(no subject)
Vampires of Venice 2/?, TenII/Rose, Peter Vincent, R for the moment
The Doctor held the cube between his fingertips and closed his eyes, opening himself up to the message. It was faint at first, but he could tell it was short. 2,655
“What?” Rose asked.
“Exactly!” the Doctor cried in a mixture of disbelief and glee.
“Who sent it?”
“I did.”
“And going by your surprise I take it you either didn’t, or don’t remember doing it for some odd reason,” Peter said.
“I didn’t. Send it. I remember that,” the Doctor replied.
“What is that thing anyway?” Peter asked, fumbling for something in his coat pocket. He produced a battered pack of cigarillos and a silver lighter.
“I’m sorry but you’ll have to go outside to smoke,” Rose said.
With an exaggerated sigh Peter returned both items to his pocket.
“It’s a hypercube, a form of messaging I used to use a very long time ago,” the Doctor explained. When he looked at Rose he noticed that her expression had softened. She knew that this was Gallifreyan technology, but he was reluctant to tell Peter about it. There was something about this man he didn’t quite trust.
“Well, what’s it say?” Peter asked, draining his tea.
The Doctor held the cube between his fingertips and closed his eyes, opening himself up to the message. It was faint at first, but he could tell it was short. He still had no idea what this was all about, how the cube had made it into this universe in the first place. There were no Gallifreyans in Pete’s World.
His reeling thoughts made accessing the message nearly impossible, so he pushed all his questions aside to concentrate on the thoughts contained in the cube. It was becoming more distinct now, and while he was tempted to pick up the scraps he understood, he waited until he was sure he got the message in its entirety.
Hello, Dad. I just wanted to let you know I’m okay.
He dropped the cube. It landed with a dull thud on the floor between his legs, the sound of the impact dulled by the deep pile rug.
“Doctor?” Rose asked in alarm.
Peter picked up the cube and scrutinised it from all sides and angles.
“Doctor.”
Rose had dropped her hand to his knee to get his attention.
“That’s impossible,” the Doctor stammered, finally able to utter a coherent thought. Which was astonishing in itself, because hardly anything could shake or surprise him like this. Of all the things he’d expected, this had certainly not been among them. What had he expected, though?
“What is, Doctor?” Peter asked, frowning.
“It’s a message from my daughter.”
Rose’s eyes went wide. “From who?”
The Doctor snagged the cube from Peter, who was turning it between his fingers, and gave it to Rose. “Listen! Go on.”
“But…” Rose protested.
“Rose!” he growled. “Use your mind. You know you can do it.” He knew Rose hated Bad Wolf, but he knew this was the only way to confirm that he had not dreamed up the message.
Rose took the cube and mimicked him.
“What are you?” Peter asked, torn between awe and repulsion.
“Shush, you,” the Doctor snapped, holding up his hand. “Give her some space.”
He watched Rose frown in concentration.
“Breathe deeply now, Rose. Deeply,” he whispered, raising both his hands to reinforce the link between her mind and the cube by touching her hand and her temple. When Rose dropped the cube, he caught it.
“Well?” he asked, nearly bursting with tension. He needed to know if he'd really heard what he thought he'd heard, and not just what he wanted to hear. He hadn’t thought of Jenny in a long time. Was that just his subconscious playing a trick on him?
“What happened?” Rose asked, down to the business part. Of course. He’d never hidden from her the fact that he was a father. She’d never made much of a fuss about it, either. A man his age would have fathered children; it would have been very naive to think he hadn’t. Rose was definitely not naive. Growing up on the Powell Estate had made sure of that.
“It’s a long story,” he said. He didn’t want to share this in Peter’s presence.
“Which I’m sure is sad and fascinating,” Peter said with a healthy dose of sarcasm.
“It’s very personal,” the Doctor said. “The question is: how did it get here? Or there, rather, considering where you found it?” Rose, of course, would know that he was wondering how it got to Pete’s World, the name they’d given their Here.
Peter didn’t seem to be put off. He had picked up the wristwatch. “What about this, then? Looks a bit anachronistic in a 16th century grave.”
“It’s a shimmer,” the Doctor said. “It’s a cloaking device. When you put it on you can manipulate people’s perception of you.”
“I could look like my stage persona without actually having to put up with the tight leather trousers and the wig?” Peter asked.
