"Fancy meeting you here," says Sherlock(?).

"Fancy that. I'm astounded. But I suppose there's a first time for everything," Bella says. She nudges a cross under a tree root with her foot. She pulls out her phone and her water balloon and perfunctorily dials-but-does-not-send; the stake can stay where it is. "You never introduced yourself."

"Sherlock Holmes," he says, "at your service." He sketches a bow. "And did you look up my late brother?"

"Clone," he says succinctly.

"Because he was incredibly lonely," says Sherlock. "To give you an idea, he popped me out of the tube when he was twelve and neither of his parents knew I existed until they were assassinated a year and a half later. A year and a half which I spent growing at a rate of seven to one and poking my nose into everything I could get my hands on."

"And then you stopped growing at a rate of seven to one," says Bella. "You looked exactly like him for three consecutive years. Was that designed in?"

"Quite," he says. "I caught up when he was fourteen and proceeded at an ordinary pace from there."

"As far as I was able to determine he was easily clever enough to pull this off if it's technically feasible at all," acknowledges Bella. "How'd he die and you turn? Those ultraviolet things are clever and even a regular human ought to be able to hold off a bunch of vampires with one. It'd have to be a gigantic onslaught or an extremely clever ambush."

"There were eleven of them, and they were hiding in our basement," he explains. "Even I am not paranoid enough to carry a laser pointer in my own fucking home. To my ultimate regret."

"The authors I've been reading," Bella says, "have obvious reasons to be biased - but their claims aren't consistent with regret being involved in that story. Let's hear your side of it."

"A gang of vampires killed everyone I have ever loved—it's a short list—and forcibly turned me. When I woke up, I slaughtered the rest of them and then waited for the man who let them in to come back so I could express my displeasure by torturing him to death. Apparently they were expecting me not to care afterward, but I cannot for the unlife of me imagine why."

"It seems to be a general expectation, that turned vampires won't care about that sort of thing. Or any sort of thing that isn't... sociopathic hedonism," Bella says slowly. "Is this just mistaken, or are you being an unconventional sort of fly again?"

"Not enough data to comment."

"Noted." She chews her lip. "I'm sorry about your - Tony." She isn't really clear on what manner of relationship a clone and his creator might have, for all that they would have had to present as twins regardless of its content.

She looks up. "You're welcome. It's always sad when people die. If vampires in general didn't undergo drastic personality changes and didn't have such inconvenient allergies I'd probably start looking into a species change when I was thirty or so."

"Turning into a vampire was the single thing in the world I was most afraid of, before," he says. "It's not so frightening from the other side, but all in all, I would rather have Tony back."

"In his original form?" Bella dares ask.

"As I knew him, yes. I would not mind him being a vampire as long as he was still essentially Tony, but I have some reason to doubt that would be the case."

"Because vampires in general aren't?"

"Even I have some changes. If I met my previous self, I am not sure we'd get along, although I am not nearly what he feared becoming."

"Yes indeed."

"Is there some glowing red button labeled 'turn planet into smear of molten rock' that I should be visiting and figuring out how to disassemble?" Bella asks. "Or was this an elaborate plan that no one more destructive than you is liable to recreate?"

"Estimate based on current experience," he says. "Perhaps slightly exaggerated. My point being that if I wanted to destroy the world as desperately as I want to find some remotely meaningful reason to continue inhabiting it, I expect I would have managed by now. My actual goal is much more difficult."

"That being 'find interesting things', or something more complicated? Because if you just want to find interesting things I would imagine you'd become the Phantom of the Library, or something."

"Well, there is interesting and there is interesting," he says. "It's interesting that the male anglerfish physically dissolves into the female and remains attached to her for the rest of her life in lieu of more traditional copulation, but I wouldn't call it an inspiration to avoid dying for another few years."

"You must have found something, or you'd have let me shoot you."

He spreads his hands and looks at her, as though waiting for something.

"You came looking for Vampire Planned Parenthood and when you found it, I was just that fascinating?" she asks skeptically. "I can be full of myself sometimes, but I've never yet managed to believe that I was anyone's reason to exist."

