The library: is occupied. There is a short guy of somewhat indeterminate age sitting at the table, in the dark, with a huge stack of books. He doesn't appear to notice her approach, perhaps because he's busy squinting at the dense handwriting of this twelfth-century manuscript.

"I'd take an explanation over an apology," she says, flicking a lightswitch on.

"Fair enough." He raises his voice slightly as he turns back to his book. "Zeke, there's a lady with a crossbow here and she wants to know what we're doing."

"Fuck!" comes the response from somewhere in the stacks.

"Oh, there's two of you and one of you doesn't like the sound of a lady with a crossbow, that's sure promising," says Bella. "Come out come out wherever you are."

"I'm not too charmed by the crossbow myself," says the one at the table. "You could really hurt somebody with a toy like that. Did you still want that explanation or are you skipping straight to threatening us?"

"I mean, I could just shoot first ask questions later but I have a good track record on not accidentally shooting anybody I don't turn out to have meant to shoot, and this could be relatively innocuous demon hunter research, say, and your friend could be swearing about the presence of a crossbow lady for completely innocent reasons, of which I'm sure there are lots, especially around here. Spill."

"You know, I really don't find stern imperatives from armed strangers very motivating, at least not in a friendly direction," he remarks, looking up from his book again since he evidently isn't going to get any reading done in the next few minutes. "I have no idea who you are or what you're after."

"Hey, person who sounds like they've heard of me," Bella calls into the stacks. "Do you find stern imperatives from armed me's very motivating?"

"Hey now," says the one at the table, frowning slightly. "Cool it with the threats, all right?"

"You are like at least fifty-five percent likely to be some sort of nasty bitey creature of the night," Bella says. "Merely threatening you is below and this side of the call of duty. Hey, Sweary Second Probably A Demon, if I hear a window open this conversation gets less verbal, so you know."

"That puts us at something of an impasse, then, because I don't think I want to give them up while you're waving that thing around," he says, nodding to the crossbow. "Look - whatever you imagine our fundamental conflict to be, surely it won't get worse if you take the time to explain it to me?"

"Depends on what your friend is up to, and it sounds like that might be 'summoning mercenary demon vampires' or something. Look, are you aware that most things that are not human and find themselves in human civilization qualify as serial killers around the third time they get hungry?"

"...No...?"

"Well, they do, so I kill them. You are an unusually talkative mercenary demon vampire or whatever you are so I haven't shot you yet but you do not have the default high ground here."

"You have no idea how deeply frustrating this conversation is," sighs Miles.

"I'm glad you met a frustrating human and not a delicious one, tell you that. You wanna tell me what you are, put the holstered guns out of arm's reach, and convince me you are not a public menace who won't even leave a body except for the Dustbuster?"

"No! I don't!" he exclaims. "Because you've been pretty clear about the fact that you might try to kill me at any moment in response to an evaluation whose criteria I don't fully understand, and that's not the kind of situation in which I feel it is safe to unilaterally disarm! And the worst part is, four days ago I would absolutely have had that confidence! God I hate this so much!"

"I'm sorry," the voice from the stacks says plaintively, and then immediately freezes still and silent and breathless again.

"So here's what I'm putting together," Bella the Vampire Slayer says. "You are some kind of demon-or-something from another dimension, which is why you are stunningly ignorant of supernatural staples; your friend back there apparently turned you, which means you were at least loosely human to start, although I can't rule out 'extradimensional human population raised as cultist sacrifices to insert Old God here' or something fucked up like that; and now you have broken into a library to correct your admittedly woeful education and think this is the correct situation in which to insist on some sort of respectful rules-of-engagement rigmarole that made sense in your original world while the Slayer has a crossbow and you are ash waiting to happen. That about right?"

"Will you stop flippantly threatening to kill me," he says in a tight voice, "please."

"Will you loosen up if I unload the crossbow?"

