She doesn't like the situation. Sanna is getting pretty close to the building, a building that Meredith won't be able to enter, and there's still a 'witness' (if you can call somebody one the other side of a call such). She'll approach Sanna anyway if nothing new shows up within the next minute or two, but she won't be happy about it. And her magic doesn't always work through technology, so she might soon be facing some police officers and that will get in the way of figuring out what Sanna is. 

She probably doesn't have a minute. Within the next five or ten seconds Sanna will be passing in front of the building, which Meredith can't see from her vantage point. Once she's out of sight, there's no telling how long Meredith has before she's out of reach, since she doesn't know where the entrance is. And even in the best case scenario where it's on the far end of the building, Sanna will get there before another minute passes.

Then she's jumping on top of the strip mall and down the other side to reach her before she gets to the door, phone witness be damned. She'll deal with the consequences as they come. She's good at evading those anyway and she's not patient enough to wait till tomorrow night. 

She lands quietly and lets her stealth magic fade as she approaches Sanna. Unless she's also supernaturally fast, she won't be able to outrun Meredith if she decides to try to do so.

Sanna freezes.

Something smells wrong. Not bad, not rotten or foul, just wrong.

The woman behind her doesn't smell alive. Which is not to say that she smells dead; it's to say that she smells like an inanimate object. Like a piece of driftwood, or the inside of a money jar, or the cement sidewalk they're standing on right now.

She does not smell how a person smells. Something that smells like this should not be something that can walk.

If Sanna had hackles, they would most certainly be raised right now.

(Some part of Sanna notes: She thought she was overreacting, but it turns out she was massively underreacting. Even capital letters can't do justice to whatever this is. What's more serious than capital letters? Fraktur? 𝖂𝐞𝐢𝐫𝐝 𝕿𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠?)

To whoever's on the phone she says, "Just a minute." She doesn't hang up, but she lowers the phone from her ear.

She turns around and faces her stalker.

Meredith just barely manages to contain a smirk. She isn't trying to intentionally irritate Sanna but her hunting instincts are very satisfied that her prey knows she's there and knows that she's trouble. And, nicely enough, Sanna has temporarily taken care of the witness for her!

Keeping her expression carefully neutral (and probably not succeeding as much as she thinks, she's out of practice), she closes the distance between the two of them. She'll give Sanna a moment to start the conversation if she so wishes. 

The woman stops far enough away that Sanna doesn't feel the need to very loudly tell her to back off. She's relieved, and somewhat surprised.

A moment or two passes.

For Sanna, who was half-expecting to be attacked by an eldritch horror supernatural being the moment she turned around, it feels like an eternity.

When no attack or explanation seems immediately forthcoming, she considers her options for a few moments.

Without taking her eyes off the woman, she puts the phone back up to her ear and says, "Hello? … Yeah. Sorry, I have to go. Remember what we talked about." She hangs up, taps and swipes at the screen a few times, and puts her phone in her pocket.

She crosses her arms. "Well?"

She looks extremely tense, like if this woman makes one wrong move she will go completely apeshit.

Good things: the last witness is gone and Sanna seems willing to listen. Bad things: Meredith didn’t think through what to say when she got to this point and she’s bad at diplomacy to begin with (as likely evidenced by her choices so far).

In a different version of this encounter, Sanna would have acted like she thought this woman was either crazy or trolling her. (Smiling wryly: "Oh yeah? Brought your reptilian detector with you today, did you? Did you buy it on Amazon with your Penta Water?")

But that smell. And how she seemed to appear out of nowhere at the bus stop. This woman isn't human either. Or, she's a human who has magic.

She's still not going to confirm it, but she'll not-confirm it in a less conversation-stopping way.

She raises an eyebrow. "Oh really? And how did you come to that conclusion?"

They both know. It’s obvious by now that they both know. But if she isn’t willing to be the first to admit to magic, Meredith will do it.

“You could say that I’ve got a sense for it. And I know quite well that there’s more than humans in this world”, she adds, light reflecting off her sharp fangs as she grins, there one moment and gone the next. Same as a change in colour to her irises, too brief to identify. If they weren’t both on the lookout for more signs of supernatural-ness, Sanna might have missed it. 

