The girl at the bar looks over her shoulder when he opens the door the first time and waves.

"I'm from an Earth."

"... There are multiple?"

"This bar is an interdimensional hub. There's plenty of Earths. Mine has vampires and it's currently the year 2029. What's yours like?"

"My world doesn't have those," says Elspeth. "Hello to you too."

"I'm Vernaia, it's nice to meet you. I'm his magic talking bird soul. I'm kind of new to existing, but that's okay, I'm coping."

"I'm Adarin," clarifies Adarin. "Princess of - what, exactly?"

"The Golden Empire. My Earth has a vampire shadow government that my mother is Empress of."

"It is since she usurped it!"

"Oh, well. Then, good for her."

"So what do you do, Adarin?"

"Sounds like fun. What're you going to do with it?"

"She is going to research and then implement immortality, I am going to take cues from Earth technology and use it to help equalize non-mages and get mages to be less - completely terrible to them."

"Cool. My mama's working on slowly turning the entire human population into vampires for immortality. I handle that department myself, actually."

"... Isabella will probably want to know that. Immediately. Are there pros and cons to being a vampire? Besides immortality and - my translation's saying something about drinking blood? That sounds messy."

"Huh, Isabella's my mama's name, too... There are lots of pros and cons. It's all consensual and vampires aren't allowed to eat humans anymore. There's pamphlets. Do you want to see them?"

"I am." Elspeth tilts her head. "Uh, she's very, very married, to my dad."

"Alts happen sometimes in different dimensions. This is the first time I've run into someone claiming to know one of Mama, though."

"I have a mirror to her, I can go get it and contact her. It would let you talk to her."

"That'd be interesting, although I don't actually know how a Mama besides mine would react to me!"

"I don't see her reacting badly," he muses. "... I think."

"My dad isn't a you," Elspeth adds.

"Would you rather not talk about that?"

"What do you think?" Elspeth asks Vern.

"Well," says Vern, "I think you've already figured out how he feels about his Isabella."

"It's a little obvious. Does she know?"

Elspeth giggles. "My parents didn't kiss for ages because she was still human and they were both worried it would be dangerous. This is probably different."

"A bit. She's being patient with him, though, and he's working on it."

"I wonder if you even have one of my father or if he just died in 1918 without any vampires around to save him?" muses Elspeth. She turns the page in the pamphlet. She takes after her dad a bit, mostly in the hair. He looks severe and vampiric and his picture is captioned Emperor Consort Edward Anthony Masen Cullen.

"Well, if he doesn't look familiar, then he's probably not relevantly present."

"I can check for him, anyway. Scrying's easy," says Adarin. "Do you want me to check?"

"Sure. Although I very much doubt I'll get along with an alt of Dad."

"... Why's that?"

"Dad is very good to his people. Alternate-universe daughter is not likely to be close enough to count."

"Ah. That's - unfortunate. You seem very nice. A bit - strange for me, considering the circumstances, but there is exactly zero reason to treat you badly."

"Thank you. It's not so much that Dad mistreats people. Mama wouldn't let him get away with it. He is merely very obvious about not caring, when he doesn't. It's even a good thing in some ways. He reads minds, and can't turn it off, and the only reason Mama was ever able to get over that is because he does not care about the overwhelming majority of those thoughts - the people whose thoughts he cares about are close to him and make our own arrangements about when to be in range. I don't mind a bit, of course. I've got the reverse magic, more or less."

"... Reads minds. Charming. I think I'll pass on being in mind-reading range."

"That's reasonable," agrees Elspeth.

"Isabella is going to want to have a long, extended conversation with you."

"I bet. Especially if you're from a few years behind us."

"Yes. I actually want to have a long, extended conversation with you, but it feels rude to leave her out. If I leave the bar, will it still be here?"

"Not if you let the door close."

"I'm not sure if she's strong enough to hold it open. Sometimes the door doesn't like it when people try to - game the system."

"... Do you want to moonlight as a doorstop?"

"I can't hold the door for you because I'm not from your world. If I'm the only person touching it it'll go to my world."

"I don't know if that will work either. Space in Milliways is - strange. I am not sure it's even safe to try."

"Is this plane built to be unhelpful?" sighs Vern.

"It's built to be... better than nothing, I think. Sometimes a lot better, but 'nothing' is definitely the baseline."

"Hmm. Then - it would be smart if we had a long extended conversation with you, then try to get Isabella, because apparently various clever solutions might go wrong?"

"Probably, yes."

"There's not really management, there's just Bar."

"... Is there a person named Bar, here?"

"Yes." Elspeth taps the bar. "She is the bar. You can talk to her, if you like. She'll give you a free drink since it's your first time here."

Adarin peers at the bar. "Hello," he says, cautiously.

Hello, says a napkin that spontaneously appears.

Why, thank you. First drink is free, entices the napkin. I have everything.

"Everything? That doesn't happen to include an elixir of life that is easily reproducible and grants immortality with no downsides, does it?"

Alas, no, apologizes the bar. My selection of magical items is extremely limited, principally to things that are only magically recreational.

How about a peach bubble tea? suggests the bar.

"Sure, let's go with that."

"Sure. It could get very long depending on how much you want to know, though. I contain the offloaded memories of an extremely large number of people, many very long-lived."

"... That is very useful! But, how did you get those?"