"You're missing a few important details," he says. "From my perspective, it looks like this. Four days ago, it was the year 2997 ECE, humans were the only sapient species in the fairly widely colonized galaxy, and I was on my way out of the star system where I'd just successfully rescued a shipload of hostages from space pirates. I had a broken shoulder and a shattered hand from the fight. Then I woke up in an alley not far from here, looking up at Earth's extremely recognizable moon, and it was inexplicably 2005 and there were inexplicably vampires. My shy friend was the first person who found me, and he recommended vampirism as a cure for my injuries, which would otherwise have cost me the hand given the state of local medicine. I accepted the offer as described. And then it turned out I should've inquired more closely about the exact function of a soul. Now I'm - suffering a temporary impairment to my moral compass, which I hope to correct as soon as possible. Hence the research."

"I am a very eloquent person and I truly cannot adequately describe just how utterly insufferable this state of being is," he says.

"That's not a common review of the process."

"I'm an outlier. It's hardly the first time. My fleet surgeon keeps a tally of all the classes of drugs he can't give me because I turn up unheard-of debilitating side effects."

"So you're debilitatingly allergic to the loss of your soul and you came here to research it. You even actually have one of the right books in the pile, well done. Why's your friend here, he want a soul too?"

"He's helping because he feels bad for putting me in this situation."

"...Vampires feeling bad about things is also outlying."

"I don't get the impression that you've had much social contact with vampires."

"I usually meet them while they're trying to kill people, frequently me."

"I could say the same thing about Cetagandans, but I don't pretend this gives me a deep insight into their culture and psychology."

"I don't know what a Cetagandan is but it's probably not a soulless anthropophage heavily overrepresented in the set of people trying to literally end the world."

"The Cetagandan Empire has a persistently expansionist bent and keeps trying to conquer new territory even though it hasn't worked out for them in about a century. Earlier this year, I liberated ten thousand prisoners of war from a Cetagandan facility where they were being psychologically tortured. The Cetagandans took exception and I spent the next six months dodging assassins at every turn."

"What an exciting adventure. You'd think you'd be better at coping with people having crossbows at you by now after six months of assassins. Or futuristic ray guns or whatever those are."

"This is a stunner. It makes people unconscious. This is a nerve disruptor. It makes people dead," he says, indicating each in turn without touching either. "Do continue mocking me for my difficulty adjusting to the loss of my soul. It is in no way unpleasant or counterproductive, and fills me with feelings of joy and goodwill."

"I have the world's stupidest superpowers to deal with the most overwhelming odds and accordingly a life expectancy of fuckall, I cope with my lighthearted approach to conversation. The book you want is the third one down, black cover."

"When I get my soul back, I'll see about solving that for you."

"That'd be grand. Do you have reason to believe your friend is not a person-eating type of vampire? How about you, have you gotten munchy yet?"

"I've been a vampire for six hours. We broke into a butcher's shop and stole some pig's blood before we came here and I didn't get the impression this was a remarkable dietary choice."

"It's pretty remarkable, although it'd help explain how he's one of the last vampires left in Sunnydale."

"What happened to the rest of them? You?"

"Yes, although not like you're thinking, most of my effect is not crossbow-based."

"I'm really curious how you managed to invent a method of driving vampires extinct that promotes the survival of thieves over murderers without being more than half sure that the thieves even existed."

"I do also sometimes do the crossbow-based population control," she says. "Especially if someone's trying to start an apocalypse, I hate it when people do that. The only reason you woke up is that you didn't route through the morgue; the only reason I wasn't alert to your friend's existence is that nobody turned up dead of a suspicious barbecue fork wound when last he snacked."

He sighs.

"And when I'm tediously covering the town in little crosses I prioritize areas I'm not likely to personally monitor on a regular basis where there's been high rates of barbecue fork death."

"You seem to have a very efficient system going."

"Thanks."

"You should have all the same memories and everything; if you want to be him..."

