It's a foggy night; unpleasant smells linger in the air, and the streetlamps overhead glow like sullen yellow moons.

A shadow steps out of the fog, grabs her around the waist, and spins her away into an alley, graceful as a dancer. Before she has time to draw breath, she's pinned against the crumbling bricks with a hand over her mouth and fangs in her throat, held high enough that her feet don't even touch the ground.

Being eaten by a vampire hurts. There's the fangs, of course, that part won't come as a surprise; but there's something else beneath that, a deep piercing pain like nothing she's ever felt before, like the very essence of her life is being torn open and drained away.

She makes an indignant sort of squeaking noise at being snatched, muffled by the hand. The pain is intense, but in an unfamiliar sort of way. Not something like pricking her hand, or spraining an ankle, but more intimate, more violating. She's been carefully nurturing her own life's essence since she was a child. It's hers, hers because it is her and hers because she took care of it, and now suddenly something bites her and it's all being drained away. The terror and panic at actually being attacked by a vampire is beaten, absurdly, by her temper. Fuck this vampire, he doesn't get to eat her. She has had a long and painful day, and he can fuck right off.

He may be draining her life away, but he doesn't have all of it yet. There's still something available that she can use without killing herself. She can just see about setting him on fire, how about that -

And then it—doesn't hurt. Or rather, it still does, his teeth are still buried in her neck, her life still flows out of her with every heartbeat... but he's draining her slowly and carefully, now, the way you'd eat ice cream on a warm summer day, and it feels less like being devoured and more like being caressed. Her blood runs quick and hot, and the sensations of her body are magnified until the feeling of his mouth on her throat is the greatest pleasure she's ever known.

This is distracting enough - unexpected enough - to interrupt her attempt to set him on fire. The power slips out of her grasp like sand slipping through her open fingers. For a few seconds she's just - lost. Lost to self recrimination at her own failure to defend herself, lost to despair at the thought of trying to work with even less resources if trying again, and if she's honest, lost to the intoxicating pleasure. She makes a little whine that's half an expression of her frustration, and half an expression of, well. A woman who has just been confronted with the greatest pleasure she's ever known.

Now the terror wins out. Draining her life away is one thing, but making her enjoy it is - well, it's quite another. And she does enjoy it, almost as much as she hates enjoying it. The feeling of being pinned while he plays with her body to make it sing, the intimacy of draining her life away with the care of a lover, the way she can't make herself stop trembling - it's very clear that she is utterly at his mercy. It's very clear that she doesn't entirely mind. Some part of her wants this, enjoys this, doesn't want him to stop until he's taken what he wants and left her exhausted and helpless and aching. She hates what he's done to her, hates being turned against herself, hates herself for liking anything about her own assault.

Whimpering and writhing against him, she scrabbles desperately for some way to end this confusing ecstasy. She fumbles a hand to tangle in his hair, in a vain attempt to directly pull him off. This works about as well as expected, in that it doesn't. He's stronger than she is. She tries again to set him on fire, but her skill with magic must be as shaky as the hand in his hair, because she can't seem to keep a hold on what little power she has left. Perhaps she just doesn't have enough left to work with anymore, she's not in any state to make judgments like that. She squirms, bites the hand at her mouth, kicks at him, but even such acts of defiance feels hollow. They only serve to highlight the power disparity. She's not getting away.

He ignores her struggles with careless ease, as though stopping her from biting him wouldn't even be worth the bother.

She reaches a third time for magic, but finds that she has nothing to grab hold of. Whatever hope she had to set him on fire, it's definitely out of her reach now. She just doesn't have enough power to work with. Maybe if she were a better witch she could manage it, but a better witch wouldn't be in the middle of being assaulted in an alleyway by a vampire. A better witch wouldn't be enjoying being assaulted in an alleyway by a vampire. With another whine of frustration (and something else) she bucks against him, in some impotent final attempt to get him off of her. It doesn't work.

He's won, he has her. She's just another witch that got eaten by a vampire. Her eyes fill with tears and she attempts to stifle a sob in some attempt to preserve her dignity. She manages it for the first, but not for the second. Soon enough she's abandoned all attempts at subtlety in favor of quietly crying. She offers him no further resistance; there would be no point. There's nothing else to hold onto but him, so she does, hating him and herself all the while. She doesn't begrudge herself whatever comfort she can take in this awful, awful end.

The pleasure rises as he drinks her down, until her pulse slows to a crawl and her life hangs by a thread, just a sip away from death—and he holds her there, taking nothing more, holds her with his fangs buried in her neck and strokes the last shivering remnant of her essence, drowning her senses in sweet piercing pleasure.

The moment stretches.

He could kill her whenever he wanted, could claim the last of her and drop her lifeless bleeding body in the street, but he doesn't. He holds her in helpless ecstasy for a long, long time, and then - when she's too exhausted to move, almost too exhausted to see straight - he takes his fangs out of her, heals the mark they left, kisses the spot with lips as cool as mist, and picks her up to carry her away.

Avethana's muffled by his hand over her mouth and her own dogmatic desire for dignity, but despite both, she makes some very undignified sounds. After long enough at his mercy, she stops caring about decorum and just whines for him. Trembling, sobbing, wanting it all to end, wanting it to never end, she whimpers and trembles and desperately clings to him like the lifeline that he is. She's terrified that he'll kill her. She's terrified that he won't, that he'll just keep her like this until all of her's unraveled and all that's left is a pretty pet for him to do anything he likes with. She's terrified of how good that prospect sounds. It's so awful, it's so humiliating, it's so violating, but most of all it's so amazing. It feels wondrous, better than she could ever possibly hope to describe, she couldn't have imagined something this magnificent. She wants it, she wants it so badly, but she wants him to stop stop stop because she hates that he's doing this to her. This is amazing, and it's being forced upon her, and she loves it anyway and she hates that she loves it. Writhing helplessly against him, she cries until she runs out of tears, not sure if she's sobbing from fear or pleasure or shame. When those run out all that's left are the hoarse, muffled little whimpers that she can't seem to stop herself from making.

By the end she's half delirious, too weak to do anything but whine and tremble like a leaf. If her fingers weren't tangled in his hair and in his clothes she wouldn't still be clinging to him, but they are. She doesn't have the strength to extricate them and she's not even sure if she'd want to. If asked, she'd have trouble recounting her own name. Let it end, let it end, she almost doesn't care how it happens just so long as it stops - she can't take it she can't take it there's so much please -

Then at last he releases her, and she manages a hoarse little whimper of gratitude. She tries, tries, tries to stave off unconsciousness, though for what reason she doesn't know. Maybe to ask him one of the many available questions, or to thank him for leaving her alive, or maybe to swear eternal devotion. Whichever it is, it doesn't really matter, because she doesn't manage it. The last thing she recalls are his cool lips kissing her unblemished throat, and then she falls into unconsciousness.

She wakes the next morning lying in her own bed, still wearing the same dress from last night. Her lifeforce is still very weak, but already well on its way to recovering.

For a few blissful seconds, she wonders if she dreamed it up. If she was just - so exhausted that she immediately flopped into bed and had a really really intense dream.

But no, that doesn't make sense. She wouldn't feel this exhausted and weak if it were just a dream. She wouldn't still be in the dress, wouldn't remember everything with such clarity - and her imagination isn't good enough for - for that. So, she got assaulted by a vampire in a - distinctly sexual fashion, and for some reason he left her alive. And somehow got past her wards to put her back in her bed, which he knew the location of. That's. Sure a thing that happened that she has no idea how to deal with right now. How about she put that on hold in favor of dealing with literally everything else first. That thing sounds like it'll be a doozy.

Okay, so. First order of business. Does she have work today? ... Yes, she does. She doesn't have to go right now, it's not yet the hour that the doctor will be expecting her. Well, there's no way she's going to that. She's not even sure she could manage to make it down to the office to tell the doctor that's hired her as his assistant that she is not in any condition to assist him right now. Actually doing any of the grueling and mentally challenging work involved with helping sick people sounds quite outside of her range of abilities. She qualifies as a sick person that could use some help, though unlike the rest of them she doesn't really need it. She'll recover, given time and rest.

