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Elijah Brooks is lost in thought.

It’s been a while since he settled in the remarkable city of Harper Rock and all the same he feels, looks, and acts like a tourist. It’s a phase he can’t grow out of; as if reliving the second-coming of puppy-fat and patchy facial hair. He just wants to fit in already. He’s doing his best to act like he belongs, but it never seems like it’s enough. As word gets out about the service he’s offering to vampires, the influx of well-wishing surpasses the number of genuine enquiries. It’s confusing, but the good sort of confusing; the equivalent of running a bath, forgetting about it, and returning hours later to find that by some miracle the bathroom isn’t flooded. Better yet, he’s been in touch with a young lady called Amalea. She offers him the opportunity to apply as a professional in her services; she also offers some advice for keeping himself alive. He’s grateful for it, so he asks her out for coffee; maybe she can point out where else he’s going wrong.

Meeting with Amalea is the reason why he’s taken up a booth in the Irish pub, inhales the fumes of an espresso still warm in his cupped hands, and counts down the morning. He also makes several laps of the pub with his eyes just to take in the details. Large windows spill golden light invitingly across distressed oak flooring; marked and stained from years of good times and bad. Old leather sofas gather around the fire pit built up by rust coloured bricks; they sit proudly in the centre of the room flanked on all sides by clusters of chairs and tables fashioned from reclaimed wood and iron. Opposite the mahogany and brass countertop bar, his line of booths sit handsomely against a wall of stone bricks. The burgundy leather upholstery has seen better days - mottled and scratched as it is - but Eli respects the look they are going for with the decor. In fact, he rather likes the intimate feel it gives and along with the musty smell of drink, smoke, and furniture polish, he is reminded of his grandfather’s sitting room.

At this time of day, an Irish pub caters to a very select type of clientele; namely the white-bearded regulars and eager study groups who now knock back espresso shots as keenly as they had knocked back shots of flavoured vodka. Eli doesn’t know what the collective word for college students is, but as they coo and peck at their smartphones and macbooks, he decides that it’s appropriate to think of them as a kit of pigeons. He makes the effort to not look like he’s looking at them, but he is looking and he makes eye contact with the same bookish redhead half a dozen times while he’s pretending he’s somewhere else. She smiles at him and he shrinks back into his seat, hides his face behind his fist. They have him thinking about how differently his life could have gone if he’d only gone to college like his siblings, but he still draws a blank when it comes to narrowing down just what exactly he’d go there to study.

The problem with Eli is that he thinks of himself as being fairly average. The smoothness of youth takes the edges off his jaw and there’s not a sniff of facial hair. His cheeks are so pumped full of sunshine that they press up into his eye-sockets; sandwiching warm brown eyes under a heavy brow. Eli’s lips preserve an eternal pout that borders sullen and sexual at rest, but even the most casual smile can tip the scales. His brown hair is about as interesting as mud; short sides and a sloppy, one-sided fringe help to give him some character. Fortunately he’s got the figure and fashion sense of a high-end model since he works the evenings at a local gym. Unfortunately, he wears clothes that are one or two sizes larger than he should. His white hoodie and khaki military style jacket surround him like a quilted box while skinny blue jeans float around his legs and bunch above a worn pair of black and white All Stars. Eli crosses his legs at the ankles and tucks them under his seat, hoping to lunge further into obscurity, but his fair skin looks pale in contrast to the dark red leather behind him.He would move, but doing so might make it more difficult for Amalea to find him.

Eli checks his phone as he waits. The ticking of the clock feels stagnant; refusing to move past 11:53. He composes a quick email to let Amalea know that he’s arrived and where he’s sitting. All he has to do now is hope she turns up.

Amalea sat, head tilted, staring at the screen before her. Browsing the vampire conspiracy theory page was almost always good for a chuckle which is partly why she tried to glance at it daily. The other part was so she could try and keep an eye on what was occuring in the city. Never before had she seen a message written in code such as the one currently making use of the pixels of the LED display. A moment later, she withdrew a piece of paper from the top drawer. Her nose twitched as the pencil flew across the surface leaving behind the key she believed the cipher used. The implement paused as her eyes returned to the screen before transferring the message from display to paper.