"Turns out all of my social skills were built on a solid foundation of genuinely liking and caring about people and valuing their well-being and personal fulfillment for its own sake," he says. "That's the reason the loss of my soul is hitting me so hard. I used to be a fucking miracle worker. I could charm blood from a stone. I raised armies and won wars and regularly accomplished the impossible on the strength of my love of helping people and unshakeable personal integrity. And now I do not have those things. But I still have the intensely ambitious nature that drove me to keep throwing myself into the kind of situation where I could accomplish such incredible feats, and the memory of being able to pull it off, alongside the knowledge that if I tried the same thing today I'd fucking die. So I am trapped in my worst nightmare, and my worst nightmare is the loss of the very skills that would most advantage me in escaping it."

"That's an interesting problem to have. Well, there's supposedly an extremely unpopular quest you can undertake to get your soul back, I told you which book it's in. You could also try to get a witch to curse you but then it doesn't stick on very snugly, it's dumb."

"Thank you for your help."

He pulls the book from its stack and tosses it to her. It lands neatly in her hand.

And she goes over to the copy machines and makes some copies, though she looks over her shoulder an awful lot.

Admiral Naismith sits at the table and doesn't do anything.

Presently she has a neatly stapled copy of the chapter to toss back to him. "Collect your friend, get out of here, I've got shit to do, make sure finding you again isn't any of it."

His friend is really unhappy about this whole situation! So unhappy! But off they go.

Bella doesn't shoot them! She shelves the books they took down and looks up her probably harmless demon and confirms it's harmless and leaves a note for Giles on the library desk and goes home.

Zeke and Miles go back to Zeke's place (and get distracted by vampire makeouts) and dig into the photocopied chapter (and get distracted by vampire makeouts) and start in on planning Miles's soul reclamation quest (and get distracted by vampire makeouts) and go to sleep and wake up (and get distracted by vampire makeouts) and wait until sundown to go raid the butcher's again (and, on the way, get distracted by vampire makeouts). Miles wears his jacket this time. It's fireproof, which seems handy.

And that's when there's a crashing sound out front of the butcher shop and a familiar voice swearing painfully.

"Hell," says Miles. He starts in that direction immediately.

"What are you doing?"

"Declining to let myself down."

Apparently the vampire slayer has been attacking some large rocky-looking white thing that is not a vampire, and it flung her through a window into what fortunately turned out to be a mattress store. She's regrouping, but the thing is advancing on the broken window now. The state of the sidewalk suggests that crossbow bolts just bounce off.

"I'm trying not to add to the list of things I'm going to be disappointed in myself about forever, and letting you get killed would definitely belong there."

"I appreciate that. How are you doing?"

"Do you happen to have a few hundred dollars I can borrow for a plane ticket to South Africa?"

"I spend a lot of money on crossbow bolts and for some reason Slaying is volunteer work, sorry."

He shrugs. "Don't worry about it. Well, unless you find the prospect of petty theft worrying."

"A little, but it's not my job to police and you're not going to blow it on cocaine. Can I interest you in a mattress shop that looks like somebody may have broken into it?" She hops out the gap in the window.

Zeke trails him awkwardly, staying well out of Bella's way.

Bella ignores Zeke in favor of the glass in her arm. "I don't suppose I can borrow that ray gun."

"If I had two, I might give you one, but this is my only nerve disruptor and anyway I really don't think we have a sufficient foundation of mutual trust for me to successfully teach you its safe and proper use."

"More complicated than point and shoot?"

"Point and shoot will probably get you as far as successfully killing things you wanted to kill. It won't get you as far as not killing things you didn't want to kill. Plasma arc training accidents are more memorable but I've always hated the nerve disruptor ones more."

"There might be more of these and my stupid powerset does not seem to give me anything with which to kill them."

"I don't yet have the funds to fly to South Africa anyway. I can stick around long enough to help you out," he offers.

"I've been coming by that butcher's shop back there pretty reliably just after sundown. If it's urgent - Zeke, can I tell her where you live?"

"You're kidding me, right?"

"If you're not careful your face'll get stuck that way."

"Do you maybe have a phone."

"No."

"Look, I don't kill vampires because I'm racist, I kill vampires because they eat people. You seem to be not eating people, good job, me knowing where you self-entomb will not affect matters."