She makes the attempt to look presentable. Or, well. More presentably like a sick person, instead of like a lady who spent the night being - assaulted - in an alleyway. Being sick gets her sympathy, being a victim of an - an assault gets her - well. A lot of things she doesn't really want to deal with right now. They'd assume things about her, her reputation would probably end up being a mess, and what would she even say? 'Oh, officer, you don't understand, he bit me with his magic sex fangs.' And if she said that she was assaulted in a - a different manner, well. That's differently bad, but still pretty bad. So - she is sick.

Fortunately, she is pale and shaky enough that looking presentably ill isn't even hard. She just needs to not be in last night's dress and put her hair in a cap and she's good to go. Then she writes an explanatory letter to the doctor, gathers up any notes of hers that he might need, and pays the neighbor across the hall's nine year old boy to go deliver it and her explanation. She looks suitably ill for him - his mother coos over her and says that it's probably all of that work with the doctor, a lady's stamina isn't built for that sort of thing, you know - and no one mentions how she got carried home late at night by a strange man. So she's probably fine and doesn't have to desperately come up with a suitable cover story that will prevent her reputation from being ripped to shreds.

Then she has a large breakfast, drinks a lot of water, and collapses in her bed to stare at the ceiling.

So uh. Last night sure was a thing that happened.

She can't, she can't seem to - her mind seems to be having some trouble wrapping itself around this fact. And also she's shaking now? That's sure a thing that's happening too. Maybe she's cold. (She does not think she's cold.) She wraps herself in blankets anyway. It - it helps. A little. At least until she thinks about the way his fangs felt and what he did to her, and then nope it is not blanket time it is vomiting and crying time. Despite her exhaustion, she has good enough reflexes to make it to a bucket instead of making a mess of her bed, so that's nice, at least. She brought a blanket with her in her haste, which is also nice. She can just have it with her while she (quietly) sobs in a heap on the floor. It wouldn't do for her to sob loudly enough for the neighbors to hear her, then they might ask what was wrong, and what could she say?

The crying makes her think of the last time she was crying and oh look, now she's hyperventilating! That's sure a thing, haha, how fun. She can diagnose what this is, she knows how to deal with it, she's a doctor's assistant, she's not a failure in all things! She holds her breath and counts to ten and releases it and promptly vomits again. Then it's back to crying. Oh, good. Comfortable familiarity. That's nice. As an intellectual exercise, let's see if she can find anything else to like in the world. She's alive, that's something. She doesn't feel super grateful that she's alive right now, not while she's sobbing brokenly in a heap on the floor next to a bucket of her own vomit, but she's pretty sure she'll be happy about that when she puts herself back together. Yay. Her mistakes haven't killed her. Yet.

What did it? She'd - she'd thought she was being careful. Obviously not careful enough. It's very clear that the vampire was, was aware of her, specifically, knew where she lived and could get into her home and oh look she has to put this line of thought on hold to stifle her own sobs so as not to attracted any attention. Ha, that's funny, she'd been plenty loud when his fangs were in her neck - no, that's not a useful line of thought. Or maybe it is, maybe she should just get all of the self hatred and self recrimination out of the way right now, so she can have space to think -

Okay, sure. She can get the self hatred out of the way now. Let's see, what horrible things does she think about herself?

She's a failure. She's a horrible, awful, arrogant waste of a person who didn't listen to her mother's warning about vampires and everything is ruined and it's all her fault. It'd be better if she never came here, better if she stayed with her parents, better if she never learned how to train her lifeforce to do magic because then she'd be safe and this wouldn't have happened to her. She would have been fine to come here if she were smarter, if she were more clever or more careful or resisted using her magic when it wasn't strictly necessary. And now she is not fine. She is distinctly not fine. She's broken, he broke her and violated her and she will not get better and it would have been better if he'd just killed her in that alleyway, she wouldn't be such a mess now, would she? Useless, stupid little witch, thinking she can dance with death and make it out alive, and look where that got her, in a heap on the floor crying.

She was already wrong and broken and horrible, because she liked it. She deserved it, she's a slut. While he had her she might as well have been his whore. That's all she'll ever be now, she's the witch that he bit, and now she's his forever, or if she's not she might as well have his fangs on her neck for all eternity. He bit her and she liked it and that means she's awful, she doesn't deserve happiness. Every single miserable moment that comes after is deserved, it's good that she's sobbing in a heap on the floor, that's what pathetic wanton little whores like her should do.

...

There. Is that all? All out now? Nothing else in that vein? Good, that was getting tiresome.

First of all, she's not a failure. She could have done better, sure, she maybe made some missteps, but it would not have been better if she'd never become a witch. It would not have been better if she'd never come here. She has personally saved many lives - she figured out that cholera spreads by water (not that she has any way to prove that, what with her having figured out with magic) and then she made it so that it doesn't spread through the main water sources of the city anymore. Frankly, if she got fangily assaulted to do that, all she can possibly think is worth it. She wrote her parents explaining her findings, too, it's not even like the knowledge of how to fix this thing dies with her. Her dad will be figuring out how to prove her findings without magic, so that other cities don't need a witch to come by and fix their pumps so they're not drinking their own shit.

Second of all, she would not be better off dead. Everything is a bit terrible right now, but terrible times don't make life not worth living. She's a mess and maybe he's going to bite her again (she has to take a brief vomit break for that thought) but that does not automatically make her better off dead. She is worth more than that, and she knows it.

Third: Fuck society, fuck her self recrimination, fuck whatever twisted logic disagrees with the following assertion: this was not her fault. It is not a man's fault if he is mugged, it is not her fault if she is bitten by a vampire. The fault lies with the criminal. That's it. None of this shit about it being her fault for learning magic at all, no, it's the vampire's fault for chomping on her.

Fourth: She is not a whore for being assaulted in a decidedly sexual manner. He did a horrible thing to her, she has confusing feelings about it, she maybe enjoyed a lot of her own assault, but whatever her reaction was to his unwanted bite, it was unwanted. She did not at any point say 'Yes please bite me with your magic sex fangs, I'm into it,' and she sure as hell wanted him to stop. She isn't wrong for not being able to fight him off, she didn't consent to anything, and see point three, it isn't her fault. There is nothing wrong with her.

All points driven home? Good and burned into her brain? Excellent, then she can move on.

Okay, on to practicalities. So the vampire knew about her, and also he left her alive.

The first probably happened because, well. She kept healing people. She'd known it was a little risky, but she'd went and twisted herself into thinking it would be safe to quietly make sure that the doctor's patients kept recovering. Instead of leaving them to die. This impulse is not bad, her actions were not bad, she saved a lot of lives, but these actions also led to her getting caught by a vampire. Probably, anyway.

As to the second, well. If she had to hazard a guess as to why, she'd say that he wants her reusable. It's what she'd do, if she were amoral and a vampire and for some reason at all interested in how delicious people are. He was very clearly enjoying himself, or he wouldn't have been... playing... with her like that. She's magically delicious, he's immortal and bored, he probably wants to keep her around to have another sip. This does not seem like a one time affair, not when he went to the trouble of figuring out where she lived and putting her back, instead of leaving her to the mercy of whatever might come across her in an alley.

Excellent. What a wonderful revelation. Now that that's settled, she's going to go throw up again. Yep, she sure is just dry heaving and occasionally throwing up bile because her stomach is very empty, that's sure neat. And she's shaking uncontrollably, that's sure a thing that's happening. Oh, and more crying. Can't forget the classics. Hooray.

She waits for this latest crying session to ebb, then calls a brief recess. First order of business: drink more water. With all of the vomiting and crying she's been losing kind of a lot. Second order of business: wow that vomit bucket is starting to smell, or possibly it has been smelling for a while and she only really got her head in order to notice it recently. How about she goes and makes that - not. Yes, good. That's better. She washes her face while she's at it, tearstained faces are just painful after a while. Then, she nibbles on some bread out of principle, drinking more water as she slowly eats. Maybe this time she'll be able to keep it all down, but she's not very hopeful. Magic sex fangs: they incite all kinds of unwanted reactions.

Okay, all taken care of? Back to work. She retrieves the blanket and wraps herself in it, and arranges to have one (1) vomit bucket at hand, and one (1) cup of water available. That will help with this next part.

So. The toughest question of them all. What is she going to do now?