The Doctor nodded. Peter was obviously a clever chap, cleverer than he’d let on. He liked that, but he still couldn’t be sure if Peter was trustworthy. “It’s more sophisticated than that. You could make yourself look like a Martian wearing your clothes. Not that that would be something you’d want to look like. Or behold.” The Doctor gave himself a shake to get rid of the mental image.
“Excuse me?” Peter asked.
“Don’t ask,” Rose merely said.
“Right. So, does that mean you’ll accompany me to Venice to find out more?” Peter asked.
“Yep,” the Doctor replied, grinning madly at Rose, who smiled indulgently.
-:-
His fingers dug deep into her shoulders as he spilled himself inside her. Her walls were rippling around him, prolonging his bliss and draining him, heartbeat by heartbeat. He cried her name, holding still as her heels held him in place. He lost himself completely in her comforting warmth and in her tight softness, thanking the Other for the gift of being with her. When he came, when they came, he was the happiest man alive. He was bursting with love for Rose, and if he could, he’d have hugged her close enough to absorb her into his body so they’d never be apart again. Ever.
He stayed inside her for as long as he could, and then he rolled off her to lie beside her. He knew that she liked him as her human blanket, but he was afraid of crushing her. He was useless after making love to her; he was nothing but a bag of bones. A blissful bag of bones, but a bag of bones no less.
“Don’t go,” Rose protested, shifting to snuggle up to him. He draped his arm around her shoulders to pull her against him. Her heart was beating frantically, just like his, their single hearts, together, and she was just as breathless as him. He chuckled and kissed her.
“What?” Rose asked, her hand resting on his damp chest.
He picked it up to kiss each of her fingers. “This is so much better with just one heart,” he said.
Rose blinked. “Okay.” She didn’t sound convinced, and he realised he was at a loss for how to explain this to her. Having two hearts did have its advantages, particularly when it came to making love, but he knew that it would never have felt right. Now that he was single-hearted and half-human he had discovered pleasures that he’d never have appreciated as a Time Lord. The post-orgasmic heaviness that made their bed and each other’s embrace so comfortable was one such thing. He’d never felt that before. The breathlessness made him chuckle; there was no respiratory bypass to compensate. The need to cuddle, and whisper, and just be.
He tried to explain.
“Poor Doctor,” Rose said. She was referring to the Other of course.
“Yes.”
The lay in silence for a while. The Doctor played with Rose’s ring.
“I didn’t want to have Jenny,” he said eventually.
“Your daughter.” Rose tensed a little against him.
“Technically, she’s not my daughter. She doesn’t have a mother, you see.” He felt Rose relax a bit. Was she jealous? “She was created from my skin sample,” he continued, looking at the ceiling. “She was created in battle.”
“So she’s like you.”
He hesitated only for the shortest of moments. “Yeah.” There had been a time when he’d flat-out denied that they were anything like each other. But in the end it had turned out that Jenny had been a little too much like him. She was yet one more of his children he’d had to bury, another hole torn into his soul.
“She’s dead, though,” he said.
Rose was too surprised to process the idea, to suggest that if she carried his DNA she must be able to regenerate.
“Turned out she wasn’t like me enough after all,” he said softly.
“But the message?” Rose began.
“That’s the thing, Rose,” he said, turning to look at her. The beginnings of a adventure were stirring inside him. He could feel it. “It’s either legit, or Peter is every bit as much trouble as I think he is.”
“And that’s good?”
“Oh yes.”
Rose didn’t smile. His own smile faded.
“Doctor, I don’t want you to get your hopes up. It might not be from Jenny. She’s in the Other’s universe.”
“Yes. But. Who’s the hypercube from then? Hmm? No Time Lords in Pete’s World.”
Rose sighed. “I just want you to be careful, is all I’m saying.”
“I know, Rose. Thank you.” He kissed her, deeply touched by her concern, and yet at the same time he could feel the idea of seeing Jenny again grow. Maybe she’d regenerated after all; maybe it had just taken her a while because she was so young. She’d been a few hours old when she was shot. The ability to regenerate might have taken a while to percolate into her conscious mind.
The Doctor grinned.
-:-
The Doctor had been thinking about Jenny and possible explanations for the better part of the journey to Venice. He knew that when he got an answer it would be entirely different from anything he could come up with, but that was the beauty of it. It also meant that he was able to eliminate some of the more outlandish theories.
