't say out loud, because she's known him for less than a week and that strikes her as taking things a little bit too fast.

"You're..." she trails off. "How are you real."

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"A question I am asked with flattering frequency," he says, "and yet I still don't have a good answer."

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"Well, whatever it is you do to paradoxically exist, please keep doing it."

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"I have no intention of stopping, promise."

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"Good." Smile.

She takes a deep breath. "Okay, I think I'd like to handle the - questionably-ex-quasi-boyfriend problem sooner rather than later, want to go find Liesel and explain everything?"

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"Yeah, sounds like a plan."

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She takes his hand and squeezes it, then extracts herself from hugs (and her laptop) to go wash her face and give herself plausible deniability for the crying.

Then: time to find Liesel.

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Liesel can be found in the living room, doing math!

"Hi, what's up?"

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"Hi, so. There has been a - slight complication."

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"Go on."

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"My - my questionably-ex-quasi-boyfriend that I acquired while soulless called. I didn't answer, but if I don't call him in a week or two he will notice something is up. Less slight complication: he's a several hundred year old vampire prince who has found a magical niche that is based around torturing innocent victims. So. That's fun."

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"That's a complication all right," says Liesel. "How likely is he to go to your sister? What's your preferred approach? Do you think he can potentially be talked out of the torture of innocent victims?"

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"He hates my sister and will avoid her unless given some very nice incentives to stop, and even then he'd do it very begrudgingly. Not so much a security risk by him directly working with her, more likely he'd investigate himself and she'd figure out something was off on her own from his visit. I think talking to him is better than just waiting to see if he shows up, but I haven't decided whether I want to try to get his help or just trick him into thinking I've left for Tibet and he shouldn't come after me."

She considers. "... He really likes the torture of innocent victims. Maybe he could be talked out of it anyway, but. He did not stumble upon his niche by accident. Aside from that he's a pretty decent guy. I have some taste, even without my soul."

The last part was kind of wry.

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"Is the 'innocent victims' part mandatory, or could he be appeased with volunteers?"

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"He could be appeased with volunteers, I think," she says, looking - slightly queasy. "But I am not sure anyone would be willing to."

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"I'll see what I can dig up. If you're willing to talk about it I might ask you for a list of criteria, magically and personally speaking, but if not don't worry about it. How powerful is he?"

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"In a magic fight I'd definitely lose unless I had time for preparation. If I had time for preparation and the element of surprise, I'd only probably lose. Strong emotions from his victims is part of it, it's not just the pain itself, it's the reaction to it. A negative reaction is not necessarily required, but for obvious reasons it's easier to horrify and terrify your victims than just about anything else." She hesitates. ".... I can get you a list of how he conducts the torture. It might be out of date, it was a few years ago, but I got the impression he'd refined his craft very well and a few more years wouldn't change it much."

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"I'd appreciate that, if you're okay to handle it," she says. "But if we do end up bringing him in on this, I'll be fine asking him about it directly."

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Slight smile.

"It's on my laptop somewhere, it wouldn't be hard to dig up and print, if you have a printer."

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"Yeah, we do."

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"Okay, then I can get that to you. Is there anything else you need to know before I go off to do that?"

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She shakes her head. "Just let me know when you decide whether or not you're bringing him in, and if there's anything else I can do to help."

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"Yeah, of course. Thanks."

And so she returns to her laptop. Her life is on this laptop, it's only natural.

It doesn't take her long to find the correct document, with all of the case studies of Serafin's victims and the magical theory with very thorough documentation and citations to specific case studies in the document itself, or other documents she has written up on this specific style of magic. It takes her slightly longer to update her backup of the document, because even if the subject matter is horrific she is not letting it get destroyed. Once that's done, it doesn't take her very long at all to delete one specific case study with great prejudice and pretend that it was not there and did not exist. Maybe if she were being very thorough she'd go back through and erase all citations that refer to it, but she can't be arsed to look at this document anymore, and prints it.

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Miles... decides not to ask about the backup. Or the deletion.

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She'd explain it if he asked, but. Yes. Good. She prefers not to.

She gives Miles a quick hug then staples the packet together and then goes off to hand it to Liesel.

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"Thanks, I appreciate it."

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"Yeah. There's extra supporting documentation if you want it, but it's not super relevant to anything but the theory." She leaves out the part about the missing case study. Liesel's a smart girl, she can figure it out. "But let me know if you think you need them. I'm - going to go work on the long range ensouling spell."

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She nods. "Good luck."

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"Thanks."

 


The documentation is very thorough. It's clear, concise, and efficient, and even with all of that there's a daunting amount of information to sort through. The list of what Yvette's questionably-ex-quasi-boyfriend does to people is impressive. And also very clearly incomplete. There's a section of pure speculation that theorizes possible magical reactions to certain kinds of torture that the case studies don't cover - the author seems curious but in a clinical, detached way. Scientific and efficient, not sadistic. The case studies are referred to by number, not by name, all throughout the document. Names, if she knew them, are tidily listed, and not if she didn't.