She has a vampire probably-stalker that will be wanting her later. At least for her delicious witchy life essence, if not for - for other things. That a vampire of the male persuasion might want with a young woman. Considering the decidedly sexual direction his bite took. (She manages not to throw up again, but she does need to take a little while to sob herself calm.)

Since he isn't keeping her in a dungeon and biting her regularly to drain her lifeforce enough to keep her magic away from her, he's either not worried about her potentially surprising him with magic, or he hasn't thought through this endeavor of his. Somehow she doesn't think it's the latter. When he... had her... he definitely seemed like he knew what he was doing. She doesn't think that rules out that she could maybe out maneuver him and catch him off guard in some way, but. Well. It does mean that she's probably dealing with someone that has done this kind of thing before. And she has decidedly not done this kind of thing before. She's not going to bet on being able to beat him in a direct confrontation.

Maybe she could try running. Not back home, he would probably be able to find her parents, but - somewhere. Vampires are weakened by sunlight and according to her mother don't like going out in it, she could maybe just - get away. Sail to the mainland, or something. Get away from the vampire and make a new life elsewhere and hope he never ever comes after her ever... But he would be able to find her parents if he had motivation, and seeing as how she's a witch that knows about vampires - she had to get that information from somewhere. She very much doesn't want this person doing to her mother what he did to her. Maybe they all could run off to the mainland together, but that doesn't sound like the kind of thing that she could sneak under a vampire's nose very easily. Just by herself, she's not confident she could actually outrun a vampire that thinks she's delicious. It doesn't sound like a pleasant way to live her life. That'll be her backup, then. Try to solve the vampire problem first, then try running away.

So, without running away or fighting him, how does she solve the vampire problem?

... Uh.

She'd like to talk to him? Well, not really, she sort of wants to crawl in a hole and never ever see him again, but if she doesn't get that, then she'd like to talk to him. So she can at all know what he wants besides, demonstrably, to eat her. Once she has that, she can try to figure it out from there. So how does she get him to talk to her?

Okay. If she were a bloodthirsty creature of the night that wanted to have delicious, delicious witchblood, what would she find annoying? ... Stalking the witch containing it. That'd get really old really quickly. But he needs to stalk her, because her hours are often unpredictable, and he doesn't know when he'll have a good opening. If she - if she spares him an annoying bit about being a vampire, makes it so that he doesn't feel rushed to get right to the, the biting, then maybe he won't skip straight to that. Maybe he'll go, 'Why aren't you running away, silly witch?'

Which would be a foot in the proverbial door and maybe get her something more to work with than 'I have an all powerful vampiric stalker out to drain me of my fluids.' It's - something. She doesn't like it, but she likes it more than 'wait for him to ambush her again.' By a small margin. ... Very small.

Her apartment has a balcony. She doesn't tend to use it, it's pretty small and she doesn't much like the smell of the city, but she has one. So she can just - go out onto the balcony and sit out there for an hour at a regular time. Every night. At - uh - she's usually home by nine. Nine to ten, then. Like clockwork. Okay. She. She can do that. Theoretically.

She writes a letter to her parents. She explains some of the situation, leaving out the parts about - what he did to her besides not killing her.

She returns to work, pale and exhausted and with a sore throat from the crying and vomiting. No one thinks anything of her 'illness.' She's a bit more quiet than usual, but this is blamed on the sore throat.

She looks up possible escape routes to the mainland to get away from the vampire. None of them look promising for getting her away on short notice; she'll have to plan ahead carefully.

And then, every night at nine o'clock, she drags herself out onto her balcony to be vampire bait. The first time she does this, she only manages to force herself to stay out there for fifteen minutes, in favor of hyperventilating and shivering under a blanket. Turns out: forcing yourself to be in a place where the vampire will ambush you is harder than it looks. The second time, she brings a book and a cup of tea and spends the time humming lullabies to herself and trying very hard not to cry, and not really succeeding on the second part. She makes it the entire hour, though. The third time, she manages not to break down crying even once. During the hour, anyway.

(She starts getting her ability to do magic back, and quietly starts trying to figure out how to make sunlight with magic in her spare time. During the day.)

Eventually, she can sit out on the balcony every night, and almost not feel like she wants to sink into the ground and quietly expire. It helps if she pretends that it has nothing to do with the vampire. She has a vain hope that maybe she can just completely forget about him and he'll do the same.

And then, one night, he appears. Suddenly and without warning. One moment there's nothing there but fog and shadows; then she blinks, and there's a vampire standing at the other end of the balcony, leaning on the railing and looking at her expectantly.

She makes an undignified squeaking sound and jumps a little when she sees him.

"Do you have," she hisses indignantly, "an entrance that is less creepy?!"

"Where would be the fun in that?"

"I don't know, reduced stress of those around you, likelier chance of getting invited to dinner parties, friends?"

...he giggles.

She huffs and marks her place in her book, putting it down on the balcony.

"... Hi," she says, after an awkward pause. She's not looking at him, in favor of inspecting her fingernails for stray bits of dirt.

"So, this is a new one. I've had 'went about her life like it was all a dream', 'fled the city the next morning', 'killed herself', 'refused to leave the house again'... but until now I've never had 'set up a meeting time and stuck to it grimly until I showed'. If you weren't so obviously miserable about the whole business, I'd almost think you liked the first taste and wanted another."

"Well it was either that or wait for you to pick a time. I - didn't expect you had any other reason to leave me alive, if you -" something in her voice cracks a little, and she closes her eyes and takes a steadying breath. "If you weren't planning on a second meeting. And I wanted to see about talking to you instead of just. 'Hi neck, meet fangs' without so much as a 'how do you do.'"

"Well. Here I am, talking to you."

"So you are." And now, of course, she has no idea what to say.

So she says the first thing that comes to mind, which is:

"You realize that you're screwing yourselves over. Vampires, as a species, I mean. If you would stop killing witches long enough we could teach a bunch of people magic and then suddenly everybody's delicious."

"Ah, but if everybody knew magic, everybody might start believing in vampires, and that doesn't sound like it would be good for us at all."

Snort. "What, don't feel like your reputation's won you any favors?"

"We eat people. Not exactly the sort of thing that makes you popular at parties."

"I guess not. But you don't - you made it very clear that you both don't need to completely eat people, and that you could -" Nope words aren't working again, she stops and tries again. "Could avoid making it hurt. That might make you popular at parties. ... Disreputable ones, admittedly, but you're a vampire. Unless for some reason you need to kill people?"

"Having a nibble that doesn't go all the way will admittedly keep us alive, or as close to alive as we get, but it won't do much else. If we want power, we have to kill for it."

"So set up with a government and provide state executions, pick off criminals that were going to hurt people anyway, show up at a warzone and offer pleasant mercy kills? I suppose it's not as convenient as just being able to slaughter your way to ultimate power, but if you make friends with humanity you can conceivably get to regularly bite consenting witches without having to play the stalking game."

"But I like the stalking game."

"So that's just. That's it, your life is stalking random women from the shadows, looking for the occasional witch you can have again for seconds?"

"...and what if it is?"

Wince. Good job, Avethana, way to probably piss off the vampire.

"I'd find it kind of empty and dull, personally."

"Well, then, I'll be sure not to turn you into a vampire."

Snort.

"Thanks. I don't think I'd like it very much."

"The immortality part is nice, and you can get that without killing anyone!"

"I'd miss the sun. I'd probably also be terrible at finding consenting subjects, and I'd insist upon having them, and promptly starve. And, you know, I'm holding out hope that maybe there's a way to magic myself immortality. It's not like any other witches publish their findings or anything."

"Well, fair enough."

"How common are we, anyway? Out of curiosity. You'd be more of an expert than I am."

"Well, it's hard to tell, on account of you have such good reasons to keep quiet. But I usually catch at least a handful of you in a year."

"Well," she says, after a slight pause to ignore the way that sentence makes her want to hide under the covers, "those are better numbers than I was expecting, actually. I'd thought there were less of us. Though - do you tend to leave them alive, or...?"

"Not indefinitely."

"Oh," she says, attempting nonchalant and missing by a mile.

"But then, I also don't usually spend this long talking to them."

"Have I won you over with my unstoppable charm?"

"You are pretty charming!"

She blinks.

