Grayson and Ridley wandered down the hall and eventually into the kitchen together, tangled in a conversation about each other's craft. Their exchange halted when they spotted Emilio, idling by the black marble kitchen island, devouring starfishes. Next to him — a fair-skinned and sinewy man, his hair a sundry of dirty-blonde french braids joined in a high bun, who was straining scads of starfish over the sink right by the island.

He turned away from the sink, immediately noticing Grayson and Ridley standing shoulder to shoulder, and his smile went as wide as an ocean.

"My, my," he cooed.

Grayson raised an eyebrow, fazed by the reaction, but Ridley blushed and withdrew a few steps apart from him.

"Oh, Silas, you're back," she stammered. "How was the reunion?"

Silas dumped the starfish into an empty bowl by Emilio, then stepped around him, making his way up to Grayson and Ridley. "Uneventful. But that's irrelevant right now." He held out an open palm to Grayson, complete with a beguiling smile. "Silas Mitchell. And you must be the newest addition to our colourful town. Grayson...Prior. Right?"

Not wanting a repeat of Emilio's unrelenting grip, Grayson took Silas's hand in a firm shake. "Uh, yeah. How'd you know?"

A grease-slathered hand shot up midway into the air. "I told him about you," Emilio said through a mouthful of starfish.

"Just surface-level tidbits," Silas went on. "Now that you're here in the flesh you could give us some more details, perhaps fill us in on that riveting conversation you and Ridley were having just a moment ago."

Ridley shot Silas a displeased look, just as Grayson started to say, "Oh...well, uhm-"

"And have some of the poached starfish I whipped up if you want," Silas cut in, his smile molding into a guileful grin. "Freshly drained of white wine — which is full of antioxidants, you know?"

"Poached?" Grayson repeated in a whisper.

In the past, the weekly Prior family dinners had only occasionally been held at seafood restaurants, much to Grayson's disappointment, and for many of them starfishes weren't an option on the menu at all.

Silas swung an arm around Grayson's shoulders and started to guide him to the island like a car salesman marketing a state-of-the-art vehicle.

Emilio held up a starfish with the same greasy hand and dangled it in the air in temptation. "...pretty tasty stuff," he mumbled through more bites.

Grayson's mouth watered. "Don't mind if I do."

********************************************************************************************

The walls of Ziro's bedroom were a titanium grey except for a dull patch of white in a corner above his bed. Ornamenting the walls were a slew of framed sketches of assorted weaponry: scimitar, battle axe, shurikens — it was enough to arm a fictional army.

Ziro lounged against the black-sheathed pillows on his bed, which was a pale white, king-sized mattress covered in pitch black fleece in the corner of his mostly bare room. At the edge of it, Evan lounged as well, nibbling at a tiny poached starfish between her fingers, while a plastic container laid beneath her hand to catch any lingering drips of white wine from it.

On a jet-black fleece rug next to the bed, Alex and Carsyn sat cross-legged beside each other, snacking on starfishes from another plastic container placed before them.

Alex glanced around at the walls, observing the serrated sketches as he plopped another starfish into his mouth. "So, your mom really drew all of these?"

"Yeah, because I wouldn't decorate the walls with anything else," Ziro lazily replied. He had pulled out his cellphone and began scrolling through something on the screen. Alex didn't mind the lack of attention. It was better than having the full force of Ziro's gaze centred on him.

"Probably for the best. Your interior design skills have always been bland," Evan said. Ziro narrowed his eyes and nudged her with his sock-clothed heel. "Hey!" she cried out.

"She has a point," Carsyn added, flicking her soggy fingers at Ziro, threatening white wine stains on his bed covers. He glared at her. She continued as if she hadn't noticed, "it's always the same old black, white and grey with you."

"Exactly," Evan continued, her eyes blown wide open in exaggeration. "Basic is good sometimes, but repeating it over and over is seriously unattractive. You should-"

"암튼 (am-teun) anyway," Ziro cut in. He shifted his gaze at last, towards Alex. "How did it go? With him?"

For once, Alex could decipher Ziro's enigmatic statements without Carsyn translating for him. Except for the foreign language part, though; he'd make a mental note to ask Carsyn about it later.

"I could be wrong, but I think he wanted to kill me," Alex began. "Glad he didn't though. And he...has a lot of piercings."

"Freaky, wasn't it? His piercings, I mean," Evan commented.

