“Was it worth it?” Louise asked on the way down the lift. “Coming all this way to save Clarence’s life?”

“It was to Clara,” said Valen. “And that’s good enough for me.”

“If nothing else I’ve finally found someone to shill my stuff,” said Enid. “Bluehawk Energy could use the promotion.”

“Wait, isn’t that the terrible energy drink that tastes like liquid candy floss?” asked Louise. “You made that stuff?”

“It’s a chemically sound product.” Enid sounded indignant. “It’s the most effective energy drink on the market right now.”

“Yeah, and it tastes like shit!”

Valen loudly cleared his throat.

“Well, I have to go with Keiko now,” he said. “I promised to meet with her for coffee an hour from now and I suspect she has a lot of questions for me too.”

“Where’d she ask to meet you again?” asked Louise.

“It’s a little cafe near Reveller’s Row, I’ll send you the GPS location.” The lift doors parted and Valen stepped out into the hospital lobby. “You can drop me off there and I’ll take the train back home after everything’s settled.”

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” Enid asked, stepping out with him. “I don’t want this to end up like the last time you got separated from us.”

Valen subconsciously rubbed his thumb over the fingers he’d lost to the mutated Cyril during his brief stint in police custody.

“I appreciate your concern, but I can take care of myself.” Valen pretended to adjust his belt when he was actually checking the butterfly swords sheathed at the small of his back. “Besides, I’ll be in a public place and Keiko seems trustworthy, even if she does think I’m insane.”

“Think she’s trying to play psychiatrist on you?” asked Louise.

“Can’t say for certain, but I’m sure I’ll find out soon.” Valen texted Keiko on their way back to the parking lot, telling that his visit’s been cut short and that he’ll be waiting for her ahead of time.

‘Did something happen?’ she texted back a moment later.

‘Clarence suddenly recovered when I was visiting,’ he told her. ‘I thought the two of them could use some alone time to sort things out.’

A wiggling ellipsis that kept appearing and disappearing in the chat told Valen that she was typing something but kept deleting it for some reason.

In the end, she responded with a simple ‘That’s good news. Let’s talk about it in person. I’ll be there soon too.’

Valen pulled open the back seat of Enid’s car and held it open for her. 

“Keiko definitely knows something’s up,” he said before pocketing his phone.

“Any idea what she actually wants?” Enid stepped into the back seat and slid to one side to make room for Valen.

“She wants to know what’s going on but didn’t believe it when I told her,” said Valen. “I think she’s probably going to try to squeeze a more believable truth out of me.”

Louise strapped into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

“So what’s the plan?” She asked while backing up the car.

“Try to convince her that I’m not insane, I suppose,” said Valen. “Not sure how I’ll do that, though.”

Enid put her hand over Valen’s and he gratefully held it while Louise drove through the dimly lit nocturnal streets.

“You’ll find a way,” she told him. “And if she tries anything you don’t like, just call me and I’ll be there.”

Valen smiled. His blood red eyes met her icy blues, or rather the one that wasn’t hidden by her hair.

“Thank you, Enid.”

Louise watched the two of them from her rearview mirror and coughed loudly to gain their attention. 

“Oy, Thunder Tits, you might want to wear your seatbelt.”

“Hm? Oh, right.” 

Enid pulled the seatbelt over her shoulder and Valen immediately looked away from her to stare out the window when she started struggling to get it over her huge rack.

Valen expected to be at the cafe a little ways before the meeting time he set with Keiko. But thanks to a combination of tourist traffic around Reveller’s Row and Louise’s outdated phone glitching up the GPS, he arrived with only five minutes to spare.

It was a quaint little place, built from white painted wood with large panel windows obscured by drawn red curtains within it. Metallic gold letters above the front door read ‘Vic & Tori’s Coffee House,’ assuring Valen that he was in the right place.

There was no space left to park on the sidewalk, so Louise simply slowed down the car before halting it in front of the cafe.

