"I feel slightly bad for hoping he is kidnapped."

"A valid perspective, I suppose. If he is kidnapped, where do you think he might be?"

"There's all kinds of places to spirit away a kidnap victim, but most of them aren't that human-friendly. Fake magic teacher asshole was from out of town, too - he knew about the house where he stashed me somehow but I'd be a little surprised if he had a comprehensive network of boltholes. I wonder how hard it would be to get a kidnapped Giles into a hotel or something."

"I could manage it just fine. Even if there is no kidnapped Giles, it's a good bet that the fake magic teacher might be staying in a hotel. Did he give you a name which may or may not be fake? Could you describe him? How many hotels are there around here?"

"He did not give me a name of any fakeness. Fifty and change, maybe sixty. White. Five-nine. Low-key boxer build under a lot of tweed, broken nose, don't remember eye color, lazy about shaving but no actual beard, salt-and-pepper hair, authentic victim of British dentistry."

"I could pick him out of a crowd on that basis, I think. It remains to locate the crowd. Hotels?"

"There's some crappy motels he might or might not be too classy to use even for a kidnapping excursion, and a Holiday Inn and a Marriott, and if he went a little ways out of town a Four Seasons."

"I do get the impression that the Watcher's Council are the sort to be classy about their kidnapping excursions, but individual preferences may vary, of course. Hmm. Should I go skulking around hotels, do you think?"

"Do those count for vampire hospitality thing?"

"Haven't personally verified it, but my intuition is no."

"Then that sounds potentially productive. I think I'm at eighty, eighty-five percent now, if you want to wait for Charlie to bring my phone I could come along so you don't scare possibly-innocent-Giles."

He shrugs. "Suits me fine."

"Holiday Inn." She drives. It is not that far off.

"Do we have a plan more detailed than 'skulk'?"

"Ask them if your uncle, witness the similar accents, checked in already?"

"Yeah, I could sell that. All right."

"My genius of an uncle forgot to tell me which hotel I was supposed to meet him at; please tell me you've seen a tallish late-middle-aged Englishman today, broken nose, excessively fond of tweed, is any of this ringing a bell or must I turn around and check the Marriott...?"

"Oh! Yes, he's here," she nods. "He didn't say he was expecting relatives, but you're welcome to wait in the lobby or go knock if he mentioned his room number."

"Perfect, thank you." He smiles with a reasonable approximation of charm and breezes on into the hotel.

Bella trots after him. "So, does tweed have a distinctive smell...?"

"Occupied rooms are distinguishable from unoccupied ones, I doubt the occupancy of this hotel is that high, we can rule out any room containing nonhumans, and if we're lucky I'll be able to pick him out by some stronger scent than tweed."

"He didn't smell of smoke or anything obvious. Did Giles's house smell sufficiently of Giles to do the trick if Giles is here?"