"On a strictly temporary basis," he says. "Until one of: you become more interesting and I decide I will be staying indefinitely; you become less interesting and I leave; or you die. And I did not come here looking for Vampire Planned Parenthood; I came to have a peek at the Hellmouth. Please tell me you know what that is."

"Well," says Bella. "It sounds like a portal to or possibly a very literally named orifice of a hell dimension of some kind. You do realize I'm working almost entirely out of books? I don't even have a curriculum to go by."

"Do your books perchance come from the Sunnydale High school library?"

"Yes. For some reason, it has a better selection on the relevant topic than the public library."

"Yes," says Sherlock. "I am aware. I have been there, in fact. Because it contains the sodding Hellmouth. Do you really have no supernatural senses at all?"

"Why in the world would I wish to tell you that, either way? If I have I'd like to be underestimated and if I haven't I shouldn't care to advertise the weakness."

"It was a rhetorical fucking question," he says. "You lay down crosses to catch vampires flinching and you do your research on top of the mouth of fucking Hell without noticing it's there. Would you like a bodyguard? Something ferociously unpleasant is going to kill you one day, and I would be disappointed if it happened anytime soon."

Bella rubs her forehead. "I can't trust you," she says, although she does not sound happy about it. "Nothing I have heard the least inkling of says that turning into a vampire deprives anyone of whatever acting skills they may have acquired."

"If I were to beat you in a fight," he says, "and then not kill you, and give you my laser pointer just for good measure, would that be sufficient proof both that I would make an acceptably trustworthy and competent bodyguard and that you probably need one?"

"Ah, now I get to do the dance of deciding whether or not to trust you with it," he says, pulling the laser pointer out of his pocket and tossing it to her underhand. "Luckily for me, I don't much care."

"Triple A. It's lasted on the ones it's got for a few years, but I'd stock up if I were you."

"Yes, that's the plan," she says absently. She aims it at her pinky fingertip, turns it on, and confirms that it does no immediate damage to human flesh. "Good. This is very good."

"You are going to be a terror," Sherlock says happily.

"Why do you say that? Just because I'm now armed with something that makes a continuous beam of fiery vampire death and won't harm a human even if I miss?" she asks, grinning.

"You have named the reason precisely, yes."

"I approve," says Bella. "All right. I'm going to finish crossing this neighborhood and then go home, sit very still on my porch with a book and a booklight and play 'I am bait', and I suppose you're now provisionally my escort for same."

"I sense a slight difficulty with the latter stages of this plan," he says. "But all right, as you like."

"You don't necessarily have to be on the porch, you could be a bit farther away," says Bella. "Unless that cramps your style." She pulls out a screwdriver and scratches a cross into a fire hydrant. "Do you have a bodyguarding style or are you making it up as you go?

"My style is as follows: I am extremely observant and ludicrously good at killing things," he says. "I shouldn't have any trouble lurking in a nice comfortable shadow nearby."

"There you go, then. How did you get to be ludicrously good at killing things? By your accounting you're six - seven? - years old. Even if you started working on it as soon as you could walk..."

"I am a genius," he says matter-of-factly. "An analytical genius, specifically. And I took all the martial arts lessons I could find once I picked my name."

"And you picked this one and not, like, Nick Stark or something obvious like that, because you are an analytical genius. I see," says Bella. "I've been watching aikido on the internet a little but I'm sure I'd give myself away as something supernatural if I tried to take lessons now - and before, I couldn't walk across a flat surface without tripping so I would have been taking my life into my hands. If I decide that you can be allowed within arm's reach of me I might require lessons."

"I would be happy to oblige."

"Very nice. By the way, if Charlie, my dad, should happen to notice you, I consider him entitled to any information he thinks to ask for, and he may also simply recognize you. He trusts me, but it's not impossible he will shoot at you before I can explain your presence. If harm comes to him - regardless of whether he starts it - that will permanently destroy your chances of... well, anything, teaching me martial arts certainly included."

"I will not harm your father," says Sherlock. "Regardless of whether he shoots at me. If he manages to hit me, I may have to shake his hand."