“Are you sure you can get back home alone?” she asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” Valen assured her. “I may not be able to drive but I know the metro like the back of my hand.”

“Still, be careful, okay?” Enid squeezed his hand one last time before he left. “And remember to call us after you’re finished.”

Enid leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek but was interrupted halfway by the car behind them beeping for them to get out of the way.

“You should probably get out now,” said Louise.

“Right.” Valen pushed over the car door. “I’ll-”

Enid pulled him back by the collar before he could leave. She planted a small kiss on his lips then gently pushed him out of the car.

“Try not to lose your fingers this time,” she told him. “You need those to play with me.”

Whether she meant video games or something else she didn’t clarify.

“I’ll try,” said Valen with a chuckle. “I’ll see you two later.”

Louise drove Enid away and Valen got to fixing his hair in front of the cafe’s curtained out window. The circumstances might not be ideal, but that was no excuse to not try to look good when having coffee with a pretty lady.

Once he was happy with the way he looked, Valen pushed open the front door and the shop bell attached it let out a sharp ding to announce his presence.

The cold stagnant air of the Nocturnal District dome outside melted away the moment he stepped inside, replaced by the warmth of equally artificial but much more pleasant heaters that seeped into his bones through his already toasty coat.

Soft orange light bathed the inside of the cafe. The aroma of a dozen different kinds of coffee permeated the air, adding to the cosy atmosphere the place had going for it.

A portly old man stood behind a wooden barista counter on the far wall, above which was a large blackboard with menu items and prices scribbled in white chalk.

The rest of the cafe’s space was taken up by uniform beige chairs and round wooden tables of varying sizes. It was surprisingly full for such a small business. Almost every seat had someone in it, most of whom were looking at their phones in complete silence with long forgotten half-empty drinks on the table.

“Hey Valen!” called a familiar voice. “Over here!”

Valen turned to look at the direction of the voice and saw Keiko waving at him from a table tucked in the far corner. She was dressed a lot nicer than the inconspicuous hoodie she wore when they last met. A knitted black waistcoat over a short sleeved shirt that contoured around her ample assets, fashionable dark blue jeans that hugged her shapely legs, and striped monochrome trainers with black socks.

It was a nice, simple outfit for either sexes, and on someone like Keiko he was sure it attracted both sexes too.

Valen hurried over to her table and draped his overcoat around one of the two empty seats left there.

“Sorry if I’m late,” he said, sitting down across from her. “Traffic was a bit rough tonight.”

“You’re good,” said Keiko. “I just got here too. Still waiting for my drink.”

The moment she said that, a human waitress in a red apron walked over the table and placed a cup of pitch black coffee on the table.

“Sorry for the wait, miss!” she said before turning to Valen with a nervous smile. “Would you like to order too, sir?”

“I’ll have some iced chocolate, please,” said Valen.

“Would you like whipped cream on that?”

“Yes, please.”

The waitress nodded and scribbled into her notepad before excusing herself. 

Keiko let out a soft chuckle.

“Iced chocolate? That’s an interesting order for you.”

“Hey, I know what I like.”

Keiko grinned.

“Me too.” She blew at her black coffee, took the tiniest sip, and set it back down to cool. “Well, now that I have you all to myself I hope you don’t mind me asking you a few important questions.”

“I don’t mind at all,” said Valen, “though I have to say, this is a much nicer place for an interrogation than the police station.”

“Great!” She started stirring her coffee to make it cool quicker. “Now, first off, I’ve been curious and I hope this doesn’t come off as rude, but do you have a job aside from your university studies?”

“Kind of.” Valen twirled a nervous finger around his black ponytail. “I’m a freelance artist, though I’m on hiatus right now.”

Keiko raised an eyebrow.

“Artist? As in painting?”

“I do dabble in painting from time to time but I mostly work on a digital tablet.”

“How do you get paid?”

