"—I am starting to see why your magic thinks we'd be romantically compatible. And, apparently, very similar."

"Yes, this is a high concentration of bisexuals. And... assuming this bar was empty when you got in and that you knew you could get any published work or non-dangerous non-living non-magical object from Bar. What would you do with this resource?"

"Get synthetic blood and reverse-engineer it," he answers immediately. "—let me give you some context. Vampires can survive on either an animal diet or a human diet. Humans taste—and smell—good enough that it tends to overwhelm all other senses and thoughts, to the point where otherwise normal people would routinely murder humans and the vast majority of vampires cannot be exposed to blood without going into an uncontrollable frenzy and killing everyone in sight. Animal blood, on the other hand, tastes about as rancid as spoilt eggs. The previous shadow government used to have only one law, which was 'do not expose vampires,' while the current one has some more sensible laws like 'do not murder people' and 'do not forcibly turn other people, no, not even your mate.'"

"Oh, that is definitely an improvement. Also, yeah, you're sounding like someone... compatible."

"And we are not overwhelming?"

"Vampires eventually—usually takes around a year—learn to control themselves. That plus I have personal magic—biokinesis—and I deactivated my sense of smell." Snuggle snuggle. "When I turned—that was... a couple of years ago, I actually lost track of time—I was planning on overthrowing the evil shadow government myself, but that ended up happening anyway while I was distracted."

"Distracted by what?"

"...my mum died. Because. There was a car crash and I tried to turn her and I—"

"Oh no." She hugs him tighter.

Well, they all can hug him tighter.

Yeah, Thomas and Fernando can join the hug now.

He is not going to complain about this.

"It's—alright, it's been a while, I can mostly not think about it anymore. And, erm, apparently the mate magic is... helping with that. A little. Displace the thoughts."

"Well, the multiverse is a very big place. We just have to find a way to bring her back."

"—yeah you said that. Multiverse. What... exactly did you mean?"

Milliways: is explained.

Sorcery: is explained.

Eslewhere: is explained.

Elan: is explained.

Galatea: is explained.

"...and we figured out just recently that there's a second Earth attached to Elsewhere with idiosyncratic magic that some people get during total lunar eclipses."

Sadde listens to all of that in fascination, and then says, "Might be a good time to mention my world is also an Earth."

"Uh, given your name and how different your vampires are from mythos I was assuming that the word 'vampire' was a translation convention by Milliways."

"Wow, Bar did tell us that Earth was pretty common, but still, a third one? You guys are everywhere."

"Yeah, and that is why I was voting for that for the name of our Earth."

"Yeah. Masquerade, although the Empress Regnant is planning to slowly peel it off and has a pretty competent staff in charge of everything. And in addition to vampires we also have a form of shapeshifters that aren't quite werewolves, and some people have personal magic like my biokinesis or the Emperor's telepathy or the Empress's mental shield. There's even a precog."

"What were you voting for?"