[I do,] Bella says. [And now I regret not collecting a more complete explanation of it the last time it happened. Should I bring anybody? Where are you?]

[In my living room. Do you want to bring anybody?]

[Maybe. See anybody you recognize?]

[No, but I can't see very much of the room without going inside and the door will probably close if I do that.]

[Does holding the door open work if you've already let it close?]

[Yes. Why, do you want me to go in and wait until I see someone interesting and then come get you?]

[No, I want to know if I can "go back" for more company after scoping out the population,] Bella says. [For my part, I'm on my way. As long as you don't have more than one living room?]

[Only one that I'm currently in.]

"Yep," says Libby. "It's even more interesting on the other side."

Bella's not sure if it'll work when she herself is not in the universe, but she puts up a "busy" message for everyone but Libby on the brainphone and steps through tentatively.

"You meet the occasional one of those, yes. Also fictional people, historical figures, a god or two... and then there are just the regular population, who are freqently interesting enough even without extra context."

Elspeth spots them, or hears them. "Grandma!" she calls, waving and trotting up to them, Jacob at her heels. "And, oh wow. Hi. This is weird."

"Grandma?" Bella asks, peering at Elspeth and Elspeth's companion.

"You did not mention that," Bella says. "You did not mention that at all. Who is your dad?" At this time, Bella does not see children as a particularly likely part of her future. They're not ruled out, but they're not a priority.

"Well," says Elspeth, "his name is Edward, but I really doubt you have one. For one thing, we think this is your version of his mom and as far as I know she hasn't had any kids. For another, if you had him born when my world did, he probably died in 1918, because my dad only lasted beyond that due to turning into a vampire."

"Although just to complicate matters, if I ever have a son now I am probably going to name him Edward."

Elspeth laaaaaaughs. "But I bet - um, should I call you Bella, or Mama, or what? - I bet she's not going to marry him and have a me."

"That does seem thoroughly unlikely. Let's go with 'Bella'. I'm nobody's mama, at this time," Bella says. "And if I ever have a daughter at this point I probably won't name her Elspeth. That would be confusing."

"Bella has an empire now," Libby says cheerfully. "And it's the most fun I've had in years."

"Oh, congratulations! How's it going? I bet you didn't call it the Golden Empire, that's kind of a theme name that only makes sense with vampires involved," Elspeth says.

"Empire of the Stars," Bella says. "I'm colonizing not-Earth locations and sprucing them up nice and inviting people to move in, rather than attempting direct takeover. What does gold have to do with vampires?"

"Vampires who eat people," says Elspeth, "have red eyes. Vampires who eat animals, or the lovely advanced synthetics they have here that we haven't invented yet, have gold eyes."

"I can see building a theme around that, assuming vampires eating humans was a major problem," Bella says. "You have brown eyes. They look like mine."

"I'm a half-vampire," Elspeth says. "Female vampires can't have biological children, but Mama had plenty of warning and she's smart, so she got some eggs taken out before she turned, and got a friend to carry me for her."

"Has there been any progress on analyzing the stuff you brought back last time?" inquires Libby.

"R&D's working on it," Elspeth says. "So far they know... it's carbonated." She shrugs. "I really doubt that's an essential feature, that's just what the bar gave me." She explains to Bella, "Blood substitutes. Major research interest for us."

"I'd imagine. I don't have that problem," says Bella. "Are drinks just free here? If not, can I pay for them in imperial asters?"

"They're not, and I would love to know the answer to that question," says Libby.

Bella looks around and fails to see a bartender. "How... does this work?"

"The Bar is magic," says Libby, pointing. "And sentient, and female. You ask her for things and she gives them to you, within fairly reasonable constraints. There is a magical tab board that may or may not be visible at any given moment, which records how much you owe. I've never actually seen somebody get collected on, but I like to pay it off once in a while anyway."

"Can she," Bella says, "answer questions, such as 'can I pay in imperial asters'?"

"Yes she can!"

"She gives out napkins," Elspeth says. "Sometimes they have writing on them. The writing is what she has to say. Just go up to the bar and ask."

"Well, that's convenient," says Libby.

"Quite," Bella agrees.

"The Golden Empire doesn't have its own currency," says Elspeth. "We just work in the currencies that already exist on Earth. It contributes that we moved into a power vacuum after removing the previous vampire rulers."

"That's adorable!" exclaims Elspeth. "Oh my word. What kind of magic do you have that you can do that? It's an anti-counterfeiting measure? Do they just all do that?"

"Wish magic," Bella says. "Very comprehensive stuff. They do all do that - but different denominations make different birds. The coins just glow in assorted colors."

Elspeth claps her hands. "That's really sweet." She pauses. "It's more... whimsical, than my mama."

"I wonder why that is," muses Libby. Although she has some guesses.