“I take online art commissions and my clients pay me through BuddyPay.”

“Huh. So you’re a martial artist and an actual artist? You really are full of surprises, aren’t you?”

“You have no idea.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, what kind of art do you usually draw for commissions?”

The answer was porn. So, so much porn. Usually appealing to one fetish or another. The freakier the fetish, the more he charged the client for it. It never ceases to amaze him how much people were willing to pay him to draw that stuff, but he wasn’t about to turn down the pocket money.

“Original characters, mostly,” Valen lied, deciding to answer with the distant second place that nevertheless did often overlap with the first. “People like seeing the characters in their stories come to life.”

“I see.” The wry smile on Keiko’s face suggested that she knew he was lying about his most popular commissions but thankfully didn’t say anything. “Does it pay well?”

“Nothing too special but it pays better than you’d think.” 

“Think you could afford a flat with it?”

“...Maybe? Maybe. I might be able to afford a studio flat if I did it full time but I’d really rather not do that.”

“Well, it’s not like you have to anyways. You live with Miss Flamel, right?”

Valen felt the lingering warmth of Enid’s last kiss on his lips. If he focused he could almost taste the faint traces of the sandwich he made her that evening.

“I’ve been living with her since I left the Nocturnal District,” said Valen. “I needed a place to stay while attending Silverlake and she offered to let me stay in her mansion so I didn’t have to pay for the dorms. We’ve been living with each other ever since.”

“What about Miss Blanchette?”

“I’ve known Louise since I was a child. We’d grown apart after I left the Nocturnal District but that’s changed recently.”

“When you returned to the Nocturnal District, right?” 

“That’s right. “

Keiko took a long sip from her black coffee. A soft sigh escaped her nostrils when she set the cup back down.

“To research the Primordial Church, right?”

“...That’s right.”

Valen recognised what Keiko was doing. 

It was a variant of the ‘foot-in-the-door’ technique, a very popular psychological tactic among the now dying breed of door to door salesmen. Make a bunch of small requests of a listener to receive a bunch of small, noncommittal yeses. Then, slowly dial it up to bigger, more committed yeses until the listener finally says yes to what the speaker truly wants.

What started as an innocent request for a glass of water could slowly escalate into an innocuous conversation, then full-blown sales pitch for some product the listener had no interest in before. Like a frog being slowly boiled in water so that it never knows to jump out.

Keiko was trying something similar. All she did was replace requests with lowkey flirty questions. Get him to respond to a bunch of harmless, mostly unrelated questions to get his mind used to giving honest answers. That way, when the conversation veered towards more sensitive subjects, he became more likely to tell the truth.

It was a good effort, but wholly unnecessary. He’d already told her the honest truth. Her not believing it was all on her.

The same waitress from before came over to their table and placed Valen’s iced chocolate on the table in front of him, then promptly left upon seeing the unspoken tension between the two of them.

The friendly smile on Keiko’s face had faded, replaced by an inscrutable expression that was not quite a smile and not quite a frown but somewhere in between. Her coffee brown eyes locked with his blood reds as she spoke.

“What made you interested in researching the Primordial Church in the first place?”

“A combination of my somewhat religious upbringing and a desire to write about something new and relevant.”

“Somewhat religious? Do you mind explaining what that means?”

Great. Now she really was playing psychiatrist. Valen couldn’t really complain though. He probably deserved it after playing doctor without a licence so many times.

“Look, Keiko.” Valen took a long sip of his iced chocolate to help loosen his nerves. “I understand what you’re trying to do.”

“What am I trying to do?” she asked, never changing from her unreadable expression.

“You’re trying to get me to talk about the Primordial Church,” said Valen. “But you’re going to be disappointed because I already told you everything I know.”

“You’re still keeping to your old story? With the Unborn God and Cyril turning into that tentacle thing?”

“It’s the truth,” Valen insisted. “You may not believe it, but I know what I saw. What I’ve been through was real.”

