"Not remotely," says Elizabeth A. Kirsch. "I moved here from New York last month."

"New York. Nice city, or so I'm told. Well, actually I'm told it's noisy and smelly and horrible, but I was asking my countrymen, so for them that's like saying it's a shining jewel in the crown of the States." She finally wrangles the scanner into cooperation. "Math book, scanning, one two three work you awful little machine. Pretty advanced, is it for class?"

She shakes her head. "Nope, just for me. I like math."

"I'll take it under advisement," she promises, smiling back with no sign she finds any part of this conversation odd. "Thanks."

"Do you like books about vampires?" Johanna blurts out. Goddammit, she's not cut out for this cloak-and-dagger shit. She's willing to just sound weird if the girl hasn't noticed.

"Depends. Fiction about vampires is a little tacky, I find. Nonfiction about vampires is hard to find at all."

"Oh, thank God. I'm not doing the half-conversation thing, anyway, you apparently know about vampires so I won't sound crazy and it's fucking infuriating to hint and hint and hint. Anyway, congratulations you're the Slayer, I'm your designated Watcher and I happen to be responsible for making sure you don't bite it by November. Let's shoot for June, at least."

"Yes indeed it is, unless you already have a few papers out. How much of that sentence has your supernatural education covered?"

"I'm acquainted with the idea that the Slayer exists, but I don't know a lot of details beyond that. Given that being dead by November is apparently a concern, I'm going to guess the job has hazards. What's the usual way to deal with them?"

"Killing things before they kill you, I believe is the approved technique. You should probably be good at it, it's a bit your job. It's just that many of the things you're supposed to be killing are also very good at that. I can help with keeping them from getting the edge, I'm a dab hand at witchery and I may or may not have lifted some useful enchanted artifacts from places where they weren't supposed to be. As I said, it's my job to keep you out of the morgue. Except for those occasions when you're killing vampires in it, which do sometimes crop up."

"I'm very interested in these enchanted artifacts. What's your name, by the way?"

"Oh, Christ alive, did I forget to introduce myself? I'm Johanna, Johanna Wernher. There's a good number of the artifacts, I can introduce you later, but of particular interest may be a sword that can cut through any nonmagical material and a diadem that makes any harm done to you appear on your foe. Crown's a bit conspicuous, but you can always just say it's an aesthetic statement. And best of all, the sword's made of bone, so it won't show up on a metal detector. Shit out of luck if they put you through an X-ray, though."

"I think I'm going to like working with you," she concludes. "Those do sound useful. As far as witchery goes, how would you like to be introduced to my aunt, who is a witch?"

"Ooh. Positively. Always nice to get a perspective from another practitioner who isn't a gibbering addict. There's some nature coven or other back in Middlesex, but they seem to think the only way to properly go about doing magic is not to do it at all. I wanted to light their bloody pontifical pointy hats on fire."

"Chris has thankfully dodged the addiction problem so far. I'll introduce you," she says. "She's coming to pick me up in," she checks the time, "ten minutes."

"Well, I don't stay in this hole a minute past when I have to, so coincidentally enough I leave in about ten minutes. I'd love to meet her, given I'll probably be in contact with her more than a bit."

"So how much of a joke was the Necronomicon, by the way?"

"That slot on the shelf does in fact contain a copy. It's expurgated and billed as cultural fiction. And annotated by Hamilton, who I think was madder than Al'hazred could have dreamed of being. You should see her notes on the Black Goat with a Thousand Young, that whole entry is a disaster on legs."

"I admit I'm not that familiar with the source material. Should I be?"

"No particular reason to study up, no. You'd be best off sticking to entities who can be physically harmed. And wouldn't drive you mad with the slightest glance at them. We've got fine defenses in place against the various tentacular nasties, at any rate, they couldn't even exist on this plane without some serious prophesy behind their incarnation. Not to worry, there's plenty of horrible things for you to obsessively learn about without getting them involved. You are not going to run out of hostile demonic races any time soon. If you reach the end of your natural lifespan, you may have time to start on the neutral ones."

"I'm not sure that's the best priority order," she says. "Knowing how to recognize the neutral species so I'm not tempted to waste my time uselessly murdering them seems handy, for example."

"Oh, probably. The lesson plan's a work in progress."

"All right."

Johanna attempts to find a conversational topic, fails miserably, and returns to her book.

"Oh. Uh, Watchers- well, the original job description was 'tribal elders who brainwashed the Slayer into a killing machine', but that went out of style, and the purview has expanded somewhat. There's a few hundred Watchers now, and only one Slayer, so the general body runs around taking care of miscellaneous demonic threats and working with potentially dangerous magical artifacts. The latter was my job, until Quentin saddled- until I was promoted to Slayer duty. Which is less brainwashing and more education and guidance, now."

"That seems like a step in the right direction," she says. "I would be likely to object to brainwashing."

"Oh, sure, you say that now, but I bet you'd love it if you gave it a try."

She laughs.

"Probably about time to go meet Chris," she adds.

Oh, thank God. That was stressful. "Let's go, then, I suppose."

She cheerfully leads Johanna out to the parking lot. Apparently it's very easy to make friends with this girl.

"Johanna, my aunt Chris. Chris, the school librarian, Johanna, who told me this afternoon that I'm the Slayer now and she's my Watcher. She wanted to meet you for witchy reasons."

"Well, I'm always up for talking shop," says Chris.

"I primarily work with chess magic," says Chris. "It's very niche. Metaphor-driven. Flexible, but requires some creativity."

"By 'very niche', she means she invented it," the Slayer clarifies.

"Fascinating. I use the Semitic tradition for ritualism and Latinate for immediate casting, but that's- very, very interesting. I'm guessing chess magic is ritual?"

"Largely, yes. My main immediate-cast spell is a sunlight invocation for vampire-related emergencies and isn't chess-based. I've only had to use it twice, which is good because it burns a small diamond in the process, but it's extremely effective."

"Fascinating. Well, if you have a solid grounding in magic in general, which I assume to create an entirely new style of magic you must, I'd be thrilled to get a lesson or two, as it's been a while since I did anything but figuring out what some nasty piece of obsidian or other did and keeping it from doing that."

"Oh, absolutely," says Chris. "Anytime." She provides her phone number.

"Any non-Friday after school is open, and weekend days may be available on a case by case basis. And you can call me Liesel; all my friends do."

Johanna raises her eyebrows, but declines to comment. "Liesel. All right. What do you say to every non-Friday after school for a few months until you're caught up with what's immediately important, viz. how to fight, ways to kill relatively common demons you can't just stab, what not to kill, et cetera? Then we can scale it back to Tuesday and Thursday, or something."

"Perfectly reasonable."

"I suppose I'll see you on Monday, then."