"What, really? I was joking."

He giggles again.

"... You giggle a lot for a vampire," she observes. "Though, I guess I can't really judge, I haven't met any others."

"I haven't met many either. They probably do giggle less often, though, the ones I've met have mostly been pretty boring people."

"All murder and no banter? Though I'm surprised you don't know a lot of them, since you're all immortal and all after the same sorts of things. I'd have thought you'd bump into each other and be murder friends."

"Young vampires aren't all that hard to kill, if you have any idea what you're doing. Most of us don't make it to two hundred."

"Whereas old vampires are a bit more complicated than 'attempt to set on fire'?" she wonders, a little wryly.

"Yes. Making friends with other vampires would if anything make even less sense than making friends with a human; at least with the human I don't have to worry about fighting over who gets the tastiest treats."

"Hey, I resemble that remark," she mutters. At a more reasonable volume: "You don't reminisce about shared hunts? Draw lots? Go with 'finders keepers'? I would have thought humans dying left and right would get old after a while, and there's less in common. Vampires seem like the better emotional investment target."

"Oh, I just don't bother making friends."

"Oh. Well. That's a method. I hope it works for you."

Shrug. "Has its ups and downs."

"I suppose everything does," she agrees.

"So, do you want another taste?"

She flinches and shrinks in on herself.

"No."

Shrug. "All right."

Well, she's just going to be over here, being small and shivery and unhappy and trying not to hyperventilate.

"You know, I don't think I will kill you. You're fun to talk to."

That's... better than the alternative, she guesses.

"... Yay?" she manages weakly, after she's got her breathing a bit more under control. Still small and shivery, though, yep.

He laughs, and vanishes.

Yep, she's just going to bolt inside and retrieve her faithful bucket to fulfill its duties. Once that's done, she's going to spend a little while on the floor crying some more. That sounds good to her.

But she grimly sticks to her meeting time, even so.

He shows up again three nights later, and this time he lets her see it: the fog thickens and swirls and condenses into the shape of a person, and then there he is.

She doesn't squeak, this time. Getting to see him show up helps. Her heart rate does a thing, but she can ignore it and forge on despite it.

"Hello," she says, putting down her pen and closing to book she was writing in. "Thank you, that entrance almost wasn't even creepy."

Giggle.

"So, how's your night going?" she wonders, because this seems like a sanctioned small talk topic. Instead of a giggling vampire she doesn't know what to do with.

"Oh, just fine. You?"

"Well a vampire appeared on my balcony, but this morning I decided to indulge myself and bought some chocolate, so it probably evens out."

He laughs.

She... attempts to smile at this, notices she isn't making it all the way there, and promptly stops.

Right, let's attempt a thing she can definitely do, then.

"Speaking of - uh, am I likely to get attacked by another vampire that doesn't care about whether I live or not?"

"Hmm?"

"You mentioned fighting over - people that were tasty. I'd really not rather be in the middle of two vampires fighting over what to do with me."

"Oh. I'd win. But as far as I know there's nobody else in town to begin with, and you were pretty hard to find."

"Okay. Just please win before I get eaten. What thing did me in? The doctor with the high success rate?"

"That was the big clue, yes."

"Ah. Thought so." She sighs a little, sadly. Yeah, she's probably going to need to knock that off. The thought makes her a bit sick. "Did you notice the magic on the pumps and wells in the city?"

"Yes, but it didn't help me find you, I was already looking into the magic doctor by the time I noticed."

"I guess my wards gave me away after that? Or you caught me healing someone."

"The wards were a clue, yeah."

"All that and they didn't even work."

"Oh, I would've had a much harder time if I hadn't been specifically carrying you home after you passed out."

She raises her eyebrows.

"... I'm not seeing how that would have helped?"

"A vampire who is very good at shapeshifting can turn into mist. Turning back is much harder. But getting stuck isn't completely hopeless, because although clouds of mist don't have fangs, we can drink from someone who breathes us. I've done it often enough to notice that when someone breathes me I can move their body like it was mine. Got me past your wards and saved you awkward questions about being carried home and put to bed by a tall handsome stranger."

She opens her mouth, then when no sound comes out, she closes it. She stares at him.

He did what???

"If you need to go throw up some more, I can leave you to it," he offers cheerfully.

Avethana leans forward in her chair and buries her face in her hands. She's shaking.

"Could. Could you not throw how you've been stalking me in my face as I freak out about how you moved me around like a puppet," she requests, in a surprisingly even tone. "Let's. Let's keep the meltdowns divided."

"Well, too late now," he says, and he turns into a large grey owl and flies away.

She turns out to not need to go throw up some more, in favor of drawing herself a bath and scrubbing herself raw. She does not feel clean she does not feel clean he was in her and walked her around like he was her and he could just do it again whenever he liked and aaaaaa.

Luckily it's been a while since he bit her, so she has access to her magic again. She can heal the marks she'd scrubbed into her skin and magic away the redness around her eyes from all of the crying. In fact, she can add a sound dampener to her wards so she's allowed to cry without stifling herself. Yes, that seems like a good investment. Especially if he ever does end up biting her again. She - she doesn't want to be heard if he bites her again.

She has trouble making herself go out onto the balcony at the designated time, the night after. She stands frozen at the threshold to her balcony, fighting back the urge to run to get her bucket or break down into awful messy sobs on the floor again. He's - probably not going to actually show up tonight, right? Right? He hasn't once shown up two nights in a row - but she hardly has enough information to prove any sort of pattern, and damned if he's not hard to read, she still doesn't know what he wants. He hasn't bitten her again, but he offered to, and he hasn't said he won't, just that he'd like to keep her alive.

But she doesn't want to be ambushed on her way home from work. She doesn't want him to, to - possess a neighbor and walk in through her wards to get to her. She doesn't want to run and then find out that he got curious about her parents because she was so fun to talk to.

She forces herself out onto the balcony like she's forcing her hand onto a hot stove, with gritted teeth and tears half-shed and a blanket wrapped around herself, for good measure.

He does not show up that night.

The nights after that are easier. Not easy, but easier. She still brings the blanket, because it helps against the wind's chill and also it helps with everything else.

She decides that she should maybe just - ask him what he wants. And what he wants to do with her, so the lack of knowledge can stop wearing at her. At least if she knows he's going to bite her she can figure out coping mechanisms. Not knowing is worse.

It's another couple of days before he shows up again, swooping down as an owl to land on her balcony railing and then shifting to human form.

She snuggles a little further into her blanket. It is such a warm and snuggly blanket, and it has loyally held her during lots of emotional turmoil. Such a good blanket.

"Hello. Full marks, your entrance was not actually creepy."

He giggles.

Does she attempt to small talk...? No, she's sick of beating around the bush.

"What do you want?" she blurts.

"...eh?"

"Are you planning on eventually having seconds, whether I want you to bite me or not? Am I just such a novelty that I have ascended from being mere dinner? Do you show up on my balcony occasionally because watching me quietly freak out is the most fun you've had in decades? I don't - I don't know what you're planning to do or what you want, and it's really upsetting. I'm stuck in an awkward state of limbo where I have an all powerful vampire stalker and I have no idea what his motivations are."

"I'm not planning to bite you again unless you want me to. You're interesting to talk to when you're not freaking out, and it seems like the best thing I can do about that is leave you alone when you get upset."

"Oh," she breathes, relaxing a little. "And you're not - not going to - possess one of my neighbors and break into my apartment to get at me if I'm not out here one night, or ambush me on the way home from work to bite me to death if I stop being interesting? I can just - calm down without everything becoming terrible?"

"Yeah."

"Okay," agrees Avethana. "That makes everything a lot easier, then."

"Oh good!"

"I mean, granted, saying those words and then following through are different things, but you haven't gone back on your word yet."

If he ever did she would probably never trust him again! Not that she trusts him now, or anything. It would just be permanently barred to him for the rest of eternity.

"One of the nice things about being a vampire is that I almost never find myself in a position where it makes sense to bother lying to someone. I hate lying, it's so uncomfortable."

... That causes her to smile. Just a little.

"Well, thank you for not."

He smiles back.

"So now that I'm at less risk of collapsing into an unhappy heap, we can meander back to the small talk. Unless you have a thing you particularly wanted to talk about?"

