"Yes, I know. Unless part of its unamenability to science involved occurring without being prompted, I suppose."

"Ugh, that would be terrible. Just - doing horrific things without permission. Worst magic ever, I would want a refund."

"Maybe the random evil magic would give you a refund! From some worthy charity's pocket, no doubt, as it is evil."

"In that case, no refund, I would just want the random evil magic to go away."

"Yes. Magic lessons till we get hungry and then we go get seafood for our date. How many of them do we have to have before the adorable shyness wears off?"

"I have absolutely no idea," laughs Darren. "It might just never go away and I'll keep being adorably shy."

"Awwwww."

"I do," murmurs Bella, too softly to carry, "think I might kiss you sometime today unless you materialize strenuous objections, but not with your family around."

"Magic lesssons!" he agrees happily. He starts giving her runes.

Which she accepts happily. She has started numbering them for spreadsheet use.

Good, good. Runes! Wonderful runes! Darren approves of numbering for spreadsheets, and tells her so.

"I can show you my index if you want to copy over the numbers into whatever you're using for reference so we match."

"Yes please."

She flips to her index, which has mini doodles of the runes in neat columns beside numbers in Bella's excellent handwriting.

Darren copies the numbers over to an index of his own, obviously much larger than Bella's, and then goes back to giving her more runes.

"Yup! Let's go let dad know about taking the car and then we can head out."