"When J.K. Rowling said wizards talk like they're in a fucking Doctor Seuss book, I didn't expect her to be understating it. Hey wait, did J.M. Barrie get that term from the paranormal community or the other way around?"

"That one was us first."

"So was Dracula! Black Court vampires are basically exactly like that in real life."

"Ordinarily, I would be kind of excited by that prospect, but you're already hot, scary, and you have body heat!"

"God, you don't wanna mess with vampires. Most of them are totally gross and all of them will kill you."

"Sad! On that note, uh, so there are things called 'demons', but they come from a place called 'the Nevernever', not 'Hell'... Christianity isn't real, is it?"

"While the exact details of the afterlife are fiendishly elusive, there's some compelling evidence for Christianity having some truth to it! 'Demons' is a catch-all category that refers to three things: the Outsiders, miscellaneous ugly and hostile creatures of the Nevernever that don't qualify as either faeries or spirits, and the fallen angels. The existence of this latter category implies the existence of regular angels, and then there's the Swords of the Cross—three blades forged with nails from the Crucifixion, that number among the most powerful magical artifacts."

"Well now I'm terrified we're both going to hell. Not terrified enough to actually change my behavior, to be clear. Don't negotiate with terrorists, even divine terrorists." She clings tightly to Mara's soft, warm body. 

"Christianity is definitely the most popular religion among the magically informed, but we have reason to suspect that the truth of it is best captured by the, uh, more moralistic therapeutic deist flavors? The phenomenon that's most widely agreed to be a case of divine intervention is the choosing of the Knights of the Cross, and those have included gays, Jews, and atheists. It's not the kind of divine intervention you'd expect from a God who tortures people eternally.

I'm not sure if I even believe in it at all, myself? Ghosts move on. We don't really have any evidence they move on to somewhere in particular. And the Swords are powerful, but their power could simply come from generations' belief in the Resurrection."

"Huh, 'Knights of the Cross' sounds very Catholic, but letting in gays, Jews, and atheists doesn't... Holy shit, were the Anglicans right the whole time? God, that would be so fucking funny. I was going to suggest that as a joke, I can't believe it's actually plausible."

"The Knights get most of their support from the Catholics, actually! The Anglicans do make some contributions, as do the Episcopals and the Orthodox. It's kind of a horseshoe theory which priests will be aware of the supernatural community—lots of rainbow flags, lots of Traditional Latin Mass types, not many normal party line followers."

"If the Knights are directly chosen by God and include all those groups of people, do the Catholics and Orthodox have some galaxy brained excuse for why?"

"Like I said, the priests who are actually worth a damn to have on your side in confrontations against fallen angels and their ilk tend to dissent from their organization's party line in one way or another. The rainbow flag types will say some shit about how 'every religion has a bit of God's truth in it' or something else along those lines that would totally get them in trouble if the Pope ever heard about it, the fire-and-brimstone types tend to cite cases like the Persian king Cyrus and so on, where God empowered a nonbeliever for His own strategic ends."

"Fascinating. Good to know there's at least some evidence in favor of a heaven. Oh yeah, speaking of religious conservatives, you were saying earlier to tell my family I'm dropping out and moving in with my girlfriend, but the thing is, I never actually came out to them."

Mara's stomach rumbles again, audibly.

"How about we decide what to do about that over dinner? We could figure out a plan for moving your stuff here, too. Let me know your sushi order."

She looks over the menu. "Lemme get uuuuuuuhhhhh, 6 pieces of salmon nigiri, a salmon maki, and the tempura lobster roll, that sounds yummy."

Mara scribbles down the order on a pad of paper.

"Very nice! I'll need to run off to the computer room to place the order; I keep all the technology around here in a separate room to minimize the number of magic-related replacements I need."

She lifts Katie up off her lap and walks off down the hall.

Katie lies down and quietly stews in the guilt from making a woman such as Mara wait for food with her stupid questions. She's a bad girlfriend to this woman she just met and she's going to make her get skinny with her constant stupid annoying yammering.

Mara returns quickly. The butterfly clip is absent from her hair.

"Order placed! It'll be a while, let me know if you have thoughts on what you want to tell your parents or when to get your stuff from your old place."

She sits beside Katie this time, moving her purse out of the way, and puts her arm around her waist.

God she's so warm and soft and cuddly. Katie eagerly leans in to the affection. "I uuuh... I kind of don't want to tell them anything. Decades of experience have taught me that telling them things is generally a bad idea. But like, fuck, they've probably already called  the cops, and tried to search my computer, shit I hope I had it locked." She is so glad she has a big soft woman to melt the stress away right now. Her spindly limbs jitter nonetheless.

"I used magic to fix the doors on the way out, there shouldn't be any evidence of a break-in, if you want I could take you to the tech room to give them a call before the sushi gets here and tell them some story about—wait, shit, you brought your computer with you to do a magical ritual? How has it survived?"

"Oh, no, it was in a different room, I figured that one out a while ago, just, y'know, in the same house."

"Dang, yeah, that sucks. Do you wanna go to the tech room and send some sort of communication to your parents to explain your absence? I know it's out of character and whatever you say or write won't be very convincing, but even a token 'sorry for running off guys, forgot to tell you I have plans with a friend!' will make my lawyer's job easier later."

Mara pauses for a moment, considering saying something more.

Leave it at that, don't show weakness, you wouldn't wanna squander the advantage of authority, says her inner voice of reason. It sounds like a mix between Tiffany and Alyssa.

"And my bad for not taking you to do that first thing. It's, um, my first kidnapping?"

"Okay yeah, let's do that now, which way is the tech room."

"This way," says Mara, and leads her down the same hall she had used to order the sushi.