Shrug. "Not especially."

"All right. Then, uh. How's your night been?"

He laughs. "It's been all right. How about yours?"

"The world is slightly less terrifying than I thought it was! So, pretty good, comparatively."

"Well, that's nice."

Nod.

"I've been able to mostly keep myself together, but I think a number of people have noticed that I've been a bit more..." She shrugs a little, and looks away. "Anxious, nervous. Maybe now I can calm down."

"You held together pretty well, considering."

"Thank you. That means a lot, actually. I thought I was doing well, but I didn't really have anything to compare against."

"Well, for what it's worth, I'm impressed."

"Even with all of the vomiting?"

He laughs. "Even so!"

Smile.

"Well, thank you. It's worth something."

Nod.

She considers him. She's tempted to ask him why did you do it, but then, she already knows the answer, doesn't she. Her faithful blanket can be pulled a little closer around her shoulders, to help with the shivering.

"S-so," she says, "you're approximately the only person I can actually talk to about magic projects, want to hear about them?"

"Sure."

"Did you actually figure out why I put magic on all of the water sources of the city?" she wonders, looking faintly smug.

"I'm sure you're about to tell me."

"I definitely am!" Yes, this was a good topic choice, she is much more comfortable talking about this. "So I'm sure you're vampirically immune to diseases because of course you are, but you have to have witnessed some outbreaks of them over the years. You know cholera?"

"Yes...?"

"Turns out, it spreads through water sources. Specifically, uh, feces in drinking water. Which is gross and it's that kind of thing that makes cities terrible, but I digress. I couldn't go so far to fix it at the source, but I could just make the pumps and wells that people get their water from clean it for them."

"Oh, clever!"

"Yes, I thought so!" she agrees. "Granted, I can't prove my findings without going, 'Magic is real and I'm a witch,' and I can't exactly travel around the world bopping every water source on the nose like a disobedient pet. It's a good first step, though. I told my father of my findings, and he'll believe me and hopefully be able to figure out a way to get someone to prove them without magic."

Snort.

"And my current project is trying to figure out if I can magically create vaccines that could be non-magically replicated. I think it's possible. I'd need to isolate whatever disease I'm trying to turn into a vaccine, drain its lifeforce, and then stop it from recovering so it's permanently weakened. The tricky part is making it so that when it propagates, the strain's also just as weak. Then I take the whole thing and give it to someone else to take credit for, because such is my lot in life."

"Oh, very clever. Careful though," he says. "Draining lifeforce is a tricky business. It's hard to avoid killing things that way until you've got practice, and if you drain something's whole life away and add it to yours, well, too much of that and you end up turning yourself into a vampire."

She considers, and nods very seriously.

"I wasn't planning to add it to mine, that sounds, uh. Gross. How much is too much?"

"When there's more death in you than life, you turn. And if any of it wasn't human, you'll have a bad time. There haven't been any in a while, but if you've heard old stories about horible demon creatures with six eyes and ninety teeth, those were vampires who ate animals. It messes up your shifting so you can't stay the right shape."

She makes a face.

"Charming. Well, thank you for the warning."

... Then she looks at him thoughtfully. "Do you have to add the lifeforce you manipulate to your own?"

"Who, me? Well, if I'm eating it, yes."

"So I probably couldn't wheedle a lifeforce draining expert into helping me with my project. Six eyes and ninety teeth sound like unpleasant things to have."

"It's possible to fix it eventually, but it's something I'd rather avoid, yeah."

"So I'm going to need to figure out a place to put it. If I accidentally add something to my own lifeforce, can I remove it later? ... It sounds really gross to have a dead thing just. Attached to me. Until the end of time."

"You sort of - digest it, over time - the trouble comes if you're taking in so much so fast that it overwhelms you."

Yep, that sure is a face she's making.

"No offense? But ew. I'd take it to stop measles, but ew."

Giggle.

"There are other logistical problems to worry about, anyway. I could get infected with measles and be fine, but that doesn't justify growing a strain of it in my apartment. Other people live here and I don't want to infect them. Plus if I had anyone over it'd get me some, ah. Some looks. My plan was to be the doctor's assistant for a while to gather samples of all of the possible diseases that could use some vaccines, then go move out somewhere away from people for magically scientific experimentation."

That last one depends a little on whomever she ends up marrying. If she ends up marrying, anyway. The life of a spinster isn't appealing, but it's more appealing than subsuming herself to her spouse's desires. She has things to do.

"What sort of looks do you get for keeping deadly diseases in your house?"

"I'm not precisely sure, I haven't kept any deadly diseases in my house," she says, amused. "But some of the apparati for growing deadly diseases would be alarming, and likely smell awful besides. At the very least, it'd probably get me evicted, and if I'm very unlucky, thrown into an insane asylum for good measure."

"Can't have that."

"It'd be an awful waste," she agrees. "And I imagine I'd get very bored."

"Until I broke you out, anyway."

She tilts her head.

"You'd break me out?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

"It'd probably be at least a little annoying, and you don't have any reason to care?"

"...don't I?"

"... I mean, you'd know better than I, I just didn't think I'd made myself that interesting."

"There aren't so many people in the world I enjoy talking to that I'd let one be drugged and imprisoned to save myself the hassle of rescuing her!"

"Well, all right. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"... I guess I can probably relax a bit on staying secret, then. Not, ah. 'Hello world I am a witch,' but I don't have to stop sneakily healing people in fear of vampires?"

"Yeah. I'd notice, if another vampire showed up."

Smile. "All right. I hadn't been confronted with anyone that was dying that I could save, so I hadn't been tempted, but it's good to know that I won't have to actually stop."

He smiles.

He has a nice smile. For a vampire. For the vampire that bit her. ... That thought causes her to drop her eyes and shiver a little in her blanket. It seems wrong for the vampire that bit her to have a nice smile.

"So," she says, forging on despite her complicated feelings, "does that mean you'll be annoyed if I move away?"

"Well, maybe a little. But I don't actually live in this city to begin with. D'you know the haunted castle in the woods to the north?"

"Is it haunted by you?"

"It is!"

"Well I suppose the trek isn't very long when you're fog." She fidgets thoughtfully with the edge of her blanket. "... What does 'maybe a little annoyed' translate to?"

"I'd miss you. I wouldn't try to drag you back or anything, if that's what you're asking."

"That was basically what I was wondering, yep. You'd... miss me," she says, smiling a little. Sounding somewhat surprised. "All right."

He smiles back.

"Well, know a good place nearby where I can magically experiment on deadly diseases?"

"...my castle, maybe?"

"Uh." Blink. "I mean, maybe? It'd be nice and out of the way, and you wouldn't get sick, but that's very, uh. Living with just you in the middle of the woods."

"Nobody around to give you funny looks!"

"Well, no. I'll, um, I'll think about it? Thank you for the offer, anyway."

She looks like she is way too intimidated by him to live with him in the middle of the woods.

He laughs.

"It wouldn't be anytime soon, anyway. I still have a few more samples of diseases to collect, and I expect that once I quit my job I'll have trouble ever finding a replacement."

"Hmm?"

"I'm a young, unmarried woman. To many people I'm some mix of silly and incompetent and doing the wrong thing. To some degree the longer I stay unmarried, the more people wonder, 'well, what's wrong with you?' Or, if they're kinder than that, would refuse to hire me so that I can instead go focus on the one thing that's supposed to matter. For my own good, of course. Because of course I don't know what's good for me, do I?"

This seems to be a bit of a sore point for her.

"Well, that's stupid."

She barks a little laugh.

"Yes."

"One of my favourite things about being a vampire is that I never have to deal with people having opinions at me if I don't feel like it!"

"Must be nice," she says, a little wistfully. "I have to. And I have to care, too. If I let my reputation fall to pieces most of my credibility goes with it. After all, if I fail at a woman's basic duty, how can I be trusted with anything else?"

"You sure you don't want to run away and live in a castle in the woods researching rare diseases?" he jokes.

Avethana snorts and shakes her head.

He giggles.

"I don't even know your name," she points out.

"Tasfal."

She stands, and curtsies politely.

"Avethana. Though you probably knew that already."