One is referred to by letter, not number. It's missing entirely. It could be an accident, but there are only so many words that start with 'Y,' and a person that makes a document as thorough as this does not make mistakes like 'accidentally leave out a case study.'

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Well. That would've been useful information, but it's very understandable that she left it out.

Liesel reads the documentation. She definitely doesn't know anyone right now that she could suggest to this guy as a substitute for his unwilling victims, but it's not impossible that she might be able to find someone, if she tried.

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Yvette focuses on spell design, explaining to Miles the logic as she goes, though a little sedately. Part of her mind's on the spell, part of it's elsewhere.

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Miles pays attention to the spell design and doesn't comment on the elsewhere.

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Well, he gets snuggles for that. For that, and for everything else.

 


"... I think I'll just call him and explain," she says, with no preamble. "And just see how he reacts."

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"All right. Want me to go notify Liesel for you?"

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"Yeah. I'll ask him if he's willing to help, but. No promises there, I certainly don't want to try to manipulate him into doing anything."

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"Sensible."

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Smile.

"And if he decides that he'd prefer me without my soul, well. Too bad for him. It's mine now, I'm keeping it."

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Snort. "Damn right."

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"That being said, we should definitely make sure Chris doesn't need anything extra for protection against him before I actually call him, because. I don't think he's going to freak out at the return of my soul, but. I don't know for sure."

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"...Yeah. Wise."

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"Hope for the best, plan for the worst, or - something." She leans over to kiss his cheek, then closes her laptop, sets it aside, and stands.

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"Yeah, something like that."

Off in search of Liesel!

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In the living room, reading about torture!

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"Hello again," says Yvette. "So I think I'm going to just call him and explain, but just in case his reaction is less than stellar I want to make sure everything is potentially prepared for a warlock to show up wanting to steal my soul."

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"How quickly could he get here if he was trying, and how likely is it that he'd try? There are more preparations I could make but they're resource-intensive enough that I'm reluctant to waste them."

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"... If he were really pissed - twenty minutes to react with a scry and a lightning bolt. A few hours to get here, otherwise. I don't expect him to do the former. The latter - if he decided that he didn't like me with a soul enough to want me 'back,' then I expect he'd show up some time to - 'retrieve' me, not necessarily immediately. If the preparations are resource-intensive then it sounds like they shouldn't be wasted."

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"All right. Then we're as ready as we're going to get."

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She nods.

"Okay. Then. I'll call him back."

She retrieves her cell phone, spends a few seconds nervously looking at 'Guess Who' on the screen, and then taps the call button.

"If he doesn't pick up and we instead play phone tag I'm going to be pissed," she says while it rings, because this makes her feel better.

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He picks up.

"Yvette! Chérie!"

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On the other hand, maybe she would have preferred phone tag.

"... hey," she says, a little lamely.

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"...Something wrong?" he says, instantly moving from flirtatious to concerned. "Who do I have to kill?"

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Yvette would reply, but she actually needs a minute to crack up.

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"Can't be that bad, then, I guess."

He waits.

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And she eventually recovers.

"No, it's - it's not bad, precisely. Turns out that being the witch of weird shit has consequences. I um. Sort of put my soul back by accident?" Pause. "And since it went through all of the trouble of following me home, I'm keeping it."

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"Oh," he says. "Huh."

Pause.

"...Is this a breakup call?"

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Wince.

"... Yesprobablybutalso - you are not obligated to say yes, I will not make faces at you if you say no - recall how my sister was the one to turn me?"

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"...She gonna be pissed?"

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"She's going to be soooooo pissed."

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"Well."

He pauses again, reflectively.

"What do you need?"

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... That is not a tone of voice she ever got from him while soulless what is going on?

"I - I'm currently safe, and surprisingly well protected, and have a pretty good cover story for disappearing, but I would like to either put Cyrille's soul back where it belongs, or kill the thing that's making a mockery of her corpse."

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"I'm in," he says cheerfully.

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"Wh-" she begins, stunned, before she stops that sentence. What! "... Okay but I'm working with the Slayer and also have sort of. The guy who caused the advent of the accidental soul is actually really really great and my sister-proof cover story is that we ran off to Tibet together because it was the most convincing thing we could think of because actually it's really really believable that I'd run off to Tibet with him like a crazy person????"

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He giggles. "You know," he says, "I like you a lot better with your soul attached."

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"I agree that I am much improved with its re-installation," she says, a little faintly. She gives Liesel and Miles a 'What is going on?' look.

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Miles... has a theory...

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"So, working with the Slayer, huh? That's going to be interesting. Is she gonna tell me I'm a bad boy?"

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"She actually asked if you'd be appeased with volunteers after I explained everything. Unless she's reconsidered upon realizing how - fuck there's no way for me to say that without sounding flirtatious - upon realizing how serious you are about the torture thing?"

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"Well, my estimation of the likelihood of finding a volunteer has gone down a little, but many things are possible," says Liesel.

