24: Probe

Lilith weighed it, her heart swinging like a scale in a cold market wind, wondering if she should help Annie.

Truth be told, Annie and Joe’s romance was just street theater to her, sweet as melon seeds to crack, not a mud pond to wade. The Little White Dragon bristled at the thought of diving into that mess.

But she was hooked by what Joe had seen, a hook set deep like a barbed fishbone. If Eliza had sealed Morris and nailed the doors on all exploration, then Joe had run into something with fangs.

Lilith wanted more, the way a traveler wants a map before nightfall. Partly curiosity, partly to stock her satchel with facts, so Eliza’s future errands—or her own detours—wouldn’t leave her blind in the thorns.

After a beat of struggle, her breath settled like dust. She nodded.

“Okay. Take me to him. I want to know what Joe went through.”

Annie’s eyes lit like lanterns at dusk. She sprang up, grabbed Lilith’s hand, and gratitude poured out like warm tea.

“Thank you, Miss Lilith. Thank you so much.”

“All right, all right—don’t get too worked up.” Lilith tugged her hand back, awkward as a bird with wet feathers. The Little White Dragon wasn’t used to other girls’ touch; she’d never stood that close to another woman, and her skin prickled.

“O-okay.” Annie pulled her hands back like she’d touched hot iron, then stepped to Lilith’s side.

“I’ll take you to Joe now.”

“Mm.”

At the door, Lilith hesitated, a leaf stalled in a breeze. She didn’t go upstairs for the Shattered Ark. In a sweater and a cloak like a traveling cloud, she followed Annie toward her old place.

Those two houses were etched in her memory like ink on rice paper. They were the first roofs she’d seen in Morris. Maybe, if she looked, she’d still find that junk heap she’d crashed into, like a nest of broken twigs.

“Here.” Annie stopped at the house with a sword-shaped paper charm hung on the door. The Little White Dragon noticed the underwear that once fluttered there was gone; two clotheslines in the yard hung empty like winter branches.

“Is anyone still looking after Joe and his mother?”

Lilith remembered a few shirts dangling there days ago, like tired flags. Now the lines were bare.

“Joe shut himself in and won’t talk,” Annie said, voice soft as a shawl. “But he still cares for his mother. He goes out once a month to pick up blood packs. He was with the exploration team before, so his subsidy’s decent. They scrape by.”

Lilith nodded, the gesture small as a ripple. He could still handle daily life—so his mind wasn’t completely drowned. He’d probably taken a hit out there, a blow like a mace to the chest. Maybe he needed a therapist; in Morris, that sounded like a ghost profession.

Likely none. Lilith shook the thought off like rain from a sleeve.

“Let’s go in.”

Annie hummed assent, stepped up, and slipped a key into the lock with a soft click.

“Joe? You here? I came to see you.”

She called like someone tapping a window at dawn. The Vampire girl waited and got silence, a blanket hung heavy in damp air. She didn’t flinch; this seemed normal to her.

Annie led Lilith toward the bedroom. The Little White Dragon closed the door behind them like sealing a jar. She paused in the entry, thought a beat, then followed Annie’s example—shoes off, bare feet meeting the cool boards like river stones.

Lilith’s eyes traced the place—a standard two-bedroom with a living room, simple as a chalk diagram. The room by the living room was their target. With the kitchen next door, it would be small, a nest-sized second bedroom for a child.

Annie stopped at the wooden door and knocked twice, gentle as rain on a plank.

“Joe? It’s me, Annie. I came to see you.”

Silence held, like a pond with no ripples. Annie didn’t lose heart; she kept knocking in a slow rhythm and spoke in a voice like warm milk.

“I brought Miss Lilith. She’s a traveler from outside Morris. You’ll have plenty to talk about.”

Something stirred inside, a moth behind paper. The door stayed shut.

“She’s met Princess Eliza and might know where the Hero’s Sword is, Joe, you can—”

The door flew open with a thud, like a heartbeat misfiring.

A scruffy man stood there, shadowed like a cave mouth, and his voice scraped out like sandpaper.

“Come in.”

Joe didn’t pour water. He led them in, then dropped into a chair like a sack, and stared at Lilith, a cold nail through the room. Goosebumps ran over the Little White Dragon like a field of frost.

Annie slipped out to fetch water, leaving Lilith alone with Joe, two stones in a narrow stream.

The Little White Dragon’s glance skimmed the room and settled on his messy bed. She perched there, the soft mattress a small cloud in a storm.

She studied him. Hard to judge his height while he sat. When he’d stood, she’d pegged him at about one-eighty, tall as a doorframe. His hair fell long and wild, seaweed snagged on driftwood, uncombed for who knew how many tides. Greasy strands clung together and slid down his face like wet ropes.

Through the gaps, swollen eye bags bulged like bruised fruit, and dark circles lay heavy as midnight paint. She couldn’t imagine how many sleepless nights had stitched that mask.

Sparse whiskers and a bristle of stubble turned his gaunt face more ragged, a scarecrow at dusk. Judging by looks alone, she’d have called him a middle-aged uncle, not Annie’s peer.

Vampires live long. To age into this ruin, you’d think a century had gnawed him. What could crush a man so fast? Even the legend of hair turning white overnight felt slow compared to this withering.

Annie returned with water. Lilith cradled a cup, took a sip, and let the warmth break the tight wire of their staring. The little dragon pinned her restless tail between her knees, sat neat on the bed’s edge, and waited for Joe to speak first.

“You. Where are you from?” Joe rasped, the words scraping her ears like grit. Lilith flicked a look at Annie to hand him water, so he could wet that desert throat.

“Dragon Territory,” Lilith answered, a straight line drawn in the dust.

“Dragon Territory, huh.” Joe muttered, like a pebble dropped in a dry well. He lifted his gaze to her and asked:

“In the Dragon Territory, are there monsters born from the Black Sun’s rampage?”

“What?”