His name's odd and foreign, but she supposes that makes sense. She has no idea how old he is, and it's not like he needed to stay where he was born and named once a vampire. He could just go anywhere. ... She feels a faint stab of jealousy, and ignores it.

"I'd heard, yeah."

Snort.

"How long have you been watching me, anyway?"

"Oh, not all that long. A couple of weeks before we met."

'Before we met,' he says, like they met at the market or at the park, and not in an alleyway with his teeth on her neck -

"Ah. Making sure you knew my schedule, or just. Waiting for the moment when no one would notice me gone? I assume it didn't take all that long to figure out I was a witch once you knew to look at me."

"I wanted to be sure we wouldn't be interrupted."

She shivers. She's so glad she brought this blanket, that was such a great idea.

"So you picked an alleyway? Anyone - anyone could have walked through it and seen - us."

"In a dead end between two abandoned buildings? Unlikely. And I would've heard them coming."

"I suppose I-I would have liked being interrupted even less than. Than what happened."

She would have hated anyone seeing her like that. Kind of hates that he saw her like that, but, well. That had been his goal. And no one that could have just happened by would have been able to save her.

"I imagine most people would."

"You know, it's kind of funny. I don't know if it's good or bad, that I can't talk about it and that no one can really know. On one hand, I can just. Pretend it didn't happen, pretend it's all fine, go about my life as if it had been a dream. And on the other hand I have no one to talk to, there's an entire event in my life I just can't acknowledge in the light of day. Like I'm lying to all the world and myself besides."

"Oh, I'd hate that," he says. "The lying thing."

"It's awful," she agrees. "Like people are seeing me with pieces missing. Like I have to lie by omission in order for them to look at me the right way, because if I didn't, they - they wouldn't understand? They'd look at me with pity or horror or like I'm broken and I'm - I'm not."

"Yeah."

"It's very - something, that you're really the only person I can talk about this to," she points out, with a little laugh.

Snort. "Well, I'm hardly about to judge you for it."

"I'd be really annoyed with you if you did."

"With very good reason!"

She smiles at him, then tilts her head and looks at him strangely.

"... You're not what I expected you to be," she says, sounding a little surprised.

"Oh?"

"You're... reasonable? You haven't at any point gone, 'Oh, yeah, biting you was totally justified and morally sound.' You're surprisingly pleasant to talk to?"

"Very few of the things I've done in my life have been justified or morally sound."

"I'm surprised that you'd admit it! I don't disagree, just. Usually people think they have a right to do terrible things or they're justified in doing them in some way."

"When I was younger I used to think it was - not just morally sound, but morally necessary - and then I noticed that that's not how most people define justice, and I have more fun if I do what I want instead of what I feel like I should, and now I'm a much nicer person."

"Huh. That's interesting." She looks at him thoughtfully, like a woman that's had an unsolved puzzle placed in front of her and she's being irresistibly drawn to attempt to solve it.

"Hmm?"

"I'm wondering if there's a way for what you want to be shaped like something that isn't objectively awful."

"What do you mean?"

"Like - uh, consensually biting people without killing them for food, and sourcing your kills for power elsewhere. Or just stopping, but I'm guessing you don't want to do that?"

"...what do you mean, 'elsewhere'? Elsewhere from what? I can't kill someone for power without also eating them and I have no idea why you'd want me to if I could."

"Like, uh - what was my list earlier - mercy kills for people that want them, vampire vigilantism, maybe setting up to do executions for a government but that sounds like more work and more people than you'd ever want to put up with? Instead of just randomly killing innocent people that don't want to die."

"You're right, that does sound like a lot of work."

She shrugs, a little sadly.

"Well, it was an idea."

"Biting people who like it sounds nice but it seems like they'd be hard to find."

"I - could see it having some appeal to some people," she says, diplomatically, suddenly very interested in the details on her shoes. "But there aren't very many people that know about vampires that could be asked."

"Yeah."

She squirms a little in her chair, uncomfortable.

"And just - opening with biting them isn't a great introduction," she continues to her shoes.

"Evidently not."

"I can actually get power without technically killing anyone - well, depending on the definition of 'anyone' - if I bite someone who's pregnant," he mentions. "But, again, meeting people who'd like that seems hard to arrange."

She opens her mouth, then closes it. After a pause:

"... I've ever met a woman that was pregnant and would have liked to stop," she points out, softly. "So maybe that one would be more, more viable. With a person to help arrange it."

"Well, if you meet another one, I wouldn't mind being introduced."

"All right," she agrees, nodding.

"... Mm?"

"I don't like that I hurt you but if I hadn't done it we wouldn't have met and that... doesn't seem better."

"Oh," she says, blinking. She - doesn't know what to say to that, actually. It's something, that he doesn't like that he hurt her. It's more than she'd ever thought she'd get from him.

"Okay," she adds, nodding a little. "Thank you. For um - not liking that you hurt me."

Snort. "You're welcome."

"It means something to me, to know that, um. That you don't like seeing me hurting and wish you'd met me in a - a better way," she clarifies, a little awkwardly.

"It just... seems objectively kind of unimpressive, you know?"

"I guess. But I wasn't expecting to ever get an apology. Or - or anything that even resembled an apology. I wasn't expecting you to regret having - done that to me at all, in any way. So it's something I didn't have before, that you don't like that you hurt me."

"Well. I'm glad it helps."

Smile, nod.

"Yeah. ... I'm still a little astonished that you like me this much, though, I haven't even done anything all that impressive yet?"

"...what do you mean?"

"I mean, I haven't been all that charming? Unless you like my efforts into preserving human life, that's admittedly kind of impressive."

"I am honestly baffled by the suggestion that you haven't been charming."

"Oh. Well, all right. I haven't been trying to be charming?"

"I imagine not!"

"Just me being myself is charming enough for you?"

"Seems like it!"

"Well. Okay."

She smiles back.

"I should probably go to bed. It's kind of late, and I have work tomorrow. To your shock, I know."

Snicker. "I'll know something's wrong if I ever catch you taking another day off," he agrees. "Goodnight."

And he turns into an owl and wings away into the night.

"Goodnight," she says.

She goes to bed.

The night after, she's not out on her balcony at the designated meeting time. Just to prove that she can. That her schedule is not at the mercy of the vampire, that she doesn't need to be afraid of him and tiptoe around him in order to protect herself. That she can just... take a night off, and it'll be fine. Everything will not come crashing down and he will not break into her home in the middle of the night to bite her. She curls up in bed with a book and she slowly coaxes away her anxiety and does her best to have a night where she does not think about the vampire. It doesn't quite succeed, but she still manages a nice night that's largely unrelated to vampires.

Nothing comes crashing down and the vampire does not break into her home in the middle of the night to bite her.

He absolutely doesn't! Her home remains uninvaded.

Excellent.

It turns out to be a good thing that she got a nice night to herself to rest, because the following day is busy. Usually, Doctor Relgam is called on for singular patients, or occasionally for multiple members of the same family with the same affliction. It's woefully inefficient, to go to every single patient's house to personally treat them, and to have every physician do the same, but sick people aren't the best at moving to places. And on their own, they don't usually congregate in one place. This means Avethana's days will vary wildly; some days she's trailing after Relgam around half the city, exhausted and wanting nothing more than to go home to rest. Other days she barely leaves his office and spends most of the day doing paperwork and organizing everything that comes within her reach to stave off boredom.

This day is a break from the norm. Most of an estate's staff have come down with something, and so for once, there are a lot of sick people all located in one convenient location. It's this sort of thing where she really earns her paycheck. Relgam is brilliant and ultimately good at his job, but he isn't very good at, well. Having priorities, or keeping a lot of information straight, or staying organized. Fortunately for him, he has Avethana as his assistant, and she's pretty good at all of those things.

The trick of it is to keep him from getting distracted. It's not a matter of trying to get him to listen to her; he's not unwilling to, and in fact, he's appreciative of her competence and initiative. He's aware of the benefits having a competent assistant gets him, and he's not likely to fire her anytime soon, even if she did get bossy. However, it'd be disrespectful to lead him around like an overexcited puppy that's chasing after every stray smell, and patients that watch a physician get ordered around by his assistant would be less inclined to hire him. So instead, it's about streamlining everything. Keeping everything that he might need within easy reach, so he doesn't get tempted down tangents that'll waste everyone's time. Making sure that all of the things he's not very good at are kept away from him. If she hands him the next thing for him to do with no distracting complications that could lead him down a tangent, that'll just be that. There will be no tangent to warn him away from.