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He laughs. "Hey, if she can get me volunteers, I wouldn't say no."

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"If you can get him volunteers, he wouldn't say no," she repeats, for Liesel's benefit. Because she's a squishy human that can't just hear both sides of this conversation without speakerphone.

"So. Okay. Thanks?"

She sounds more confused than thankful. Not that she's not thankful, just.

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"What?"

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"You're. I didn't think you were going to be all raarrgh burn burn pillage steal her soul I want her back blargh! or anything, but. You are being so calm and accepting about this! You used a tone of voice I hadn't heard while I was soulless and bitchy, and I'm pretty sure I caught what it meant but it doesn't make a ton of sense! I am confused! Pleasantly so, but still!"

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"I mean, I'm a little jealous of the new guy, but - I like you better this way."

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"... All right," she accepts, a little hesitantly. "I mean, granted, I am much less of a manipulative selfish bitch this way, it is so much better to actually care about other people."

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"And you're much cuter!"

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Snort.

"Ah, yes. The great deciding factor to the question of 'to soul, or not to soul.' Which one makes me cuter."

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"I'm much cuter without mine, personally."

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"Really?" she wonders, blinking. "What makes you say that?"

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He laughs. "Oh, I was an enormous fucking disaster as a human. Don't give me my soul back. You'll regret it, I'll regret it, the world will regret it."

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Funny thing, she actually believes him.

"Okay. No ensouling for you, got it. I can maybe get you a sticker 'Should not contain soul' or something."

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He giggles again.

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"... Soul not included is fine for the Slayer clubhouse, right?" This is directed at Liesel. "Serafin says he'd be a disaster with his soul back, I'm inclined to believe him."

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"As long as I can work with him, which it sounds like I can..."

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"Serafin can you please play nice with the nice Slayer? She's very reasonable, promise."

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"I can do that!"

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"Thought you could. Thank you."

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"So should I be flying to - presumably not Tibet - to consult on this?"

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"Um. Let me ask. You okay with Serafin coming to join us at the Slayer clubhouse now?" she asks, of Liesel.

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"Will he be useful to the project?"

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She considers. "... His magic is more freeform than mine or your aunt's. It'd be tricky to integrate them I think, but definitely worth the trouble. So. Yes, very useful. Also if my sister caught me in my lie he would be very good at, um. Making the things that would give us trouble explode. Which is not a thing I'm great at, personally."

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"Then he's welcome to join the circus," she says wryly.

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Miles laughs.

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Smile.

"So! We're in Sunnydale, actually. Moving from my house was pretty easy. Liesel, do you want me to give him this address or meet him somewhere and talk to him before you let him into your house, or...?"

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"I'll meet him in that park, I think."

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"All right." She relays directions.

"And thank you. Really."

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"Anytime, chérie. See you soon."

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She - smiles a smile she does not entirely mean to.

"Yeah. Fly safe."

And so ends that very confusing, but reassuring conversation.

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"I have a potentially complicating observation to make," says Miles. "Should I keep it to myself?"

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"... Observe away."

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"I'm pretty sure he fell in love with you over the course of that conversation."

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She opens her mouth, then reconsiders, and closes it. She blinks.

"..... But I didn't even do anything?"

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"You were very yourself."

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"Oh. Yes. I. I suppose I was." She makes a complicated face. "Damn it the plan was not to seduce him."

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"He sounded pretty content not to be seduced."

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"... Yeah. Okay. I probably still need a hug, though."

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This can be arranged.

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Excellent. Hug.

"Of the complications to have, that's really not the worst one. I'm not sure it even counts as a complication."

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"He seems really astonishingly reasonable!"

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"Yes. I have taste even when I'm missing my soul."

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He laughs and hugs her some more.

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Giggle-hug.

... She recalls that they have an audience, and she gently unhugs.

"So um," she asks of Liesel, "any questions?"

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"What can you tell me about his personality?"

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"He's very honest and straightforward. He knows what he wants and arranges to have it, and while some of those things are objectively horrible, he's not otherwise inclined to make trouble. He's calm and reasonable and more thoughtful than you'd think at first glance, and -" she hesitates, then forges on, "- surprisingly sweet. To people he likes."

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"I think I can work with that."

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Smile.

"Okay. Good. If he doesn't like someone he will be up front about it, he's - he can lie, but he finds it sort of uncomfortable and doesn't unless he has a good reason. Like I said, arranges to have the things he wants."

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"Yeah, this is going to be redeeming evil sorcerers on easy mode," she predicts.

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Giggle.

"One day your collection of basement vampires will be complete!"

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She cracks up.

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"We might be like Pokemon, Miles. We can even be put in a box and ignored until necessary for a battle."

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"You're going to have to explain that one, I've been on this planet for like a week."

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"Oh. Uh. Pokemon's a video game based around capturing little adorable - or not so adorable - monsters to walk around and go on adventures with, involving a lot of fighting other little adorable monsters with your own. Because the adorable little monsters shoot fireballs, or create blizzards, or the like. Except you can only bring so many with you at a time, so many of them go into a box of shame to be ignored until relevant."

