"No idea," replies the girl. "Even if the bar gave me a name we probably wouldn't wind up calling it that, I suppose. You wouldn't like it, though," she adds, giving Libby a look up and down.

"I wouldn't like it because...?"

"Humans don't. Neither does he," she says, elbowing her friend, who chuckles and elbows back. "Just vampires and their relatives."

"Hmm. None of those in my world, last I checked." She smiles. "Libby Kirsch. New York City, Earth, 2005. You?" she asks, with a glance between the pair of them.

"Golden Empire? That's a new one," says Libby. "Care to explain?"

Elspeth shrugs. "My mom took over the world. Well, the vampire world. Humans we're handling a little more gradually. That's what she called it."

She raises her eyebrows slightly. "Your mom, then, being the... Queen? Empress? Should I be worried for my future? I guess the vampire part makes it less likely we're from the same world."

"Empress," Elspeth says. "Are you the sort of person who'd know about vampires if you had them? There were plenty around during 2005, just not quite so organized. But they were hiding, and you're not a vampire, so no one can tell you without risking getting killed if you have the same kind and the same previous government and stuff."

"If they're hiding, then I guess not," she says. "I mean, I like to think I'd notice, but everybody likes to think that. Are they going to un-hide at some point?"

"Gradually," Elspeth says. "Under the Golden Empire people who know things can tell individual other people - not shout it from rooftops or anything, but they can tell anyone they want, and people can come to any of our capital sites and get pamphlets -" She seems smug about the pamphlets - "and apply to get turned, if they like. The idea is we don't want a traumatic overnight revelation, just people going about business as usual plus vampires as vampires become relevant to them. Would you like a pamphlet?"

"I would love a pamphlet," says Libby.

"This is quite the pamphlet," Libby says approvingly. "And, all in all, definitely the nicest world conquest I've heard of."

Elspeth nods happily. "Have you heard of many?"

"All right, you got me," Libby admits. "Not as such."

"Didn't think so. But Mama was very nice about it, yes, as much as she could possibly be."

"And why's that?"

"Why was she nice?" Elspeth asks, confused.

"Well, yes. 'Nice' and 'world conqueror' aren't personality types with a lot of overlap."

"The previous rulers of the world ate people," Elspeth points out. "I think Mama would say that not taking over the world would not have been very nice of her. Especially since her witch power made her the only person immune to their best weapons."

"Interesting way to put it," says Libby. "Your mother sounds like an interesting woman in general."

"She is," agrees Elspeth. "She doesn't come here much, even though this stuff is great, though." She raises her bubbly golden beverage. "I should bring home a case... assuming the bar'll let me... maybe R&D can work faster with something to reverse-engineer, and it'll be nice for the Golden Day party."

"As far as I know, the bar is just fine with letting people carry product home," she says. "Although I don't do a lot of it myself. This place tends to catch me at the oddest moments. Halfway out of a cafe, for example."

"Is that where it got you today? I found it in my office closet when I wanted a new - um, 2005? - a new... memory chip."

She laughs. "Technological advances beyond my comprehension, huh?"

"Yes," says Elspeth apologetically.

"'Can think of him as' implies that you aren't," says Libby, still looking curiously at Jacob. "Is there a whole pamphlet's worth of explanation behind that?"

"I wrote all the pamphlets, which were my idea," Elspeth says. "Or the original versions, anyway; some of my staff have made updated editions since based on the first ones. And I didn't draw the drawings or take the photos."

"They're very informative," she says. "Natural talent, or formal training?"

"I'm a witch. I'm good at being understood," Elspeth said. "Also, I have several millenia's worth of assorted people's memories in my head and some of them were writers."

"Now that's interesting," says Libby.

"I didn't do it on purpose," Elspeth said. "I was nearby when someone sent them to everyone around them to escape being executed. Plenty of people have the same payload."

"Oh, no, not that part," she says. "Well, that too. But what exactly did you mean by 'good at being understood'?"

"Very interesting," says Libby.