Rose had dozed with her head on his shoulder during the entire flight, and Peter had disappeared after he’d chatted up the flight attendant; he was probably renewing his membership in the mile-high club.
The Doctor wasn’t sure what to make of Peter. He was sure that underneath the cocky, rude mask lived an entirely different man. A man who was smart enough not to flirt with Rose. A passionate man, the Doctor thought, Who covered his obsession with vampires by incorporating them into his Las Vegas act. It was the perfect illusionist's trick. He was fairly certain that the obsession had preceded the career choice. Peter’s website exuded a dedication and kind of professionalism that suggested that vampires and other supernatural beings and revenants were something that had come early in Peter’s life. So he was a geek. That endeared him to the Doctor, but he also wondered what had happened to Peter.
The light glared as it reflected off the water in the lagoon, and the Doctor had to squint despite wearing his shades. If he were a vampire, he’d certainly not choose a place like Venice for his home. There were few basements in which to hide during the day - but many shutters closed against the heat of the midday sun. Masks. Many visitors and strangers who’d not be reported missing.
The wind was surprisingly cool as the water bus ferried the three of them from the airport to the city. It tore at his hair and destroyed Peter’s blow-dry do and plucked strands from Rose’s pony tail, and he put his arm around Rose’s shoulders to keep the shawl she’d put around her shoulders in place.
Once they disembarked the vaporetto, Peter took them through the warren of alleyways to their hotel. They ended up in a shady square with gardens crawling over the walls hiding the properties from curious eyes. Peter went to a shiny brown door in the wall, but instead of using the brass knocker he pressed a button right beside it. There was a humming sound and the intercom crackled with static.
“Room 7 and two new arrivals,” Peter said, stooping to speak into the temperamental mike. The door opened with a snick and they stepped into a shady garden, the gravel crunching beneath their soles.
The Doctor had been to Venice many times - his Venice - but he’d never seen anything like this place. The garden was lush and cool, bougainvillea pouring down the red brick walls, framing the eternally shuttered windows of the small hotel.
“Nice place,” he said. He’d never have expected Peter to pick a place like this.
“Wait until you’ve seen the rooms.”
The French windows in their room opened onto a rooftop garden overlooking the Grand Canal, the busy main water street of the Republic’s eponymous capital. “This is amazing!” Rose gasped, leaning against the stone balustrade to look down upon the vaporetti, gondole and boats travelling below them.
“It is,” the Doctor breathed, taking in the view of the other side of the canal. The palazzi lining it looked like exquisite confections, like the result of an artist’s vivid imagination done in water colours. The facades were made from colourful marble or painted and bleached by the sun, framed by white ornaments, the roof tiles baked a pale pink, the windows that weren’t shuttered or gleaming in the sun. Striped poles stuck in the water guided the boats to wooden jetties protruding from the waterfront entrances of the palazzi, and the boats tied there bobbed as others passed. It was busy but surprisingly quiet.
-:-
They had dinner in a tiny restaurant in a minuscule square, a place, Peter had promised them, tourists rarely found. The alleyway leading from the restaurant opened out onto a canal. The restaurant was called The Assassins.
“Fitting,” the Doctor commented.
“We’ll take a taxi to the Lazzaretto first thing in the morning,” Peter said after they’d ordered pasta and fish and wine and bread.
“What do you think of the shimmer and the hypercube?” Rose asked, sipping the simple red wine that came in a glass not unlike the one she used when brushing her teeth.
“I thought Torchwood. You’re the ones who sneer at people like me because we do not think that every ghost and vampire and werewolf is of alien provenance,” he said. Rose smiled softly, acknowledging the perception most people had of them. Peter’s bluntness was endearing.
The Doctor frowned. “Most of them are.”
“But some of them aren’t, that’s when we get called in.”
“Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters,” the Doctor said, adding the tune of the song. Which got him an amused snicker from his wife and a blank stare from Peter. “Sorry, couldn’t resist. You seriously don’t know the film? It’s a classic!”
“It was never made here,” Rose said.
“Oh.”
“What the fuck are you on about?” Peter asked, growing impatient.
“Oi, language!” the Doctor frowned, drowning his indignation in wine.
“A film about people like you,” Rose explained.
“I thought is was never made.”
“Not in this universe,” she said. “So, tell us about the vampires of Venice.” Trust her to steer the conversation out of dangerous waters.
