Chapter 118 - Internet Trolls And Where To Find Them

The next several days were relatively calm compared to the hectic rush of my previous week. I finally took time to catch up with Rita, who had been pouting at me for abandoning her only to jump at me for 'juicy details' next moment, and with Panda, though with her we've met quite a lot in passing as it was. She worked for me, after all.

There were things to do, but nothing so urgent to push to do it now, now, now. With the stress of the past few days, I took that opportunity to push these not-so-urgent things away a little and just relax. Thoughts of an actual vacation even crossed my mind once or twice, but that was just unrealistic at the moment.

My relaxation was made so much better by two things. First was the fact that the oppressive heat finally began to move away from the city, even if not entirely. Weather forecast threatened its return, and news reports from all over the world, whenever I caught a glimpse of one, stated that the world-wide heatwave was still on in many places. But not at mine!

Second was JJ. I finally had time to convince him to watch evolution of vampire movies, but besides that, we just spent time together. I could chat with him for an entire day and only stop when my tongue grew tired, and a single look from him was enough to make my stomach do weird things. And when we fell silent, it always was a companionable silence.

He used these looks a lot. It was, in fact, quite a struggle to not press him on my bed and start tearing apart his clothes at times. At other times, I asked myself why I even bothered. JJ, in turn, did his best to entice me, but didn't push. As if his goal was to drive me mad until I, well, threw him on my bed and started tearing his clothes.

'He'd love that, I'm sure,' I mused as I absentmindedly traced the line of his arm with my finger. The two of us lay cuddled together on my bed (nowhere to throw him, hah), with JJ's arm serving as my headrest. JJ was a great cuddler despite his lack of natural warmth—I could arrange him whichever way I liked and his limbs would never fall asleep.

'Wouldn't that be just like Christina? She is all for suddenly jumping,' I thought suddenly. The memory of JJ's ex soured my mood quicker than lemon juice curdled milk. I had no reasons to doubt that she was out of JJ's system by now, and even if she wasn't, that he was serious when he told that she had to die, but that did nothing for my nagging urge to compare the two of us.

The worst thing was, that besides that fact that she was totally nuts, and recently, that I was a once-in-a-million arch-witch, Christina usually came on top in these comparisons.

A buzz of my phone distracted me from my musings. I pulled it out of my pocket, sensing JJ shifting to accommodate me and to look at the screen, too.

It was lit with a new message, the first words of which made me slam the phone into the bed in anger. It's like Christina knew when people thought about her, because the message was from her. Another idle threat. She never stopped sending them, though after my lack of reaction, she slowed down to a message once in a few days. One message too many, if you ask me.

"This woman just doesn't know when to stop," I grumbled, hiding my face on JJ's chest in search of comfort.

"You perfectly captured the essence of her problem, ma chèrie." His light tone lifted some of the dark cloud over my head, and the hand he wrapped around me made me feel safer in an instant. "We will defeat her, one way or another."

"It's just that psychological war of hers… Ugh. She is like the worst kind of internet troll. I half expect her to say she's going to find me by my IP, except that she knows my address already." I paused, then realised that I again had to explain to JJ what I was talking about. The immersion in the epoch helped him to catch modern terms with lightning speed, but now and again, we would stumble on something he didn't yet understand. There was just too much to learn. I opened my mouth to explain, but he interrupted me.

"Find you by IP? What kind of search is this?"

"Well… I'm not a pro in that area, but IP is just a number everyone in internet has, and there's a way to find out where you connect to internet from based on it," I lifted my eyes to JJ's and found him staring at me with a deep seriousness that made me pause for a moment. "It's usually used as an idle threat, though… But…"

When it came to my head, I realised what idea came to JJ's head. I saw that he saw me coming to the same thought as he did when he grinned at me. I beamed back. "But maybe we can use it to find Christina. Or maybe not it, but some other hacker way!"

I sat up, now too energised by that idea to lie around. JJ's hands trailed down my body as I moved away from him, but he kept lying down, only propping himself up on an elbow. "Christina is savvy with tech, but how savvy exactly is she? I'm pretty sure that not enough."

"And what about you, ma chèrie?"

"Well… At least I know enough to know that this is possible," I gave JJ a look of mock annoyance. "No, I'm not a hacker. But I know where to find one. In theory, at least. Oh, God, bless all the trash books I read for teaching me about things I never thought I would need to know!"