Kate wanted most of her friends to see the new home at the same time, to have a nice celebration and shared reactions, but she had also promised Yumi to be the first to try the new bed. Of course she had kept that promise and had enjoyed a fun and rather unique night with the Noppera-Bo. Now, the two demons were sitting in the kitchen enjoying breakfast.

Kate flexed her jaw slightly. “Ok, now everything is weird.”

Yumi chuckled. “Yea, having holes in your face certainly is.”

“Normally, for me, it isn’t. Not having face-holes and other… holes is weird, now having them is weird. Everything is weird. But it’s all weird in a fun way.”

“I’m glad you’re having a good time. And you’re getting better at pleasing someone without the usual parts as well, both in bed and in the kitchen.” Yumi ‘winked’.

“It’s Polly’s recipe. Her chocolate pancakes are the best after a good night of fun.”

“Agreed.”

After a few minutes of silently devouring pancakes, Yumi continued. “You have a wonderful home.”

“Thank you! It’s only the second time I’m using this kitchen and the first time using the bed.”

“Are they as good as you expected?”

“Even better! It’s the home of my dreams that I didn’t know I had until I saw Hell.”

“You need to show me the rest after the pancakes. Just from what I’ve seen so far, I want to rethink my own home.”

“How long have been living in your current home?”

“Since we remade our cities, just after immortality. I did repaint my bedroom and added a bathroom a few centuries later, but it could use a little change.”

“I’m glad you feel inspired by mine. If you aren’t in a rush, you could check out what Evelyn is going to plan relatively soon, or what Adelina will go for.”

“That’s a good idea.”

“You’re still getting that tour here of course. I need to see your reaction to my bath.”

“That sounds promising.”

“I am certain it will deliver.”

“After what I have seen already, I have no doubt.”

“Since everyone else is getting the tour tomorrow, will you come by for that too? We’ll have a little dinner party and everything on the patio.”

“Definitely! Your humans, family and stuff, will be there too, right?”

Kate nodded. “I don’t want to ask you to disguise yourself, but I can’t guarantee how they’ll react. I understand if that’s a dealbreaker.”

“Oh no, I’ll put on a face, no worries. Maybe I can talk to them about it and who knows? I mean, Adelina and Evelyn got used to me quite quickly, maybe your family is similar.”

“Possible. Their reactions to demons in general were quite calm too, I certainly hope they accept you as you are. Speaking of accepting you… it still bothers me how much of a big deal I made of you when we met. I’m sorry.”

“What? I didn’t take you as anything but curious back then. You reacted positively, even enthusiastically! I can’t wish for anything better than that.”

“It’s a relief to hear that. Still, I feel I am sometimes a bit too direct with my curiosity.”

Yumi shook her head. “I can’t speak for everyone, obviously, but I felt a little honoured by your questions back then. It felt like you were genuinely interested in not just the bio-magical aspects of what I am, but also in me. That felt good. And to be honest, I have a question for you now too.”

“Okay? I’m not that interesting.”

“You are very interesting. I just want to know how you can be so unsure about other demon’s perception of you. You can read their minds, even just passively. Shouldn’t it be easy to confirm what I felt back then?”

“Well, yes and no. I can just poke into your memories and your emotions without you noticing these days, but it still feels more real to have you say it. If I just look at how you felt, I don’t know if you wanted to feel that way or if it was involuntary, I need to look at more to get the full picture and the more broadly I look into your mind, the more you will be able to sense my intrusion. I don’t want to intrude too much. Even just catching a glimpse of what you felt back then from your memories and then asking you about it would give a better picture than just the small mental poke. Let’s say you felt good about the questions but then told me you didn’t. That clearly shows me that there is some other problem between us. Thankfully there isn’t, but I would never know if I just had a little peek.”

“I see… I never thought about the fact that Nightmares don’t see everything in a mind at once. That’s fascinating, and it makes so much sense.”

“Speaking of our inherent abilities, Ama told me that you can magically blend in. What’s that about and why don’t you do it around humans?”

Yumi took a moment to gather her thoughts before she answered. “It would work to not be noticed by humans, but only as long as I don’t interact with them. But I never trained that ability properly so I would cause a reaction similar to what a… what where they called? Facedancers, I think. I would make humans feel the same way they would if they encountered a facedancer. It’s a feeling of disgust, kind of a scaredness but not in a panicky way.”

Kate raised an eyebrow. “That is something I haven’t read about yet. What you describe vaguely sounds like what humans call the uncanny valley, the effect that the closer something is to a human, the more endearing it gets, up to certain point where it gets too close and it becomes super horrifying. Beyond that point is just what humans look like.”

“Yes, pretty much that.”

“Okay. I can see why you might cause that if your blending in magic is a bit weak. But what’s a facedancer?”

“You have read about the Fae, right?”

“I have. There isn’t much about them, just that they are incredibly ancient and have moved on to a different dimension or something.”