The Doctor held the cube between his fingertips and closed his eyes, opening himself up to the message. It was faint at first, but he could tell it was short. 2,655
“What?” Rose asked.
“Exactly!” the Doctor cried in a mixture of disbelief and glee.
“Who sent it?”
“I did.”
“And going by your surprise I take it you either didn’t, or don’t remember doing it for some odd reason,” Peter said.
“I didn’t. Send it. I remember that,” the Doctor replied.
“What is that thing anyway?” Peter asked, fumbling for something in his coat pocket. He produced a battered pack of cigarillos and a silver lighter.
“I’m sorry but you’ll have to go outside to smoke,” Rose said.
With an exaggerated sigh Peter returned both items to his pocket.
“It’s a hypercube, a form of messaging I used to use a very long time ago,” the Doctor explained. When he looked at Rose he noticed that her expression had softened. She knew that this was Gallifreyan technology, but he was reluctant to tell Peter about it. There was something about this man he didn’t quite trust.
“Well, what’s it say?” Peter asked, draining his tea.
The Doctor held the cube between his fingertips and closed his eyes, opening himself up to the message. It was faint at first, but he could tell it was short. He still had no idea what this was all about, how the cube had made it into this universe in the first place. There were no Gallifreyans in Pete’s World.
His reeling thoughts made accessing the message nearly impossible, so he pushed all his questions aside to concentrate on the thoughts contained in the cube. It was becoming more distinct now, and while he was tempted to pick up the scraps he understood, he waited until he was sure he got the message in its entirety.
Hello, Dad. I just wanted to let you know I’m okay.
He dropped the cube. It landed with a dull thud on the floor between his legs, the sound of the impact dulled by the deep pile rug.
“Doctor?” Rose asked in alarm.
Peter picked up the cube and scrutinised it from all sides and angles.
“Doctor.”
Rose had dropped her hand to his knee to get his attention.
“That’s impossible,” the Doctor stammered, finally able to utter a coherent thought. Which was astonishing in itself, because hardly anything could shake or surprise him like this. Of all the things he’d expected, this had certainly not been among them. What had he expected, though?
“What is, Doctor?” Peter asked, frowning.
“It’s a message from my daughter.”
Rose’s eyes went wide. “From who?”
The Doctor snagged the cube from Peter, who was turning it between his fingers, and gave it to Rose. “Listen! Go on.”
“But…” Rose protested.
“Rose!” he growled. “Use your mind. You know you can do it.” He knew Rose hated Bad Wolf, but he knew this was the only way to confirm that he had not dreamed up the message.
Rose took the cube and mimicked him.
“What are you?” Peter asked, torn between awe and repulsion.
“Shush, you,” the Doctor snapped, holding up his hand. “Give her some space.”
He watched Rose frown in concentration.
“Breathe deeply now, Rose. Deeply,” he whispered, raising both his hands to reinforce the link between her mind and the cube by touching her hand and her temple. When Rose dropped the cube, he caught it.
“Well?” he asked, nearly bursting with tension. He needed to know if he'd really heard what he thought he'd heard, and not just what he wanted to hear. He hadn’t thought of Jenny in a long time. Was that just his subconscious playing a trick on him?
“What happened?” Rose asked, down to the business part. Of course. He’d never hidden from her the fact that he was a father. She’d never made much of a fuss about it, either. A man his age would have fathered children; it would have been very naive to think he hadn’t. Rose was definitely not naive. Growing up on the Powell Estate had made sure of that.
“It’s a long story,” he said. He didn’t want to share this in Peter’s presence.
“Which I’m sure is sad and fascinating,” Peter said with a healthy dose of sarcasm.
“It’s very personal,” the Doctor said. “The question is: how did it get here? Or there, rather, considering where you found it?” Rose, of course, would know that he was wondering how it got to Pete’s World, the name they’d given their Here.
Peter didn’t seem to be put off. He had picked up the wristwatch. “What about this, then? Looks a bit anachronistic in a 16th century grave.”
“It’s a shimmer,” the Doctor said. “It’s a cloaking device. When you put it on you can manipulate people’s perception of you.”
“I could look like my stage persona without actually having to put up with the tight leather trousers and the wig?” Peter asked.