"How old are you?" Elspeth asks Bella.

"Eighteen. As of not terribly long ago," Bella says.

"...I'm older than you," Elspeth says. "Even just chronologically. Oh, this is strange."

"Did your mom become progressively less whimsical over time?" Bella asks.

Elspeth thinks. "I don't think so - not so I'd notice," she says. "But all the memories I have of her, even the ones that don't belong to me from before I was born, have her dealing with vampires. Maybe vampires are more... serious? Than whatever you've been doing?"

"Or Alice is rubbing off on me."

"Aunt Alice, or someone else of the same name?" Elspeth inquires eagerly.

...Libby laughs.

Bella blinks. "...Well, he's my boyfriend, if that answers your question. Is that also weird, that I have a boyfriend?"

"Not Aunt Alice," concludes Elspeth. "Of course you can have a boyfriend. You could even if a version of Dad were around, but without one it's not particularly strange to me."

"The correspondences between our worlds are so interesting," says Libby.

"I have," says Bella, "and what do you mean by checking us, and what does truthy mean?"

"Well," Elspeth says, "does this sound interestingly different: I am five years old."

"...Yes. That's freaky," says Bella.

"So I work on you. I used to work on Mama, but then I stopped," Elspeth says. "Anyway, my witch power boils down to communicating true things. I can sometimes generate true things I didn't technically already know, if I attempt to talk about them to people who are interested in the topic and I have enough to go on. Jacob here is really interested in whether I'm safe, so before I'm allowed to take anyone home, I have to check how dangerous they are by telling him whether they could even theoretically hurt me."

"So, question," Bella says. "Who is Jacob, and why is he so interested in this, and why does he look at you like that?"

Elspeth hands Bella a pamphlet!

"Yes," says Elspeth forcefully. "He's my wolf."

"So if we're planning to visit," says Libby, half for a slight change of subject and half because this is a very important point, "we should probably get un-dangerous first."

"Even if I left all my coins at home," Bella says, "which I am loath to do, and even if I stripped myself of several of my installed powers, which I am also loath to do, I can do a heck of a lot of damage with creativity and biting my cheek, and mint powers are indelible. This may not work."

Libby shrugs. "I'd have no problem dumping my stash somewhere for the duration, and I don't come with nearly as many extras."

"But you're no less capable of biting your cheek, and if you're less creative it's not by a lot."

"By my best estimate, if I leave my five-and-ups at home, I'll pass the test," says Libby.

"Okay. But is there any way Alice is getting through here?"

"Probably not. I wouldn't let him through if I were them," she admits.

"...Why, what's the matter with him?" Elspeth asks.

"He can readily generate a great deal more of our sort of magic than we can," Bella says. "I suppose I could implement emergency protocols first, but that would have the disadvantage of him learning what they are."

"Well, would you want to bring Alice?"

"Maybe. I'm not sure. It would be interesting, I imagine."

"We don't have to bring him on our first visit, anyway."

"True."

"Mama might easily choose to make exceptions on the basis of how friendly you seem - especially to Dad, who reads minds - after a first meeting," Elspeth says. "There are plenty of people who work for her who wouldn't pass the strict test."

"I am extremely friendly," Libby says brightly. "Especially to quasi-granddaughters."

"If I can't get along with a version of myself, I can't get along with anyone," Bella says. "And I get along with some people. So I can get along with your mama. Q.E.D."

Elspeth giggles. "Okay. Well, if you can... unmagic yourselves enough that I can convince Jacob you're kosher, we can try it that way."

"Libby, you said holding the door open works even after it's been closed once. We could take turns going out and stashing our coins now," Bella suggests. "If we don't want to wait for the next appearance of Milliways-with-an-Elspeth-in-it."

"Sure," Libby says agreeably. "How are you going to stash yours?"

"Treasure chest from good old Elias," Bella says.

"Good old Elias indeed. I'll probably have to spend a pentagon to get mine stored away—do you mind...?"

Bella shrugs and hands one over. "How do you keep yours normally?"

Bella goes to the door. She makes her agony beam toggleable with an expenditure of a pentagon - by her only. Then she toggles it, and puts her remaining pentagons and hexes and stars away too, not without some trepidation but without too much delay either. The rest of her standing powers aren't harmful. Mere aikido skill and super-speed probably will not faze vampires and werewolves.

Bella doesn't think there's a whole lot she can say in self-defense here. If they were willing to trust her disinterest in harming them, they wouldn't be doing this. "I can go put my squares away, too; I can still make them, but that will cut my reaction time," she says tonelessly.

"That might be best for the first visit," says Elspeth sympathetically.

"Since I have nothing on me that can move stuff as far as the treasure chest from here, I'll have to teleport; Libby, hold the door for me?"

