"I find getting some air helps with insomnia," she says.

"Can't fault that. But, you know, this place gets kinda dangerous after dark. I know it's hard to believe, but..."

"Thanks for letting me know."

"Um. So. Yeah. If you need fresh air, there's always, like, meditating in your backyard? I never really got the hang of meditation, but I'm kind of..." He gestures vaguely to himself. "Untranquil."

"Funny thing, so am I."

"That's a pity then. You could pick up some martial arts katas or something? Get the blood flowing, without the potentially getting the blood flowing out of you."

"You seem very concerned about my blood."

"I generally like people to stay alive rather than dead, yeah. Kind of a thing."

"Well, thanks, but I'll be fine."

"...I'm not sure how you're sure of that. I'm really not joking about the death thing, you understand. Teenagers aren't exempt."

"I'll let you think about it for a minute."

"There we go."

"I don't mean to be rude, it's just that I'm kind of doing a thing, keeping the vampires honest and all that, and I don't need them slain. So we're kind of at cross purposes here. Unless you've taken it on yourself to revolutionize the Vampire Slayer industry to not involve vampire slaying?"

"Well, you'll notice I haven't burned down the blood brothel. 'Is a vampire' is not that great an approximation of 'needs to be killed immediately', as far as I can tell. There's plenty of overlap, but it's very possible to be one thing and not the other."

"Thanks for that; the brothel's a major success story. You seem a lot more reasonable than I'd expect from a Slayer."

"Are we known for being unreasonable? I haven't had the job for long."

"More the support staff. The Council's a bit... zero-tolerance. Stab first, ask questions of next of kin before stabbing them, kind of thing. And a lot of the potential Slayers get secreted away to training facilities by them early on, so they end up as mini-Watchers themselves."

"I did not come out of a secret training facility."

"I'd worked that out! You didn't really seem like the type."

"What gave me away?"

"Mentioning that you knew about the bite shop and hadn't set fire to it, really. The Watcherspawn don't really do subtle."

"I see."