The Doctor nodded. Peter was obviously a clever chap, cleverer than he’d let on. He liked that, but he still couldn’t be sure if Peter was trustworthy. “It’s more sophisticated than that. You could make yourself look like a Martian wearing your clothes. Not that that would be something you’d want to look like. Or behold.” The Doctor gave himself a shake to get rid of the mental image.
“Excuse me?” Peter asked.
“Don’t ask,” Rose merely said.
“Right. So, does that mean you’ll accompany me to Venice to find out more?” Peter asked.
“Yep,” the Doctor replied, grinning madly at Rose, who smiled indulgently.
-:-
His fingers dug deep into her shoulders as he spilled himself inside her. Her walls were rippling around him, prolonging his bliss and draining him, heartbeat by heartbeat. He cried her name, holding still as her heels held him in place. He lost himself completely in her comforting warmth and in her tight softness, thanking the Other for the gift of being with her. When he came, when they came, he was the happiest man alive. He was bursting with love for Rose, and if he could, he’d have hugged her close enough to absorb her into his body so they’d never be apart again. Ever.
He stayed inside her for as long as he could, and then he rolled off her to lie beside her. He knew that she liked him as her human blanket, but he was afraid of crushing her. He was useless after making love to her; he was nothing but a bag of bones. A blissful bag of bones, but a bag of bones no less.
“Don’t go,” Rose protested, shifting to snuggle up to him. He draped his arm around her shoulders to pull her against him. Her heart was beating frantically, just like his, their single hearts, together, and she was just as breathless as him. He chuckled and kissed her.
“What?” Rose asked, her hand resting on his damp chest.
He picked it up to kiss each of her fingers. “This is so much better with just one heart,” he said.
Rose blinked. “Okay.” She didn’t sound convinced, and he realised he was at a loss for how to explain this to her. Having two hearts did have its advantages, particularly when it came to making love, but he knew that it would never have felt right. Now that he was single-hearted and half-human he had discovered pleasures that he’d never have appreciated as a Time Lord. The post-orgasmic heaviness that made their bed and each other’s embrace so comfortable was one such thing. He’d never felt that before. The breathlessness made him chuckle; there was no respiratory bypass to compensate. The need to cuddle, and whisper, and just be.
He tried to explain.
“Poor Doctor,” Rose said. She was referring to the Other of course.
“Yes.”
The lay in silence for a while. The Doctor played with Rose’s ring.
“I didn’t want to have Jenny,” he said eventually.
“Your daughter.” Rose tensed a little against him.
“Technically, she’s not my daughter. She doesn’t have a mother, you see.” He felt Rose relax a bit. Was she jealous? “She was created from my skin sample,” he continued, looking at the ceiling. “She was created in battle.”
“So she’s like you.”
He hesitated only for the shortest of moments. “Yeah.” There had been a time when he’d flat-out denied that they were anything like each other. But in the end it had turned out that Jenny had been a little too much like him. She was yet one more of his children he’d had to bury, another hole torn into his soul.
“She’s dead, though,” he said.
Rose was too surprised to process the idea, to suggest that if she carried his DNA she must be able to regenerate.
“Turned out she wasn’t like me enough after all,” he said softly.
“But the message?” Rose began.
“That’s the thing, Rose,” he said, turning to look at her. The beginnings of a adventure were stirring inside him. He could feel it. “It’s either legit, or Peter is every bit as much trouble as I think he is.”
“And that’s good?”
“Oh yes.”
Rose didn’t smile. His own smile faded.
“Doctor, I don’t want you to get your hopes up. It might not be from Jenny. She’s in the Other’s universe.”
“Yes. But. Who’s the hypercube from then? Hmm? No Time Lords in Pete’s World.”
Rose sighed. “I just want you to be careful, is all I’m saying.”
“I know, Rose. Thank you.” He kissed her, deeply touched by her concern, and yet at the same time he could feel the idea of seeing Jenny again grow. Maybe she’d regenerated after all; maybe it had just taken her a while because she was so young. She’d been a few hours old when she was shot. The ability to regenerate might have taken a while to percolate into her conscious mind.
The Doctor grinned.
-:-
The Doctor had been thinking about Jenny and possible explanations for the better part of the journey to Venice. He knew that when he got an answer it would be entirely different from anything he could come up with, but that was the beauty of it. It also meant that he was able to eliminate some of the more outlandish theories.