"He's a good shot and bullets go faster than bolts. Really?" asks Bella, intrigued. She paints a cross in a crosswalk and tucks one under the courthouse's drainpipe.

"I did not dodge your crossbow bolts by watching you shoot them. I dodged by watching you be about to," he says. "When someone is about to shoot at me, I arrange not to be where they are aiming. I evaded a probable assassination attempt that way as a human, in fact."

"Interesting," says Bella. Paint. Scratch. Tuck. Scratch. "I figured I had to be telegraphing somehow."

"You were. Nearly everyone does," he says. "To me. And I say 'nearly' only because I have not seen enough examples to make me fully confident of 'everyone'."

"Can you teach me not to, or are you sufficiently exceptional that if I'm letting you teach me anything I'm already covered?"

"Teach you not to telegraph to me? I doubt it most sincerely," he says. "Teach you not to telegraph to other people? Likelier."

"Am I that bad?" she sighs. "I do usually hit. Not always the heart on the first try, but I do usually hit."

"You're not bad," he says. "You're still a Slayer. But a Slayer without formal training, which is certainly not optimal, and merciful heavens I have just convinced myself to be your Watcher. What a night."

"Is that what Watchers are supposed to do?" Bella asks, strolling down the sidewalk. "Teach Slayers not to telegraph their shots? Because it sounds to me like their job is... watching. But perhaps that's an artifact from another time."

"The history of Slayers in brief, from what I have gathered since the subject became of interest to me: Back in the mists of time, some group of beleaguered humans decides to invest supernatural abilities into a champion who will defend them against the forces of darkness. For inscrutable reasons, they pick a teenage girl and design her portfolio of handy talents so that it will pass to some other teenage girl when she is inevitably killed in the line of duty. Then they train her up and send her out. The succession of teenage girls thusly empowered becomes a global phenomenon: Slayers. The Watcher's Council springs up at some indefinite point and makes it their business to track down a new Slayer wherever she might appear and assign a crusty old fellow to stick by her side, train her in the various arts of combat, and point her at evil things that ought to die. Why they call themselves Watchers, I haven't a fragment of a clue."

"I am sincerely uncertain if I wish I had one of those or not," muses Bella. "I don't suppose they'd give me a selection of crusty old fellows to ensure no personality conflicts."

"I am sure we can arrange to circulate rumours of your presence," he says. "They will pounce on you like starving dogs. I don't recommend it."

"The pouncing does sound unpleasant," she agrees. "Are they very disconcerted by my failure to appear on whatever manner of radar they have set up?"

"Headless chickens," he says. "I stumbled on one in my quest to find a Slayer, which I have since abandoned, largely because they could not find her either. Lucky me."

"Very lucky. It's pure Hell-Orifice coincidence that you encountered me here, is it?"

"The Hell-Orifice," he snorts, "is in addition to attracting me on its own merits, famed for drawing in supernatural persons and phenomena of every kind. I am less surprised to run into you here than I would have been in, oh, New York."

"In spite of the relative populations?"

"Yes. If I ran into you in New York I would have to wonder why New York as opposed to any other largish city. In Sunnydale, I have a good guess."

"And yet the Watchers haven't swarmed here and interrogated the high school," laughs Bella. "Why haven't they thought of it, if it's such an obvious place?"

"Because they are idiots?" he suggests.

"It begins to seem increasingly likely, but still, I wonder if I should move?"

"Take your father with you," he suggests, "if you do. The police death statistics in this town must be appalling."

"They're pretty bad, but I don't think I can get him to leave," Bella says unhappily.

"Then stay. And if the Watchers stick their crusty noses into your business, I am sure it will be fascinating to, hah, watch."

"Do they have any... resources? That I should watch out for? I imagine if they expect to control superpowered teenagers they have something other than crust on their side, don't they?"

"I believe they prefer to rely on crust," he says. "But it seems likely that they have a few other things on their side. Regrettably, I don't know what. I could find out, but it might take a trip to England to ransack their crusty headquarters."