"Yep," agrees Elspeth. "And I can push memories or compositions or feeds of my own senses at people, talk silently, simulcast translations in any languages I know which is most of them, and, if I have a human to put them in, I can 'resurrect' any of the vampires I have backed up in my head - I don't do that last one much, since we don't usually want to, you know, squeeze humans out of their own heads, but it's been appropriate a few times."

"You must be very handy to have around," she muses.

"I run the public relations department," Elspeth says.

"I'll bet you do," says Libby.

"Where public relations means that, and also intake for would-be vampires," Elspeth continues. "I also have application forms on me. People in Milliways usually aren't interested in immigrating, but some of them have taken the forms to look at."

"Application forms?" she echoes. "And what exactly are the benefits of vampirism?"

Elspeth hands over a PRPR-1-ENG and a 1-A: Introduction to Vampires.

"Amazing," murmurs Libby. "And very thorough. Did you write the form, too?"

"Of course. There's actually a missing option in question four, it's just left out because there are very few people who date or marry vampires without being their mates and they can fill that in under 'other' when applicable."

"I think I'm starting to get a sense of your style."

"It took you that long? Most people feel like they've known me for years after I say 'hello'," Elspeth jokes.

"Maybe I'm just slow."

"Or not easily convinced you have information you don't? I could rapid-fire a lot of information at you, but I try to avoid doing that with humans - my brain runs in higher definition than yours. It can be problematic. When I talk with words there's less misdirection, but not more content."

"You're definitely more, hmm... you're easier to get to know than most people."

"I'd wonder what was up on your end, if I wasn't."

"I'd have to be either so bad at it I couldn't tell the difference, or so good at it the difference was negligible," she suggests.

"I don't think anyone is the first thing," Elspeth says. "I can talk to people who are comatose. I guess the second thing could work."

"Well, is there a theoretical maximum for the informativeness of a conversation, and do you tend to approach it?"

"I don't know. I probably could, if I turned it way up. This is me on default right now."

"How would you go about turning it up?"

"Trying... to? There's not a button on the back of my neck."

Libby giggles.

"I was born with my powers. My parents got to watch me dream when I was a newborn. I just do stuff. It's like deciding to move my arm."

"I guess my question is something more like: do you increase your information density by having more things to say and packing them all into the same message, or by communicating the same things in ways that tend to lead your audience to more not-necessarily-related conclusions?"

"I do some of the second thing, but more when I'm working at it - I can figure out some information I don't already have, by figuring out what it would make sense to say, because it makes sense to say things that will cause people to understand true things. But that's clunky and doesn't work very reliably. I haven't experimented a lot with improving my verbal density. If I need to be faster, I dispense with talking. I don't often have to quickly say a lot to a human."

"Sometimes you can increase information density by saying fewer things," says Libby. "Like that form, for example. Having the non-magical spouse/lover option for werewolves but not vampires implies that for vampires it's rare-to-nonexistent."

Elspeth nods. "A lot of male werewolves imprint, but female ones never do. Any vampire - well, at least any category of vampire we know how to identify - can mate."

"That part sounds inconvenient," she says.

"It can be," Elspeth agrees. "When it works out it's nice, though. And mate bonds - and imprinting ones - are immune to some magic that could mess with other relationships."

"At least mate bonds are automatically symmetrical," she says. "Or they are if both parties are vampires. What happens if a vampire mates to someone who won't or can't turn?"

"Then the person who's not a vampire is not affected," Elspeth says. "It's very sad for the vampire and pretty awkward for their mate, and we have to be watchful to make sure the vampire doesn't do anything drastic. Wolves tend not to do that, fortunately - they're not as possessive about it, although if their imprints are in danger they will definitely do something about it." Jake pats her on the head.

"It just seems like a really inefficient system."

"As far as we know, it wasn't designed - it's just how vampires and werewolves work."

"Well, no wonder it's inefficient."

"Of course," laughs Elspeth. "We just work with and around it."

"Dare I ask what 'drastic' means, anyway?"

"Manufacturing a medical emergency, or doing something coercive to get their mate turned, or just biting them themselves and turning them without anaesthesia - basically, the object of a rejected vampire mated to a human is to get their mate turned so everything will be nice and symmetrical. If they mate on a hybrid instead and that can't happen, they just go kind of... stalkery."

