"Some of them are all right," she says, but it's grudging and speaks of exceptions to a rule; humans have to prove their trustworthiness to her in a way that other xenians just don't. In a way that he doesn't, now, because he's like her, almost, and Ilde has been starved for that in a way she hasn't really admitted to anyone. She likes Mafaton so much because, for all that it's mainly a vampire town, it's also mainly a not human place.

It's valuable to her, the ability to go somewhere they aren't.

"But just be careful." Her hand is still healing where the razors cut her in the arrival room, and she examines her palm for a moment before tucking it back against her lap; it's not so bad as it was, she doesn't need the bandage any more. It's just irritating, how the skin pulls and reminds her. "There are lots of us, not human, though. Not like us--" them, water creatures, "--but other xenians. And we've got ways." A shrug; Ilde doesn't put up with hardly anything any more, she tells herself.