Alex shook his head. "Not really. At first I was super surprised at seeing a bunch of different piercings in places I wouldn't expect a piercing to be, but I realized they actually looked pretty cool." A tiny, covert smile appeared on Alex's lips as he recalled his first meeting with Lev; how cold and intimidating he had been at the start, but how he seemed to have become warm and mellow by the end of it. He gave his head a slight shake, snapping himself out of the recollection, and went on. "But anyway, we made a deal so that he would agree to stay away from the grotto permanently. I just have to have a full day sleepover with him at his place tomorrow. And I've never been to one before so I'm kind of excited."

Evan stared at Alex like he had grown two heads. Carsyn stared at him with raw glee. And Ziro stared at him with immense skepticism.

"A guy might've tried to kill you, and now you're going to sleep in his house?" Evan questioned. "What if there's an attempt on your life while you're asleep?"

"I don't think he'll actually try to kill me."

Evan scoffed, baffled. "What the heck gave you that impression?"

Alex shrugged, the tiny smile returning to his lips. "He did seem kind of aggressive, but he wasn't like that the entire time."

"...what did he tell you about us?" Ziro suddenly asked. His phone had been set aside somewhere on the bed and he had swung his feet over the edge of the mattress to sit up in the direction of the fleece rug, once again putting Alex under a microscope.

"Oh...uhm, well I told him it wasn't my business to know, so he didn't tell me anything."

"Ah, Lexy. So considerate. So pure. That's all going to shit the longer you live here," Carsyn remarked.

"Can't wait," Alex mumbled through a mouth full of starfishes.

Carsyn smiled back at him. "But let he-who-shall-not-be-named know, if there's so much as a scratch on you, I'll kill him myself."

Alex grinned, but nodded his understanding. "Noted."

Evan sneered teasingly. "How is it that you seem closer to him in the past day than you have been with Ziro and I in the past seven years," she said to Carsyn.

"Maybe it's cuz you're always riding high on v-dust and picking at your food like a pigeon," Carsyn replied happily.

Evan scoffed, but before she could counter, Alex asked, "what's v-dust?"

"Oh, vampire dust. It's uh, lightweight stuff, but it can be heavy if you take a lot of it. Pale and frail, but deadly as hell — in a pleasurable way of course. Best consumed through a straw," Carsyn explained.

Alex just stared at her, trying to replay her riddle-like words through his starfish-addled brain.

Evan snapped a finger in their direction, making Alex look over. "You know, the drug? Vampire dust?"

Alex's face went blank. "...oh..."

Evan removed her left sneaker and turned it over, revealing a small plastic bag filled with white dust. She picked it up from the bed and held it in the air.

Alex flimsily pointed at it. "Vampire dust?"

"Yup."

"And that's really some kind of drug?"

Evan chuckled. "Yessiree. It's new in the market, but getting real popular these days."

"You junkie!" Carsyn called mockingly.

"Oh get off my back! I remember a certain someone sucking up v-dust right from Ziro's desk just last week."

This time Carsyn scoffed as Alex looked over at her, shocked yet amused. Before Carsyn could rebuttal, Ziro interrupted.

"Put it away, Evan. Rents are right downstairs. Another time," Ziro said.

"All right, all right," Evan sighed. She stuffed the bag back into her shoe, then set it onto the floor to slip it back on.

Meanwhile, Ziro pushed off the bed and headed to the back of his room where an iron-grey desk sat. He pulled open one of the thin drawers, glancing back enough to make eye contact as he said to Alex, "keep an eye on him while you're over there."

It took a moment for Alex to realize that Ziro was talking to him. "What? Oh...Lev?" He said the name quietly as he wasn't entirely sure if it was okay to say it out loud. "Wait...do you mean, spy on him?"

Carsyn and Evan both shot each other uneasy glances, yet neither commented.

"Think of it like vigilant observation," Ziro said. "I just want to make sure he keeps his end of that deal you two made, and that he's not...up to anything else."

"Like wha-" Alex started to say, but then Carsyn nudged him and mouthed a 'leave it'. Alex coughed away his initial response, and instead said, "uh, yeah, sure. I'll watch him."

"Good." Ziro spun around, a brighter look on his face, though not quite smiling, and raised up a deck of cards held together by a black elastic band. He asked Alex, "ever play cards?"

Alex forced a small smile, despite his answer to the question. "No. Never."

If Ziro noticed Alex's forced cheerful display, he was good at pretending he didn't. The elastic band came off in one smooth uncurling motion, and Ziro began to shuffle the deck. "You'll start now."