Bella goes, and teleports to where the treasure chest is currently living in an extremely otherwise inaccessible section of Moonstone Palace. She squares off all the other squares and teleports back to Libby's living room, feeling extremely naked in nothing but clothes and a string of triangles and tempted to punch the wall or bite her lip or dig her knuckle into her wrist right then.

Libby winces in empathy.

"I'm sorry," says Elspeth, but she runs the check again and this time Bella comes up just under the threshold of acceptability. "Um, Bella, in fairness, we can't seriously hurt you either. The vampires are faster but only one of them can teleport, he can't track you, and you can heal any wounds anybody could give you before you could jump away."

"That's good," mutters Bella.

"So. Time to visit?"

"I suppose," Bella says.

"Okay. Here goes," Elspeth says. She heads for the door, and when she opens it, it does not lead to Libby's living room. Instead, it leads to a room with a copier and a vampire in it. "Hi, Santiago," she says. "I went to Milliways and I found my alternate universe mama and grandma."

Libby trails after her, with a friendly smile for Santiago.

"Is there a standard announcement for that?"

"Not really, but she'll come up with some less bizarre sounding way to put it, and then people won't waste time being surprised when we get there," shrugs Elspeth. "So, welcome to 2030 Golden-Empire-World Norway. This capital is called, um, Lisel, because my parents considered that name for me and this is mostly a capital site since I was born here."

"That's sweet," says Libby.

"It could have been named Libby but they didn't like that name as much," says Elspeth apologetically, "and it didn't sound as much like a city."

"I think so too," human-Bella says frankly. "Okay: I can guess why the empire, why the vampirism, why the hot husband, why the incongruous outfit. I want to know why the hair."

Golden Bella laughs. "I got set on fire. Twice. Vampire hair grows very slowly, so once I got to a point where I could find a style I liked, I just stuck with it. And you may want to keep your remarks about my husband to a minimum. You make him somewhat uncomfortable. And not solely by virtue of the fact that you're an alternate version of me. By any chance, do you have the magical wherewithal to control your scent?"

"That can be arranged," says Bella. Triangles can do scents. She arranges for a triangle to do scents. "Just me, or Libby too?"

"Well," says the vampire Bella, "Libby might feel more comfortable if no one in the room were contemplating trying to eat her, but she is not a special problem in this respect, whereas you - and I, before I turned - are a very special problem for Edward in particular."

"That sounds awkward."

"It was handled fairly quickly."

"Somewhat so," local Bella shrugs, "though not something we don't all deal with on a regular basis."

"I may want to steal your crown design," nonlocal Bella says speculatively.

"I won't make mine out of gold," suggests Bella. "I'm going to conjure it out of nothing, I can just make the whole thing out of marbled-moissanite-and-opal if I want. In fact, I like that idea."

"That sounds both lovely and like something I wouldn't do given the chance since it would be off-theme. Go for it," says her vampire counterpart.

I knew they'd like each other, Elspeth... somethings... to Libby.

Meanwhile, Bella of sharper teeth says, "I hear you have... pretty much strictly better magic than ours around here."

"I'm not sure if that's exactly the case. We have ingots where you've got witches and from what I know we're roughly equivalent - I think I have about your power, except Elspeth still works on me, for instance - but between coins and vampires. Well. Coins are really convenient for me but only because I have..." She pauses, looks at Edward, and decides to say, "Help. Coins are more flexible, I gather, but smaller scale without serious investment. I don't know. Does turning into a vampire hurt like hell?"

"Oh. In that case, yeah, my universe wins hard."

"How good's the patch?" wonders Libby.

"He's a perfect anaesthetic," pipes up Elspeth. Of course, explaining this is part of her job. "But maybe a little too perfect. No one has any senses while they're under, and from the moment you start turning you can't sleep either. So me and another witch who can do visual illusions take turns piping movies at them while there's a batch changing. It's no one's favorite three days, but it's not torture anymore."

There is currently no way to privately ask the Empress of the Stars if they want to offer a better solution, so Libby just glances at her and says, "We could probably help with that, if you want."

"Well," says the Empress Regnant In This Section Of Multiverse. "That would be very kind of you. Have we got anything you'd like?"

"Nothing that would be tricky for you to offer us," Bella says. "2030 technology - I'm doing a lot of stuff for my Martians with magic, but I don't want to be a bottleneck. Interesting magic for my friend Lazarus to study. If you've got a Lazarus or an equivalent the same can go the other way. Maybe some interesting media is going to come out in the next 25 years - I'd feel rude scooping anybody, but I wouldn't mind sneak previews, and I'm not averse to throwing around some magic for frivolous reasons. I might want someone turned into a vampire," she adds offhand. "Without your anesthetist, though, he's like that."

"...She does everything?"

