She shows him the lava monster.

"... Huh. Chile? That's - strange, how did it get here? I mean at least now we know, but still."

"There aren't really volcanoes around here, even if its limitation to Chile in particular were a fiction."

"Right, that's true, too. It's still - weird. It seems like there would be better options to come after you with that isn't so - exotic."

"Such as?"

"Well. Honestly? A gun."

"Assuming they don't know enough about who I am to follow me to the drugstore some afternoon and make it look like a holdup gone wrong, and they have to identify me by species, that'd probably take a sniper, who's probably more worried about getting caught than a Cherufe is and also is a kind of difficult skillset to pick up in a weekend."

"True. But where can you go to pick up a Cherufe hitman on a weekend? It says a bit about whatever's after you that that's easier than a gun."

"Yeah, they had a Cherufe going spare or just consider that the go-to solution, I guess."

"I mean, once they have decided to kill someone, a Cherufe - or possibly exotic nonsapient monsters in general - is their go-to. They have a knack with them, they have an exotic nonsapient monster handler on the payroll, they have no liquid cash to get an untraceable sniper rifle but they do have a garage full of Purina Cherufe Chow, whatever."

"Right, yeah, I got that part - I just do not approve of them. So I suppose we should start trying to figure out who had at least one Cherufe at their beck and call at that time and could get one to Forks within a weekend."

"I think maybe we should check to see if there've been weird fires elsewhere in the general northwesterly area. In case the Cherufe has been camping out receiving instructions for a while before you splashed it and may have been succeeding at other tasks."

"... Brr, that's a scary thought. I'll look up weird fires when I get home, that's important information to know."

"It was leaving a strange enough trail that it might have looked like arson, I can ask Charlie to see if there's anybody worrying about serial arson among the cops in case there's a pattern news reports wouldn't mention."

Darren nods. "Sounds good. I guess maybe we could also ask Mrs. Adams about bugbear senses, and ask if she knows much about its habits or its route before it found us?"

"Yes, that's a good idea," agrees Bella, snapping her fingers, "and if there's any - I mean, it's more likely to be some kind of critter, right, than a human? If there's any critters around who aren't ruled out on account of obviously not wanting me dead."

"It could be a human that has been made aware of critters and knows magic," points out Darren. "Or something to get a Cherufe to work for them, some leverage of another sort or something."

"What's the relative population of critters and critter-aware humans, though?"

"More critters to critter-aware humans - I don't have the actual numbers, but... Usually a human gets told if they're best friends with or spouse of a critter. Neither leads very well to large numbers."

"So, most likely a critter, and Mrs. Adams can find those - although I guess it could be a critter like Angela who knows about things but hasn't turned."

"Yeah. So it's probably a bad idea to rule out other options, entirely. Unfortunately."

"Yeah. But critters are people of interest, at least. Even if they aren't in fact trying to kill me. I think I'd like to know more critters."