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]

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.

[impetuous_force]

"You are a distressingly good pickpocket."

[eversomuchfun]

"I'll take that as a compliment," he says cheerfully. "Trade you." His other hand produces laser pointers, one two three four, with successive flourishes.

[impetuous_force]

"You said you had six. Is there some way for this handoff to go that doesn't leave you with a nice big window for killing me?"

[eversomuchfun]

"I'm keeping two. I did say they were useful for killing vampires," he reminds her. "And no, there is not. But you could always stay in the house and toss it out to me, and I will toss you back your phone and shiny new death rays and be on my merry way."

[impetuous_force]

"Or you'll walk off with them," she says.

[eversomuchfun]

"Or I'll walk off with them. But I have no good reason to," he says. "Whereas if I give you the lasers and your phone first, you have many excellent reasons to call emergency services or try to set me on fire."

[impetuous_force]

Bella considers this.

"You could," she says, "take out all the applicable batteries."

[eversomuchfun]

"There's a notion," he agrees, and he does. Two of the laser pointers take watch batteries; two take pairs of AAAs.

[impetuous_force]

Bella waits to be tossed her battery-free electronics, behind the threshold of the house.

[eversomuchfun]

He does that too.

[impetuous_force]

She catches the phone, and three of the laser pointers; one of them lands on the cereal box instead, and she has to go get it.

She puts them all in her bag.

And she looks at the Gem in her hand.

She does not know any spells to sabotage the fucking thing.

"What are you going to do?" she asks softly.

[eversomuchfun]

"The same thing I've been doing all this time, but in daylight," he says. "You probably imagine I'm going to kill lots of tasty humans, but it isn't true. I was bored of murder within a week of turning and I haven't done it since."

[impetuous_force]

That gives her pause.

"So if I just sit here," she says, "are you going to torch the building to chase me out?"

[eversomuchfun]

"I don't know," he says dryly. "Would you like to try it and see? It seems to me that in that situation each outcome is the opposite of how you'd like it: a murderous vampire will set the building on fire and get the ring, and a nice friendly one will wait patiently for a few hours and then go away and leave you to the mercy of the next fellow."

[impetuous_force]

"You explain how you found me by way of asserting that the name is not a gimmick, and then you seem so sure that some other vampire, not named Sherlock Holmes, would inevitably also find me," Bella observes.

[eversomuchfun]

"Being Sherlock Holmes is how I found you first. I don't claim that I am the only vampire on this entire planet smart enough to make the same connections. Although I might be. Regardless, the other vampire is mostly rhetorical; the point is still that by staying inside you are arranging things so that I will get the Gem of Amara if and only if I shouldn't."

[impetuous_force]

Bella hmms.

With the battery out of her phone she can't check the time on it, and she doesn't want to ask him if he has the time. But she thinks she could make it home before the alarm if she concludes here quickly.

"On the premise that I'm going to get out of this alive," she says suddenly, "do you want to offer any incentives for me not to report your description, last known location, and gem possession to the USADI as soon as I can?"

[eversomuchfun]

"I can't think of any," he admits. "I suspect you will not be swayed by the fact that I would find it slightly inconvenient if you did, and you have no reason to believe that I will not be using it to kill anyone."

[impetuous_force]

"And I don't have any way to check up on you, not unless you take up permanent residence here and we continue not to have vampire-related deaths," she mutters.

[eversomuchfun]

He laughs. "I could do that."

[impetuous_force]

"...Are you serious?"

[eversomuchfun]

"Should I not be? I don't have a better destination in mind," he says. "There's a certain appeal to the nomadic unlife, but mostly what I'm looking for is something interesting enough to keep me away from sunrises. You're reasonably interesting. And the deer in these parts are very tasty."