She efficiently gathers information from all sick patients of when they first grew ill, their symptoms, and how much the illness has progressed. She keeps track of which members of the staff are worst off and gently steers Relgam to them first. She keeps a list of the drugs and herbs they have on hand, and which things are needed and which things have been used, and quietly informs him when it might be wiser to switch to a different prescribed remedy. It's more work than usual, but it's not any more difficult than it usually is. She just has more to keep track of, more to do, but she's done it all before. It's long become second nature to put on a polite smile and deferential air while gently steering her boss with expert efficiency. All she has to do is all of the little things that he doesn't want to, and hand them to him when appropriate.

For an estate's staff, this is an unusually foreign bunch. There are several women with the white-blonde hair common in the northern regions of the main continent, and a handful more who speak Lothannic with noticeable accents.

The man of the house comes by around midafternoon to check on his people. He looks an ambiguous thirty or thirty-five, with a smooth youthful face, a grave confident bearing, and a touch of premature grey in his short brown hair. He keeps out of the way, watching doctor and assistant thoughtfully.

There are opinions she could form about a man that hires vulnerable women, but she's at work and therefore it's often inconvenient to have opinions about things. They seem like they're treated well, and they're not all pretty in a way that suggests he's getting something more out of hiring them than a workforce that has nowhere else to go. She'll choose to think the best of him, with the information she has. He's being charitable, surely. She has learned how to keep potential kindling away from her temper.

When he enters, she curtsies politely, then returns to her duties. Soon enough, they're just about done. She flits around, wrapping up all possible orders of business here; making sure that they're leaving enough cough syrup to handle the lingering sore throats and coughing, that she's recorded all information the doctor might need in the future, checking for anyone that might be sick but isn't displaying it overtly and heading it off before Doctor Relgam leaves, and then at last, retrieving the doctor's coat. He's in the habit of forgetting it.

Mr. Sialtas sees them out personally, thanking them for their time and congratulating them on their good work.

Dr. Relgam thanks him sincerely, Avethana curtsies politely again, and away they go.

She doesn't require another day off from sitting on the balcony. Here she is, on the balcony, at the appropriate meeting time. That night, then two nights after.

And here is an owl, and shortly afterward a vampire.

"Hello," she says pleasantly, closing her book.

"Hello! How have you been?"

"I've been all right. Earned my keep at work, but I usually do that. You?"

"Tinkered with some of the magic in my castle. Flew through a thunderstorm because I could."

"What's flying through a thunderstorm like?"

"Exciting!"

"I suppose that follows. And - what magic did you tinker with in your castle? I have no idea how vampire magic works, is it basically like being a witch except also you eat people?"

"Mm, we can do most of the same things as living people, the vampire magic that's vampires-only is mostly just eating people and shapeshifting. But we... come at it from a slightly different angle, I suppose? I can always tell dead magic from living the moment I touch it."

"Huh. Can you show me an example of dead magic? Now I'm curious."

"Sure."

He holds out his hand and makes a little ball of light float above it.

There is something - different - about the spell. A living witch's magic is made from her own lifeforce; Tasfal's little light spell is made from his lifeforce, and it's - well, not alive. The light itself looks perfectly ordinary, but the energy underlying it is... cold. Dead.

"Huh. Yeah, I see what you mean, that's a really obvious difference. And if I accidentally ate the lifeforce of something, it'd be like... that?"

He releases the spell; the light fades.

"Not quite! It looks different when you have life and death mixed. But yes, that's approximately what you get. And if you ever watch something's lifeforce when it dies, really pay attention the whole way through, you'll see it gets even deader than this before it fades away completely."

"I think I might not be so interested in the phenomenon to watch that happen," she says, a little grossed out. "But it's interesting, anyway. That lifeforce dies, not just - dissipates."

"Well, vampires are essentially made of dead lifeforce that hasn't dissipated yet. It's why we need to eat people - it lets us borrow enough aliveness to keep going a little longer. When we starve, we fade like any other dead thing."

"Hm. So if something's in the middle of dying, could I shove living lifeforce at it and get a vampire? ... I don't want to test that, but as a thought experiment, it's interesting."

"It's possible! But I bet if the dying thing was not a person you'd end up with a problem on your hands."

"Uh. What kind of problem?"

"The first few days after waking up as a vampire are... a little rough. I'd expect a vampire dog, or whatever, to just go mad and try to eat everything in sight. And very new vampires normally can't shapeshift hardly at all, but if a vampire animal had the same problems as a vampire who eats animals... yeah that could get messy."

Wince. "Well. I extra special don't want to test that, then. How are the first few days as a vampire rough?"

"You start out very, very hungry, almost on the edge of starvation."

"Ah. Not sated until you eat someone?"

"I've heard it's possible to avoid killing anyone, but... another thing about being a vampire is that the more people you've killed and eaten, the longer it takes you to lose that bit of borrowed life after a meal. So if you never kill, you're always just a few days away from dying."

"Charming," she says, sounding anything but charmed. "... How long does it take you to lose that bit of borrowed life?"

"Me personally? I haven't let myself get that close to starving in a while, but the last time I went a long time without eating it was a few months and I was only just starting to really feel it. Maybe ten or twenty years ago."

She nods, pensively.

... Yeah okay she guesses she'll ask. Why not. He finds her charming for reasons she doesn't understand, she's handicapping herself if she doesn't act like herself, so:

"Would you ever consider giving it up? Killing people, I mean?"

"...I'd take some convincing. It's... you're a witch; you can make yourself more powerful just by doing more magic. The only way I get more powerful is by killing people and taking their lifeforce to add to my own. And I like being powerful, I like the convenience of being able to arrange my life how I like it through magic, I like the security of knowing there's probably no one in the world who could take me in a fair fight and not many who could do it any other way. If I don't keep growing, eventually I lose that."

"... If you stuck to just... providing a service for women that wanted to stop being pregnant, and maybe the occasional mercy-kill? Would that be enough?"

"...Maybe. I don't take more than about one life a month, they're not worth as much if they come any faster than that."

"So it'd need to approximately be that regular to make up for it. And not otherwise intolerable for you."

He nods.

Pensively, she nods back. Looking not particularly hopeful about her ability to actually make this happen.

Yeah.

"So your killing schedule means that you don't ever need to have a - a non-murderous snack?"

"Not in the sense of being in danger of starving if I don't. But it's not comfortable to go a long while without so much as a nibble, even if it won't kill me. Why?"

She hesitates, nervously fidgeting with the button on one of her sleeves.

"... It - it helps me come to terms with - with how you introduced yourself if there was more to it than, than simply wanting to see me like that. The idea of being a - a meal instead of a toy. I-I don't like either, but I hate one more than I hate the other."

"Well. It was - the thing I do when I'm planning to eat someone, if I'm not in a hurry. And I do it that way partly for fun and partly because it's better to have - 'snacks' - in between."

Avethana shivers, then nods, jerkily.

"I think I'll turn in for the night, then. It's getting kind of late."

It is much earlier than the last time she bid him goodbye, but it's not very hard to see why that's different for tonight.

"Goodnight."

He owls away.

"Goodnight."

She takes a few nights off from balcony sitting to process, and also to also not have part of her life revolve around the vampire that bit her for a little while. He - kills a lot of people. One person dead a month, one or two as - as snacks between them - and how old is he? That's a lot of people. Not as many as it could be, she knows how many people have died from other things, but it's an awfully high body count to assign to one person in order to live in comfort for eternity.

Blind terror and self preservation instincts are no longer shoving her out onto the balcony every night. Now it's just whether or not she wants to talk to the monster who violated her and who regularly and remorselessly kills people for power. He's - less bad than he could have been, but he's not good. She doesn't know what to feel about him, and she doesn't know what to do with him. She's probably a good influence on him - at the very least, he now gets to experience the negative consequences of his actions in a way that he clearly cares about - but she's not entirely sure if that's enough to persuade her to go have a chat with him. Inertia produced the last meeting, but she's not a fan of letting inertia govern her life. She's not sure. It's fascinating to talk to him, sometimes, except for when it's awful and she wants to curl up into a ball and remove herself from the world.

