I understand. Mayerling hears echoes of Carmilla's welcome in it. She too had claimed to understand. Perhaps she even did. The best lies are the truth. This situation is simpler, less fraught for this strange companion than for Mayerling. He glances one more time at the image of Charlotte's cooling corpse on the floor. The urge to treat it as the palest of substitutes flickers and flattens under the weight of his focus and will.

This shop is neither of theirs, and late as it is, his presence may draw unwanted attention. Mildly embarrassed by what is, technically, entering (he did not break the door) without permission, tacit or explicit, Mayerling gives a slow gracious nod of the head. "There is little reason to stay where we are," Mayerling agrees. No one else is close enough to cause problems, the woman that sparked this now beyond his senses.

He motions the other man out ahead of him, not offering that minor vulnerability, lest it all be an act. Oh, what wounds Carmilla cleaved into his heart, that someone expressing concern should feel like a threat. Exhausted but unable to sleep, Mayerling steps only a short distance away, a couple dark shops.

"I have never had such troubles sleeping," Mayerling says softly, a conversation only for them, "it could be supernatural, something of this place. That option is a trouble itself, a convenient scapegoat when it is nothing more than one's personal difficulties.