Oh boy. A vampire? Maybe? She never met any back home, and fiction depicts them every which way, but Neil said the real ones do at least have sharp fangs. And even if he hadn't said that, given the circumstances it's the obvious guess. (Then again, the moon's only half full, so maybe werewolf?)

She now feels less confident in her inference that if this woman hasn't killed her already then she isn't going to. Maybe she just wants to pump her for information about what she is or where she came from, and once her curiosity is satisfied then she'll kill her. And maybe Sanna can take her, but then again maybe she can't. So, delay giving her any information.

"Okay. Where exactly is this going? What are you hoping to get out of this conversation?" She decides to leave out 'And what happens when you've got it?'

Is Sanna reluctant? She sounds reluctant. That’s not good but hopefully will change because Meredith would like some answers soon. 

“I’d like to learn more about what you are. You feel different from everything else I’ve met and I’m curious. So this is going towards me asking many questions and you preferable answering? I guess you can also ask some questions back if you’d like. I’m obviously more interested in you than in myself though, I already know what I am.”

I guess you can also ask some questions back if you'd like, she says. I guess, she says. Wow.

"Right. First of all: Can you see why I might find it hard to believe that you're just here for a friendly conversation and nothing else? Given that you just spent the past half-hour stalking me like a fucking serial killer?"

Meredith just blinks at her. Of course she wants to talk to her! And it’s not a just, it’s a must. That’s why she followed her even into a different city. She wouldn’t be that invested if Sanna was just a tasty-smelling human but getting answers requires more cooperation than getting blood. 

It doesn’t even occur to her that Sanna might not understand how intensely curious she is because that’s an obvious fact to her. More fundamental than gravity. It’s what makes her act. It’s why she’d been languishing in boredom until Sanna’s flair showed up to her senses. How else could she have acted?

A moment or two ticks by.

"Cat got your tongue?" Okay maybe dial the impatience back a bit, do remember that you're dealing with an eldritch horror supernatural being who may or may not be able to kill you at any moment. Also remember that you value your life more than you value being snarky at people who annoy you. Maybe. Probably.

"Is there some part of my question that you didn't understand?"

“Probably? Yes? Or maybe the answer to the previous one is no?”, that’s… not a very good reply. You want to convince her to talk to you, Meredith! (Although she doesn’t seem to want to talk! And it’s not even because she’s busy asking Meredith about her magic. She’d understand that.)

Okay, either this is Obfuscating Stupidity to make her appear harmless, or she has ✨inhuman psychology✨. (Or she's just actually kind of dim-witted in a completely ordinary way Sanna rejects this hypothesis for being really boring and disappointing. …Okay not really, she knows better than that, but she doesn't think it's likely.)

Sanna… doesn't knead her forehead with her fists, because that might involve taking her eyes off the Very Dangerous vampire lady. God, Maximum Hypervigilance is exhausting, can she go back to merely Extreme Hypervigilance.

For now, she'll mostly behave as if she thinks this lady is sincere about not understanding the question.

"Alright. I'll try again. You claim you just want to ask me some questions. I find this difficult to believe. The reason I find it difficult to believe is because the way you went about getting my attention was to stalk me for half an hour, which is a very terrible and scary thing to do to someone, instead of doing something a hundred times less threatening, like calling out 'Hi, can I ask you something' back at the bus stop. To me, the only obvious reason to go about this the way you went about it, instead of just asking me for a moment of my time without stalking me first, is if you're actually planning to maim or kill me once I've answered your questions."

(Carefully not mentioning more benign alternative hypotheses, carefully not mentioning what would reassure her on this score. That's the 'mostly'.)

Meredith isn’t actually dim. She does have a vampiric psychology though and those can drift pretty far from that of a typical human. She’s usually more reasonable but that’s because she’s generally uninterested. Which isn’t the case right now. She’s very curious and that curiosity isn’t getting answered! 

She could pay attention to what Sanna is saying but that’s hard to do when she has so much else she’d rather know (it’s about as appealing as licking a rock while you have a cake right in front of you). It’s clearly important to Sanna though and she won’t tell her what she wants until she is convinced about this… so she’ll try.

“I’m not interested on killing you. I won’t have any reasons for it even after we talk unless you’re attacking me first. And killing you would only cause me trouble. People will be tense and the police will be searching for me, that gets annoying pretty fast. Especially since you’re in a small city.

“And the stalking… it felt like the best option at the time. I didn’t want to approach you with others around.”