"She can copy witches' powers by touching them. Except me. I don't like her enough to let her through the way I can sometimes with Elspeth and Edward," says the golden one, smiling thin-lipped.

"I am not an ingot," says Libby. "Lazarus is, though. He... I'll go with 'sees'... he sees magic."

"He would be willing to visit," says Libby. "Are you enthusiastic about magic? You could be enthusiastic about magic together."

"Definitely bringing Lazarus next time," says Libby.

"Sounds like a good idea to me," Bella agrees. "Is there any known way to summon Milliways or does it just appear at apparent random?"

"There are people known to be able to summon Milliways," says Libby. "I'm not one of them."

"Who can?"

"Nobody here, that I know of," Elspeth says, "but I met a lady who I think might have been a version of Addy in there once who said she could. And I think if she couldn't she would have just lived there all the time."

"I've met a few people who can," says Libby. "Or at least, they said so and I had no reason to disbelieve them. Nobody we know, though."

"I don't suppose any of these people described developing this ability?"

"The Addy I met said she spent a while pleading first, but she did this the first time she ever found the bar, so she doesn't know if that had anything to do with it," Elspeth said.

"One of mine claimed it all started when she stole a salt shaker," Libby recalls. "And that she carries said shaker around as a good luck charm. The other two were less inclined to theorize."

"How much would the bar be likely to mind if I stole a saltshaker?" Bella asks thoughtfully.

"I wouldn't do it," Elspeth says. "But that's less about me having expectations that she'd mind and more about stealing not being nice and the bar being nice."

"I've never tried. The petty thief in question didn't mention anything either way. At a guess, though, I'd say she wouldn't care much."

"You are very well brought-up," Bella tells Elspeth, sounding self-congratulatory.

Her counterpart snorts. Elspeth smiles.

Libby giggles.

"Mints. We're mints. I don't require all the amenities that ordinary humans do - for instance, it is not necessary that I sleep - but basically if you handle us like humans you won't be far wrong," Bella shrugs.

"Even more so in my case," says Libby, "because I still have mortal requirements like food and sleep."

"Oh, I still need to eat, I haven't gotten around that one yet," Bella says. "I like food and it's easy enough to conjure even if I'm without for some reason."

"I am sterile, albeit reversibly," Bella says. "It seemed like the sort of thing it would be wise to take care of in advance. Libby? Wolf village or ask 'em to get us a hotel room?"

"Wolf village," she says, shrugging.

"Comfy," says Libby.

"There's a welcoming committee?"

"You know, I really appreciate how organized this empire is," says Libby.

"You have to have dealt with name collisions before," says Bella, amused. "You can just call me Bella. I bet everyone will know who you're talking to from context."

"Hello, Elena."

"I like blue," says Libby. "Blue's nice."

Bella waves back, finding the whole thing terribly charming.

Likewise Libby! Elspeth's entire universe is kind of cute, apparently.

"It is very nice to meet you too, Orfeo. In fact I suspect it's magically nice."

"Thih seems to be a logistical problem," says Libby. "And it's a problem I'd rather solve indoors."

Libby spends the walk smiling at Orfeo, and when they reach the house, she steps inside and finds somewhere to sit.

There are chairs, and couches; Orfeo is faster than her and picks half a love seat, not expectantly, just in case. Elena throws herself into an armchair exasperatedly.

Bella, not involved much in these proceedings, decides to scope out the kitchen.

"Orfeo imprinted on you," says Elena wearily. "I keep telling Jake to tell Her Majesty to put imprintable guests somewhere else, that it's not sufficient leeway that people can just change packs if they don't want to be mixing with imprintable people, but no one listens to me. And Orfeo looked out the window, and, well. He's like Elspeth except with how he feels about people instead of facts. So you can tell what that did. And wolves are not meant to be all by themselves, so unless you want to move here, or someone - realistically me - can come back with you to wherever you're from, Orfeo's choices are feeling like he's got a few big holes in him or feeling like he's been put through a shredder."

"I don't plan on moving here," she says. "I have a lot of friends and it would be impractical to bring them all. How would you feel about coming back with me?"

"It's also possible that this is the sort of problem that could be fixed by throwing sufficient magic at it," she says thoughtfully. "Most problems can, in my world. But you'd have to apply to my empress for that; I don't have the resources. And I don't know that it would help, it just seems likely."

Elena frowns at her knees. "Imprint bonds are immune to magic. The problems with packlessness might not be. I don't know what kind of magic you or your empress have to throw around."

"Short version: Some people from our world can generate coins that grant wishes. Coins come in power levels from 'get that stain out of the carpet' to 'terraform Mars'. Bella has a hundred or so of the most powerful kind and can easily get more; I've got one."

"If I ask nicely, then yes."

"Okay. That's good. But unless she can do it now, or, you know, before you go home, I still have to come along at first. Packlessness is not a joke."

