and there shall be an age of darkness

[impetuous_force]

Bella is careful.

Bella is careful to go to the magic shop during lunch - not at night, not when her parents might notice her leaving home, not when her teachers might notice her skipping classes. She is careful to wear her crucifix, carry her holy water gun, keep her demon whistle ready to hand. She is careful to wrap her occult purchases in disguising packaging: chip bags, gym clothes, grocery totes. She is careful to restrict herself to spells that are necessary - whether "necessary" means for the result or for managing her mercifully limited dependence on the damn things is always carefully recorded in opaque code in her notebook, and if the ratio gets too low, she goes cold turkey outside dire emergencies for at least three days. This is uncomfortable, and it kills her class performance and her temper for those days, but she has to be careful. Her parents don't want her doing magic. They're afraid she'll get addicted. (Done.) They're afraid she'll get snapped up by the USADI, drafted into casting more than she can handle or things that shouldn't be cast at all. (Not done; and another reason to be careful.) They're afraid she'll get a spell wrong and hurt herself. (Not done; yet another reason to be... careful.)

She is confident that witchery has saved her life at least twice, possibly as many as four times; she's sure it's saved others more than that. A month ago she located the hiding place of the Gem of Amara, determined it ludicrously easy to find, and conjured it to her for safekeeping in Forks under considerably more sophisticated wards placed gradually over the course of weeks. (Not in the house; any vampire with a non-vampire demon friend could bypass that protection and she doesn't want to put her parents in harm's way. But in a house, because the protection is non-negligible; USADI experimental reports say that squatters count as living human residents, and she can get into the basement section of a consistently occupied old Victorian close to the city walls without bothering - or alerting - those who make it their hangout.) With this gem more securely stowed, it will at least take longer for some vampire or other to come across it, render themselves invincible, and slaughter an entire metropolitan area before USADI calls in something sufficiently heavy-duty to get around the damn thing.

She's looking into how to destroy it, but while Forks has the advantage of safety, it also has the disadvantage of a relatively cruddy magic shop. The Witchnook is capable of special-ordering things, albeit with a lag time of weeks or months, but Bella's not sure how far to trust the proprietor. She supposes her parents don't know she's a witch yet, so it can't be "not at all", but, well. She'll come up with some other books to order in the same batch, as cover.

Bella is careful when she goes out at night. She wears her cross, she carries her holy water gun and her demon whistle. She sets her alarm clock at maximum volume for fifteen minutes after she expects to be back, with a note taped to it for her parents, in case she runs into trouble. And usually she doesn't go out at night at all.

Tonight she needs a spell ingredient that cannot be out of doors during the daylight without losing its potency, though, so if she wants to get it home at all, she is going to have to spend ten minutes walking to the Witchnook, pay for her twilight powder, and spend ten minutes walking back.

Forks has walls.

She'll be okay.

She'll be careful.

Comments

[eversomuchfun]

"They come in very handy for killing other vampires."

[impetuous_force]

"The plans do?"

[eversomuchfun]

"The laser pointers. The plans are mostly - sentimental in value."

[impetuous_force]

"...Sentimental? Seriously?"

[eversomuchfun]

"After the vampire alliance killed Tony and turned me, I killed what was left of them, waited for the man who let them into our house so I could kill him too, and fucked off into the night. Surely that much at least is public record. If I can manage to get the plans to someone who is capable of putting them into production, that will be a lovely little grace note to the whole business."

[impetuous_force]

"I didn't follow the story very closely," Bella says, "so those details might be public but I didn't know them. And I suppose you didn't already drop the plans in the mailbox to some suitable company because you didn't want to get lasered the following month?"

[eversomuchfun]

"Yes indeed. Not that it might not come to that eventually, but I thought I'd try a better class of immortality first."

[impetuous_force]

"But you have no vampire friends for whose well-being you are concerned. So if you get the gem you'll be perfectly content to hand them to me and see everyone old enough not to point the light at their eyes carrying one."

[eversomuchfun]

"Precisely."