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He giggles. "Please don't put me in the box of shame, Liesel. I'll be good."

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"No one is going in the shame box, promise."

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Can't talk, too much giggle.

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"Thinking of vampires in terms of Pokemon is -" Nope more giggle. "It's a visual, certainly."

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"It is that!"

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"Would I be your vampire Pokemon starter, in this scenario? Is Sunnydale Pallet Town?"

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"I don't know enough about Pokemon to keep riffing but I am now battling an urge to start calling you Pikachu and never stop."

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"Please do not call me Pikachu. I would like to be Charmander, if I am to be called by a Pokemon's name. I will be a dragon one day."

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She laughs.

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"And now we should probably stop talking about this because wow I am a nerd."

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"Nerds are highly valuable!"

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"Yes, we are, just." She shakes her head, amused. "Anyway. Speaking of valuable nerds, I should work on the ensouling spell some more - I'm almost to the point where I can chat to your aunt about it, do you know when she'll be free?"

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"I can go ask. How much longer do you think you'll be, approximately?"

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"A few more hours to get everything all set up to integrate with her magic, I'd estimate. Longer if she'd like me to make sure everything can integrate well with Serafin's magic, too."

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"In a few hours, Serafin will presumably be here and then all three of you can talk about integration."

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"Yeah. It'll be fun."

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"Sounds like it!"

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Smile.

"I'm tempted to talk about it, but that can be later, after my sister has her soul back. Until then, I'm banished to the basement."

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"Good luck."

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"Thanks."

To the basement!

Laptop: ready. Miles: cuddled. Time to nerd.

... With some brief distraction for important relationship talks. She can multitask. And also it's about to be relevant.

"Um, any thoughts on Serafin - being in love with me, or...?"

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"...He seemed like he wasn't going to make an issue of it, so... I don't know? If you wanted to, uh, keep him like I'm keeping Zeke, I don't think I'd object, but it is also entirely understandable if you don't want to do that..."

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"I - don't know. I'd want him to just stop torturing innocent people before I'd be willing to - keep him." Hesitant pause. "... I'm sort of worried that if I'm near him for too long I'll just sort of. Accidentally fall into his arms without meaning to?"

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...Miles hugs her.

"Do you want to - do something to try to prevent that...?"

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"I - don't know." Lean. "My life is confusing and complicated and I want to hide under the covers for a while until it stops being those things."

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"Yeah, I hear you." Hug.

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Such hug.

"I mean, granted, it's being confusing and complicated in helpful ways so far, just. Yeah."

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"I aim to be the most helpful of complications!"

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"Honestly, you're not even counting as a complication to me." Snuggle.

(Type type type, setting up the program that'll calculate what options she has that are least likely to react horribly to making friends with the two different magic types.)

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Snuggle.

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A few hours later, leaving plenty of time for Serafin to be early, Liesel goes to wait in the park. She sits under a streetlight with a math textbook and reads.

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"Odd place to study. Mind if I join you?"

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She glances up and smiles.

"Not at all," she says, scooting to the side slightly to make room on the bench.

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She slides easily to the seat next to Liesel.

"Test tomorrow, or do you just like math?"

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"I like math to what some consider an inordinate degree," she says.

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"Oh? Which part do you like about it?"

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"Hmm." She closes the textbook, keeping the page with a finger, and leans back slightly on the bench. "It's just... fun to think about? Or maybe it would be more accurate to say it's a fun way to think. It's like an entire abstract universe that I can visit whenever I want."

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"Huh. I don't think I've heard math characterized that way before. I think I get what you're talking about, though. Like switching to speaking a different language with a different way of thinking."

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"A little, yeah. But I get a lot more out of math than I get out of languages."

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"Huh. Neat. Does the night help you go to the abstract universe?"

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"Ha. No, my aunt set me up on a blind date. If he doesn't show by midnight, I'm going home. In the meantime," she pats the textbook, "I have linear algebra, which is more fun than boys anyway."

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Snort.

"Well, be careful, all right? I hear this town's not the safest after dark."

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"I've heard something similar," she says. "What's your excuse for the late-night walk?"

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"My sister's out of town for a while, and I agreed to watch her cat while she was gone. Unfortunately, he's a sneaky little bastard, and now he's who knows where. I'm trying the 'leave a thing of the animal's where you last saw it' to see if that'll persuade him out, but I figured I'd also look around a bit and see if I can find him before he gets himself run over or something."

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"Best of luck! Need any help?"

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"Oh, probably, but I'm not sure how much it'll help to have someone else wandering around in the dark looking for a black cat. Besides, I think he likes being chased - know a good way to persuade a cat out of hiding without attracting raccoons?"

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"I could call my aunt," she offers. "She's a problem-solver."