“You’ve been under a lot of stress,” said Keiko. “Not just in the past few days but your whole life. Losing your mother and twin sister like that. Anyone would be left scarred by what you’ve been through but as far I could find you’ve never been to a therapist.”

“You’ve looked me up?”

“Only the sort of stuff that’s publicly available,” she assured him. “Scholarship student for both school and uni. Honour student for both. You’re the textbook definition of a golden boy.”

“I wonder if I should be flattered or disturbed.” Valen spoke in a dry tone which he attempted to dampen with another sip of iced chocolate. “I feel self-conscious now since I know so little about you.”

“We have time to get to know each other.” Keiko took another sip of her black coffee. “You lived a hard life, but you’ve also made the best of it. All that untreated trauma from surviving the Ashen Nights. You can’t hide it forever. Coming back to Nocturnal District again as a stressed out uni student with those kinds of memories in the back of your mind, it’s understandable if that made you susceptible to stuff you’d normally never believe.”

Okay, now she was getting a bit too real. There was truth in her words. He probably, really, definitely should’ve gone to therapy after all he’d gone through. On a logical level he knew that it was nothing to be ashamed of. Mental health was just as important as physical health, and there was no healing factor he could rely on for a broken mind.

But emotionally, he just didn’t feel like he deserved it. He didn’t deserve to be depressed when the rest of the Nocturnal District faced the same trauma that he did. Many of whom fared worse than him without any surviving family or friends to fall back on.

Now that he was living in a literal mansion with one of the world’s richest, most beautiful women, it felt downright insulting to the other survivors of the Ashen Nights still stuck in the squalor of the Nocturnal District to think that he deserved the same care as them.

Plus, practically speaking, a vampire with a therapist didn’t look good on a resume for a lot of employers. They were reluctant to hire vampires for inclusivity programmes in the first place, much less one with the sort of baggage he had.

“You think I was manipulated to believe in the Primordial Church’s rubbish,” said Valen. “That they used my trauma against me, causing me to believe in a higher power in order to better make sense of what I’ve been through?”

“I also think it backfired horribly on them,” said Keiko. “Instead of seeing the Primordial Chruch as a source of salvation you seem to regard them as a source of evil.”

“I prayed to gods as a child. Silly lad that I was, I prayed that my mother was still alive. That the ashes I had to inhale that night weren't hers. That she’d somehow managed to sneak away to regenerate and would come back any night now.” Valen gulped down the sticky, chocolate-sweetened saliva coating his mouth. “They answered by taking away my sister too. I have no love for the gods, unborn or otherwise.”

“The gods don’t care about us anymore.” Keiko placed her hand over his atop the table. “But I want you to know that there are still people who do care.”

Valen didn’t shirk away from her touch, though he couldn’t feel the same warmth from her as he did with Enid.

“I appreciated it,” he said. “But I stand by my old story. Believe it or not, the Unborn God is real. I heard it speak to me and I’ve already been attacked by its followers for not joining it.”

Keiko sighed in exasperation and leaned back on her chair.

“I’m sorry Valen, but I still find it hard to believe. Especially when I know that some parts of that story definitely can’t be true.”

“We know for a fact the gods exist,” he reminded her. “Is it really so hard to believe there could be a fifteenth one?”

“That’s not the most unbelievable part about your story.”

Valen furrowed his brow. “Then what is?”

As if on cue, the shop bell rang again to announce the entrance of yet another to the packed small cafe. Keiko’s eyes widened and she stood up from her seat, facing the entrance behind Valen.

“What are you doing here?” she asked whoever had just entered the cafe.

A familiar voice answered. One that Valen didn’t think he’d ever hear again. Mainly because he was the one who silenced it.

“I have some unfinished business with Mister Vasilis.”

Valen slowly turned around and saw Cyril Culnacan, the monster he murdered, alive and standing at the door.