our real estate is a great investment

[cross_and_bow]

"Welcome to Sunshine," says Juliet. "And to my front porch and whatever you do don't hit the light, it'll set Sherlock on fire."

Comments

[pythbox]

At 'take them with a clove of garlic', he snorts.

[cross_and_bow]

Homework goes on until dusk approaches to the point where it is time for the Bells to depart. On her drive home - even with Shell Bell around, Juliet drives; she doesn't want Charlie or her classmates wondering, and besides, Shell Bell could find a door home at school and want to take it right then - she brainphones Sherlock. [You up?]

[eversomuchfun]

[Arguably. What is it?]

[cross_and_bow]

[It's not urgent, if you want to go back to sleep. You could put up a busy message - or if you want to be wakeable by brainphone in case of emergency you could just give me a range of hours. But Mr. Giles doesn't know anything useful about edge cases of blood exchange with vampires and I wanted to know how you know - if you know - that "tasting" when I get scratched up sparring is safe.]

[eversomuchfun]

[You have to drink some of my blood, or another vampire's, in order to turn,] he says. [And I'm not sure the other way around is required at all.]

[cross_and_bow]

[How much is enough? If there's splatter when I'm fighting some random vampire - or you, though you're much harder to hurt and I would try to pull back before gouging you that bad if I got a lucky hit - and I have my mouth open...]

[eversomuchfun]

[At this point I'm guessing, but my guesses tend to be reliable. I don't think a few drops will cause you any trouble. And I think you would need to be dead before it became a problem in any case. The ideal condition seems to be completely exsanguinated but otherwise relatively intact. I've never heard of a living, uninjured person being fed vampire blood and turning from it, or for that matter of someone's midnight snack getting their teeth in and waking up three days later. All instances of turning seem to involve someone's deliberate effort, and more blood than you are likely to accidentally ingest. I'd even venture to say that it's not cumulative: if you get a little here and a little there over the course of your Slaying career, and have a heart attack when you're ninety, you won't end up a wrinkled little bloodsucker.]

[cross_and_bow]

[Okay. Do you know anything about the mechanism behind all this or does it just - add up right?]

[eversomuchfun]

[I have a data point you're not likely to get anywhere else,] he offers. [I was force-fed the blood of about eight vampires, in considerable quantity, and I turned in just shy of six hours after they killed me.]

[cross_and_bow]

[...that is interesting. Do you know why they did that? If the motive is common or the possibility is known someone could bypass my trips to the morgue.]

[eversomuchfun]

[I didn't leave them alive long enough to ask,] he says unapologetically, [and I haven't heard of it since.]

[cross_and_bow]

[Okay. I think this town is probably depopulated enough and unpleasant enough for vampires to walk around in by now that you couldn't easily collect eight of them now, anyway...]

[eversomuchfun]

[Have I neglected to mention the Bleecker Street bite shop? I'm sorry, I assumed you knew. Most of the vampires left in Sunnydale don't go outside. Their meals walk in on their own two feet, pay them for the privilege of a nibble, and walk out again afterward.]

[cross_and_bow]

[...Bite shop. No, I've never heard of such a thing. People pay for that? Like, in quantity? I guess that's pretty unobjectionable, if the business model works.]

[eversomuchfun]

[It can be made pleasant for everyone involved,] he says. [I don't need to go into detail. Alternately, I can go into lots.]

[cross_and_bow]

[...How about medium to start,] she says. [I'm driving.]

[eversomuchfun]

[A vampire can choose to make being bitten a physically pleasurable event for the snack.]

[cross_and_bow]

[That is an interesting ability indeed. This isn't, like, a special skill, any vampire can do it if they want?]

[eversomuchfun]

[Any vampire.]

[cross_and_bow]

[And this is pleasant enough that there is a nest of vampires in town who are able to make this their primary if not sole source of nutrition and charge for it,] confirms Juliet, intrigued, [drawing solely from the potential customer base of the humans-in-the-know and suffering all the usual limitations of word-of-mouth-based advertising for businesses, plus what I assume is some amount of embarrassment from their clientele. That is very interesting indeed.]

Pause.

[I'm still driving, so we can pick that conversation up a bit later, I think... I don't know if Giles is going to ask you on his own, but he wants to know where you got the number twenty-six regarding Slayer life expectancy.]

[eversomuchfun]

[Oh, spying on a Watcher, of course.]

[cross_and_bow]

[Giles is probably gonna want more detail than that. Especially if it was him.]

[eversomuchfun]

[It was not Giles, and I did not kill or even injure him, in fact he never knew I was there. And that is as much detail as Giles can have.]

[cross_and_bow]

[How much detail can I have?]

[eversomuchfun]

[More than that,] he says. [How much would you like?]