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

[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.

[nonbird]

[What about them?]

[self_composed]

[Here's how I found out about magic: I literally fell into a hideout that a distant ancestor of mine magicked up to only admit his descendants. In this hidey-hole was one hexagon, and a book. The hexagon made me a mint; the book explained what the hell was going on. The book says stars are dangerous. I have stars, I can get more stars if I want them - and I don't dare make a wish on them because I don't know why they are dangerous, or how, let alone how to get around it. Maybe they think that if you stare at a star long enough, you'll know how to operate one. Jeez. Maybe they know how to work stars - but they don't have a pet masochist like I have. And haven't used their pentagons to make one, so if I'm smart I will not piss them off overmuch because that they could likely do any time it occurred to them, and it may if they're desperate.]

[nonbird]

[I didn't see anything particularly special about the stars you had on you when we met,] says Lazarus. [I mean, they were just the next step after hexes. There wasn't anything more different than that about them, except the physical shape.]

[self_composed]

[They could also just be wrong about you being able to do this,] Bella points out. [But I'd think it was worth being paranoid about, if I were them.]

[nonbird]

[Well, if there is something dangerous about stars, I'd be very surprised if I couldn't figure it out somehow or other,] he says. [But I might have to watch someone use a star.]

[self_composed]

[Eegh.]

[nonbird]

[Yes. Eegh is right,] he says. [Assuming I am ever un-kidnapped, I'd like to watch someone use the other sizes of coin first, I think.]

[self_composed]

[I will be happy to oblige you post-un-kidnapping.]

[nonbird]

[Speaking of which, any ideas on that front?]

[self_composed]

[Not unless you've got more to tell me about the ward or somebody shows up so I can get more information that way,] Bella says. [Not yet at least. I'm sorry.]

[nonbird]

[Damn,] sighs Lazarus.