[impetuous_force]

"How did you even find me?"

[eversomuchfun]

"The name is not just a cute gimmick. I studied its previous home, concluded that someone must have conjured it away, and looked for anyone who had ordered the necessary ingredients for a long-distance conjuration at about the right time. You were the closest match. There aren't all that many uses for fresh dragon oil, even fewer in combination with frogs' toes. And then, of course, I looked for the best possible place in town to hide something which you don't want a vampire to find, but which they are almost certainly going to anyway - and here we are."

They have arrived at the right house.

[impetuous_force]

Bella shivers.

[eversomuchfun]

"Well?"

[impetuous_force]

"I'm torn between wanting to get confirmation of my guess about what happens if I decline to help you, and not wanting to give you any ideas."

[eversomuchfun]

"Take the deal and save yourself the trouble," he advises.

[impetuous_force]

She considers.

(She might be stalling, just a little; another twenty minutes or so and Charlie and Renée get a rude awakening...)

[eversomuchfun]

Sherlock produces a lighter and starts playing with it.

[impetuous_force]

"I'm thinking," she snaps. "The house isn't going to get less flammable while I think."

[eversomuchfun]

"Interesting way to put it," he says, but he puts the lighter away.

[impetuous_force]

She scowls. She thinks. (She stalls.)

"Do you have the plans on you?"

[eversomuchfun]

"Yes. On a flash drive. No, I will not wait for you to go fetch a computer so you can have a look."

[impetuous_force]

"I wasn't going to ask. Since there are multiple pointers, plus the plans, can I get one of those objects before I go in the house, and then the rest when I come out with the gem to trade you?"

[eversomuchfun]

He produces a small USB key and hands it over ceremoniously.

[impetuous_force]

She takes it.

She steps away from him, shaking. "I've never taken the wards off before. I think I can do it in under ten minutes but I am not sure." And she lets herself into the squat's basement by the back door.

She waits till she's in before she checks for her phone and finds that she has been relieved of it.

"Fucker," she hisses under her breath.

What do I have -

The Gem of Amara, under wards that she can probably bypass in five minutes if that. Her crucifix. A USB key which may or may not contain plans for laser pointers. A staircase leading to a bunch of sleeping squatters, probably alcoholic, probably not possessed of phones - is it worth checking? - he'll hear if she wakes them; if she does that or takes too long he'll torch the building, of course. He can't know exactly where in the house she put it. She goes up the staircase, carefully, pressing herself to the wall to minimize creaking, and finds no phones lying around charging or blinking lights, and goes back down.

She has the alarm, set, ready to bring Charlie running. If she waits - he has a lighter but he wasn't carrying a can of gasoline; how fast will a house like this catch and burn without extra help? Or maybe he stashed lighter fluid here; he did know where it was already. She doesn't know.

She has paper and pen. (Always.) She tears out a sheet of paper, and writes, This USB stick may or may not contain the plans for anti-vampire laser pointers as developed by Tony Stark, PLEASE CHECK. She murmurs an anti-fire spell over the paper and the flash drive and the miniature cereal box she brought with her to disguise the twilight powder, then wraps the note around the box and tucks the USB into it. The key will not leave the house, not till he's gone, on the off-chance it's actually valuable.

She should've done that spell after deciding what else to do. She's a little keyed up now, magic is yummy, she doesn't have great data on how much having recently done spells affects her judgment. But she can still think, right, what does she have -

She's pretty sure if she wants to get out of this alive she has to bring him the gem. His argument about the laser pointers makes sense, he does look like Tony Stark's eccentric twin, he really might just hand them over, and then even if the plans are worthless maybe they can be reverse-engineered.

Fuck.

She picks through her wards, methodically, shivering with magic and fear.

She undoes the combination lock that sat under all those wards, and she opens the box, and she takes out the ring with the Gem set into it.

She opens the door again, but doesn't leave the building, yet.

[eversomuchfun]

Sherlock is waiting just outside, holding her phone.