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]

Halfway there, a stranger steps out onto the sidewalk in front of her, apparently out of nowhere.

He's young, about her age or a little older, and wearing a black leather coat with an excess of zippers and a feminine cut over dark grey jeans and a pink button-down shirt with a faint floral pattern. His boots are the kind that lace to just below the knee, also black leather, and have roses embroidered up the sides. The result is definitely... memorable.

"Hello," he says. His voice is pleasant and vaguely English. "I'm looking for the Gem of Amara."

[impetuous_force]

Is there any realistic possibility that this guy has chosen her to ask about the Gem at random?

Nope. There is not.

"How did you get in here?"

Because if she survives this encounter, it will be worth all the grief she'll get over going out at night to tell Charlie how the hell that happened.

[eversomuchfun]

"Easily," he says, grinning. "Your security is good, but I am better. Now, your options: you can come with me and fetch the gem out of its clever little hidey hole for me, or you can come with me and watch me get it myself. I promise you'll like the first one better. Fewer casualties."

[impetuous_force]

"What if I don't think you can get it?" Bella asks.

[eversomuchfun]

"Option two it is, then. Shall we?" And he half-turns, beckoning her to follow.

[impetuous_force]

Bella considers bolting. No good; she'd trip, he'd get her. She's got a better shot with the water gun; she reaches for it.

[eversomuchfun]

He steps smoothly back toward her, takes the watergun out of her hand, and tucks it into his pocket with unhurried casualness and inhuman speed.

"None of that," he says. "When I was alive I once beat a vampire in unarmed single combat, and whatever else you are, you are not a comparable martial prodigy. You are not going to solve this with violence."

[impetuous_force]

"Am I going to solve it with my scintillating personality?" she asks. She considers spells, discards them; considers lying to him that the water gun leaks, discards the idea.

[eversomuchfun]

"Scintillate away, just as long as you do so while walking. I can also bribe you," he adds offhandedly. "You may recall Tony Stark's infamous laser pointers, if you were following the news a year or so back. The six remaining specimens and only copy of the plans are all in my possession. Once I have the gem, of course, it's all the same to me whether someone starts making them in bulk."

[impetuous_force]

Now there's an arresting idea.

She walks. She does not walk quickly, but she's not much slower than she was on the way to the magic shop, which he presumably observed. "I don't have any way to verify such plans."

[eversomuchfun]

"Hard to do that without an engineer handy," he agrees. "But I do have the laser pointers, and it's reasonable that if I got my hands on the one I could get my hands on the other, is it not?"

He leads her along. Apparently he will not be relying on her to tell him where the Gem of Amara is.

[impetuous_force]

She squints at his face.

"But if you can get it for yourself what's the point of having me along, let alone trying to bribe me? You could have left me a nastily surprising empty hidey-hole."

[eversomuchfun]

"It will be more convenient to send you in after it than to arrange for its hiding place to no longer be a human living area."

[impetuous_force]

"How are you planning to demonstrate that the lasers are real, or is that not part of the plan?"

[eversomuchfun]

He produces a laser pointer out of some pocket or other, flicks the beam across his fingertips, puts the laser away, and shows her his burned hand as they pass under a streetlight.

"Clear enough for you, or shall I do it again?"

[impetuous_force]

"The internet rumors say they dust vampires instantly," she comments after a pause.

[eversomuchfun]

"The internet is, as usual, wrong. These models need about half a second shining directly on skin for the flame to catch. He was working on a wider beam, but—" He shrugs, looking away. "Didn't finish in time."

[impetuous_force]

"Considering that you don't have the gem of Amara now, I'm unclear on why you didn't destroy them. And the plans, if you have those."

[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."