"There's a witch whose magic is to copy the powers of others when she touches them. She touched someone whose power was to collect every memory from everyone he touched, and got all of his, and then she took my power, and blasted everyone in range with the entire payload, including me."

"That sounds. Messy?"

"Some humans effectively died."

Adarin winces. "Effectively? ... Lost their minds to it?"

"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'."

"Was the witch responsible - arrested or something?"

"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."

"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."

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."

"Her name was Chelsea Dawning. She looked like -" A looking-like appears helpfully, including both human and vampire appearances.

"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've rebuilt to a stable and comfortable position. Dad let Addy borrowing Chelsea's power put 'back' some of what was taken," she adds.

"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?"

"How old is she now? What does she do with her time?"

"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."

"Ooh. I bet you she doesn't die of boredom."

"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."

"You're planning to keep her company, huh?"

"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."

"I'll do all right without predictions, I think. Thank you, though."

"You're welcome." Elspeth leans on Jake, who puts an arm around her like he is particularly cuddly furniture.

"I'm curious about the daemons."

Elspeth giggles. "And why are you a kagu in particular?"

"Daemons take a shape that's - appropriate to personality. Apparently, a kagu is appropriate for me," explains Adarin. "We looked it up, actually, kagu daemons aren't exactly common. Most of it was very vague and unhelpful."

"Why an owl for your Isabella?"

"Witches settle as birds, without exception. I'm not sure why. So that's one part. Personally I think the owl in particular also has something to do with intellect, and -" Oh, look, there's a faint little smile on his face that hints he is maybe over the moon for her. "- clarity of sight. Even in the dark."

"You get a very entertaining look on your face when you talk about her. Just this side of being her wolf."

"... Thanks?" he says, bemused. "What do you mean, being her wolf?"

Elspeth aims a thumb over her shoulder at her lounge furniture. "Like Jake is mine. He's a werewolf. They do a love-at-first-sight thing."

"Huh. That seems like it would be extremely confusing."

"It was pretty clear what had happened right away. Confusing how?"

"Well. I, personally, would be really confused as to why I was instantly in love at first sight. I - need reasons. Just 'Oh, you exist' is really not enough for me, I think. So anything that was love at first sight would be confusing."

"It was already a known phenomenon. Everyone Jake regularly interacted with at the time was a wolf, an imprint, or a child. So it didn't need explanation particularly."

"So, in that case, less confusing and more distressing."

"I was pretty alarmed. He was mostly alarmed that I was alarmed rather than about the thing itself."

"I suppose it'd be different if I knew it was something that could happen to me."

"It's not without advantages. Wolf imprints - and vampire mate bonds - are impervious to magic alteration. The reason nearly everyone in Jake's pack at the time was an imprinted wolf was because they were the only ones who could peel off from the other wolves in an emergency because they had an overriding priority. But it can sometimes lead to some unfortunate situations. Jake and I have it better than some."

"I believe you," he says. He does not look like he'd be comfortable with falling in love at first sight, though. At all. Ever. "Is it with - someone compatible, or just - randomly chosen?"

"Vampires get at least basic compatibility. Wolves - don't, necessarily."

".... Right. That's a bit terrifying."

"As far as we can tell, imprinting seems to care about theoretical eventual ability to have wolf puppies. It only happens to male wolves and female imprints. It doesn't care about age - although the wolf will be at least twelve, because before that they can't activate and they're just puppies. It doesn't care about sexual orientation or gender or interest in having puppies or personality. The saving grace is that it is in the more extreme cases a very generic love at first sight. Someone who imprints on, say, a two-year-old will not develop a prurient interest in her at that time. Someone who imprints on someone who is not interested in a romantic relationship at all will be content with platonic friendship, although it doesn't seem like the imprint is smart enough to tell if the imprint wants to date and just doesn't want to date her wolf for whatever reason."

"I'm very happy for you," he says. He does sound it, though in more of a 'good they're not crazy' kind of way instead of 'aww, cute couple.' "Really. Just - I want exactly none of the - that."

"Well, don't be around any unmated vampires of a compatible gender-and-orientation, because their compatibility-checking is reasonably good but not foolproof. But a wolf won't get you."

"Thank you. I will - not do those things."

"Half-vampires don't seem to do anything like either phenomenon, although there aren't that many of us yet so it could be a coincidence. Also, on the one occasion where it's been tested, imprinting and mating did not agree on whether a couple should be together."

"No, of course not, that would be too sane," sighs Adarin.

"There are," remarks Elspeth again, "pamphlets." She pushes them across the bar at him. It's a complete set.

This one is about Empire history! There is a summary of the reign of Stefan and Vladimir, followed by the Volturi, followed by the currently ascendant Golden Empire. There is the picture of Elspeth's mother and father in it. Complete with crown.

"... The Volturi ruled with mind control, mass-murder, and invasion of privacy to the highest degree? To that extent? Go vampire Isabella. That was really asking for it. I'm a little sad that I couldn't help. Though, that would put me in the same room as vampires and their - mating thing. So. Maybe not."

"And vampires mated to humans have historically had a habit of immediately turning them to render it reciprocal."

"Well, there is also the part where most vampires have a really hard time being around humans without eating them, especially if they don't have perfect records. Which would make romancing challenging, especially before telephones were invented."

"That - okay. That makes sense but I still find it upsetting for the poor souls on the other end of it."

"Oh, yes. My aunt Alice does a lot of precognition about who might mate to whom to avoid unfortunate results."