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Summer vacation elapses, and sees their storefront doing one heck of a business in the Avalon with the help of their griffin employee. There is a suggestion box for new spells they should invent, some of which have to be long-term projects but others of which are converted into new product fairly promptly.
School starts up again. Darren and Bella are both skipping straight into twelfth grade. (Bella looked into just starting college early, but while she does technically have the sort of resume that can lead to that kind of thing, she can't exactly write an essay about how she saved the life of another person and this caused her to have Moral Character, let alone about how she started a small business - so skipping one grade it is.)
They apply to colleges. They both get into University of Washington and get sufficient scholarships to accommodate both going there.
Summer ensues again.
One afternoon, Bella is over at Darren's, and has fallen asleep - in purring fullform - across his lap on the couch.
shesepankh
morethanimaginary
"Yup."
She doesn't sound like she regrets it.
"Tempted to eat some others, here, since they're all dead anyway."
She doesn't sound like she regrets it.
"Tempted to eat some others, here, since they're all dead anyway."
morethanimaginary
"Nope, no idea. I got - flashes of memories, but not all of them, I know he likes pumpkin pie, for instance. But not how he directed the ink monster. Sorry."
shesepankh
"Who he was working for?" tries Bella. She extends claws, scratches the ice with a horrible sound.
morethanimaginary
"I - don't have enough to go off of. I got the voice, it was soft and quiet but it echoed across the entire room, almost like a whisper but sweeter. Rather unforgettable, so that's - something. I know dead-person was terrified of him, that he scrambled to do everything to make the boss happy. But other than that... Not much."
shesepankh
"Do you know if any of these people were critters?"
She's squeezed very tight to Darren, trembling a very little.
She's squeezed very tight to Darren, trembling a very little.
castmyown
Darren kisses Bella's forehead, and then wraps his arms and wings around her. Some measure of comfort.
morethanimaginary
"If they are, they were in human form. We'd have to check for medallions. Which we should do, we'd make a killing if there were any."
shesepankh
"Sure. Loot the corpses," sighs Bella. Snuggle. She will obviously not be participating any time soon.
morethanimaginary
"Looting, wheee," says Savannah, and then she fumbles her way to a flashlight and gets to looting.
One of the guards who was supposed to bring "the boss" out to where paramedics could collect him has a satyr medallion, and the torturer she didn't extensively talk to has a nokk medallion. Everyone else is either a (dead) human or very thoroughly shapeshifted by other means.
shesepankh
Meanwhile, Bella murmurs to Darren: "If she eats the others - the memories might add up to something better."
shesepankh
"Would you feel better about that if I went into extensive detail on why I'm not significantly upset?"
castmyown
"I'm not upset that they're dead," clarifies Darren. "I'm just - I think we might be losing something if we sent my sister to eat their hearts for convenience."
shesepankh
"It might not be convenience. If they know things about the person they were working for, and Savannah can piece them together, we could find him before he finds another monster to eat me right out of your lap."