"Speaking of controlling superpowered teenagers, do you have an idea of what they'd be likely to want me to do?" (Scratch. Bury. Stuff. Paint, paint.) "Besides train in various forms of combat and kill evil entities. ...How do they find evil entities? If they're just ordinary humans..."

"Magic, research, guesswork, luck," he says. "In increasing order of frequency."

"Do you know any magic? I haven't made much headway with what the library has to offer, and it's slightly harder to tell the difference between fiction and the real stuff than it is with the demonological texts and the histories. Apparently witches care more about making their spells interesting pleasure reading than demonologists and historians; once I read halfway through a thing before I noticed it was published by Puffin."

"I haven't made much of a study of it," he says. "Mainly out of arrogance. That could change, I suppose. Not the arrogance, the other part. No force on this Earth is going to change my arrogance."

"I would really rather have magic than what I got. It seems more... versatile," says Bella. "Not that I don't appreciate the fact that I haven't fallen down the stairs all month. Having both would be cool too."

"Shall we see what we make of it, then? If you ever let me within arm's reach," he jokes.

He grins.

Bella finishes crossing the neighborhood and circles back to her car. "You know where I'm headed," she says, hopping in the pickup's cab.

"Showoff," she says without heat as she parks and goes in for a book. She comes out with one of the texts on magic, sits on the porch chair, and holds very, very still, apart from page turning - which, as the lights go off after about a minute, isn't enough to trip the motion sensor.

Sherlock pretends not to exist.

The neighbour's hedge snickers.

"I'm not likely to get two in one night," Bella tells the neighbor's hedge. "I'm going to turn in. See you around."

"Goodnight," the hedge says amicably.

Naturally, it sees Sherlock indoors also. But not for long. He heads for Bella's house as soon as stepping outside will not cause him to catch fire.

"Stand down!" orders one of Charlie's subordinates. Another is checking for pulses. Charlie himself is radioing for backup, but he's got his sidearm trained on Sherlock.

A small pebble strikes her window with pinpoint accuracy, nowhere near hard enough to break it.

She looks out the window. (She doesn't open it.)

Bella opens the window. "Are you drunk as well as injured?" she asks him.

"No," he says cheerfully. "But you are clearly an oracle. You'll never guess what just happened."

"...Did Charlie shoot you?" she asks, exasperated. "Why was he in a position to shoot you?"

"...Pretend to be angry? What two dozen demons?"

"My favourite coat has a great big fucking hole in it," he says, gesturing indicatively. "And my shoulder is none too happy either, but unlike the coat, the shoulder will repair itself. I invite you to apply to your father for explanations of what he was doing facing down twenty-six assorted hellspawn with four cops and a corpse. Police business, I imagine. I ran across them on my way here."

"I... see," says Bella. "Charlie's all right?"

"In perfect health, last I saw him," says Sherlock. "As I was fleeing down an alley."

"Ooookay. Why would you need to pretend anger about your coat? And to whom?"

"I wouldn't, really," he says. "But I am not, in fact, angry, and it seems vaguely like the sort of thing one gets angry about, and furthermore it seems not impossible that I will eventually meet your father and have the opportunity to berate him for it, if I can keep a straight face long enough, which at the present moment would be a task far beyond my capacity to achieve."

"Why pray tell are you acting drunk?"

"Because I just killed twenty fucking demons," he laughs. "And then got shot."

"Should I be concerned about my mental faculties if the same thing ever happens to me, or is this a Sherlock thing?" she inquires.

"Adrenaline, endorphins," he shrugs. "I don't know if I have them anymore, but apparently I have a reasonable facsimile."

"Noted. Thank you for killing the demons," says Bella. "Do you happen to know what they were doing, besides, apparently, killing at least one - cop? Bystander?"

"Bystander," he says. "I could venture a few guesses, but my information is not complete."

"What're your information and your guesses?" Bella asks.

"Four species of demon," he says, settling down a little. "Numbers roughly equal. One dead human, cold. The way those demons fought, they were uneasy allies at best, united briefly against a common enemy. My best theory is that the human stumbled across some kind of meeting or negotiation, perhaps heated, and was sufficiently alarmed and sufficiently new in town to call 911. The demons swarmed her before the police could arrive."

