There's one with a crossbow, squinting at her, loading a packet of bolts.

Slayer.

Yvette drops the bag of magic supplies and raises her hands in a surrender.

"I surrender!" she screeches, backing up.

"That's new."

"What, the other vampires you talk to lose pattern recognition with their souls, you're the Slayer, I'm a vampire, I'm gonna die horribly if I cross you so I surrender. I haven't killed anyone and don't bite people without permission and can say both under lie detection for exactly this reason, please don't kill me thoughtlessly I am not a threat to you or anyone else."

"I acknowledge the overwhelming logic of this argument but since it is, in fact, new, I have to wonder if I'm missing something besides a way to do lie detection."

"Fair enough, is there anything I can do to assuage your doubts here?"

"I don't know, I don't come with a quiz ready to administer."

"I could give you suggestions, but I acknowledge that sort of falls into the earlier trap of suspecting this is a trap. Want to hear them anyway or have me shut up and let you think?"

"What's in the bag?"

Wince.

"Magic supplies for self defense, because I noticed Sunnydale was getting quiet and got concerned. Clearly I was on to something." She giggles a little hysterically, then stops that because it's not useful. "I'm a witch, you can shoot me if I start waving my hands or chanting Latin ominously but the surrender is still very genuine, and I have nothing I can do silently with my hands above my head before a crossbow bolt gets me."

"Kinda self defense?"

"It's a bit of a variety, the halite dust, basil, and blackberry's for warding my house against weird fallout that might be involved in someone opening the hellgate. The rest is for different ways of protecting a person, from mind altering effects or weird curses or possession, and a bit that'll help with someone trying to stab me but nothing that'll reliably hold out against someone that's stubborn about it."

"Suppose somebody has tried basic magic and can't make any of it work at all, how would you diagnose that?"

"That depends on what you did and how it didn't work, explain and I can diagnose?"

"I went through everything in the New Witch Handbook - I made the Magic Box shopkeep demo me two things before deciding not to demand my money back for it - and the crystals ritual in Sorceren and two chants in Incanting Arcane. Diddly squat."

"... Really? Those should have worked, that's really weird. Uh. You might have your power being siphoned to something else so you don't have any to use yourself, you might have some curse in place that prevents you from doing anything, you might be some kind of secret demon hybrid that combined with Slaying isn't playing nice with magic. It might not be any of those, it might be something else entirely, magic's weird and untidy and honestly kind of terrible. I'm just making guesses in the dark, I'd have to break out my magic nerd kit to give you a concrete answer."

"What would that involve?"

"Uh, for starters, peering at you through a lens thing I have at home that helps me detect magic. If that didn't get an answer, then I'd need to get other supplies and make a circle out of them, then put you in it. There would be some ominous Latin chanting, I might ask you to don some jewelry that'll record detailed analyses of what's going on with you. If that didn't get an answer, I'd have to do weirder things, but away from my laptop I couldn't tell you what they'd be, some of them are really obscure."

"What is your nonlethal means of support?"

"Freelance web design, bite shop donations, witch for hire. ... I haven't been outfitting the people you want to kill with protection baubles for money, I'm a theorist and researcher, I disentangle weird magical edge cases."

"What is a bite shop? How did you fall into that instead of the usual minimally discriminate murder?"

"Vampires do not have to kill people with our bites, and, um. How do explain this for polite company... if we want to we can make it very pleasant. So much so that some humans pay for it. Think like, vampire bite prostitution, it's close enough. I knew about the vampire food chain before I turned, I didn't think giving up the ability to say under lie detection that I hadn't killed was worth the easy snacks, find body disposal a chore, and I can steal blood from the butcher shop if I'm not feeling social. I'm amoral but I'm not stupid, minimally discriminate murder is for people that have no foresight or creativity."

"Did turning not affect your foresight or creativity at all? It sure does something to most people."

"Uh, no? It took out my empathy, morality, some of my social skills, and rearranged my priorities, but I'm plenty forethoughtful and creative."

"What do you charge for witching?"