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They’ve parked beside a motel that glows orange in the darkness, including its vacancy sign, and above it:
FREE B EAKF ST AND W FI
The streetlights around them blink like sporadic fireflies.
In the passenger seat, Paimon seems distracted, looking outside the rain-streaked window instead of insisting they get out and act. For all his emphasis on relaxing, Paimon must always be doing or saying something if the quiet goes on for too long. Paimon never speaks about especially sad topics, but Lauren?iu can feel when he’s drifting. Becoming Lauren?iu-esque, if you will.
They can’t have that.
Lauren?iu speaks up, “Are you all right?”
“Hm?” Paimon straightens, but not much, since he’s almost horizontal in the reclined seat, looking cozy and a little funny. A far cry from a fallen celestial being on his throne. “Mmyeah. Did you notice that other vampire in the diner?”
Another.
He had felt something, but he couldn’t explain it, so he asks, “Another vampire? No. Did you see who it was?”
The demon king replies, “Just another patron. I suppose it doesn’t matter now.”
“Did they look as if they were...” He’s not quite sure of the right word. Ready to feed.
“I’m not sure. She—they were close to us.”
“In the blue coat? The person who killed the fly?” That person had looked rather irritated, and at the same time, strangely composed. Holding themself back.
“Yes, Paimon tells him, straightening the seat and going to lower the window. “Dark hair, twenty-something. Staring the entire place down.”
“I felt something,” he admits. “I can’t explain it.”
“Ah. Was it something physical, or more?”
“Both, I think. A tug on my heart. Like a string being plucked.”
“So, you can sense other vamps.”
“I suppose I can. When...when I was looking for Anthony, I felt him once I found the house, but not before. I’m afraid that because he, as my sire, abandoned me, my skills have been a bit...delayed.”
“In fairness,” Paimon replies pleasantly, “you are still considered rather young for a vampire, so despite being, well, staked and killed, I think you’re doing splendidly.”
Lauren?iu gives a sound between a laugh and scoff, but it’s genuine. “Thank you.” At times, he struggles to accept kind words from anyone, instinctively searching to find hidden malice or sarcasm. In a lot of ways, he’s been taught that genuineness carries a secret poison.
When they get out and enter the motel, passing a handful of people smoking, a miasma of nicotine, tobacco, and pot wafting through the air, Lauren?iu wipes his shoes on the evergreen welcome rug, the lobby is dim with off-white paint on the walls, a dull brown, cheap carpet, and pale green curtains on the long windows A row of chairs are by the front door, and a table with various tea packets and a keurig machine. In the last chair, a babushka naps in the corner with a folded blanket in her lap.
At the front desk, they can barely see the bespectacled, middle-aged, brown-haired man sitting behind the desk with an older-looking desktop and an array of high paper stacks that appear insurmountable.
The frazzled receptionist only notices them when Paimon strides forward and asks for a room. Frazzled, the man stands to see them.
He frowns disapprovingly, but his voice is meek. “I’m sorry, sir. We don’t allow dogs.”
Daisy bows her head and whines, as if she couldn’t eat the man in one swallow.
Paimon smiles too kindly. “Yes, you do.”
The man’s eyes gloss over. “Yes, we do.” He starts clicking on his ancient computer and flipping through papers. “Hmm...” He adjusts his glasses. “I’m afraid, in the room we have available, there’s only one bed.” Naturally. “But it’s king sized!”
Paimon looks at Lauren?iu and asks with a hand out, “What would you prefer?”
He’s washed Paimon’s hair while he was naked in the bath. How awkward can this be?