"Reasonable train of thought. Should I worry about the results of the meeting - or its disruption?"

"I should, perhaps," he laughs. "I'm the one the survivors will be hunting."

"There could be collateral damage, or they could be plotting to blow up the elementary school or something sinister like that - non-vampire demons won't be repelled by the crosses around the place."

"Shall I find out?" he offers.

"I would like to have the information," she says, which isn't quite an answer to his question.

"I am good at information," he says. "You might consider it my signature talent."

Sherlock glances at it, and starts giggling again.

Sherlock flops back onto the ground and wheezes with mirth.

He's sitting out of porchlight range. More or less. Sherlock raises his hand in a little wave, and otherwise lets them get on with their conversation.

"Thank you," he says. And wryly, lazily, cheerfully, without the least hint of anger: "I am very annoyed about what you did to my coat."

Charlie snorts and goes into the house. He shuts and locks the door behind him.

He grins up at Bella.

"You look like you're having fun. Have you even got the bullet out of your shoulder yet?"

"No," he says cheerfully. "Should I, d'you think?"

"Will it otherwise remain open forever or will it just heal around the slug?" Bella inquires. "I suppose removing it is wise either way, but I'm curious."

"No idea," he says. "Never been shot before. I suspect the latter, however."

"Then you should take it out unless you want to have a chunk of metal in your shoulder forever or reopen the wound at some point, shouldn't you?"

"I suppose so, yes," he says. "But it is likely to be an unpleasant job, and I would much rather just lie here and giggle to myself."

"Well, I can't get it for you. It hasn't been a week yet," she says reasonably.

"If I wait a week for you to get it, you will have to dig it out with a knife, which will be even less pleasant," he says. And sits up. "Ah, fuck it. Will you be staying in tonight?"

"Yes."

"Luck," she calls.

"Good or bad?" he calls back.

"At least one of the two, depending," she laughs. "G'night."

Bella carries on with her usual routine. Attend school and pay about thirty percent attention, read, cross neighborhoods, patrol, follow and eventually shoot anyone who flinches, read more, try any small spells she finds with results that appeal to her and fail at them. Only now she does all of this - after sundown, anyway - with a shadow. He is pretty good about keeping his distance.

And then one night he shows up at her house after sundown, per usual, with a large, full backpack, not per usual.

Bella peers out of her upstairs window. "What's in the backpack?" she asks him.

"Blood," he says, grinning. "My regrettable little hotel room's regrettable little refrigerator coughed its last this morning, and I need somewhere to keep the rest for now. Any space available in yours?"

"All pigs' or something?" Bella inquires.

"Pig, some cow," he says. "I am trusting the labeling system of the butcher I stole from. None human, in any case; I'd notice that."

"There's fridge space for that much volume, although I'll have to rearrange the vegetable crisper. Unless you want to drink it cold, there'll need to be a drop point and a time of night picked out, at least for the next few days."

"You can bring some out to me when I arrive to go about my bodyguarding, can you not?"

"Yes, but handing it to you is not happening, yet, and ideally it would be warmed - how long in the microwave? how much per day? - when you arrived, so we didn't waste time that could be spent patrolling. I'm not sure where you're staying or how long it takes you to get here or whether other things sometimes come up in your - undeath - actually, that's nonsensical, you are clearly a walking-around intelligent thing and pulse-based definitions of life are comparatively uninteresting and I don't think the scientific community has had a chance to rule on vampires anyway yet - whether other things come up in your life between sunset and your appearance here."

"It would be a waste of time for me to leave a bag of blood outside for you at sunset and for you to run it back to your 'regrettable little hotel' to microwave it, regardless," says Bella. "I may as well take care of that." (She can always hold her nose. She owns clothespins.) "Acknowledging that microwaves may vary, how much do you need and how long do I nuke it?"

"A jar a night and two minutes seems to be about the right answer. I haven't been eating this way for very long."