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"Maybe if I can't find him tonight or tomorrow, yeah. I don't really want to bother too many people up in the middle of the night for a cat, you know?"

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"Sensible," she agrees.

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"Does your aunt usually problem solve for finding lost cats, anyway?"

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"Well, not in particular. She's actually a computer security consultant."

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"Oh, cool. Self employed, I'm guessing?"

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"Yeah."

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(There's a number of things that could actually make her, doesn't she know about how being self employed with a web-based job frees someone up for other things? Cyrille's money is on 'witch,' over demon.)

"This is the part where I would ask some sort of leading question about her job, but I don't actually know a thing about keeping computers secure. Uh. Does she tell people to have a password with a capital letter, a symbol, and a number in it?"

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"I think it might be too late at night for the secondhand computer security lecture," she says wryly.

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Snort.

"Point. Asking for secondhand computer security lectures is probably indicative of how I am getting too tired to properly recover a cat. Luck with the date."

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"Thanks! Luck with the cat!"

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"I'll need it," she snorts, and then she departs.

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And Liesel returns to the comforting arms of linear algebra.

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Of course, she doesn't need to completely depart.

She has a hunch about this girl, and there's no real loss to finding a nice little nook from which to spy.

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A breeze descends from the sky, out of sight of Liesel's well-lit park bench, and condenses into a person. He strolls out into the park, looking around with the air of someone who is here to meet a stranger for the first time and isn't completely sure he'll recognize them. But when he passes in front of the right bench, he stops and waits to be acknowledged.

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She looks up and raises her eyebrows.

"Well, I'm impressed," she says. "...Which is going to be an awkward opener if you're not my blind date. Liesel. Hi." She shifts her textbook off her lap so she can more conveniently offer a handshake.

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He takes her hand and kisses it. "Serafin. Enchanté. I've heard good things."

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"And getting more impressed by the second!" she says, reclaiming her hand and efficiently collecting her textbook and notes back into her shoulder bag.

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"Shall we take a walk?" he suggests, offering his arm.

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"Where did she find you?" she wonders, resting her hand on his arm in the classic fashion. "You're like a walking romance novel and I am very into it."

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"Some mysteries are best left unsolved, I find."

And away they go.

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What the fuck is going on in this town.

Is she getting too paranoid? She really feels like she's not. Her sister disappears with some guy, the guy's brother is an excellent actor and allegedly is from the future, this girl with a mysterious aunt is on a date with Serafin the torture warlock that doesn't actually live near here...

This is weird. This is too weird. She thinks it's worth following them, but she takes care to be the absolute sneakiest.

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"Okay, starting to legit wonder if my aunt conjured you up out of a romance novel," she says, smiling wryly up at him. "And has anyone ever told you that you're unfairly tall?"

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"I like to think of myself as exactly tall enough," he says with a soft chuckle. "All right, how do I prove to you that I'm a real boy after all?"

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"Proving you can talk like a modern human being was a good first step," she says. "Let's see. How about... tell me one embarrassing thing about yourself? I'll trade if you want."

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"Hmmmmm. You first."

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"I still wear the Captain America jammies my aunt bought me when I was twelve," she says promptly. "Your turn."

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He bursts into giggles and has to stop walking.

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"You're not supposed to laugh!" she says accusingly, giving him a playful shove that affects him not at all.

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"I'm sorry, it's just—what an image—"

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"All right, I forgive you." She pats his arm. "But don't complain if I laugh at yours."

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"I confess I'm having some trouble coming up with something embarrassing enough to qualify without being too embarrassing to share on a first date."

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"You're not trying to weasel out of this, are you?"

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"I would never."

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"Well that was the least convincing denial I've heard in a while."

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"No comment. But no, honestly, I am having trouble."

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"We can leave it for now. You don't giggle like you're conjured out of a romance novel. I'm not sure how I expect the male leads in romance novels to giggle but it isn't like that."

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"I choose to take that as a compliment."

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"Smart move." She tugs on his elbow slightly and they start walking again. "So, how about a non-embarrassing fact?"

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"Actually," he says, "before I get into that, would you mind terribly if I stepped away for a moment? I think I caught a glimpse of an old friend just now and I want to go say hello, ideally without embarrassing myself in front of my very charming date if it turns out I was seeing things."

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"Sure, go ahead," she says, in the manner of someone who very definitely knows there's more to this story and is politely not grilling him about it.

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"Thank you. I appreciate your understanding."

He leans down and kisses her on the cheek, and then heads in Cyrille's direction.

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Liesel stays right where she is, touching her cheek with her fingertips and smiling a deeply charmed smile.

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Well.

Can't win them all.

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"Cyrille," he says when he reaches her. "Nice to see you. Mind fucking off?"

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"Serafin. Nice to see you too." She considers. "Maybe later."

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"Is there a particular reason you're stalking me tonight?"

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"I stalk everyone, haven't you heard? Today I drew your name from the hat, sorry, happens to everyone." She smiles. "I didn't know you went on dates. Feeling lonely?"