"That's great for you, but like, you're the Slayer, I'm still not telling you where I live," says Zeke.

"Okay. So I will hope they don't urgently come in swarms, I guess."

"Good luck," offers Miles.

"Thanks." She seems to be free of shards now. "Later." And off she goes.

So they steal some cash from the mattress shop and also a mattress because why not, right, and maybe they get a little distracted testing mattresses, it's important to be thorough, but then they go back to Zeke's place and Miles rereads the chapter and Zeke gets bored and goes to the Bronze and doesn't hunt because he's full anyway but does kiss some cute people in alleys and then he goes home and distracts Miles some more and they sleep through the day and in the evening after the sun sets they're back at the butcher's shop.

Bella's there, pacing, looking pretty recovered from her glassy misadventure. "Nest," she says.

"Talk tactics to me," says Miles.

"Followed one of 'em, under an orange grove a drive from here there's some holes in the ground. I didn't jump in because apparently all the ways known to kill the things involve stuff I can't get. I don't know how many there are but if you cover me I can kill whoever's controlling 'em."

"I'm not totally sure I shouldn't just be running a solo infiltration and assassination, if all this person has on their side is lots of the big lumbering things that wipe the floor with you in a fair fight but go down to nerve disruptors," he says. "At least assuming that this person would themselves also go down to a nerve disruptor. I can cooperate with you if that's what you think would be most effective, but it sounds... awkward."

"I don't know if it's a human, a demon, or what," she says. "No idea if it goes down to nerve disruptors or not. Almost certainly knows magic besides 'summon lumbering things'."

"So you're the expert in local phenomena and I'm the expert in military operations and the only available weapon that works on lumbering statue people. That doesn't point to an obvious answer for who should be commanding this mission."

"Is this the sort of problem I solve by suggesting that you are a mercenary and I'm hiring you for your pick of the perp's loot or what?"

"Normally my employer doesn't take field command. Normally I'm also a genius at field command. I'm still pretty good, I haven't lost every relevant skill, but there's definitely an edge I'm missing. I am interested in discovering how to maximize our combined effectiveness and I genuinely don't know whether that looks like me in command, you in command, or establishing no firm structure and hoping for the best." Pause. "Full disclosure, even when my social skills aren't broken I have a huge insubordination problem."

"I'm not unwilling in principle to send you down a hole alone," she says, "but if you die and your nerve disruptor's down there with you I have to jump in blind to get it to finish the job."

"And does that sound better or worse than coming along and hiding behind me while I disintegrate untold numbers of screaming statues, then maybe or maybe not popping out to contribute to the murder of their creator?"

"...Is there some trick to hiding behind you that eludes me?"

"And we can now tick 'short jokes' off the list," Miles sighs.

"Sorry, that was uncalled for. Anyway, I can hang back and be ready to pick the thing up if you drop. I don't feel a strong need to give orders, just information if I discern information, and I consider 'duck' valid advice from most sources, including from anybody who's shooting things on my behalf, will that do?"

"Probably good enough to be going on with. God I miss my soul so much."

"Do you tolerate people who quip when they're adrenaliney better when you have a soul? Car's this way," she adds, waving him over.

"Do you have, like, a list, so I could avoid them better, or what?" She hops in the driver's seat.

"You'll have to be more specific, we're lousy with hells around here."

He laughs. "No, sorry, it's just - I was going to say, 'I can't imagine why you would take me prisoner and hold me in a room with the lights on all the time', and then it finally occurred to me that - you remember I told you about those prisoners who were being psychologically tortured - I spent six weeks among them before I managed to free them, undercover as a fellow prisoner, and for some reason I'd been going around all this time since then thinking that since I'd only been pretending, it obviously didn't count as real psychological torture in my case, and I have now recognized what utter bullshit that whole line of reasoning was."

"Ah. Well. I can't imagine why I'd do that to you either."

"I feel very confident that you won't!"

"Great! Something we can just unproblematically agree on."