"Sure. Do you need any now - or, no, you wouldn't, you said it was your fridge, not your microwave. Leave the backpack on the driveway and I'll come take it in."

She comes downstairs, fetches a grocery bag, goes outside, and opens the bag. (She doesn't trust him perfectly yet - but she thinks it would offend anyone's sense of anticlimax at this point to kill her with a trapped bag.) She unzips it, peers inside, verifies that it contains labeled jars of blood, and transfers the jars to the bag so he can keep his backpack. She runs them into the kitchen, reorganizes the vegetable crisper, and puts the bag in next to the leftover turkey. She puts a sticky note on it that says "ASSORTED ANIMAL BLOOD - SHERLOCK'S FRIDGE BROKE - YES DAD I AM BEING SAFE THANKS" and then grabs her messenger bag and heads out to start the evening.

Neither, thankfully, does Sherlock.

A pair of demons - Sherlock may recognize them from the other night, but they're passing for human, and walk right over Bella's crosses - do whistle. And head in Bella's direction. She looks around, but when they go by a scratched fire hydrant, she doesn't pull out her crossbow.

Bella's breathing hard more out of emotion than exhaustion. "N-nicely done," she says.

"You're welcome," he says lightly. "I remember these fellows from the incident the other day; I didn't want to connect us in their minds until I was sure I needed to kill them both."

"I don't think most kinds of demons eat people the way vampires do. What did they want with me?" Bella wonders, putting a new quarrel into her crossbow before she stashes it in her messenger bag again.

"Not sure," he says. "Sport is a likely hypothesis."

"The person they killed before was also a woman, wasn't she?" Bella asks, frowning. "Did she have any other notable features? How old was she?"

"Now that you mention it, she was almost exactly your height," he says. "Otherwise unalike—older, browner, not a student, not connected to the police in any obvious way. The height may or may not be a coincidence."

"Okay. I'll ask Charlie to keep an eye out and see if anyone turns up dead of barbecue-fork-unrelated causes, especially if they're similar to her in cause of death. If they're not just playing around there might be some connection and we can figure out what they're doing."

"The barbecue fork thing was really ridiculous before I showed up. I can't even figure out why this town is inhabited," mutters Bella, looking at the demon bodies. "Hm. I don't have a procedure for dealing with these. The vampires take care of themselves."

"Never underestimate the human capacity for denial. Do you object to just leaving them here?"

"I suppose I can explain them to Dad and he can either make something up or nudge it towards being the thousandth annual unsolved murder of something not found in any biology textbook," she says. "Didn't they have friends, though? Are they more likely to do unpleasant things to one or the other of us if they find the bodies?"

"In a town like this, I expect even the demons know that an unexplained disappearance is an unexplained death. They may be able to track you by your arrows, I suppose, if they get their hands on the right magic somehow or other."

Bella solves that problem by collecting the bolts. She wipes them off on the nearest patch of grass to the point where she's willing to have them in her messenger bag, and stows them.

"That should be all right," he says critically, casting a final glance over the bodies. (The night he dug a bullet out of his shoulder, he also got a new coat. This one has come this far without getting bloodstained.)

"Okay." Bella skips crossing the rest of this block; she doesn't want to be observed nonchalantly wandering around in easy view of a pair of corpses. She turns the corner and starts working her way down Santa Clara Avenue. "...Thanks," she adds. "Thanks a lot."

"All in a night's work. I'll just go back to being unobtrusive again, shall I?"

"Yeah. Thanks," she says again.

He smiles briefly and finds a shadow to disappear into.

"Well, that's interesting," says Sherlock.

"It is. There was a window of -" She looks at her watch. "About an hour. Do you happen to know what kind or kinds they were? Do those just disappear or dissolve or get assumed into another dimension on death?"

"This is one of the species I did not recognize," he admits.

"There are so preposterously many..." she mutters. She doesn't go down that block; she keeps going and takes the next left instead.

Bella gets the rest of the way home without incident. Before approaching near enough to turn the lights on, she says - "Thanks again, Sherlock. I am - really not convinced I would've been able to beat them alone."

"Nor am I," he says from the shadows. "You're welcome."