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[cross_and_bow]

Bella looks up Tony Stark. (There's no reason not to.)

...Okay. He looks familiar. And his death those several months ago was really very suspicious, and she doesn't think anyone has been doing her morgue trick in New York City. And his more reclusive identical twin's body was never found at all. (If there was an identical twin, and not just Tony Stark theatrically pretending to be two people with mirrors or holograms or Photoshop and cooperative witnesses giving insistent interviews and then suddenly being dead and no longer able to pretend. There was, after all no sign of a twin before a sudden debut when he - they - was or were fifteen, and... "Sherlock Holmes", really? There's not even a hint of a twin in Tony's birth announcement, which she checks because that's the obvious thing to check.)

Come to think of it, Mr. Does Not Stick To Flypaper never introduced himself.

She supposes that his cute laser trick didn't work that well, if he got got. (But she saw it burn him. It's a clever weapon, should take almost no skill to wield a continuous beam - what kind of onslaught could have gotten around that?)

Nothing about her routine changes in response to this information.

Until several days later when she's crossing another neighborhood (seventeen to go) and - he just keeps popping up, doesn't he?

Comments

[cross_and_bow]

"I suppose I can explain them to Dad and he can either make something up or nudge it towards being the thousandth annual unsolved murder of something not found in any biology textbook," she says. "Didn't they have friends, though? Are they more likely to do unpleasant things to one or the other of us if they find the bodies?"

[eversomuchfun]

"In a town like this, I expect even the demons know that an unexplained disappearance is an unexplained death. They may be able to track you by your arrows, I suppose, if they get their hands on the right magic somehow or other."

[cross_and_bow]

Bella solves that problem by collecting the bolts. She wipes them off on the nearest patch of grass to the point where she's willing to have them in her messenger bag, and stows them.

[eversomuchfun]

"That should be all right," he says critically, casting a final glance over the bodies. (The night he dug a bullet out of his shoulder, he also got a new coat. This one has come this far without getting bloodstained.)

[cross_and_bow]

"Okay." Bella skips crossing the rest of this block; she doesn't want to be observed nonchalantly wandering around in easy view of a pair of corpses. She turns the corner and starts working her way down Santa Clara Avenue. "...Thanks," she adds. "Thanks a lot."

[eversomuchfun]

"All in a night's work. I'll just go back to being unobtrusive again, shall I?"

[cross_and_bow]

"Yeah. Thanks," she says again.

[eversomuchfun]

He smiles briefly and finds a shadow to disappear into.

[cross_and_bow]

She completes the crossing of the neighborhood.

She checks on the demons again, on her way home.

The bodies are gone.

[eversomuchfun]

"Well, that's interesting," says Sherlock.

[cross_and_bow]

"It is. There was a window of -" She looks at her watch. "About an hour. Do you happen to know what kind or kinds they were? Do those just disappear or dissolve or get assumed into another dimension on death?"

[eversomuchfun]

"This is one of the species I did not recognize," he admits.

[cross_and_bow]

"There are so preposterously many..." she mutters. She doesn't go down that block; she keeps going and takes the next left instead.

[eversomuchfun]

"Agreed."

And he's gone again.

[cross_and_bow]

Bella gets the rest of the way home without incident. Before approaching near enough to turn the lights on, she says - "Thanks again, Sherlock. I am - really not convinced I would've been able to beat them alone."

[eversomuchfun]

"Nor am I," he says from the shadows. "You're welcome."

[cross_and_bow]

And in she goes.

If he is running some kind of con she is at a complete loss for what it could be, unless he's particularly fascinated by getting victims to deliver themselves into his hands with full knowledge of his species and he likes difficult targets.

Just a few more days and then she can let herself act like she believes what she's already pretty thoroughly convinced of.