"Ooh. Consider them added to the circle of interest," he says, grinning. "Which ones?"

"Cam and Amariah. Stella's a maybe, everyone else is probably a no."

"Why is Stella a maybe?"

"I haven't discussed this with her, but she's got a something going on with Lazarus, her magic-seeing guy, and the only other ones of us who are engaged in anything other than Cam and Amariah's strictly casual activities with more than one person are with Sherlock-and-Tony sets. ...Did that make sense? I mean that there seems like there's, Cam and Amariah who have primaries but don't stay put to speak of, and then on the other end of the spectrum is, like, Golden, but most of us are sticking with one person or a Sherlock and the accompanying Tony, and Stella displays nonstandard behavior in that sense."

"...It makes sense now that you've explained it," he says.

"It's kind of fun mapping out all the ways Bells handle any given thing, especially when you throw in the confounder that once we meet each other we tend to copy each other's strategies for anything and everything. When Aurora hit the peal she went around the entire Bellparty asking everybody except me and Golden how they dealt with polyamory."

"No, she concluded that everyone but her had special circumstances at work, accidentally uncovered some kinda unsettling things about Stella's relationship with Alice, and wound up finding her own special circumstance."

"...Are these the sort of unsettling things that make good gossip, or no?"

"It might actually make more sense to hear the story from one of the Jokers. I know Stella's side of it but most of the unsettlement was Alice's. The basic idea was that Stella surprise-turned Alice into an Aurum type vampire, on the grounds that this hurts beyond the ken of mere mortals - awesome Christmas present for a Joker, yeah? - and this comes with some adjustments besides hurting intensely during the transition, and she and Alice didn't communicate well enough about the significance to each of them about the 'eternal mate bond' feature. And the way Stella explained all this to Aurora made Alice kind of skeeved out and he went and torched away being a vampire."

"...What is an 'eternal mate bond'," Ripper wants to know.

"Exactly what it sounds like. Aurum vampires mate for life and they take it really, really seriously. It does not go away. It is matey and bondy in nature. Usually monogamy is part of the package, but that didn't happen to Alice. Aurum werewolves do something a little similar but unidirectional and it's only male ones."

"Ouch," says Ripper. "I can't begin to imagine."

"There are some pretty bad corner cases, but the typical case is a couple of vampires being adorably devoted to each other," says Bella.

"Forever," he says. "Immutably forever. Maybe I'm just thinking too hard about the corner cases."

"It does go away if you stop being a vampire, which can be done via torching or just going through Downside."

"Well, that's... nice. Still. Remind me not to be a vampire."

"Don't be a vampire," says Bella. "Also, maybe don't go to Aurum, because vampires can wind up mated to people who are not themselves vampires, that being the source of most of the awful corner cases. Golden has a precog who checks out visitors, but she's not perfect - I mean, she's really good, but people's decisions can throw her off, so if you meet anyone she didn't see you meeting there's a chance."

"Right. Never going to Aurum," he concludes.

"Vampires who aren't mated already don't show up to Bell parties," Bella adds. "Except Addy showed up to one, but she isn't allowed anymore, and they're pretty sure she can't mate anyway, and I don't think Golden would hesitate to kill her on the spot and retrieve her out of Downside and not bother to turn her back into a vampire, if she did anyway."

"...Who in fuck is Addy, then?"

"Her title is Imperial Factotum. Her witch power - those are random magic powers people are sometimes born with or get when they turn, in Aurum - is to copy other witch powers, so she's handy, but she's also kind of amoral and creepy."

"Yeah, tell me about it," snorts Ripper.

"Yeah, Golden would have killed her after she usurped the previous vampire government if her husband couldn't read minds and make sure Addy wasn't doing any more amoral-and-creepy-things."

"What kinds of amoral and creepy things did she do...?"