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The pay is good near Sunnydale - unreasonably good, she can make twenty paper dollars in a day - but the land is cursed. They had not planned to come here at all. "It's an evil place," she was told, "full of demons," and she nodded very seriously. She will fight demons, if it must be done, but she will almost certainly die of it, because demons are strong; it would be better to wait, and come back when she has the strength to fight demons and win.
But then a job fell through in Orange County and there were rumors of la migra - worse than demons, she takes it, though no one's explained them - on the coast, and they'll starve if they don't go anywhere, so it's Sunnydale.
Two men go missing in the first week. "It's the demons," Maria Luna says, resigned.
Iomedae goes out looking, finds the bodies. There are fang-marks in the neck.
Iomedae knows a lot about the undead.
She borrows a paring-knife, and makes stakes, and drives them through the dead mens' hearts so they won't rise. She goes back and tells everybody that it's vampires, and that they should refuse strangers entrance to their dwellings, though she isn't sure if the cars they live out of will count, and that they should show a holy symbol, and have garlic everywhere.
And then she goes into the town of Sunnydale with her rucksack and twelve empty one-liter Gatorade bottles, to get some holy water from the church. Holy water is expensive, she knows that, but she also knows that you send stronger paladins than her, if you have a vampire problem, and there is no point dying with all of her savings still tucked inside her chemise. She has four hundred paper dollars and will see how much holy water that gets her, and whether it can get her the loan of a silver weapon.
The church is doing confessions. She had never heard of the concept until about a month ago but now approves of it wholeheartedly; many of the traditions of the Church here are strange, but they are clearly right, if she did come home and tell her parents about them they'd be proud and approving.
She will wait until the confessions are done, though with an anxious glance out the window as it's going to be dark in an hour. (She was only able to get off work this early because it is a Saturday.)
