yeah that happens if you turn into a vampire

[cross_and_bow]

(prologue)

Bella slips into the school by a side door; she just saw a thing and she thinks she's seen it in a book before and thinks it's supposed to be mostly harmless but before she wakes Giles up over probably nothing or kills a likely neutral demon she wants to check.

And she pushes into the library.

Comments

[unmarred]

"Yes."

[cross_and_bow]

Bella's phone rings. "Ugh. Cop dad says don't answer the phone driving, sacred calling says do not be unreachable, Miles, can you see if it's Giles or something." She tosses the phone at him.

[thisvorlunatic]

He catches it and figures out how to answer.

"Bella's driving; what is it?"

[keyed_up]

"It's Soph. Sleepover fell through, need the car to get home unless she wants me walking through Sunnydale alone at night. Hey are you the ray guns one or the creepy house one? I swear she said your name I just forgot."

[thisvorlunatic]

...

Miles reports, "Soph says the sleepover fell through and she needs the car to get home unless you want her walking through Sunnydale alone at night."

[cross_and_bow]

"Wrong number, I don't know a Soph."

[thisvorlunatic]

"She also," says Miles, lowering the phone slightly and glancing at Bella with raised eyebrows, "asked me if I was the ray guns one or the creepy house one."

[unmarred]

"Called it," murmurs Mark.

[cross_and_bow]

"I don't know a Soph."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Call it louder next time," Miles tells Mark; and he makes a sort of half-shrugging motion with the phone at Bella, a what should I do with this, then? gesture.

[cross_and_bow]

"Does the phone recognize the number?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yeah. Matches."

[cross_and_bow]

"Okay, tell her I'm almost there and then I'm asking Giles what the excessive hells."

[thisvorlunatic]

"She says she's almost there," Miles reports into the phone.

[keyed_up]

"'kay, thanks, whichever one you are, sorry I forgot your names!"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Don't worry about it," he says cheerfully into the phone. "Bye." And he successfully disconnects the call.

[cross_and_bow]

"The fuck."

[unmarred]

"I knew Miles hadn't just invented you a sister out of whole cloth and I apologize for not voicing my suspicions sooner," says Mark. "I have no idea what the fuck, however."

[cross_and_bow]

"I don't have a sister! I've never had a sister!"

[unmarred]

"I'm perfectly willing to believe that you didn't have a sister before, but one appears to have been inflicted on you sometime in the last few hours."

[cross_and_bow]

"Or something. In context she's way more likely to be some kind of weirdass demon. With... sloppy memory alteration habits?"

[unmarred]

"The memory alteration caught Miles with a subtle enough touch that he'd only heard her mentioned once offhand and not by name. I'm not inclined to call that sloppy. Something else seems likelier, though I don't know what."

[cross_and_bow]

"I suppose it's possible I had her and then forgot her, but - but I remember a really coherent entire life without a sister. Renée went househunting in Jacksonville and picked a two-bedroom, so I could visit, she kept a lot of my kindergarten drawings and I took all kinds of creative license with how to represent the concept of divorce but I never had a sister -"

[unmarred]

"Verify whether your parents remember coherent entire lives with the sister included?" he suggests.

[cross_and_bow]

"I'm really not sure how to call my parents and discreetly confirm that they only had one kid! I guess I could mention 'Soph' vaguely like she was a school friend, see if they grab it..."