"Well, it's good to know I wasn't the only one missing something."

She was talking now, and it... seemed to placate her. I had taken it for fascination earlier, but now the shift from predatory to relaxed was much more obvious. Good, this was good. Just keep her at bay, get your wits around you.

"Now, then. You were going to kill me. That's a little problematic for me. And now that I've invited you into my house, you can kill me anyway."

Hmm. I could try fire, but I hadn't tossed any around in a serious fight since I got here. I could barely hurt her, or I could blast out a supporting wall and bring the whole building down.

I'd had enough of that back home. Not the preferred option.

Force magic didn't work well on vampires back home, since they had a high threshold to both pain and physical injury, I didn't have any stakes or holy items. Somehow I didn't see the rice working.

All I had was a pentacle that made her vaguely less inclined to kill me. Temporarily.

"So. To answer your question? Yes. I'm a wizard. Big, bad spooky wizard. And I'm a nice guy, so I'm gonna go ahead and give you one chance- and one only- to tell me why I shouldn't smite you where you stand so you don't come back and kill me in my sleep."

I'd gotten damn good at bluffing in my time, but who the hell knew if it was good enough?