Snort.

"Time to disintegrate a lot of screaming statues. Please stay out of my line of fire. I have been grazed by a nerve disruptor before and the statue's horrible screams convey the sensation pretty accurately."

"How wide a beam is it?" she asks, hopping out of the car.

He gestures a range of diameters between about two and twelve inches. "The strength of the effect varies with distance from the center, and the beam spreads out as it travels through the air. The inner beam is permanent nerve damage, death if it gets you in the brain; the outermost edge is temporary excruciating pain; in between, and after it passes beyond its maximum fully effective range, you're taking your chances."

"Okay. I am pretty good at dodging shit, stupid superpowers are good for that, I might cut it closer than non-Slayers would be advised if the situation calls."

"Well, it's your risk to take. I just don't want you taking it uninformed."

"Mmhm, just don't, like, yank your shot wild if I roll under the line of fire with an inch of clearance or something."

"Noted."

"...d'you have limited charge to worry about or is it an infinite ray gun?"

"I'll have to recharge it every so often but I already checked and local electrical outlets present no challenge to my universal power adapters. It would stretch credibility to imagine that I might run out of charge in one battle, unless we spend twelve solid hours disintegrating statues."

The remaining statues disintegrate neatly and quietly, without the cracks or the smoke or the horrible screams.

"Phew," she says. "Thanks!"

"No problem."

"I do not see any obvious loot here, but I can wait around without depriving you of your ride if you want to loot hunt."

There is a little loot but none of it readily exchangeable for US dollars, the principal currency in which plane tickets are sold.

Eh, you can always find somebody. Miles pockets some likely-looking objects. "Okay, let's go."

So she drives him back to Sunnydale and drops him off by the butcher shop.

And he hangs out with Zeke and commits petty theft and decides to scrap the whole idea of buying a plane ticket because faking the necessary identity documentation would require too much human contact and stowing away in a luggage compartment is safer. This still requires him to acquaint himself with flight schedules and pick up supplies, though. And he'll need some means of transporting himself to an airport...

He has evidence that Bella possesses a car!

There's her car!

Promising! And the lady herself...?

Not in the library, or anywhere else in evidence on campus.

...

Gosh, it's so unpleasant!

The unpleasant floor belongs to an unpleasant house, and the unpleasant house is perfectly still and silent, quite as though unoccupied.

"Miles," she says in relieved confusion. "Where the fuck are we?"

"Sorry. Mark," he says, with an ironic little bow. "Miles's twin. He may not have mentioned me. I represent a particularly awkward and private chapter in the family history."

"You... didn't come up."

"Yeah, I'm not surprised. So, who are you and why are you sitting on the floor of this horrible little house drugged into near-paralysis?"

"Uh, my name's Bella and I am not entirely sure but I don't like it. Why are you lurking in this horrible little house?"

"I was kidnapped and dumped in the basement."

"Well, that's antisocial. Can you open the door or should we make small talk till I shake off whatever's wrong with me?"

"I anticipate having no trouble opening the door. There remains the question of what we will find on the other side."

"Good question. I suppose we can park until I'm to my usual standard of dealing with questionable things beyond doors."

"Sounds like a plan. What is your usual standard?"

"Pretty good. Yours?"

"If the solution to our problem involves murder, I can accomplish it."

"...Okay. Well, I have not decided whether or not the guy who drugged me should be murdered, but it's nice to know that if he should this would present no obstacle."

He smiles slightly.

She decides not to ask if he's a vampire too, because the range of answers on that is not necessarily to her favor.

Mark stands still and stares meditatively out a painted-shut window.

"Anybody out there?"

"Neither visibly nor audibly if so. And I can see and hear quite a ways."

"Well, I suppose that's better than the alternative." She flexes her hands. Her grip strength's pathetic. Ugh.

"Mm. Yes. If you've met Miles, though, I expect he'll be along to rescue you sooner or later."

"I'm not sure why he'd notice I was missing to begin with."

"Wait and see."