"Charming."

"There's an extent to which they can't help it, but they do vary in how bad they get, so we have to hold them responsible anyway," sighs Elspeth.

"How bad exactly does that tend to be?"

"It ranges from disconsolate pining - harmless - to suicide - legal, especially under the circumstances, although we do try to encourage people to wait a year or five in case their mate comes around - to harassment and pestering and trying to find any means they can of bringing pressure to bear - sometimes legal and sometimes not, depending on how overboard they go - to various combinations of forgery, carefully calculated degrees of assault to try to force turning either to save life or reverse disability, kidnapping, that sort of thing - not legal at all."

"Ouch," says Libby. "Remind me not to visit. 'Kidnapped by lovesick vampire' is not on my list of dream vacations."

"It wouldn't be a random vampire. The relationships usually work out, even when one party stays not-a-vampire, if they give it a chance; they're people who are suited to each other. And we do protect vampires' mates who don't want to. But sure, you don't have to come home with me." She shrugs and downs the rest of her golden bubbly and orders another.

"Suited by personality, if not by species?" she says dryly.

"Well, also by species a little bit, in the sense that vampires don't seem to mate to werewolves and werewolves don't seem to imprint on full vampires," Elspeth says. "At least unless someone changes species after the fact; both phenomena are very durable once established. I'm not otherwise sure what you mean. It's not like interspecies relationships are doomed or always a bad idea or anything except that you should avoid getting attached to someone who hasn't mated-slash-imprinted but still might."

"I don't know, I just can't imagine half a mate bond being a comfortable start to a relationship. But maybe I'm approaching it too analytically."

"Not everybody seems to have mates at all - there are vampires who've been around for thousands of years who don't have them, and there's a witch who copies powers who's repeatedly tried a precognition power that showed its own witch her mate right away, and the copier wasn't shown anyone. So whatever's going on, it's not for everyone," shrugs Elspeth.

"Fascinating," says Libby.

"It is. We don't know that much about it because R&D can't perform any experiments, only observational studies, but we're paying attention."

"Paying attention is always a start," Libby says agreeably.

"What do you do, in your vampire-free 2005?" Elspeth asks.

"I'm a mathematician," she says. "It's more fun than it sounds."

"Ooh. The fellow who absorbed the memory payload I have ate some mathematicians but I don't know how within date their educations were and I haven't been keeping up with the field."

"Are you a math fan, then?"

"I like most subjects. Math's one of them, but it doesn't come up much in my work and it hasn't rotated into the position of my favorite hobby yet. I imagine it will. I'm immortal."

"That must be very handy," says Libby.

"It is! We like it. It's just about Mama's favorite part of being a vampire, and she's extra immortal - she's been set on fire twice."

"What's your mother like, anyway? I'm still having trouble picturing this kindhearted world dictator." She waves the relevant pamphlet. "Photographic evidence notwithstanding; I mean in a more abstract way."

"Oh, she's very smart, and kind of paranoid but people did keep trying to kill her for the longest time, and she loves me and my dad to bits, and she's careful about being ethical with all her power - she put my grandpa Carlisle in charge of the ethics of the R&D department and if you knew my grandpa Carlisle you'd know that means she takes not being evil very seriously. She doesn't like being interrupted. She raised me by herself for five years when we thought my dad was dead and she was the most devoted mama anyone could ask for. She's got a lot of... psychological resilience, I guess? Most vampires who thought their mates were dead would just fall completely apart - they'd go for a futile, suicidal attempt at revenge or turn into apathetic zombie-types or go outright insane. Mama managed to function and bring me up to maturity. She cares about knowing where all her mental moving parts are and making sure they don't break or go the wrong way."

"She sounds like a hell of a mom," says Libby. "I approve. And now I kind of want to meet your grandpa Carlisle."

"He's been here one time," Elspeth says. "He didn't know what to make of it. I don't think he liked it very much. He might have seen a version of somebody he didn't like the look of?" she guesses.

"Too bad," says Libby. "Guess I missed my chance. Unless it scoops him up again out of spite; I hear it's been known to."

"He'd probably politely tell it he didn't appreciate that and then leave," Elspeth predicts.

