At the bar, there sits a girl with a long copper-colored braid, slight and beautifully-complected and wearing khakis and an oversized pullover. Next to her is an enormous man, darker and looking at her (worshipfully) and the rest of their surroundings (suspiciously), wearing a brown uniform that is held on entirely via the cunning application of magnets. She has a glass of something fizzy and gold and he's got a Coke in its can.
"Yes. Vampire memories are crisper and more intense and overrode them. Two of the victims looked similar enough to vampires included in the payload who'd had few enough vampire memories to fit in a human brain that they recognized themselves as those dead vampires. The others were only - lost, but since we couldn't get them back as they'd been we got their families' permission to use them for more 'resurrections'."
"This was before Mama took over. She was doing it in self-defense, arguably. And Mama had to pardon a lot of things, many much worse, to have more than a handful of vampires working for her after she did take over. Addy works for the Golden Empire now."
"How do your witches work, anyway? The ones I'm used to are a - separate species, only female."
"In my world 'witch' means someone who is born with, or acquires after turning into a vampire, a specialized magical power. Mine is telling the truth."
"A surprisingly useful and dangerous power. Nice job. I'd say something about 'Don't kill people with your mind' but honestly, you - don't seem the type. Plus, you're Isabella's daughter, I imagine she has that covered."
"I have never personally killed anyone with my mind, although I came close once. Someone found a volunteer for a deliberate resurrection but I couldn't go through with it. Addy did it. I haven't been asked since. Mama did most of my upbringing, but she's probably less a factor in how I am than you're thinking, because when I was five, a witch whose power is to manipulate interpersonal relationships got me."
"He would offer to hug you," says Vern, "if he thought it would at all help."
Elspeth shrugs. "That was a long time ago, and age five is near maturity for half-vampires, of which I am one. But it changed things between me and Mama considerably, and I also spent most of my life up until then believing my dad was dead only to find him alive with the relationship-manipulating witch having cut him from everyone except Mama too. And most of the memories in my head aren't mine."
"Okay," says Adarin, finally recovering enough to have words again. "There are - alts. Of people. Right? What's the name of the - relationship-manipulating witch, what should I watch out for, that's - I - if your problems were at all addressable, I'd do so but I genuinely can't think of anything that would be helpful. So I want to prevent that from happening to someone else."
"Her name was Chelsea Dawning. She looked like -" A looking-like appears helpfully, including both human and vampire appearances.
He does not look like he wants to kill her. Even disgusted with her, as he is.
"I have a first-person understanding of what she was like but it's not something I can diagnose out of a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. I suspect she could be kept alive and mostly harmless without unduly torturing her if you put her in contact with a number of people who she was allowed to use her powers on and didn't make her interact with anyone else."
"I - see. Thank you." Pause. "... I'm pretty sure you don't want, or need my pity, but if there is genuinely anything I can do to help, let me know."
"I've rebuilt to a stable and comfortable position. Dad let Addy borrowing Chelsea's power put 'back' some of what was taken," she adds.
Vern noses his hand and he pets her, soothingly. Pet, pet, pet.
"In the interest of fairness - is there anything you'd like to know about me?"
"I'm more curious about your version of Mama, although if she likes you you're probably interesting in your own right too."
Adarin snickers. "Thanks - I'll tell you about my version of your mother, though, I'm not likely to get snippy because I'm not interesting enough. Where would you like me to start?"
"She's nineteen, I think. She's a witch, and for her that puts her in a different sort of society than humans. She calls them - us? - 'mortals,' actually. She'll live until she's killed, or dies of loneliness or boredom. When I met her, she was apprenticed to another witch, but she terminated it after she gained an objective truth-teller."
"I'm inclined to agree," says Adarin, wryly. "And she's working on immortality, with the truth-teller, so I think she'll manage it. And that takes care of loneliness, too."
"He's already going to naturally live to be at least five hundred," snorts Vern.
"My mama's immune to mental magic, so I don't have her memories. But I do have my dad's up to the last point at which he touched the memory-copier, and that's my source of most of what I know about her when she wasn't already married. It makes it hard to come up with predictions about how I think she'd interact with you."