"A short visit to another universe isn't a huge deal," she says, not without a certain amount of irony. "And no, we left all the big coins at home, to appease your very safety-conscious princess."

"Yes," Libby says fondly. "Yes you do."

Orfeo grins. Elena groans and mutters under her breath.

"I'm youngest of four," says Orfeo agreeably. "Born during the Volturi control of the wolf population, in the Volterra village; our dad's a wolf and my and Elena's mom is his imprint. So I'm half-Quileute half-Italian. We stayed there even after Her Majesty took over but when I activated me and Elena joined the Imperial pack to have more stuff to do. I run the village paintball games - it's not a big deal, Chiara can take over - and I have field medic training but it's only applicable for wolves and you shouldn't set me at a hurt human, and I can speak Italian natively, and I won yellow gold in the Ultra Olympics for wolf division wrestling once, and white gold in mixed middle division long-distance swimming twice. I'm on the holiday decoration committee. I make really good risotto. I'm decent at chess and great at knowing which way is north and lousy at singing."

"I don't speak Italian," Libby says thoughtfully. "I should learn it."

"I mostly just use it to talk to Mom," says Orfeo.

"It's nice sharing multiple languages with somebody, though. Me and my aunt speak English, German, and French."

"I know... maybe a few hundred words of French, and I could probably fake more than that if I had to," muses Orfeo. "There's a stationary branch of the Imperial coven in Québec so I hear it in my head and we go there sometimes, but I've never systematically tried to learn it. I don't know a lick of German. Except, like, 'ja' and 'heil' and 'schadenfreude'."

Libby giggles. "Not a bad start. You can learn them with magic when I take you home," she offers. "Although I'm not sure it wouldn't be more fun teaching you the long way."

"It sounds like you do a lot of stuff with magic," he observes.

"I didn't use to. Then Bella happened," she says, smiling. "And now there's a palace on the moon, a rapidly expanding city on Mars, and little things like installing a whole language in somebody's head are starting to look comparatively trivial."

"Huh. What do you do while she's doing all that?"

"My specialty is personnel," she explains. "When I said I had a lot of friends, I may or may not have meant I run an extensive international organization full of useful people of all varieties. Not unlike your empire, from what I can tell. Whenever Bella needs someone to run the Mars immigration office or her magic bank or something, I find the right person for the job."

"Cool. That doesn't sound like something you'd just fall into, how'd you get into this?"

"What kind of math?" he says, with the air of someone who just about knows that there are kinds.

"Lots of kinds. I'll spare you the boring incomprehensible details." She grins. "Unless you like boring incomprehensible details, in which case I can tell you all about infinite-dimensional vector spaces."

"Well, I wouldn't listen to anyone else talk about infinite-dimensional vector spaces, but," he shrugs.

"I'm sure between the two of us we can come up with a subject that you like on its own merits. How about motorcycles, do you like motorcycles? I have a motorcycle."

"I like motorcycles," he agrees. "Can't have one because we move around the world all the time, but I learned to ride one anyway; there's some stashed in some of the imperial garages."

"I'll get you a motorcycle," Libby decides.

Libby also decides that nothing terrible will happen if she sits beside Orfeo. So she does.

He goes right on grinning.

Bella runs out of things to look at in the kitchen. She sidles back in. "So what's the deal?" she asks.

"If we can manage it, Orfeo is going to move worlds," says Libby. "I intend to manage it. Would you be willing to spare a star to see if it'll fix the unpleasantness of being a wolf with no pack? I'll start in smaller denominations, obviously, but I'm not sure a hex would be enough."

"As a one-time thing, sure. I suppose if we have a mass immigration the problem will solve itself," Bella says. "Does this not seem sketchy to you? I mean, I realize it potentially cannot be helped, but it seems sketchy to me."

"Sketchy in what sense?"

"A dude has just not-particularly-voluntarily had his motivation structure hacked and now whatever he was going to do next week is on hold so he can follow you home?" Bella says. "And your request was something other than 'Bella, can you see if a star can undo that'?"

"I don't want you do undo it," exclaims Orfeo. "I mean, unless Libby wants you to, but she doesn't seem to."

"Observe my reasons," she says, gesturing to Orfeo. "Not-very-voluntarily hacking his motivation structure again in the other direction isn't going to reduce the amount of sketchiness going on here. And imprinting is immune to magic in this universe, so even if we could reverse it with a star, I don't know that it wouldn't have long-term negative effects. Which I don't want."

"Which is why I didn't say 'no, bring him into my universe and I'm hacking at the imprint itself, because ew'," Bella says, "but you seem awfully comfortable with this."

"Yep," says Libby.

"Why?"

"I don't really know," she says. "It just doesn't seem to me that I have a really good reason not to be comfortable."