"I mean, it's still Tuesday, right?"

"How the hell should I know?"

"Well, do you remember it having ceased to be Tuesday any more recently than last week."

"I have not learned the day of the week at any point since arriving on this planet."

"Oh. Oh well."

"I'm not sure we'll need him, mind you. But if we do, he will show up."

"I mean, if there's nobody out there waiting for us to emerge I'm not sure why we shouldn't just wait until I can move normally, exit, optionally cooperate on finding whose idea for a reality show 'dump people in a terrible house' was, and move on with our lives."

"There could be someone out there waiting for us to emerge who is inaudible and either invisible or outside my limited line of sight. Or they could have set up primitive monitoring equipment."

"Possible."

"Insufficient information."

"Yeah." She stretches her legs out, leans left, leans right. Rubs her neck. Doesn't help with the headache.

"Are you in pain?"

"Head's killing me. Other than that just wobbly."

"I have no solution to offer."

"Didn't think you did. It should clear up eventually."

"What?"

"Miles," he says; and then louder, "What took you so long?"

"Hi, Miles. You didn't say you had a twin."

"He's an embarrassment on a number of levels and I've only known about him for a few months - Mark, what's wrong?"

"You!"

"Him, what?"

"My soul. Mark has detected the loss of my soul and accurately guessed how upset I am about it and now he's equally upset but worse at hiding it."

"Oh. Well, you're going on a field trip sometime, right?"

"Yes. Soon. I'm going to be fine, Mark."

"You are not fine," Mark murmurs.

Bella gamely attempts to stand. Success. Wobbly success.

Mark looks at Miles.

"I'm not psychic," says Miles.

"...What, and Mark is? What are you being not psychic about?"

"Mark is non-literally psychic, he can just guess what I'm thinking with surpassing accuracy at all times. Normally I do a pretty good job of guessing right back."

"...Okay. Well. I've been kidnapped and drugged but I think I can walk now, so if nothing's lurking in ambush outside I want to call my dad and check on my Watcher."

"Nah, we're good, I checked."

"The question was something like, 'am I currently a more functional implementation of Miles than you are, and if so, what should we do about that?'," elaborates Mark.

"... Good question," says Miles.

"Implementation of Miles?"

"Mark can not only guess what I'm thinking with surpassing accuracy but also use that ability to flawlessly impersonate me. He probably is a more functional implementation of me-with-a-soul than I am, right now."

"Where did your soul even go, for that matter?" wonders Mark.

"Lotta debate on where souls go when forcibly evicted," sighs Bella.

"What are the odds."

"I wasn't sure if you were a vampire too, seemed inopportune to ask," Bella tells Mark.

"It doesn't seem to have done anything to my soul, though, assuming I ever possessed such a thing."

He demonstrates the vampire face thing. "Mm?"

"Looks vampire-ish to me," says Miles. "Was there also an exchange of blood involved?"

"Yes."

"...Um."

"Do I need to be worrying about whoever sired you?"

"Worrying how?"

"...Uh, in my capacity as usually able to stake vampires who are being nuisances."

"Oh. No need. I discovered by experimentation how to kill him."

"Okay. Keen." She'll wait until she feels like she could lift a stake before asking if he shares his brother's responsible diet.

"Anyway, though, I haven't had any personality alterations," says Mark.

"Yeah? Your me still has his soul?"

"Yes. He wants to cry and hug you and tell you it will be okay," says Mark in a dispassionate tone.

"That's weird, you have a - a soul emulator, that's weird."

"But useful. To have a spare Miles around since the original model is damaged and in need of repair."

"How come your plans for your field trip, anyway?" Bella asks Miles.

"I was actually looking for you to ask if you could drive me to an airport," he says. "Perhaps after we've dealt with whoever kidnapped you, drugged you, and locked you in a house with a vampire."

"Yeah, that's rather antisocial behavior. It was some dude lurking in the library in place of Giles, pretended he was there to be a magic teacher for my birthday - I can't get magic to work out of books and it's dreadfully frustrating - and next thing I know here I am. I don't know where Giles is or what his involvement was."

