"… I told him about the magic on the dead body?" he tries.

"No, you mentioned it to him. That's very different!"

He shrugs. "Feel free to tell him about stuff on my behalf, but really, I'd rather not have to."

She sighs. "Fine. I will."

"Okay, so, plan of attack for the gym teacher? Is that what was next?"

"I mean, plan of attack in general. Like, suppose the gym teacher has nothing to do with it and was just unusually good-humored, then what, that kinda stuff."

"… Weirdly unusually good-humored, but okay, uh, I don't know? I mean, how close do you have to be to compare magical signatures? Is it exactly the same as getting that one?"

"I need to be able to see my target, it's pretty much the same but if my target is broader than just one person, like their house or something, it's less obvious than it was with the dead guy, and proportionally less accurate."

"… So do we wait 'til tomorrow and you cast it on his office or something, or do we try to find him tonight somehow? I mean, I have no idea where the gym teacher lives."

"...yeah waiting's probably the best idea."

"Okay," he says, then looks around a bit. "Is there any extra, uh, preparation that we can do? Like, some sort of basic protection thing, some basic weapon, I seriously still have no idea what stuff magic can do nor how easy or difficult any of this is."

"Um, magic can do pretty much anything, but magical energy has to come from somewhere. New witches usually need to borrow power from deities and demons, but the more magic you do the more personal magical power you have."

"I'm not sure whether I should feel proud or worried..."

"What do you mean borrow from demons? Could I… I don't know, borrow from my own demonic-ness if I wanted to do some?"

"Y-you might have more magic juice than regular humans by default, I guess. And the literature calls everything that thinks and is not a human a 'demon.' Most magic involves calling on entities and giving them access to you in exchange for accessing them and channeling their power through you. And magic itself is more or less sentient."

"… That's a little creepy. What sorts of entities do you let 'have access to you', like, could you in theory do that with a nice demon somehow? I'm just curious, since presumably there are nice demons, since I'm like half demon or something and I'm… nice…?"

He thinks?

"Nice demons don't tend to visit Earth much and the ones who do aren't usually powerful. There are some books that mention the Powers That Be..."

"… Which are?"

"Supposedly very good and powerful demons that want to fight the forces of darkness but work in mysterious ways and don't interfere directly?"

"Are there any examples of things they've done? I don't know if Sadde's told me anything about this yet."

"I haven't, there's only like two books that mention them and they're on the ambiguous side of mythical."

"Oh, right. … Are there any rituals that involve them? Or, like, could you substitute which demon you offer your power to to be them instead? I don't know how dangerous that'd be so, uh, this might be a really stupid question."

"If there are, I don't know them, it's part of why I think they're mythical."

"A-and you can't change which god you call for rituals that call gods, you'd need a whole new ritual a-and the old god might get annoyed. So say the books."

"Oh," he says. "Okay, yeah, probably not a good idea to do that then. I just thought, you know, if you don't invoke them that'd just be equivalent to, like, not doing the ritual, but– uh, yeah."