"Hi. My name's Elspeth."

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

--Oh.

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

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

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

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

“That... that’s possible?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You can recommend, I guess.”

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

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

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

"Your patron?"

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

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

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

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