"Giles?"

"My Watcher. Slayers get assigned a crusty elderly Brit to Watch us, which can take the form of 'stalking' or of 'research support'. For some reason this is a large organization and ten of them don't work ordinary jobs and tithe to give me a stipend; I think they are as a group very poorly thought out. Giles is okay, though, unless he sent that asshole."

"...Yeah," says Miles, glancing at Mark. "You being me would be an efficient use of resources."

"I'm not sure I can avoid the crying and hugging you part, come to think. Maybe we should get Bella to an appropriate primitive comm device first."

"They're called phones."

Shrug.

"By all means let's find me a phone."

"Yes," says Mark. "I don't know what to look for, but Miles and I can guard you on your way and if we are in a location unfamiliar to you I am sure Miles can navigate."

"I'm not sure where we are but if we hit civilization I can figure it out, I just never did get my wilderness survival girl scout badge."

"I walked here from the school. Finding civilization won't be a problem. Ready to go, then?"

"I think I can walk, and if you didn't find anything hostile on the way here it probably doesn't matter if I can also do a few dozen backflips."

"We have a stunner, a nerve disruptor, and Mark. I think we're set for any combat situation not involving literal armies."

"My heroes."

And back to civilization she goes, getting a bit more surefooted as they proceed.

"Yep, that's a phone." She pats herself down for her wallet: she at least has not been robbed. She puts quarters in the pay phone. She talks to her dad. "Charlie's going to come pick me up. Thank you both."

"No problem," says Miles.

"If you'd like my assistance in finding and assassinating the person who put us in that house, you shall have it," says Mark.

"And how do I look you up?"

"I don't know yet."

"I'm staying with a friend right now but he doesn't want Bella knowing where he lives because she scares him," says Miles. "And none of us has a phone."

"I could just tell you where I live but the place is not designed to be a pleasant vampire hangout."

"I can imagine it wouldn't be."

"Yeah. Loiter around the school? I'll have to get my car from there anyway."

"We can loiter! I'm becoming very proficient at loitering."

"Congratulations!"

He laughs and bows theatrically.

And presently a cop car rolls up and Bella converses with the occupant and waves to the vampire twins and hops in the passenger seat.

And the vampire twins traipse off to presumably do vampire twin things perhaps involving loitering.

"You knew about that?"

"Actually no. Obvious only in retrospect. You're having a bit of an existential crisis over it."

"What a pair we make," he snorts. "I'm going to laugh so hard over this once I have my soul back."

"Yes. So, where is an appropriate location for me to activate your soul-self so he can fling himself on you and weep?"

"Zeke's place will probably do."

"This is my twin brother Mark, who is coincidentally also here and coincidentally also a vampire."

"Hello."

"We've been postponing our tearful reunion so we could rescue Bella. She got kidnapped. She's fine now. Is your crypt a good place for tearful reunions or should we go somewhere else?"

"Nah, go for it, I don't mind," says Zeke.

So they go inside and Mark becomes Miles and there is a lot of hugging and crying. Mark-as-soulful-Miles does the majority of the crying, but soulless-Miles is not immune.

Meanwhile, Bella rests, eats most of a pizza, recovers most of the way, finds that she cannot raise Giles, and sets her dad to tracking the "magic teacher" with police resources after he drops her off to get her car (and check the library for Giles, but nothing doing).

The Naismith twins eventually make their way to the school to loiter there.

She's waiting by her car. "Either of you any good at detective work?"

"I bet we can manage," says Mark. "Miles even solved a murder once. What information do you possess?"

"I saw the guy," she describes him, "and he has a British accent and was probably affiliated with the Watcher's council. I think he may have incapacitated or taken Giles before he showed up at school to drug me; Giles didn't show up to work all day so he's probably been here since last night at least. He managed to pass as a plausible magic teacher for a few minutes. He may have been loitering in the library all day if scent tracking's your thing, although there'd be lots of conflicting data. Plus whatever you know from having been vampirenapped."

