i'm just that fascinating i guess

[self_composed]

The first day Bella spends out and about with her new who's-watching-me powers, she is rather alarmed.

Maybe she's just mistaken about how much time people spend looking at reasonably pretty eighteen-year-old girls. She kills a pentagon to try it on a nearby control - who's looking at that girl over there?

Fewer people. Fewer people are looking at that random girl, and less intently. They're looking at her familiarly - they know her - or casually - they're checking her out.

[I have a spy problem,] Bella says. She makes a faintly exaggerated show of snapping her fingers in frustration and turning around. She's going back to her room to get a mirror and bobby pins and barettes, so she can spy back on the pretense of checking her hair, without making it overwhelmingly obvious that she knows what's going on.

Comments

[self_composed]

[Okay. So there's a local mint who Chris knows. He can at least make pentagons; it's possible to overshoot, if you're not using my favored methods, and wind up with something bigger than you meant to, so even if he doesn't aim for hexes he's probably made some. Good to know.]

[nonbird]

[Yes.]

He hesitates.

[And... I think, while I was there, I saw the mint who makes the dark purple coins. They were on a different floor and too far away for me to be sure about the coins part, especially because I wasn't even sure coins were identifiable that way, but they were definitely a mint.]

[self_composed]

[...That's also interesting. Just two? We aren't looking for an entire office building full of mints?]

[nonbird]

[Just two,] he confirms.

[self_composed]

[But the green mint had some of the purple one's coins. So most likely they work together.]

[nonbird]

[Yeah, that sounds like good logic.]

[self_composed]

[Chris knows one. She probably knows the other one. You haven't met many mints just randomly walking around so this isn't likely to be a coincidence. Chris knows you - and would have had the wherewithal to spot-check spy on you. Chris doesn't go around with persistent magic powers besides her native one, though?]

[nonbird]

[Not that I've seen,] says Lazarus.

[self_composed]

[So hexes are exceptionally expensive for them,] Bella concludes. [Or, any possible powers are worth less to Chris than you thinking she lacks them. Does Chris carry coins?]

[nonbird]

[She does not,] says Lazarus. [Not that I could tell. She could probably squirrel away a few of the lower-tier ones without my noticing unless I was paying a lot of attention.]

[self_composed]

[But would she know she could do that without asking you? Has she asked you?]

[nonbird]

[No and no. Well, unless she knows someone else who can tell her the first thing.]

[self_composed]

[I suppose it's possible that they haven't kidnapped you before because they already have an equivalent and only yoinked you today because they don't want me to have you,] Bella muses.

[nonbird]

[Or they were put off when I told Chris her minty friend creeped me out,] he hypothesizes.

[self_composed]

[Why would that put off an obviously sinister person or organization who had a use for you?]

[nonbird]

[Maybe they're slightly less sinister than they appear, and preferred to leave me alone rather than coerce me into helping them.]

[self_composed]

[And they've yoinked you into an abandoned warehouse and very thoroughly imprisoned you there because why, under this hypothesis?]

[nonbird]

[Because they don't want you to have me?]

[self_composed]

[They could have yoinked you to any number of nicer places, even if that were all.]

[nonbird]

[Maybe they panicked,] says Kolya.

[self_composed]

[Maybe.]

Bella paces, back in her room; Janine is still away. [Now, wait, this is interesting. If they don't really want you for themselves - but they desperately don't want me to have you - so much so that they freak out and burn a really expensive coin to get you really stuck - why might that be? What's something I would behave that way around... If there were another masochist on the level of my boyfriend running around, then, I think, I might act like that. I don't need another one, but I'd sure want to know if someone I didn't like and anticipated opposing was going for one; I might yoink first and ask questions later, and if I didn't have a lot of spare coins I might not show up immediately to explain myself because I'd have to get there on the bus or whatever. Something valuable but redundant to them, that's what you are. But you aren't a mint. You wouldn't be an especially good one. You are good at finding things out.]

Bella paces. She thinks.

[If my inferences hold... then... you know - or can find out via your power - something that they already know, and consider a very important secret.]

[nonbird]

[...I am disturbed by the soundness of your logic,] says Lazarus.

[Your boyfriend?] asks Kolya.

[self_composed]

[My boyfriend, my pet masochist, my font of hexes, my extremely fantastically convenient mint-in-cahoots,] Bella says. [He wants Lazarus to perform sinister experiments on him. Lazarus, any guesses about what the secret might be? Something innocuous-seeming, maybe.]

[nonbird]

[I think I've told you everything I know about magic,] says Lazarus. [Are there any big unanswered questions I don't know to be asking?]

[self_composed]

Bella considers this.

[Stars?] she says.