"I definitely want to meet your grandpa Carlisle."

Elspeth shrugs. "I'm allowed to bring people - well, humans who don't have particularly threatening magical powers - home with me, if you want."

"What's a particularly threatening magical power?"

"If you could get through me or Jake in a serious - however unlikely - attempt to do me any harm, that's the relevant threshold," Elspeth says. "Mama's convinced that Milliways is safe, but all bets are off in a world. Other relevant people are tougher to hurt than I am."

"I think you're safe," says Libby, which has the dual benefit of being perfectly true while concealing the actual answer to that question.

"Do you actually want to come home with me or is this hypothetical? Because I have to try my check if you do."

"It's mostly hypothetical. I'd probably want to pick a better time. What's the check?"

"I mentioned that I can learn things about other people by seeing what makes sense to say. It doesn't catch everything, but what it catches is unrelated enough to what people want caught that Mama considers it a fine first-pass check - you'd still have to get past my dad or Maggie to stay welcome in our world for any length of time."

"How exactly does that work?" she asks interestedly.

Libby laughs. "Would the same method work to tell me how much danger I'd be in, in your world?"

"Sure," Elspeth says. "Assuming that you're really interested in being informed about that."

"Definitely," she says. "And I know someone who's even more so. If I ever decide to visit, maybe I'll drag her in here for a chat."

"You would be... exactly as safe in my world as anywhere else," Elspeth says. "...Why is that the most informative way to put that?"

"Informative and very reassuring!" says Libby. "I guess I should explain. My world has some people with native powers not unlike witchcraft, and my aunt's is a personal shield that she keeps pointed at me because she's an incorrigible worrier. Proof against anything from bug bites to neutron bombs, if you believe her."

"Ooh," Elspeth says. "That does sound useful. Mama's bodyguard is more specific than that. But she has an extra trick up her sleeve that I don't know about, probably because I'd tell everybody."

"You are definitely the opposite of secretive," Libby agrees. "It's endearing."

Elspeth laughs. "I'm kind of like both my parents, backwards. My dad reads minds. My mama's mentally opaque - no mental powers work on her. If she tries very, very hard she can let me or Dad in for short periods of time, though. I used to work on her all the time until I developed an offensive branch to my magic and then her shield shut me completely out. And I encourage everybody to read my mind!"

"I wonder if Chris's shield shuts you out," muses Libby. "I don't think so. The truthiness part works, anyway. I encourage you not to try overloading my poor human brain just to see if that works too."

"I wouldn't do that," Elspeth says seriously. "It wouldn't physically kill you, but my power - wielded by the copying witch, not me - can and has destroyed human personalities."

"I appreciate your restraint, then."

"It was interesting what happened, actually, if you don't just focus on how awful it was," Elspeth said. "The vampire memories in the payload were the strongest, and when the humans who'd been wiped looked into the mirror, if they saw a sufficiently similar face to a vampire who'd been backed up, they 'recognized themselves'. That's how we got John and Didyme, and we used the phenomenon ourselves to salvage some good out of the other victims too."

"Has the copying witch ever been here?" she wonders.

"No. She wants to, though, of course."

"It occurs to me to wonder if she could copy powers from my world, but I'm not sure I know anyone who'd want to experiment, given the preconditions."

"Which preconditions?"

"Milliways, mainly."

"They wouldn't want to come or they can't find it?"

"Either. Both. If I know anyone who's found it independently, they haven't admitted as much, and you have to agree that news of an interdimensional time-travelling bar is a little hard to swallow even given preexisting magic."

"Everyone believed me," Elspeth says innocently.

"Gee, I wonder why."

Libby grins.

"It's a pity Milliways isn't easier to summon. That would be really convenient," sighs Elspeth.

"I've heard some people have a particular talent for getting it to show up," says Libby. "I have no such talent myself."

"It never appears when it would be really inconvenient for me," Elspeth says, "but it doesn't show up whenever I want it."

"Sometimes it's convenient, sometimes it's inconvenient, sometimes it's unremarkable, but it is never on request," says Libby.

"Unremarkable?"

"Not a really good time, not a really bad time, just a time."