"Mm," says Mark. "Yeah. I expect we can find him. What do you want done with him when we do?"

"Depends on how hostile he is to having been found anything from 'citizen's arrest' to 'wait for Charlie' to 'come up with a story with Giles about how in the course of this man's felonious activities a small fellow well beyond the reach of the law came in with a barbecue fork'."

"That sounds like a good range of options."

"Those barbecue forks are a menace. Oughtta be a law. How would you go about finding the guy?"

"The town is small. I expect we can check all the likely hotels and so forth individually. Faster if you drive us, of course."

And when they have arrived, Mark says, "I think I'll search faster alone, but if you want to come along I don't mind."

"Go ahead, although you'll freak Giles out if you show up without me, probably, so maybe let me know before you barge in having found something."

She waits in the car.

"My Giles," snorts Bella. "Uh, I'll call Charlie." She has her phone now. She calls Charlie. "Where in the hotel are they?" she asks Mark.

"Room 212."

"Thanks." She relays this to Charlie, and then the call's over. "So, this is kind of an awkward question but do you need directions to the butcher shop your brother has been raiding, and if you do not already know where to find it what have you been eating?"

"I mostly haven't," he says. "Been busy."

"Mostly?"

"When I arrived in this world I was in a room full of ominously chanting robed cultists. They deprived me of my senses by magic and I killed a lot of them anyway. Their 'god' was very impressed and offered to make me his immortal consort. I declined. He decided to make me his immortal consort anyway. When I woke up, I fought him, won, and eventually managed to kill him by cutting his head off. Then I ate some leftover cultists. Between that moment and a stop at the butcher's on the way to the school earlier tonight, I didn't eat."

"Oh. Okay. Well, kindly restrict yourself to the butcher's shop and I'll give you a pass on the cultists, although I'm not sure you needed the advice with your soul emulator as described."

"The loss of my soul has had no discernible effect on my personality at any level."

"Rare bird you are."

"Yes."

"You want a ride anywhere once this is wrapped up?"

Shrug. "You can drop us off at the butcher's. Sometime soon we'll want to be driven to an airport but that's not a project for tonight, I don't think."

"Yeah, I don't think I can stay awake long enough to get you all the way there."

"Tomorrow, then, or later."

Giles is so happy to see them!

Bella is so happy he was not complicit!

Hooray!

"D'you mind sharing a vehicle with a coupla vampires, I said I'd give them a ride to the butcher shop but you probably need a lift too."

"...Excuse me?"

"The vampire who was locked in the house with me turns out to be Ray Gun Vampire's twin brother and they are both waiting outside."

"Starting a collection, are we?"

"Vampiring weirdly must run in the family."

"Bella Swan's Home for Reformed Vampires," he snorts. "Well, it won't be the worst company I've enjoyed today."

So out they go. "Giles, Miles, Mark."

"Hello."

"Hi," says Miles.

"Let's get outta this crime scene." She hops in the driver's seat. Giles's place is closer; he gets dropped off first.

"Good night, everyone," he yawns on his way out of the car.

"Night, Giles." And she drives to the butcher shop.

Where the vampires hop out of her car and Mark says, "See you tomorrow."

"...So, I should come back here tomorrow after school to drive you to the airport?" she guesses.

"Ideally. We won't be too badly inconvenienced if you need to delay."

"I'm not booked, I'll bump you if an apocalypse rears its head or something. See ya."

"See you."

And off she goes, and she sleeps like a rock and misses her first two classes but is there the following sunset.

The vampire twins are loitering expertly.

"Hey. Magical soul adventure time?"

"Indeed."

"Are you fetching yours too?" she asks, popping the locks so they can get in.

"We'll see. The goal is to retrieve Miles's; what happens to mine is totally inconsequential next to that."

"All right." Off she drives.

The vampire twins are quiet.

"Arthur Mallory, Asshat, has not been whisked away from jail via Watcher bureaucratic magic or anything," she mentions, "which I had worried about a bit."