"I suppose it wouldn't make any practical difference."

"Also," she says, smiling at Orfeo, "it's hard to be uncomfortable about things when I'm having a continual case of the warm fuzzies."

"I'm glad I can help," Orfeo says.

"I know."

"Dunno. What's your world like? It's got a Her Majesty in it so it can't be too wildly different, but obviously not exactly the same."

"Well, for starters, it's 2005," she says. "And there are no vampires or werewolves; I'd know if there were. There's mints, who make wishcoins, and ingots, who are roughly equivalent to your witches."

"Funny names," Orfeo remarks. "And 2005, wow. I wasn't born then. This might be legally complicated if I can't just bring my actual documentation and claim that they must have lost everything on their end, even without hidden laws making everything easier for supernaturals."

"Oh, leave that to me," she says with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Documentation is easy. When's your birthday? How old are you?"

"January 3, 2010. I'm twenty," he says easily. "I'm going to pass for 25 until and unless I quit, though."

"So with a little math: January 3, 1985. And I don't plan on aging much past thirty, but by the time that starts getting really obvious, people are going to be used to immortal Martians. In the meantime, we can fake you some reasonably accurate documents."

"Martians?" he laughs.

"My world's Bella founded her empire on Mars," Libby says serenely. "It's very pretty there. I'll show you sometime."

"O-okay," he laughs. "Wow. And Martians are immortal?"

"There weren't pre-existing Martians, but she plans on eliminating death eventually and she's starting with her subjects. Who are all emigrating from Earth. Including us, eventually, but I have too many responsibilities to abandon my planet just yet, no matter how enticing the alternative."

"Oh. Okay then. Wow. Her Majesty's working on death too but her plan doesn't involve Mars anytime soon." He grins a goofy grin. "Heh, I'm gonna live on Mars in the past."

"By the time we live on Mars, it might not be the past anymore," she says merrily.

"Oh. Okay. I'm still gonna live in the past."

"Barring catastrophe, yes," she says. "This alternate universes thing does have its upsides."

"Have you been to lots of them?" he asks. "I've been all around the world but I've never seen the inside of Milliways. Everything I know about it is secondhand from Jake."

"I haven't gone visiting like this before, but I've had some bizarre encounters there. The most bizarre was definitely the time I met Elspeth, though."

"Just because her mom is a duplicate of your Empress of Mars?"

"You don't look like Esme," says Orfeo quizzically.

"Biological," she explains. "Her name—well, her maiden name—was Elizabeth Kirsch, same as me. And she looked reasonably like me and acted reasonably like me, as far as I can tell."

"Oh. Interesting. But you don't actually have a little His Majesty running around at home, do you?"

"No," she confirms. "No kids. I am toying with the notion of naming a hypothetical eventual son after him, but he probably wouldn't like the idea, so maybe I won't."

Orfeo laughs. "I don't think he would, no. A few supernaturals have named kids Isabella - I think there are three, now, a puppy and an adopted human and a quarter-vampire - but no one has tried naming anyone after Edward."

"What would you name your kids, if you had any?"

"Haven't really thought about it," he said. "Would be up to my - well - heh. I didn't exactly forget you were my imprint when I started that sentence, but I have a script for this kind of question, you know? And wolf guys are pretty much not supposed to date apart from imprints. Too much potential for predictable heartbreak and drama. So I've always figured if I ever had kids at all..." He shrugs. "Then by that point I would be pretty thoroughly bossable on that or any other question."

"I don't intend to be particularly bossy," says Libby. "I never exactly said why I run a massive international organization, did I?"

"I don't think you did," he agrees.

"Maybe?" he hazards.

"Can you tell me what parts don't make sense, so I can try again?"

"I don't mean partly, I mean maybe," he says. "I have a working mental picture, I just don't know if it's sensible or not."

"Okay. Why might it not be sensible?"

"I'm not clear if people have 'fits' in the sense I'm picturing," he says. "I mean, single ones per person even setting aside the fine details, anyway. Maybe I do, but if you don't have werewolves, that's not something you're usually using as a guideline. And if people have fits, I'm not sure what 'putting' them there would mean, and I'm coming up with weird guesses that involve more physically picking them up and depositing them places than you probably use."

"Huh," says Orfeo. "It probably wouldn't have occurred to me to call that sort of thing 'fit' but it's cool."

"It's not that I believe every single person has exactly one spot they're meant to go," she says. "It's not like a jigsaw puzzle, it's more like... a mosaic. I have this field of coloured rocks in front of me and every single one is a different shape, and I can see that if I move this one over here it'll fit in way better than it does where it's sitting. Except that people are obviously a lot more complicated than rocks, and their 'shapes' change over time. Like you, for example. If you'd never laid eyes on me, you definitely wouldn't fit best in my universe. But you did, so now you do, and we have to figure out how and where."