"How was this time? What were you doing?"

"Coffee with a new acquaintance. She went to the bathroom, I went outside, outside turned out to be Milliways. I'm really not sure where to file it."

"You get the thing where it's not been more than thirty seconds when you go back, right?"

"Historically, yes. If this turns out not to be one of those times, I am definitely filing it under inconvenient."

"I imagine your acquaintance might be confused."

"I bet she would be too. And I don't think confused is her favourite state."

"I don't think most people like being confused. Hm. If you don't have vampires, then if you ever had a my dad he presumably died in 1918, but you could have a my mom. She'd be seventeen or eighteen in 2005, depending on what date," muses Elspeth.

"So I should be keeping an eye out for megalomaniacal teenagers?" she jokes. "Possibly so I can lend a hand?"

"Maybe! She makes a very good empress of the world," Elspeth says. "In my world by the end of 2005 she'd faked her death and was wandering North America, but if she hasn't encountered any vampires or werewolves I don't know what she'd be doing. Maybe she'd finish high school, in which case she'd still be there at any point in the year apart from summer break."

"So, probably not in New York, then."

"Well, I don't know. She might have gotten impatient and gone to college, a year early. She never got around to it in my version."

"So, maybe in New York."

"Maybe. I don't think she ever thought about where she'd have gone to college if she'd gone. She certainly doesn't have time for it now; she just fits in reading between ruler-of-the-world crises and small allowances for personal time."

"That implies a lot of ruler-of-the-world crises."

"The world is big," Elspeth says. "If Mama has a flaw at ruler-of-the-world-ing, it's that she's reluctant to delegate. Like, Grandpa Carlisle can approve anything R&D might want to do, but she can overrule him if they appeal because she's a little more flexible and outranks him, so sometimes they appeal. It'd be easier on her if she let him have the last word, and it wouldn't affect that many cases, and if something really important came up people would find a way to go around him and ask her on a case by case basis anyway, but." She shrugs.

"That sounds like a pretty big flaw in a world dictator, but as flaws go, not a bad one."

"She tries to set up systems that can implement her judgment without her being personally involved. It just takes more than she's had to get all the kinks worked out, but they are smoothing over time - she's only gotten involved in determining whether someone got to turn or not once in the last year, and it was someone she knew. Otherwise she's gotten to the point where she'll trust my department to run smoothly and there isn't an appeals process that formally goes up all the way to her."

"Is there a story behind that intervention, or was it just a case of quiet nepotism?"

"She told me not to pass his application. She disliked him personally and wasn't sure if he'd have any red flags that would show up on the form."

"Oh, dear," says Libby. "My faith in your mother's empressing abilities just took a hit. Well, it depends what she disliked him for, I guess."

"She had a job when I was a kid, and he was her boss; I don't know exactly what he said to make her dislike him and I didn't ask, but apparently she didn't want to invite him into the vampire community," shrugs Elspeth. "We do have to turn away or delay a lot of inoffensive people just to control the vampire population growth and not overload the people who handle anaesthesia during turning, and he didn't have any bonus features that would have guaranteed him an in, so I didn't think it was a big deal. She doesn't do this at all often - mostly when she was more involved she'd have me prioritizing witches she wanted particularly much or making sure I knew so-and-so was our cousin or whatever. It's not like she can never stand people she doesn't like. She doesn't like the Imperial Factotum but gets along with her for work purposes."

"That does sound a lot more reasonable," she acknowledges.

"The Imperial Factotum is the copy witch. She makes herself very useful and very easy to keep happy and well-behaved, so Mama overlooked things like that time she had me tortured," Elspeth says lightly. "She had to overlook a lot of things as long as people were credibly going to be decent going forward. At the time she took over the world, she and Grandpa Carlisle and two people she'd personally arranged to turn were literally the only vampires alive who'd never murdered anyone."

"A little bit happier than you'd be if it was my mama," Elspeth says. "You'd be basically okay with it, although exactly how much might depend on how she got there and some details... Happier with her at the job than anybody else you know, though. Who are you having coffee with?"

"My universe's version of your mama," she confesses.