“There are a few things they have left behind, including some warnings for whoever would visit the border world after their departure. This was all part of my basic education, something like school, and that’s been a long time ago, so this all might be angel’s gospel for all I know.”

‘Angel’s gospel’ was a saying that meant something might be wrong because of simplification or omission of information, malicious or otherwise.

“Interesting. I have to admit that I didn’t dig too deeply into what we have about them. Demon history and magic took priority.”

“Understandably so. Anyway, one of the things the Fae warned about were a type of predator they called facedancers. They are the reason humans, and many other animals in the border world, evolved this uncanny valley reaction. The facedancer would seek out groups of their prey, shapeshift to look like them and try to integrate themselves into the group. They would then slowly pick them off over months. Because they would try to slaughter anyone who got close to exposing them first, it was important to not overreact to their presence. Instead, you would need to warn others and drive the facedancer from the group. Obviously, this only worked because their mimicry wasn’t perfect.”

Kate looked thoughtful. The fact that there was a shapeshifting predator native the border world carried so many implications. “They are extinct now, right?”

“Yes. Evolution took care of them. The Fae writings implied that the facedancers weren’t the only magical creature that lived during their time. They even left a warning that if they spend enough time with a group of sapient beings, the facedancers would learn to mimic language. They likely wouldn’t be able to actually understand it, but they would be able to copy and generate speech in ways that was convincing enough to fool even the smartest prey, like the Fae.”

“That’s scary, fuck.” Kate really didn’t like that thought. She hoped the facedancers really were extinct and not just evolved with the rest of the fauna around them. The idea of a predator able to nearly perfectly infiltrate human society and slowly feed on people without anyone noticing was horrific.

“The lessons about the Fae warnings and the border world kept young me up on more than one cycle. These days it calms me to know that no matter what we encounter, we are nearly guaranteed to be the superior predators.”

“Hm.” The young Nightmare didn’t know if that was calming to her or not. “I suppose I never thought about demons being predators as much.”

“It’s the reason for most of our inherent magical abilities. My blending in to not be noticed by prey, your telepathy and more to learn about and control your, well, food.”

That was definitely an uncomfortable thought. “Food like humans.”

“I didn’t want to say that, humans have grown beyond that now. But yes, food like humans were.”

“I suppose I can’t put off dealing with that side of me forever. Ama also mentioned things about our predatory nature.”

“Ama is Amaterasu, right?”

“Yes, sorry.”

“It’s okay, just needed to make sure. I am not the best demon to talk to about that stuff. Even before we started using synthetic souls, I didn’t really hunt. I kept to the domesticated animals on the border world that we kept to feed on. Most of us hunted and it was very shortly after we had started pushing for humanity to establish itself that we made the switch. It’s almost crazy how much soul we take in now. There is soul in everything. Each of us used to feed maybe once or twice every border world decade, now we are almost swimming in the stuff.”

“I think I will ask Nirrti or Polly about the predator thing then. Maybe you can answer something though. Why do we need souls?”

“We fed on them to prolong our lives. We evolved that ability along with our magical skills a very long time ago. Without souls, before immortality, a demon would live about as long as a human does now. With souls we could live for a thousand years, sometimes more. Now it bolsters our magical abilities. It enhances our sense for magic, the sense for how reality flows around us. I suppose that only makes sense once you know what part of the soul we actually eat.”

“Okay? Can you elaborate?”

Yumi nodded. “Again, basic education, might be not entirely correct. You see, the soul is not just what makes consciousness happen, it’s also what ties consciousness to reality. It’s a combination of many parts, each fulfilling a different need. What we take, well, took is the part that binds a mind to a body and thus to material reality. The part that makes a being capable of thought and identity is untouched by us. So, when we feed on a living thing, we slowly cut off its ties to its body, eventually severing that and causing death. If we stop before that happens, the soul will eventually fully heal.”

“And the synthetic souls we can conjure are just the ‘edible’ part.”

“No. They also contain the other parts, but they are empty shells. Like, there is the scaffold to hold thought and identity, but there is no thought, no identity. And since it has none of that, it just evaporates when severed from the material. That’s also what I understand is the problem with making new demons. We can create a working body, even a soul to put inside, but there is no mind, no person there. Last I heard some scholars theorized that a mind could form on its own eventually, but I have my doubts.”

“I was… a bit scared of the predator side of things. But knowing that demons can’t just remove a soul from existence, deleting a person by eating them, is relieving.”

“Just don’t forget that we also hunted for the meat.”

“Right… you needed to eat before immortality happened.”

“Yea… sorry.”

“Nah, it’s fine. I think I just need an even fuller picture of the predator stuff from someone who has studied it. A friend of mine once likened becoming a demon to a mouse turning into a cat. I suppose that isn’t that far from the truth.”

“Hey, a big part of that is also that the cats realized the mice have more in common with them then they thought. And while you’re a cat now, that doesn’t mean you can’t have empathy for the mice.”