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"She's cute, isn't she? She's mine and you can't have her," he says, smiling right back.

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"You're lucky Yvette likes you. Or does she still?"

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"Last I heard. You know something I don't?"

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"Probably. But I'm bored of this conversation now, have fun with your date."

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"Have a nice night," he says pleasantly, and he turns around and walks back to Liesel. By the time he reaches her, he has an actual smile on his face instead of the expression of polite loathing he always ends up having around Cyrille. He offers her his arm again.

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She takes it. "All caught up with your friend?"

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"Yes, but let's not talk about her."

And off they stroll again.

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Ugh.

At least if there's a conspiracy, Serafin's probably involved, so she'll get an acceptable excuse to kill him. Which is very cheering, really.

She sighs, then turns to resume looking around the town. It's been a while since she was last here, she has ever so much to catch up on.

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"Sure. Where were we? Non-embarrassing facts? Want me to go first again?"

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"Since you offered, yes, why not."

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"All right... I've known I wanted to be a mathematician since I was eight, which is when I first heard of algebra. Your turn."

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He laughs. "I have no such ambition. You're going to accuse me of being conjured out of a romance novel again, but all I want to do with my life is live in a beautiful castle surrounded by every conceivable luxury."

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"You sure are something," she says, smiling up at him.

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"Something good, I hope?"

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"So far!"

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"I'd better keep up the good work, then, hadn't I?"

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"Signs so far indicate you probably don't need to worry too hard. Unless this has all been an elaborate deception orchestrated to seduce me."

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"Elaborate deceptions aren't my cup of tea. I prefer to be direct."

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"Subtlety has its place," she says. "But I like directness when I can get away with it. Want to come back to my place for a cup of tea and a chat?"

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"That sounds like an excellent idea."

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"Let me just call my aunt."

She gets out her phone and calls home.

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"Yes?"

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"Chris! Hi! You sure know how to pick 'em," she says. "We're headed home now. Seriously, did you conjure this guy out of a romance novel or what."

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"No comment," she says. "I've got to maintain my mystique somehow. See you soon."

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She laughs. "See you," she says, and she turns to lead Serafin home.

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Chris goes looking for Miles and Yvette.

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They're cuddled together in the basement, Yvette on her laptop and presumably figuring out the ranged ensouling spell.

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She knocks politely.

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A good habit to keep, really.

"Come in," calls Yvette, glancing up.

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In she goes.

"So, good news and bad news," she says. "Good: Liesel called, and she met Serafin and it went well and they're headed back here now. Bad: She was acting like I'd set her up on a blind date, which means they were being watched, or suspected they were, and that was her cover story. I think you two should stay down here until further notice."

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Yvette nods, pensive.

"I think I agree."

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"We can hope the suspected observer was unrelated to any of this, but..."

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"But it would be foolish to not consider all possibilities." She fidgets anxiously with the hem of her sleeve. "If it's my sister, then it's a very good thing I accepted your invitation when I did."

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"Yes."

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Miles hugs Yvette.

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She leans into him, attempting a smile and not quite managing it.

"Well. Nothing for it now except hiding in the basement. Keep us updated?"

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"Of course."

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"Thanks."

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She nods, and goes back upstairs.

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Yvette lets herself have a minute of leaning comfortably on Miles. He's just so nice to lean on. He's just so nice in general.

And then she takes a deep breath, smiles adoringly at him, and gets back to work.

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Up on the ground floor, Liesel invites Serafin into her house.

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He steps over the threshold and stops in his tracks.

"...Wow," he says. "I was all set to say 'you realize I could kill everyone in this house now, right?', but now I realize I was seriously underestimating your aunt."

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"It happens," she says from the living room. "Welcome to my humble yet fortresslike abode. Yvette and Miles are downstairs."

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Liesel starts down the stairs to the basement.

"That was a masterful pickup on the cover story, by the way," she says over her shoulder.

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"It was a brilliant cover story!"

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"I hope you'll forgive me if I don't ask you on a second date."

She knocks on the door to Yvette and Miles's basement room.

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"Come in," calls Yvette, clicking her laptop closed and setting it aside.

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In they go.

"I have successfully retrieved Serafin." She glances back at him. "Was that Cyrille?"

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"Yep. So that'll be fun," he says dryly.

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"Ugh," says Yvette, eloquently. "Of course she wouldn't be busy elsewhere and give me time to design the spell to soul-snipe her."

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"Well, at least you've got help, right?"

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Smile. "I do, yeah. Speaking of - thank you. Both of you."

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"You're welcome."

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"Is the spell ready to talk about, should I bring in Chris?"

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She considers. "Eh. Close enough. I have enough to work with, anyway, if not everything."

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She goes to fetch her aunt.

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Serafin looks consideringly at Miles.

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"Yes?"

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Shrug.

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Here's Chris!

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Yvette looks between Serafin and Miles, apprehensive.

Then she decides she does not have time for her relationship drama, smiles an awkward apologetic smile at Serafin and Miles, and then carries on like there is no relationship drama to behold at all.