Rose had dozed with her head on his shoulder during the entire flight, and Peter had disappeared after he’d chatted up the flight attendant; he was probably renewing his membership in the mile-high club.
The Doctor wasn’t sure what to make of Peter. He was sure that underneath the cocky, rude mask lived an entirely different man. A man who was smart enough not to flirt with Rose. A passionate man, the Doctor thought, Who covered his obsession with vampires by incorporating them into his Las Vegas act. It was the perfect illusionist's trick. He was fairly certain that the obsession had preceded the career choice. Peter’s website exuded a dedication and kind of professionalism that suggested that vampires and other supernatural beings and revenants were something that had come early in Peter’s life. So he was a geek. That endeared him to the Doctor, but he also wondered what had happened to Peter.
The light glared as it reflected off the water in the lagoon, and the Doctor had to squint despite wearing his shades. If he were a vampire, he’d certainly not choose a place like Venice for his home. There were few basements in which to hide during the day - but many shutters closed against the heat of the midday sun. Masks. Many visitors and strangers who’d not be reported missing.
The wind was surprisingly cool as the water bus ferried the three of them from the airport to the city. It tore at his hair and destroyed Peter’s blow-dry do and plucked strands from Rose’s pony tail, and he put his arm around Rose’s shoulders to keep the shawl she’d put around her shoulders in place.
Once they disembarked the vaporetto, Peter took them through the warren of alleyways to their hotel. They ended up in a shady square with gardens crawling over the walls hiding the properties from curious eyes. Peter went to a shiny brown door in the wall, but instead of using the brass knocker he pressed a button right beside it. There was a humming sound and the intercom crackled with static.
“Room 7 and two new arrivals,” Peter said, stooping to speak into the temperamental mike. The door opened with a snick and they stepped into a shady garden, the gravel crunching beneath their soles.
The Doctor had been to Venice many times - his Venice - but he’d never seen anything like this place. The garden was lush and cool, bougainvillea pouring down the red brick walls, framing the eternally shuttered windows of the small hotel.
“Nice place,” he said. He’d never have expected Peter to pick a place like this.
“Wait until you’ve seen the rooms.”
The French windows in their room opened onto a rooftop garden overlooking the Grand Canal, the busy main water street of the Republic’s eponymous capital. “This is amazing!” Rose gasped, leaning against the stone balustrade to look down upon the vaporetti, gondole and boats travelling below them.
“It is,” the Doctor breathed, taking in the view of the other side of the canal. The palazzi lining it looked like exquisite confections, like the result of an artist’s vivid imagination done in water colours. The facades were made from colourful marble or painted and bleached by the sun, framed by white ornaments, the roof tiles baked a pale pink, the windows that weren’t shuttered or gleaming in the sun. Striped poles stuck in the water guided the boats to wooden jetties protruding from the waterfront entrances of the palazzi, and the boats tied there bobbed as others passed. It was busy but surprisingly quiet.
-:-
They had dinner in a tiny restaurant in a minuscule square, a place, Peter had promised them, tourists rarely found. The alleyway leading from the restaurant opened out onto a canal. The restaurant was called The Assassins.
“Fitting,” the Doctor commented.
“We’ll take a taxi to the Lazzaretto first thing in the morning,” Peter said after they’d ordered pasta and fish and wine and bread.
“What do you think of the shimmer and the hypercube?” Rose asked, sipping the simple red wine that came in a glass not unlike the one she used when brushing her teeth.
“I thought Torchwood. You’re the ones who sneer at people like me because we do not think that every ghost and vampire and werewolf is of alien provenance,” he said. Rose smiled softly, acknowledging the perception most people had of them. Peter’s bluntness was endearing.
The Doctor frowned. “Most of them are.”
“But some of them aren’t, that’s when we get called in.”
“Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters,” the Doctor said, adding the tune of the song. Which got him an amused snicker from his wife and a blank stare from Peter. “Sorry, couldn’t resist. You seriously don’t know the film? It’s a classic!”
“It was never made here,” Rose said.
“Oh.”
“What the fuck are you on about?” Peter asked, growing impatient.
“Oi, language!” the Doctor frowned, drowning his indignation in wine.
“A film about people like you,” Rose explained.
“I thought is was never made.”
“Not in this universe,” she said. “So, tell us about the vampires of Venice.” Trust her to steer the conversation out of dangerous waters.