A few days later, she hasn't yet decided what she'd like to do, but the world spins on regardless. Doctor Relgam returns to Mr. Sialtas's house to check on the status of his abundant patients, and Avethana goes with him.

Mr. Sialtas is busier today, but looks in on them a few times over the course of their visit.

She barely notices; she has more important things to worry about. Good for him, for caring about the welfare of the people that work for him.

His staff are recovering well. A few of them need more treatment, in the form of a prescription of drugs or herbs or bed rest. For the most part, though, everyone's doing much better. They shouldn't need to come back. She keeps careful records in case they do, makes a note of who should be watched for worsening symptoms, and makes a list of under what circumstances they should call Relgam back.

Soon enough, their job is complete, and they depart.

For a few days, she still doesn't venture out onto her balcony. A few times she considers it, but decides against for a number of minor reasons that aren't really why she's not doing it. It's too rainy, she doesn't want to deal with the smell, her feet hurt from all of the walking of the day, so on. Really, she's reassuring herself that she doesn't have to adhere to his schedule. Her life is her own.

During your recent visits to my estate, I found that I admired your work very much. You have a gift for organization that surpasses the most accomplished scholars I have known, and a practical efficiency that would be the envy of any manager.

If you wish, you are welcome to return for dinner on an evening of your choosing. My housekeeper, already much improved, wishes to thank you as soon as she is able.

Sincerely and respectfully yours,
Karthian Sialtas

Oh, goodness. She actually needs a minute to remember exactly who he is, blinking at the flowers and note in confusion, then the information clicks. That's not a direction she expected to get an offer from.

As a courting overture, this really isn't a bad one. Poor thing must have written and rewritten that second sentence perhaps a dozen times over, to avoid coming on too strong to a stranger, while still expressing the things he wanted to say. He chose well, too. Of the things he could have said, the ones he did are - flattering. She's admittedly a bit of a sucker for compliments to her efficiency and organization. The flowers are a bit too expensive for her taste, they make her feel a bit like he's trying to either buy her or impress upon her that she's damned lucky to catch the attention of someone so well off, but the arrangement is approximately as painstakingly well chosen as the phrasing. She's not an expert in the language of flowers (the entire thing seems a little silly, to her) but she's pretty sure this translates to something like 'respect, admiration from afar,' or - something. She'll go look it up, later, to be sure. Either way, she gets the impression that he spent far, far too much time thinking about this, and that he's very concerned with not scaring her off.

... Yeah, all right. The major difference in social status makes her kind of nervous, and she has yet to actually hold a conversation with him, but she'll give him a chance. If he's what he seems to be, he seems - sweet. But he might not be what he seems to be, and while his assurances of his housekeeper's presence are soothing, she is not the sort of person to blindly trust him to handle it. She is a young, unmarried lady, and she is not going to be going to a strange man's house alone if she has anything to say about it. Even if nothing happened, even if she could defend herself with magic if he tried something untoward, it'd imply the wrong sorts of things about her character.

Avethana arranges to have tea with an elderly, widowed neighbor. The old woman's apartment is a depressing thing, all carefully arranged trinkets that haven't been touched in years and faint smells of outdated perfume and loneliness, but the woman herself is sweet enough. She'd probably quite like to get out of her apartment and go be personally involved in guarding a young lady's honor. As Avethana suspected, she's delighted.

With that handled, she picks a date, and carefully pens a polite reply to the flowers. She only agonizes over it a little. While it's cute that he went to the trouble, she'd rather not give the impression that she'll just fling herself at him. Maybe some other girls might, but she needs a bit more than one cute letter, some flowers, and a large and expensive estate. She has plans beyond marriage and motherhood.

Either way, this is enough in her life to make her feel like it might be safe to have a talk with a vampire without worrying about her life revolving around him, so: balcony!

Owl!

"Hello," she says, smiling a little. "You know, I'm kind of surprised that you haven't tried out other entrances. Decided to give up being creepy?"

"Birds are good for getting around without attracting attention, and the owl's my favourite. And I didn't think you'd appreciate more mist."

She blinks.

"... No. I wouldn't," she agrees, quietly. "Thank you."

Well, that's. Hard to start a conversation after, isn't it. She'll just. Try her best, won't she.

"So, um. Why is owl your favorite?"

"Flies very quietly. And such lovely soft feathers!"

"I didn't know owls were soft. That's - cute."

Giggle.

"What's it like being other things? Are there other preferred shapeshifting forms?"

"I've tried lots of things but owls are still my favourite. Cats are nice too, but they can't fly, so they're not nearly as useful."

"No, I imagine not. Shapeshifting must be so fun, though."

"It is!"

"What's fun about being a cat? Being comfortable anywhere and being part liquid?"

He laughs. "Yeah, more or less. And the way they can move is really something. Vampires are supernaturally graceful all the time anyway, but for feeling like you're supernaturally graceful, there's nothing better than being a cat."

She smiles fondly. "No, I suppose there wouldn't be. Even as they flail and flip over backwards they still manage to look like they'd meant to do that. I miss having a cat around."

"Well, I could turn into one if you like, but somehow I doubt it'd be the same."

"No, not quite. It'd be a bit weird to, say, pet you. Knowing that you're a person."

"Just a little," he agrees.

"I've thought about adopting a stray cat, but I don't think my apartment is really large enough for one. And if I let it out to wander the city, I'm not sure it'd come back safely. Injuries and diseases I could fix without a problem, but if it just never came back one day..." She shrugs, sad. "I'd be heartbroken."

He nods.

"But, um, anyway," she says, suddenly self-conscious about her personal tangent. "How goes the day to day life of being a vampire?"

"I've been trying to figure out a more convenient way to light my castle. The problem is that I have to know what something's made of pretty thoroughly in order to make it with magic, and I definitely can't be bothered to go out and buy lamps like a normal person, so I've been lazily relying on conjured candles for centuries because they're so simple, but ever since the invention of the gaslamp I've wanted something more like those."

"Huh. Is it the aesthetic appeal, trying something new, or being sick of dripping wax everywhere? ... Do conjured candles drip wax everywhere, I suppose I wouldn't know."

"They drip much less wax than most candles but still more than I'd like. And I have to put more work into doing things like make them light when there's someone nearby and go out when there isn't. Something more permanent and centralized would be much easier to enchant. Maybe it's time to look into glowing rocks again... last time I tried to light my castle just using magical lights, it turned out to be vastly more complicated and difficult than it had any right to be, and I quit in frustration after a few months, but I was barely three hundred at the time and it seems plausible that I've learned a thing or two since."

... She giggles, just a bit. Hearing stories about his interior decorating is fun.

"I see. For context, how old are you now?"

"Eight hundred!"

"Aha. Yes, it's plausible that you have learned a thing or two since then. But then, I also exist, and can walk around in the daytime and go to markets when they're open and everything. Do you want someone else to go to a place that specializes in maintaining and installing them, and ask for an explanation?"

"That would be lovely!"

"All right. I'll see what I can do, then."

"Thank you!"

"You're welcome. Anything else you might like me to investigate in the light of day for you?"

"I'll let you know if I think of anything."

"All right," she agrees, nodding. "... Has watching modern technology evolve over the centuries been fun?"

"Yes!"

She smiles. "I want to see what else we'll end up inventing; the march of progress doesn't seem like it's slowing down anytime soon."

"Maybe you'll stick around long enough to find out. I've heard rumours that it's possible to achieve immortality with living magic, though the rumours didn't have any guesses about how you'd do it."

"Maybe I will. We'll see. What sorts of rumors were they?"

"The 'I ate someone who can't have gotten that powerful in a single human lifespan' kind. So not ultimate immortality."

"Ah, well. All right then. I do have more freedom to experiment, anyway, which is definitely not nothing."

He smiles.

"Reassurance that I won't be eaten by a vampire is pretty handy! To your shock and surprise, I know."

Giggle.

"It's such a - a pity that magic can't just be taught to everyone," she sighs. "It'd put Doctor Relgam out of a job, but it's such an - an atrocious waste of human life."

"Hard to do anything about it, though. Even I can't save everyone from being eaten by vampires."