"Hi, Chris. Okay - so I'm pretty sure I can get your two branches of magic to make friends, but we'll have to be very careful about what chess metaphor we use, and I or Chris should be the major spellcaster for the spell, on account of how this is precisely the thing that got me my accidental soul."

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"What do you mean by being very careful about the metaphor?"

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"For that matter what do you mean about the metaphor in the first place?"

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Oh right Serafin doesn't know how Chris's magic works.

"Sorry, Serafin. Chris has a magic system that's very tidy and friendly, and it's based around chess metaphors. It's not as freeform as yours, but it's also less wild, and doesn't require any torture at all. The reason we should be careful with the metaphor is that - okay, so, Chris's magic and my magic will be the base of the spell, and Serafin's magic comes along and magnifies the effects of it. We're all flexible enough to manage it, it's just a matter of - building everything with everyone else's idiosyncrasies in mind. Which for you, Chris, means that the structure needs to take into account what the other magics are like so it'll - hook up correctly, I suppose is the correct terminology."

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"Huh. All right."

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"I think I see what you mean," she says, nodding. "We should go over your spell's structure, then, and I'll think about how to build around it. As for Serafin... maybe I should try casting a few small spells with you as practice," she says to him, "to get a feel for how you power things."

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"How much power am I putting into this? Or I guess, to put it another way: is there anyone around here I can hurt?"

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"Um. I think that we're probably not going to be able to get your typical max level of power ethically, but." She makes an awkward face. "Depending on how much power we need - and I don't know the answer to that question yet, I don't know the specifics of how Chris's magic works - you, um. Already know my pain tolerances. I bet I could output more from emotional responses than - um, before, on account of everything. It probably shouldn't be our first option because I'm a little delicate right now on account of my recent ensouling, but it is an option."

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"I'll keep that in mind."

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"Something to say over there?"

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"Well, in the interests of having all of our options listed, I should probably mention that I have a high pain tolerance and might be slightly manic-depressive. I'm not thrilled about contributing in that particular way, but I'd do it if it seemed like it was actually the best choice available."

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"Well. Good to know."

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Look at that awkward expression on Yvette. She is so awkward. The most awkward.

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"...Should we maybe have some kind of conversation before we start in on the magic," he says to Yvette. "With a smaller audience."

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"Yeah, um. We probably should."

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"Shoo," he says, with a general wave at the non-Yvette people present.

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"Shooing," says Liesel agreeably. She and her aunt go back upstairs.

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Miles looks at Yvette. "Am I staying or going? I should avoid being visible from outside the house but I bet I can do that and still not listen in if that's what you'd rather."

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"I'm okay with you staying, if, um, Serafin is too?"

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Shrug. "No problem."

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"Preferences for - a part we start on or should I just spout out the very first thing that comes to mind and hope for the best?" she wonders, a little wryly.

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"I think spouting out the very first thing that comes to mind might turn out to be a better plan than it sounds like," Serafin says thoughtfully.

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Snort.

"Okay. Um. Miles and I are in a polyamorous relationship."

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"Huh," he says, regarding them thoughtfully.

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"So it's not a, a - 'bwuahaha I have found someone better and now let me show you the door' situation, but, um. I am actually quite uncomfortable with the part where you torture innocent people."

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"Yeah, I figured it was something like that. Well. If the Slayer finds me volunteers..."

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"Then - then maybe? Yeah? But I can't -" she looks away. "I can't build my life on an if?"

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"Yeah, that makes sense. I wasn't going to ask you to. You clearly have more than enough to deal with right now."

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"Yeah. Thanks. For what it's worth, I'm sorry."

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He shrugs. "Maybe something'll turn up someday and we can talk about it then. Meantime - if we need to throw a lot of power at this and there isn't a better option than you, will you be okay?"

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She considers.

"Yes, but with an asterisk. Okay is sort of a relative term for me now? Which is depressing and unfair and I'd like it to stop, but I mean. That's not going to happen until Cyrille's taken care of. I'd probably have slightly more baggage to deal with, and might end up crying on you halfway through because I - I miss you - but compared to other baggage it's not even bad. My sister getting turned into a vampire, killing her Watcher, hunting me down to forcibly turn me, then dealing with how I ran around without a soul for four years sort of. Outdoes whatever you'd be willing to do to me, you know?"

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"Yeah."

He smiles wryly.

"...do you want a hug or would that be weird?"

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"You can hug me," she assures him, with a slight smile.

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He hugs her.

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Hug.

And then the hug ends, and she looks at him.

"... Are you going to keep kidnapping people and torturing them to death? If Liesel can't find you any volunteers."

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He sighs.

"I don't know."

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She - conspicuously doesn't say a word.

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"...So," says Miles, "was I right when I guessed that you fell in love with her during that phone call?"

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"—what," he says, blinking at Miles.

And then a pause, and then, "...yeah, good catch."

