"Hi. My name's Elspeth."

It's true. It's soooooo true. That Is Her Name.

--Oh.

Oh, that's delightful. That's perfect. Something inside him sings.

He should... probably figure out what's going on before she kills him. Probably.

"What are you." There's something there, in his voice. It's not the demandingness of his tone, but something--behind it, or maybe part of it. Power, lacing through the words, compelling an answer, requiring it. It reaches into Elspeth and pulls, so lightly it's impossible to notice unless you're looking.

"I'm a half-vampire, why?"

“That... that’s possible?”

No, wait, he’s getting sloppy. He needs to focus. Deep breath. “Where... where are we?”

"Yes but only if the vampire's the dad and pretty good at handling humans safely or you have an in vitro fertilization setup; I'm the latter. It's called Milliways. The bar's a person, time's probably stopped where you came from, and the door you came through'll behave normally after you leave."

“...The door I came from is, I believe, fundamentally incapable of behaving normally.

You— you’re telling the truth. I mean. Everyone is, when they talk to me, but—you’re doing something different. How.” That tug, again. 

"- you don't have to do that to me, dude, I'm not really a private person. It's called witchcraft where I'm from, some people get specific personality-influenced powers and mine is telling the truth."

“Sorry. I don’t... I’ll try not to compel you. Sometimes I do it on accident, but that was— not. ...Actually, one more question, I really do need to check. Are you planning on killing or hurting me?”

"No."

“Okay. Okay, I’m... I’m sorry. No more compelling. It’s just, been a while since I’ve talked to someone that was true of.” He’s also hungry, but maybe just listening to her voice will stave that off for a while. “What... I would appreciate knowing more about this place. And about you. It doesn’t seem right, but—in a different way than I’m used to things not seeming right.”

"Milliways is mostly harmless by default. The bar is a person and she can communicate with napkins in addition to being able to approximately see and hear you. Time can desynchronize between parts of the establishment that don't interact, such as the hotel rooms upstairs, the security office, the backyard, and the infirmary. The bar doesn't control the door, which opens in a way not consistent with genuine randomness but also not in a manner influenceable by patrons. The first drink is free."

“Can you— is it— no, wait.” He turns to address the bar directly. “Are you going to hurt me.”

No, says a napkin, placidly. But that won't work on me, so you might have to rely on other forms of evidence, such as the fact that I'm an inanimate entity.

“It worked on the Distortion, which is a hallway. Or... kind of a hallway. Either way, I’ve met lots of inanimate entities capable of terrible things, and I don’t trust the entity that dropped me here. Excuse me for not trusting you either.”

(Jude Perry’s voice rings in his mind: Imagine you’re, um… a butcher, and one day an injured little lamb walks into your workshop, and strides right into one of the mincing machines, but when you go up to it, knife in hand, it shakes its head and tells you “I’m not stupid”. He tries not to pay attention to it.)

He shouldn’t ask. If it can ignore his compulsion and lie to him, he shouldn’t listen to any answer it gives. But he wouldn’t be here if he were any good at not asking. “If I go back out the door, what happens?”

Typically but not invariably - and quite outside my control - you will return whence you came, and after the door is closed, it will behave as it typically does, though some people find that they are able to get doors to Milliways at less than random.

“Fuck.” He slumps a bit. “You said the first drink is free?”

Yes. Would you like to order something or would you prefer my recommendation?

“You can recommend, I guess.”

Whatever it is is caramel-colored and comes in a low glass with ice.

He drinks it. If he’s probably going to die here anyway, there’s no point half-assing it. 

“It’s... When you talk. My—patron, or whatever you want to call it—likes it. A lot. I don’t know if that’s a good thing but it at least makes me less tempted to ask you questions.”

"Your patron?"

“Right. If you know more about vampires than me, I’m not exactly sure how much background to be assuming you have, here, and I’m trying not to ask questions.”

"They might not be like your kind of vampires, they can differ world to world. But I know most facts about my kind."

“You think this place connects worlds?” A bit of compulsion bleeds into his voice before he can stop it and he winces a little. “Sorry, just— you hadn’t mentioned.”

"Oh, yes, it does, the doors can go to any of zillions of worlds." There's nested subtext tucked away neatly when he thinks about it: 'zillions' here means she does not know the order of magnitude but it's more than any of the numbers she tried asking Bar about.

