Higher Velkind

Oh? Aren't you an interesting little thing... Why are you looking at me so, dear?
Find something that holds your attention? I'm flattered, truly, but weren't you ever taught that it's rude to stare?

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My hope is that my usual audience will not hold a more familiar tone against me for this topic, as I feel I can speak more personally about it than most other subjects that find themselves in print within my workshop.
I know that I have, throughout most of my writing, treated the myths of this world with a certain level of... deniability. It's served me well throughout my time as a reporter and serves me now as whatever you'd describe my current occupation as. I would, of course, gather together the scraps of information I could find and present them to you dear reader, and allow you to draw your own conclusions. I seldom encounter these myths, personally, even if I could see their genuine effects firsthand.
That changed a fortnight ago, when the above quote was spoken to me by a most beautiful lady standing demurely at the edges of a gathering of Salallóni socialites. She seemed surprised, in her own way, that I had noticed her at all, but in a way that belied a pleasant surprise over an unwanted shock.
Then I woke up nearly two weeks later in a four-poster bed that I did not recognize, in clothes that weren't my own, in a manor that according to the locals hadn't been occupied in over two years. If they're right, then an abandoned property has quite the cleaning staff. More notably, on the bed next to me was an absolutely ancient book titled "Secrets of the Red Smile", and no author's name anywhere I could determine.
Within its pages, dear reader, was a most enthralling mystery. A description of a race of people that I had never heard of before, written about as if they were walking amongst us at all times. The Higher Velkind.
What makes them "Higher" than other Velkind remains a mystery to me, alluded to by the author but never truly addressed.
The existence of the Velkind is described as shadowed and somewhat subsistent, due to the fact that this species hides itself well amongst others so that it might sustain itself upon the ichor of others. They, apparently, drink the fluid in the same way that we may drink water.