Orfeo nods. "Well... what else do you need to know?"

"That's the tricky part. Sometimes I don't know what the thing I need to know is until I know it. So really I just need to know you as well as I possibly can—your sister, too, if she comes with us, because then I need to find a fit for her too. But bringing us back to the reason I started saying all this in the first place, I don't get anything out of overriding you on preferences like naming hypothetical future children. That's exactly the kind of thing where if you had an opinion, I'd want to know about it and take it into account."

"Oh. Well, I haven't thought about it, but I can, if you want me to," he said, furrowing his brow. But he looks vaguely confused by the entire idea. For some reason "imprint" and "mother of his children" are not snapping together much less hypothetically than they ever did before. "I don't think Elena will want to stay, if she doesn't have to," he adds. "She likes video games. Moving to 2005 would be hard on her."

"In that case, I hope we don't need her to."

Orfeo nods solemnly. "This is probably really hard on her. She sees herself like a buffer between me and the world. Our half-sisters tended to pick on us and when our parents didn't catch it, she'd wind up defending me - and then the role of our sisters was played by 'everything else in the world', later on, when we were all a little more grown up."

"This may be a pipedream, but I'm still hoping to find a solution that doesn't leave anybody actively unhappy."

"Tunnel between the worlds?" Orfeo suggests. "Can your sorcerer-empress do that?"

"We've never tried. Another thing to put on the list of experiments."

Orfeo nods. "So... what's it like, not having any wolves or vampires around? I've lived around and in packs, near covens, all my life..."

"Good question," says Libby. "I could ask the same thing in reverse. My aunt's an ingot, so I have been generally aware of magic all my life, but I never actually met a non-aunt magical person until much later."

"...Okay, going by comparisons to movies and stuff... I assume everybody I meet can live forever if they have the least interest in doing that. I divide relationships into 'fated perfect eternal' and 'doomed'. I grew up referring to myself as though I were a baby dog instead of a baby goat and so did most of my friends. People around me don't get sick. If we get injured, it's over with in a week, and that's if we were seriously mauled and shot full of venom just shy of killing us. Within a pack, the silent treatment is not an option - telepathy is not optional. Wolves are at the bottom of the mental totem pole among the supernaturals until you get down to some pretty thinly bred hybrids, but compared to people I see on TV or that I've interacted with while out in human civilization, I think we might really be quicker or something - I'm not talking myself up personally, but they don't seem to operate on the same time scale, and that makes sense, we move faster than them. I'm not used to adults aging, and it weirds me out to see movies made by the same actor ten years apart. Everybody around me at home is buffer and prettier than random people I see in Oslo or wherever. No one complains when it's time to move furniture for some reason. My friends are all on liquid diets or capable of demolishing supposedly family-sized packages of anything for morning snacks." He pauses. "Does that help?"

"That helps a lot, actually," says Libby.

"Great," he says, grinning at her.

"Yeah," Orfeo says. "I don't remember this part, but when I was really little, the sense of community was magically enforced. The Princess tore the fake parts of that down as part of the takeover, but there was a lot left, and after all that time people were used to it. It stuck. I don't think I want to claim we're Communists or anything - we use cash, Jake's in charge of our pack and Becky and Rachel are in charge of theirs, and we don't go around calling each other Comrade. But someone has to be really determined to not be involved with us to get to the point where we wouldn't all swoop in to support them if they needed it. That's another reason Elena wouldn't really want to go to your world. She's used to all these people and hasn't got an astronomically higher priority."

"That's a nice thing to have," she says. "I wouldn't want to take her away from it unnecessarily."

Orfeo nods. "So hopefully you can fix the packlessness issue, or it turns out it's a nonissue for imprinted wolves."

"Hopefully one of those," she agrees.

"Have I mentioned I'm glad you speak English?" Orfeo remarks suddenly. "My dad was only barely starting to learn Italian when he met my mom, and to this day she's nearly monolingual."

"You haven't mentioned that, no. And now I'm tempted to start speaking German just to tease you."

"You can if you want, but I know you'll understand me if I talk English," he laughs.

She blinks at him in exaggerated mock-confusion and asks, in German, "Are you sure?"

He snorts, and replies in Italian, "The weather is divine today, don't you think?"

"Good one," she says appreciatively. "I can tell we're going to get along."

"I wonder how long this is going to amuse you," he replies.

Libby giggles. "You're cute."

"I kind of expected you'd be able to understand some of this from the French. Maybe you can and aren't letting on."

She grins, which isn't informative either way, really.

It's really not. He raises an eyebrow at her, smiling.

If it is, he's not getting it. "Having fun?" he asks in English.

"Yep. I like you," she says. "You keep up. That's an important quality in people who are going to be spending a lot of time around me."

