"As though we would not offer respite to any guest," Anoud announces as though the question were for all of them at normal volume. For vampires, it may as well have been. Only one setting has food and with it drink. He motions toward it, as natural a movement as any a body could make, except his cape provides dramatic flourish with it.

Mayerling sits next to her around the round table. His mother sits across from him, and his father sits across from Sharon. They each have blood capsules as a show of solidarity in taking subsidence.

"Please, tell us about yourself, Sharon," Yara says, "Johan doesn't fall in love with just anyone—I trust you are a remarkable and strong willed individual. Consider me already impressed and simply let me get to know you."

Mayerling knows, then, that they must be from after he turned his first wife and she joined the family as a vampire. That turn of phrase, a remarkable and strong willed individual—his mother used it for her.

Under the table, he reaches for Sharon's hand and squeezes it. There's no wrong answer. That much is true.