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"I didn't even do anything," she protests weakly, smiling a little.

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"You didn't have to! You just - were!"

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Snort.

"It's nice to know it's not just me that prefers me with a soul. I was sort of worried you'd be upset."

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"You're - more. I'm not sure what you're more of exactly but I'm sure it's something I like."

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"Empathetic? Sincere? Awkward?" She smiles. "Well, anyway. Good, I'm glad."

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He laughs.

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...Miles blinks.

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"Yes?"

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"You almost reminded me of—" and then he double-takes. "Um. Okay, that's an unexpected and inexplicable interdimensional happenstance."

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She blinks, and looks at Miles.

"... What is?"

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"...You look exactly like my friend's dead father - I've only seen a few pictures, he died before I was born, but now that I'm paying attention, you've got the family eyes, too - it was the laugh that clued me in, you sounded just like him..."

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"...I have to admit that's a new one," he says.

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"Also, by 'friend' I may in fact mean 'Emperor'."

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"...well, if your Emperor's father was ever Emperor himself, and is not remembered as the biggest disaster the empire in question has ever seen, he's definitely not me."

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"The empire in question has seen some pretty big disasters, but no, Prince Serg got himself killed pursuing a really stupid war during his father's reign."

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"That sounds like exactly the kind of thing I would've done when I had a soul."

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"... Okay, that's just. Weird. And yes, let's. Let's not put your soul back, ever."

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"I was a complete trainwreck!"

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"I haven't heard that Prince Serg particularly resembled a vehicle accident, but then, the history books sort of skip over him, he never inherited and we're kind of embarrassed about the whole Escobar fiasco..."

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"... Did the history books skip over, say, his parents? You could compare and contrast those and see if there's a resemblance."

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"Ezar and Soraya Vorbarra - Ezar was a good Emperor, by all accounts, maybe a little too heavy-handed sometimes, but he dealt pretty well with the situation he was given. My grandfather knew him."

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"...Serg, Serafin; Ezar, Evaras... did Ezar have the 'family eyes' too?"

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"Yeah, I think so. And he looked a lot like - well, you. If you look at portraits of the three of them side by side, Ezar and Serg and Gregor, it's really obvious they're three generations of the same family."

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"Well, that. Sort of calls up a number of awkward questions, like, 'is there a me there' and 'is there another you here.'"

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"Yyyyes. Those are some awkward questions all right. But I think we can probably leave them alone for now. We have more important things to worry about."

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"Right, yes. We do. Just." Handwave. "Anyway. I think we're cleared to talk magic again? Probably?"

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"Seems like it!"

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Serafin hugs Yvette again and then steps away. "I'll go get the witch, then."

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She hugs him back, of course. But yes, five second rule for hugs, good.

"Thanks."

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He goes and gets the witch.

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"All right," says the witch, "let's hear about this spell of yours."

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Here's an explanation of the original spell! Here's an explanation of all of its components, and all of the pieces that make it up. These are the key components, and these are the ones that can be messed with if anyone present thinks that it will not work out well with their own magic set. Here are her proposed ideas for how to integrate this spell with their magic systems - Chris's integration proposal is noticeably more vague than Serafin's, for somewhat obvious reasons.

In short, Chris's magic will make up a lot of the foundation for how the spell will be aimed, and what the power provided will be channeled into. Serafin, predictably, will be providing the power itself, and likely help with expanding the range of the spell. Yvette's magic will provide the fiddly detail work and specifics of ensouling someone. She's pretty sure this is the best way they can integrate all of their magic types quickly, but she might be missing some nuance in Chris's or Serafin's magic, is there anything they'd like to add?

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Serafin shrugs. "My part looks simple enough."

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"Yes, I can work with this," says Chris. "Serafin, want to come upstairs to my workroom and try a few spells?"

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"Sure."

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"Mind if I watch? ... If I can leave the basement without being near any windows, anyway."

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"I think we can manage that just fine. My workroom has a window but I can close the curtains."

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"All right. Is uh, Miles also allowed a break from the box of shame, or is it magic users only...?"

Because she is aware of how Miles is likely to go stir crazy quickly, and she'd like to mitigate that as much as possible.

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"I think we can accommodate multiple spectators."

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"Hooray."

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"You can stay in the box of shame, if you'd rather," she points out. "Since you don't seem all that excited about your field trip privileges..."

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He glances at the stairs, and at Chris and Yvette and Serafin. There's an obvious joke to be made about how letting Yvette out of his sight in the company of her questionably-ex-quasi-boyfriend might lead to regrettable events, but no he is absolutely not going to so much as allude to that it is a terrible idea she would be so awkward let's not. Different banter premise.

"It is pretty comfy down here. But who knows, maybe I'll learn something."

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"You might! At this rate you'll be able to be able to leave the box of shame on your own magic user merits."

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Giggle.

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Well they're adorable.

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"I'll go collect Liesel and close some curtains, then," says Chris.

She does that.

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Serafin, after a glance at Miles and Yvette, follows.