Elspeth bursts out laughing. "So what's she up to?" she asks through giggles. "She doing okay? Gosh, it's hard to imagine her without my dad, I don't even have anyone else's memories of her from before she met him."

"She seems pretty happy, from what I can tell. She's studying something or other at Stanford."

"So she did go to college early. Cool. I almost want to meet her but that would probably weird her out. And I'm not sure if the time will be what I expect it to be when I come home, if I leave the bar for another world."

"Yeah, somehow I don't think 'I met your daughter while you were in the bathroom, do you want to say hi?' would go over well."

Elspeth laughs again. "I could explain it to her - unless yours is a witch too, and would block me too even if I never tried to hit her with anything with side effects?" Elspeth shrugs. "But I'd sure think it was strange if someone brought me my future kid from another world whose dad I'd never meet."

"Exactly," Libby agrees.

"So are you going to help her take over the world?" asks Elspeth. "And I wonder why you'd find yours a better world dictator than mine..."

"Most of this conversation has been you interviewing for the position of world dictator on her behalf," says Libby. "Needless to say, she passed."

"Oh my word, are you serious?" guffaws Elspeth. "Oh, that's hilarious, she'll think that's the funniest thing... Do you know what the difference is between yours and mine, though, in terms of which you'd rather have ruling the world?"

"...You know, I'm not entirely sure," she says. "I could make a guess or two, maybe. Mine might be more naturally inclined to be friendly to me if I help her take over the world, for example, although I bet that's not it."

"Hmm. Does yours have magic? At all?"

"Yes she does," says Libby. "She's a mint—that's a more generally applicable kind of magic than the usual run of native powers. But she's not the only mint I know."

"She doesn't have Mama's mental opacity? I hope you don't prefer her as a world empress because she'd be mind-controllable or something."

"She hasn't admitted to having your mother's mental opacity, but I bet she does anyway," says Libby.

"Do you know why she hasn't mentioned it?"

"I don't think she trusts me yet."

"Why not?"

"When two very wary people meet each other, it's hard to be the first one to do the good-faith thing. So naturally, I'm cheating," she says, gesturing between herself and Elspeth.

"But I'm just not sure how it could harm her to own up to having that power. Granted I'm at a disadvantage understanding reasons people have to not say true things," muses Elspeth.

"Oh, I agree that it doesn't make a lot of sense for her to keep that particular thing to herself. But I find it totally reasonable that she's being generally paranoid."

"Have you asked her about it, or do you not want to admit that you know?" chuckles Elspeth. "But, I don't know, is she an especially good 'mint'? What does being a good mint consist of?"

"There's a few different ways to be a good mint," she says. "The main one lacking among the mints I know is output, but if she's especially productive, she hasn't dmonstrated that to me. Then again, I can see why she wouldn't."

"Output... of...? I'm trying to be helpful, but I can't pull all facts out of thin air."

"Coins," she says. "Mints generate coins that allow people to make wishes. A good mint is either especially good at wishing, or especially good at producing coins."

"I bet she's very good at wishing," Elspeth says, after a beat.

"Oh, I bet she is too. But I already know enough people who are good at wishing that I don't think that would be a major point in her favour."

Elspeth shrugs. "So maybe she's good at the mysterious coin-making process?"

"Could be," says Libby. "The mysterious coin-making process involves turning pain into wishes. How good do you think she'd be at that?"

Elspeth frowns. "Not... unusually good, I don't think. I mean, she'd be motivated to try, to get magic, but... much to my dismay, if she were into that, I would know."

"Should I not ask?"

"It's worth something," says Libby. "Okay, so we know Bella is probably not an unusually productive mint... does she know an unusually productive mint, I wonder?"

"Maybe, but I can't help you there, I don't think," Elspeth says.

"I guess not," says Libby.

"Maybe mint magic just works better for her style of world-ruling than having to coordinate with a lot of witches does," suggests Elspeth.

"It's possible. But if she's not especially productive, she's still going to have to coordiate with a lot of mints to get anything done."

"It sounds like mints are more interchangeable than witches. There are some duplicate or near-duplicate powers, but not that many - if she didn't get along with Maggie she'd have a hard time getting her lies detected."