"It's really good that you like me," he says. "It'd be... inconvenient. Otherwise."

"That's one way to put it."

"It's been known to happen. But not as often as it could, which is good."

"The fact that it's been known to happen at all is kind of upsetting."

"Sometimes it's temporary, like Emily and Sam," he says. "They're happy now."

"Well, that's a little better."

"Elena thinks we just need to keep imprinting from happening outside of controlled circumstances at all, but then unimprinted guys couldn't go anywhere, see any girls besides vampires and women who can't have kids - we're pretty sure those don't get imprinted on - and family members. It's not even impossible to imprint on a puppy, turns out, and then the puppy doesn't activate when she's old enough, so we're all pretty worried about Denise now. Her wolf most of all."

"I guess there's no way to check in advance whether or not someone's going to imprint on a particular person?"

"No. The Imperial Seer can't see wolves, or she could - she can tell about vampire mates, as long as they aren't hybrids, because she can't see those either."

"Well, I know another person who can tell the future. I don't think she'd want to move here and start telling wolfy fortunes full-time, if it turns out she doesn't share that problem, but she'd probably be okay with the occasional consultation."

"There's... a fair number of us," Orfeo says slowly. "Most people who can imprint seem to imprint eventually, but it's unlikely to happen at any given time even if we travel a lot unless we're purposefully staring at lots of girls. There was a big cluster of them early on when Her Majesty activated my dad's generation in La Push but we think that's because the local Native American populations were particularly likely to be well-suited for whatever the magic's looking for. Puppy-making, probably, because of the sterility thing. If she doesn't want to do this full time I'm not sure how much help she could be."

"She could come by every so often, round up a bunch of unimprinted guys, and steer them toward imprints they'd be happy with," Libby suggests. "That'd be some help, right?"

"It would," Orfeo says. "That would definitely help, we can't imprint twice."

"And Mary's good at answering questions like 'will these two people get along?' I've asked her that kind of thing before."

"She must be useful for your fitting people thing."

"Usually I can figure it out myself, but yeah, she is."

"I'm not sure what age she'd start rounding people up," he muses. "People in La Push and Volterra can often wait until they're sixteen or seventeen before they run into a vampire and activate - Cody alone isn't enough to do it unless he's trying - but the Empire pack hangs around them enough that we're generally floofing for the first time at twelve or thirteen. People that young can and do imprint but it weirds some folks out. It's bad enough when the imprint herself is a little girl, but at least the magic is smart enough to back the hell off for a few years on anything gross when that happens. When the wolf's twelve, it is not."

"Well, I don't think anyone's going to convince Mary to point a twelve-year-old at that kind of situation."

"If she doesn't, he might go into town for groceries with his mom and imprint on the cashier," Orfeo points out. "I'm not making that up, that's what happened to Benny."

"That sounds awkward."

"It was. It really, really was."

"I'll ask Mary, anyway. We'll see what she says."

Orfeo nods. "I don't suppose she could see who's at risk of having that happen to them before deciding how to steer them?"

"Maybe. Risks are another thing she's good at."

"Useful."

"Extremely."

"Where am I going to live? Pre-Mars, I mean," Orfeo wonders.

"In New York, with me," she says. "I'm not sure of details yet. Any preferences I should know about?"

"In most of the capitals I live in a little house, like this, with Elena and Tristan and Chiara," he shrugs. "I like that. I've been to New York and it had more people than I could count and all the coziness of a hole in the ground. Do you live by yourself? Are you home much? Jake just follows the Princess around all the time, but I don't know if that's compatible with whatever you had in mind."

"I don't think I could feasibly have you follow me around all the time," she says. "A lot of it, though. Yes, I live by myself, and my apartment does not rate high on the coziness scale. My aunt's house does, though. Maybe we'll see if you like it there. How much I am home is wildly variable."

"It won't matter that much to me where we are as long as you're usually around and you like it," shrugs Orfeo. "I could probably produce specific comments after seeing the place, if you want them."

"Specific comments would definitely be appreciated."

Bella walks back into the room with a tray of pancakes and some plates and forks and knives. "Carrot-cake pancakes," she says. "How are you guys doing?"

"Those look tasty," says Libby.

"I'm going to eat about two-thirds of those if you let me," Orfeo says. "We're talking about practical stuff for when I move. Going pretty okay."

"I'm hungry. Bella, do you mind if I duplicate your pancakes?"

"Do it while they're hot," Bella says, serving herself a small stack and drizzling cream cheese icing over them.

Libby expends a square. A stack of pancakes, slightly larger than Bella's, appears on her plate; it's not immediately obvious exactly which pancakes she copied, but they appear to be selected at random rather than from an existing stack. She handles the icing the old-fashioned way, though.

"I pentagoned cooking a while ago," Bella says.