Translating the message was a fairly straightforward affair once the pieces of the puzzle were in place. Tapping the pencil eraser against her chin, she pondered her options; she already knew she would contact the man if only to warn him against using his name in such advertisements. What else to tell him was her current debate. A short while later, the red-head posted an encoded message before emailing the mysterious man.
Sighing, the blood thief pulled her hood tighter around her face obscuring her distinctive red hair as a she crossed the street towards Lancasters’. Despite it being nearly noon and the sun blazing brightly in the sky, she’s concerned about being caught out; to some, she was still public enemy number one, after all. Typically, she wouldn’t be outside her abode or workplace without some sort of disguise, but she had offered Elijah a job with her company and thought it wiser to meet him here under her normal look. Given the time, she knew she should be safe, but wasn’t willing to stake her life on it. She wasn’t foolish enough to forget that things weren’t always as they appeared in the city.

A quick tug of the pub’s door ensured it shut behind her as her eyes swept over the establishment and its mainly collegiate clientele. Satisfied that there was no immediate security issues, she moved towards the bar to order her drink, knowing she still had a couple minutes before the set meeting time. The email popping into her mind wasn’t entirely expected but was welcome nevertheless. It beat wandering around aimlessly and saved her from having to send one of her own. Sliding her cash across the bar, she took the finished cup of hot chocolate from the woman with a murmured thanks.

Jean clad legs carried the human towards her query. Hazel eyes continuously, covertly scanned the area for any signs of brewing trouble. Not seeing any after a couple moments, her attention surreptitiously turns to the lone figure she’s here to meet seated in one of the booths. Aside from his interestingly styled hair, the first thing that draws her attention is his pale skin which leaves her wondering if he’s naturally fair-skinned or if he’s recently been fed from. Perhaps it is both or something differently entirely; she also knew that she might not even be seeing his real look if he had chosen to disguise himself in someway. It wasn’t out of the question given the city they resided in. Things weren’t always as they seemed.

”Mr. Brooks?” she queried softly upon reaching the booth, ”I’m Amalea. May I?” She gestured to the bench opposite him in silent question of she could join him here. It wouldn’t surprise her if he indicated he wanted to head elsewhere, so best to ask before assuming.

In the short moments before Amalea joins him with her cup of hot cocoa, Eli considers who he’s meeting this afternoon. He’s an artist, and subsequently a very accomplished daydreamer, so he can quickly imagine what a person might be like behind their persona. The first thing he pictures is a pair of deep-set eyes; as dark and endless as the midnight sky. Skin, the colour of jasmine petals, comes into focus next and it spreads like moonlight over round cheeks, a button nose, and folds into peachy lips before shaping the jaw into a pretty point. Chocolate brown hair dances around her shoulders in beachy waves; preserving threads of sunlight in golden highlights. She wears a royal navy sweater, figure-hugging black jeans, and a pair of nude pumps. She has broad shoulders and child-bearing hips, and yet her waist is so thin his fingers would meet if he put his hands around her. This figment of Eli’s imagination makes the effort to look low-maintenance.

A soft voice alerts Eli to the fact that he’s no longer alone and pulls him sharply out of dreamland. He stares up at the other individual past the point where it is considered polite, but for long enough that understanding grips him. Suddenly that dumbfounded expression on his face melts into a warm smile; he stands to greet his companion at long last.

“Yes. Hi,” Eli says softly in return. “Yes. Of course. Please do. Please, sit,” he adds, then takes a seat; his hands find the warmth of his mug immediately. “Thanks for joining me, Amalea. And, you can call me Eli.”

Eli isn’t too surprised to see that Amalea is not the woman he was picturing at all. He does have a wild imagination, but, that doesn’t mean that he’s ever disappointed with reality. The first thing to strike him about Amalea is her auburn hair; it reminds him of sunsets on the Gold Coast in Queensland and how the sun would burn the city air before it dips behind the ocean. She has an expressive face; her full lips have the capacity to spread a wide and open smile across her face, and her round, bird-like eyes can flex into any shape beneath fine brows. For the meantime, however, Eli struggles to make a fix on any one kind of emotion. The only thing he senses as a certainty is that Amalea is not particularly comfortable here. Eli’s enthusiastic smile softens and he decides to dial back the energy.

“This place is nice,” he says. “It feels familiar. Kind of homely. Have you been here before?”