"...Is this the point where I mention I know a lie detector named Gretchen?"

"Is she redheaded, Irish, a little over a hundred and fifty years old, yea high, gay, and adorable?"

"No, no, no, yes, yes, and yes."

"Huh. That's still rather coincidental. She married to an Italian lady named Gianna?"

"Not as far as I know."

"If you encounter one, consider introducing them," shrugs Elspeth.

"Will do," she says. "Although Gretchen doesn't speak Italian. Does Gianna speak German? I'm guessing no."

"Gianna speaks all kinds of things now that she's a vampire, but originally it was Italian and English."

"So the language barrier might be an issue. Still, I'll see what I can do."

Elspeth giggles. "If your version of Mama isn't an unusually productive mint but knows at least one, why wouldn't that one be the ruler of the world, I wonder," she muses. "I suppose they could be bad at making wishes? Or not want to rule the world, like Siobhan." Pause. "Do you know a Siobhan? She goes with Liam if you find one of those."

"Should I start writing these down?" she jokes. "And a surprising number of people don't want to rule the world, even though they could. Me, for example."

"Siobhan just wants dominion over Ireland and she doesn't even do anything with it besides keep an eye on the vampire population so it's all people she likes," Elspeth says. "If you want to matchmake based on who's mates in my world you may as well take notes, but Maggie and Gretchen are probably just a funny coincidence - wrong country, wrong time, wrong hair color."

"I wonder if your world has a me," muses Libby.

"I can check when I get back if you like. Where would I find you?"

"In New York City, as Elizabeth Kirsch."

Pause. "Are you sure New York City - and for that matter how attached to this time are you - because my biological paternal grandmother..."

"I'm not at all sure about New York City. What was this woman like?"

"I don't know much. Human memories get faded like crazy after turning, so I don't have much from Dad. Grandpa saw her... she did look something like you, but older, old enough to have a seventeen-year-old son, and sicker, and not the beneficiary of modern medicine. I can't really compare voices because she was dying of the flu the entire time and didn't sound great. But her name was Elizabeth and her maiden name was Kirsch."

"Well," says Libby. "That's weirdly hilarious."

"Grandma," says Elspeth experimentally. It doesn't sound particularly true or particularly untrue. "I don't think I have enough to go on to do that. Oh well. The only thing I know she did was figure out that Grandpa Carlisle would be able to do something to save her son and tell him very fiercely to do so. He couldn't do anything for her even if he'd wanted to turn an extra person, because she died when people were looking, but Dad he was able to wheel out and save."

"Yeah, that sounds reasonably like me," says Libby. "If there was an unusually ethical vampire hanging around and I had a terminally ill son, you bet I'd figure it out and point the one at the other."

"Sending pictures to humans has been demonstrated safe. Do you want to see her?"

"Sure."

Elspeth picks out a series of images - one blurry, unclear one from Edward's childhood, where the ages would be more closely matched, and three from Carlisle's observation of her. And a picture of Edward, before he got so sick, when he was still human, for kicks.

"Cute kid," she remarks. "I could believe we're related. He looks a little like my mom, actually."

"So maybe you're going to help your counterfactual-daughter-in-law take over the world," giggles Elspeth. "Here's my dad's biological dad. It's not a great picture since he died of the flu the next day, but I dunno, do you think he looks like husband material?" A picture accompanies.

"First I have to imagine myself getting married," she says, "but turn of the twentieth century, I guess it's not impossible. Did he have any notable features other than looks, or do you not know?"

"He named my dad after himself?" Elspeth suggests. "...Dad's lingering impressions of him were that he was smart and authoritative and principled, the sort of person relative to whom Grandpa Carlisle's fathering would seem like an improvement but not a completely different sort of relationship?"

"Well, smart is always a plus. Authoritative not so much."

"This was how he came off to Edward, I have even less about how he was with his wife," Elspeth points out.

"True. Well, I'll buy it."

"All right. Hallo, Grandma," says Elspeth. It sounds a fair bit less true than most of what she says, but not overwhelmingly so.

"You are now officially my favourite grandchild."