“That’s...
Okay. That... changes things. Maybe. 

“In my world, there are fourteen—they’re not really beings, but you can think of them like that, it’s easier—based on the common fears of living things. They—feed on it, kind of, or maybe embody it, or... something like that. There are lots of different names for them—different lists, too, people including more or less than fourteen—but I’m going to use the one I’m familiar with. Some of them are simple; the Buried, that’s claustrophobia, or the Dark, which is exactly what it sounds like. The Desolation is fear of sadistic pain, the Vast is fear of heights and depths and insignificance, the End is fear of death, the Slaughter is fear of war, the Corruption is the fear of disease and insects and gross things. Then there are the more conceptual ones, like the Lonely—also exactly what it sounds like—or the Spiral, which is fear of madness and not being able to trust yourself; the Web, fear of being controlled and manipulated; the Stranger, which encompasses fears based in the uncanny valley, the familiar made wrong; and the Eye, the fear of being watched, of having your secrets revealed. The fears of animals, they exist too—the Flesh, fear of factory farming, and the Hunt, which is, well, what it sounds like. Vampires in my world are—strange alien creatures of the Hunt, preying on the predators.

“I... It’s been a long time since I started becoming less human. Getting these... abilities, from the Eye. And then.... I died, and the Eye brought me back. But it wants truth. Especially true stories. Of times when people were very, very afraid, and were right to be afraid. And so I can Ask for them. That’s why—that’s why I like it so much when you talk. It feels right.”

"...I haven't been talking about people being afraid, though."

“Well, no, but— it likes curiosity, it likes knowing true things, it likes certainty. I don’t know whether or not I can survive on just that—I highly doubt it—but it’s still...” He trails off, sighs. “I don’t know how old you are or what your power is but I think it likes you. Which, if you don’t have the entities in your world... don’t come to mine.”

"I don't think we do. Is it bad, for it to be fed? If what it wants is just stories?"

“It... hurts people, when I take them. They feel watched. Like their privacy’s being torn away, all the time, their secrets exposed from every corner of their mind. Even in my dreams, I’m watching them.”

And then, after a long pause, quieter: “I don’t... want it to be bad. But, well, I wouldn’t.”

"...I feel okay so far. But like I said I'm not a very private person."

She blooms with context. There have been witches who read minds, who detect lies, who copy entire histories at a touch - this gives some people Elspeth knows a bad case of existential dread but it doesn't bother Elspeth. Elspeth shares dreams in her sleep, with anyone who holds her hand; Elspeth can transcend language. She has on occasion needed to lie. She is better at it when she does it with the truth. She can tell the truth so hard it kills the people who hear it; she can tell the truth with such fidelity it resurrects the dead. And witchcraft isn't random. Witchcraft did not give this power to a private person. It gave it to Elspeth and absent practical considerations and the fact that she currently contains a lot of information that isn't hers to give she would happily tell everyone everything.

But there could be practical considerations.

"Should I not want it to be fed?"

Jon’s eyes close when Elspeth talks; he visibly relaxes into the sensation. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I wouldn’t be too surprised, either. I don’t... you know so much.” His voice is low and pained on the words before lightening. “I can definitely see why the Eye likes you, Elspeth Cullen. You answer questions like I ask them.”

"I shouldn't go too fast. I don't know if you have different tolerances from humans."

That earns a bit of a laugh. “Oh, I definitely do. You can start slow and I can— tell you if it gets to be too much?” His eyes are greedy; his tongue flicks out to wet his lips. “Please.”

"What do you want to know first?"

“Everything,” he says before he can stop himself. A moment later, he corrects himself. “From the beginning, please.”

(A tape recorder appears in the background and clicks itself on.)

"I am a half-vampire," she says again, and it's full of color, you can almost smell the vampire floral scent, the brown eyes are from her human side, the vampire was her father, her mother never bore her but was already turned having prepared for the possibility of children in advance -

A tall Native American man who looks like an action movie poster given form emerges from the hallway beside the bar. Elspeth takes his hand and his eyes twitch behind closed lids like he's dreaming - and he opens them and fixes Jonathan with a glare.

He growls, a low wolf noise.