[Libby, James, Elizabeth, you should all come meet my grandma!] Elspeth says, when her wave of the Aurum delegation arrives.

[Why should I come meet your grandma?]

[You really should,] says Libby. [I'm on my way, Elsie.]

Orfeo happily follows his imprint.

[You should meet my grandma because she's a you!] Elspeth says, incapable of awaiting dramatic reveal.

"Esme is currently still winning," apologizes Elspeth, also constitutionally incapable of many forms of tact.

"Aww, but this one is clearly the best," says Orfeo, indicating the Eosian Libby, knowing perfectly well that no one will take him seriously on the subject.

"All's well. Libby's aunt wolfed so I'm not a mess when there aren't any Aurum visitors, the tech drop took some getting used to but I'm all right."

"What was your last plan?" Elspeth asks Slipstick. "And Grandma, I'm sure Mama'll offer you a job and just didn't want to overwhelm you."

"That's a plan?" asks Elspeth quizzically.

"It was going to be," says Slipstick. "But, again: he died."

"But couldn't you get him back, now that Mama and her alts have taken over the afterlife?"

"From what I know," says Slipstick, "I don't think they'd let him out."

"Oh. So very unpleasant, then."

"I wonder if I should be vaguely dismayed," says Orfeo.

"He was nothing I couldn't handle," says Slipstick.

"Well, there are eight Bells and only three have Libbies employed or about to be so, so you'll have choices," says Elspeth to Slipstick, "if that looks like next for you."

"Can you tell me anything about the rest?" inquires Slipstick. "My information isn't exactly complete."

"Sure. Besides Mama and Stella and Juliet, there's Shell Bell, who's already taken over Atlantis and was the one to discover Downside by getting assassinated. There's Amariah, who's a witch and lives in Alethia which is the only world we know about that isn't attached to Downside now and everybody there has an external usually-animal-shaped soul and it's contagious if you go there so that's something to consider, and she has an artifact that dispenses objective truth but only within Alethia, and she hasn't taken over yet. Angela hasn't taken over either, because she lives in a theocracy and even though it turns out the god is a spaceship and not a real god she's waiting for the last Archangel to finish out his term - that's her, up on stage, with the other angel, I think they're going to sing! And there's Aegis who's from the future, maybe not as far as Angela but we're not quite sure about Angela's history, and she's younger than all the others and she's an admiral and she got a hostile alien species to surrender and last I heard she was going to see about getting democratically elected to be something called Hegemon. And there's Pattern who is called that because she has no distinguishing features yet."

"Shell Bell and Juliet are also dead," says Elspeth. "Or that would be Pattern's distinguishing feature."

"The one who was dead when the rest of them found her," she amends.

"The one who was dead and just plain stayed that way without caveat until earlier today," says Elspeth, "yeah, that's her. I think she's looking for a mint-helper."

"That, I cannot help her with," says Slipstick.

"Not personally, maybe, but Libby, I think I heard that you helped Stella interview for her extras when Alice went missing?"

"So," says James, looking between Libby and Elspeth and Orfeo and Jacob, "what's with the escorts?"

"Jake is my wolf and Orfeo is Libby's," says Elspeth. "I didn't bring my pamphlets with me but - ooh." She dips into one of the bowls of squares and conjures up a few complete stacks, and hands James one on wolves.

"Her Highness does good pamphlets," laughs Orfeo. "Short version is I took one look at Libby and I was all magically gone over her, likewise Jake and the Princess."

"Yeah," says James, "there's a lot of that in your world, isn't there."

"Well, two kinds of it," says Elspeth. "Stella's precog Mary has been helping with the wolves, and now that Aunt Alice has cleared up her blind spots she can do it herself - and she was already keeping a lookout for problematic instances of the vampire version."

"That sounds convenient."

"It's much better than having it happen at random. I'm happy to have Jake, but it was alarming at the time."

"Libby handled it like a champ," says Orfeo loyally.

"Elspeth was five and wasn't sure if her mother was alive at the time, and -" Jacob begins. "But - man, you know well as I do that Whose Imprint Is Best fights never get anywhere."

Elspeth pats her wolf on the arm. "So he's my bodyguard, although the title is less essential now that we've got wishcoins going spare," she says. "Mama barely uses hers anymore except when she's at formal meetings with human governments and wants to be shadowed by an entourage."

"Happily, bodyguards are not something my template generally needs," says Libby.

"In my case he's also handy for safety reasons that don't directly involve taking bullets for me or anything," Elspeth says, "because he's a very good target for my truth power on subjects that have to do with whether I'm safe."

"Your aunt might be magic, Grandma, witches happen in Aurum," says Elspeth, "mightn't she?"

"If she has any, it didn't show up in time to prevent either of us from dying. I stand by my declaration of envy."

"I bet she'd get the power if she turned, anyway," says Elspeth.

"I guess we'll see when we dig her up," says Granny.

"Yep!"

"Bells sure do make life interesting," says Slipstick. The other Libbies laugh.

"Okay, I'll bite," says James. "What'd Golden do?"

"Do you want a verbal summary or a magic summary?" Elspeth asks.

"Let's try verbal."

"Mama had a harder time of taking over our world than the other Bells have had with theirs, because she didn't have coins, just individual people some of whom had witchcraft, and because someone was already ruling the vampires when she got there. One of her plans backfired and she and Dad wound up each thinking the other was dead for five years, and mated vampires can't really do a lot without their mates safe. Mama managed to bring me up while pretending to be dead to everybody else she knew, which is more than most anyone would have been able to do. But then we got split up and I found Jake's pack of wolves and the Volturi found the pack and I found Dad being kept prisoner in Volterra where the Volturi ruled from, and a lot of very complicated things happened but eventually the Volturi were defeated and Mama became Empress."

"Gotcha," says James. "That does sound... untidy."

"Yes."

"It feels weird to have it all summarized like that. I learned about this stuff in class when I was a puppy," snorts Orfeo. "It's like hearing someone summarize World War Two."

"Yes," says Libby, "especially the part where 'a lot of very complicated things happened'."

"A lot of complicated things did happen. We did an entire unit on the Golden Revolution. I made a little diorama," says Orfeo.

Elspeth giggles.

"Cute," Libby says fondly.

"It was adorable. I did my presentation on the kept wolves and I made Rachel out of cottonballs and Becky out of black pompoms."

"Did I write all your textbooks, or was this after Grandma Renée started helping with those?" asks Elspeth.

"I don't remember who wrote my textbooks when I was in puppy school, Princess," snorts Orfeo.

James giggles.