Elspeth giggles. "Aww. You've got more competition for favorite grandma, I'm afraid."

"I can live with that," she says.

"Grandma Esme is the sweetest person. If she met you she would probably decide it was appropriate to ask you to accept on your counterpart's behalf her sincerest thanks for bringing up her adopted son."

"You know, Elspeth, you've got a pretty great family."

"There was a period where my dad was a total jerk, but that was pretty much due to circumstances beyond his control, even if he could have handled those circumstances better. And he fixed them as best he could and we're okay now."

"Well, that's good," she says. "I think 'okay now' is the important part."

Elspeth nods. "Man, it would be weird if he met you, he would have no idea what to do about it."

"Would it be easier just to save him the confusion? I can be your grandma without being his mom."

"Yeah, he never comes here anyway. I'm not sure if he's ever even seen a door."

"There you go then."

"What're you going to tell your version of Mama when you go back?"

"I'm really not sure," she says. "Any advice?"

"Well, I don't know. Do you want her to like you, or do you want to maintain your strategic caginess?"

"I take it I can't do both? I mean, if possible I'd like to get away without mentioning Milliways because it's bizarre and unverifiable. But since I'm planning to install her as ruler of the world, she has much higher access to my secrets than she did half an hour ago."

"Well, if she's having coffee with you she must find you personally tolerable, so you have a leg up over, say, Addy the Imperial Factotum who she personally can barely stand and who has to stay within Dad's mindreading range eighty percent of always and top me up with all her new memories once a month to make sure she's not hiding anything in the other twenty percent. You won't have to do that if she likes you and you can convince her you're on her side, which you probably can if you actually want to make her empress of the world. But if you don't tell Mama stuff she'd want to know that's relevant to her, if you even delay much, she will figure it's because you don't trust her to behave appropriately with the information and she will think it's likely that you'd think that because you have information suggesting your goals don't match. And then she has to consider you maybe-an-opponent." Pause. "You haven't attacked anyone she likes, have you?"

"I don't know if she considers me to have attacked anyone she likes," says Libby. "I did briefly kidnap someone out of the middle of a conversation with her, in the interest of preserving one of those secrets I'm going to end up telling her anyway. Actually, while I'm here, what's your assessment of how your mother would behave if she knew how to dodge the otherwise heinous consequences of using the most powerful magic in the world?"

"She'd... do that and then use it? Probably in quantity if she could get it? Mama has R&D working on scaling space colonization in ways that take advantage of vampires not needing spacesuits, and reproducing our anesthetist's magic so we can turn more people, and defensive anti-weapon technology of various forms so we don't need to worry so much about governments deciding to nuke us, and she throws money at charities that are doing things like getting clean water to Third World villages so more people can live long enough for us to get around to them. Also she's got people working on this stuff," Elspeth hefts her glass, takes a swig, "but yours probably will not find that a necessary project. In our case it's taking the place of a truly staggering amount of animal slaughter, but at least we're now working in conjunction with slaughterhouses that can use the meat and not just the blood so we're not hunting wild megafauna and damaging ecosystems."

"That sounds... potentially interesting," says Libby. "Quantity is a problem; bigger wishes require more pain. Even her hypothetical productive mint is probably not keen on churning out sevens."

"Would it take many to accomplish goals like that?" Elspeth asks.

"It depends just how good you are at wishing," she says. "And how ambitiously you can imagine your goals. It sounds like that one is not going to be a problem for Bella."

"She wants to fill the universe with a society of vampires and hybrids and some werewolves, although she's not taking any personal interest in managing the werewolf population," Elspeth says chattily. "Well, mine does, yours probably just wants to soup up humans and send them every which way. She wants everyone to be immortal and safe and do interesting things."

"You know, I really think we're going to get along," says Libby.

"You and your instance of Mama? I sure hope so," says Elspeth.

"Me too!"

"Anyway. Can mint magic do lie detection? Even temporarily? Because then she'd believe you about Milliways, if she can do that and you offer to let her. And then you can just tell her everything and offer to help her take over the world and tell her what you want."

"It can, yeah. And I think I will do just that."

Elspeth traipses out the door, Jacob at her heels gazing at her adoringly.