The glares and curses on their lips were something Sayre expected when he walked into the coven, but the eyes that looked him up and down—scanning, surveying, studying, devouring—weren’t.

“Is this him?” one whispered to the witch beside her.

“That’s…the vampire?” she muttered behind a lifted hand. “The Old One?”

“He’s—”

Sayre shot a glance over as he shuffled past, hands in his leather jacket’s pockets, curling a ring around his left middle finger with his thumb nervously. 

The two witches hushed with a jerk, hiding blushing cheeks. Though not before he heard a “Like a young Gregory Peck,” and a, “Who?”

Sayre stepped around curios filled to the brim of containers, ducked beneath lines of dried plants, growing plants, green plants, fake plants, and dying plants, and to a solid oak door—original.

The red haired witch knocked. “Hazel.”

“Busy!”

Sayre tensed. Her voice never changed. It was still that pointed, stabbing, thistle-coated song that he had always known.

“It’s important.” The witch looked back to Sayre. “Pretty damn important.”

“Later!”

“It’s—”

“Open the fucking door, Hazel!” Sayre rolled his eyes and boomed. All of the coven turned to him, startled into staring. “It’s me.”

There was silence. Then there was stomping. The door burst open to Hazel—permed brown hair, freckles, brown eyes, and a scowl that could make a werewolf whimper back to its lair. “Sayre,” she said, voice caught in her throat. Held down by anger, surprise, he’d never know. “What the fuck are you doin’ here? How—”

He tilted his head with a flat glare. She knew how.

“Of course she fuckin’ did.” Hazel lifted a hand to her head and massaged across the smear of teal eyeshadow. “What the hell do you want?”

“Can we talk?”

“We are.”

“In private.”

Hazel scoffed. “No. I’m not going anywhere alone with you.” Ah, there was the suffocating mistrust he knew.

Sayre lifted his hands from within his pockets, expanding himself wide, and black—the closest he would ever be to looking like a bat. Honestly, he never understood why bats. Why not cats? Or snakes? Or— 

“I may be an Old One, but I’m not stupid.” He gestured to the crowd of witches that surrounded them, and peeked around the hallway corner, and eased on their tippy-toes to see how and why a vampire could just walk into the heart of their coven.

With a deep, deep exhale, Hazel stepped away from the door. Another invite. But, as he moved to step over it, she held a hand to his chest with: “Wait, the salt.” She ran a toe over the threshold. It shimmed white, then the line of salt revealed—broken.

“Cute,” he said.

“Can’t be too careful.” Hazel gave a flat smile then closed the door behind him. In her office, Sayre moved to the window and twisted the blinds shut. The sunlight faded to a dim, but comfortable glow. “Last I heard, sunlight wasn’t a problem for you anymore.”

“It’s not. This is for privacy.”

“The room’s enchanted.”

“Can’t be too careful,” he repeated her words, then he moved to the bookshelf as a spine of a book caught his eye. His fingers freed from their pocket, lifted, and ran down the length of it. A tattered, but beloved copy.

“Why’re you here?” Hazel broke him from his distraction with a shuffle of papers she tapped against the wooden desk to organize. Her gaze, as was her tone, was curt and biting. It rolled over him and his bleached-blond hair, twisted and poking, his ripped pants, his boots, his band t-shirt, his jacket. He was sure the last she had seen of him, he was in a suit, with his natural hair, and high-waisted trousers, suspenders, and wing-tips. Back when cars were still called: motor-carriages. “Can’t be to talk about the atrocity that is your hair? Because I’m pretty powerful, but that—”

“Any idea on why there’s a rumor going about that you and the coven want to kill me?”

Hazel snorted. She almost laughed. Sayre sent her an eye. “Well, I didn’t start it! Believe me, I would have—It wasn’t me. Though, out of curiosity, what did they say I’ll do?”

“I’m serious, Hazel.”

“So am I! What was it? A stake? An acid bath? Oh, tarred and feathered. I do love a classic.”

“Walter seems to think I’ll be trouble” —again, Hazel snorted and laughed— “because he’s afraid of this coven.”

“Wise man.”

“Walter’s an idiot.”

Hazel’s arms went akimbo. “A wise idiot, then.” They shared another glare. “I didn’t start it.”

“I didn’t think you did.”

“Good, because if I wanted you dead, you would be.”

Sayre turned from the bookshelf. The fingers of his right hand twisted the ring on his left. “I know,” he said absent-mindedly. “Why do you think I’m here?”

Hazel’s eyes dropped to his hands, to the ring. Her jaw clenched, but whatever she had ready on her tongue, she swallowed down her throat. “So, what is it that you want from me? …Exactly?”

“It’s weird…” he said, then helped himself to one of her chairs. He slouched down, legs extended, boots peaked. Sayre’s attention lowered to it as he thought, and spoke aloud. “I’ve this gnawing feeling something weird is going on. Something…familiar.”

“You’re an ancient-ass vampire who’s older than the city he’s lurking in. I’m sure a lot is weird for you,” snarked Hazel. Sweet, sweet, reliable Hazel. Always foul to him. Ever since the first time he walked into her and—

“Don’t call me ‘ancient,’” Sayre hissed.

“Fine. Prehistoric? Vintage!”

Sayre pressed fingers into his eyes as he groaned, “Hazel.”

“Okay! Weird shit is happening! When is that new? When is any of this new? I may not have started that rumor, but I don’t mind it. Good! Let them be afraid of us! Let them know that I fucking hate you, Sayre.”

Another groan produced, “Love you, too, kid,” as he rubbed harder.

“What’s wrong with you?” Hazel moved around her desk. Her arms crossed over her chest. It didn’t hide the stake.

“Nothing. It’s… Listen, something weird is going on. Something I don’t like. It feels like cogs are shifting that shouldn’t be.”

“Ever think that maybe you’re just too old and senile?”

Sayre lifted his head to glare and Hazel jerked back. Her arm out, stake pointed. He didn’t need to see his reflection to know it happened again. Palms met his eye sockets. “Walter’s making moves. He all but said. He doesn’t respect what’s here. He wants to change. Wants to run it like a human would. He’s an old man, but an infantile vampire. He’ll do something drastic—”

“More than a fuckin’ coup?” She sat on the edge of her desk, but the stake remained visible.

“He tried to recruit me.” Sayre pulled his palms away, and when Hazel didn’t flinch again, he figured he was back to human sapphire. “Then, when that didn’t work—guns. It’s always fucking guns. Humans never tire of them.”

“I’ve yet to see a bullet penetrate a spell…or properly kill a…you.” She pointed with the stake. “I still don’t get what this has to do with me? With my coven.”

“Why now? It’s not new-news that you despise me. It’s not even from this fucking decade. So, why now?”

“That’s…a good point.”

“It’s odd to start that now. It’s odd to have that spread and incite a den, and a coven, and who knows what else. See! Cogs are moving, but I can’t see the whole machination yet.”

“Having you and I fight would…keep the two most powerful things in this city preoccupied.”

“As would be the spectators scarfing down popcorn to watch.”

For a moment, there was silence. Sayre leaned his head back against the wall the chair was pushed against. He closed his eyes.

“Bold of you,” Hazel muttered.

“If we wanted each other dead…we would be dead.”

“You don’t know that. Maybe I’m biding my time.”

“You’re not going to kill me,” he said, confidently, softly. His eyes eased open and fell into her brown eyes. So much like— “If you did that…”

“Shut up.” She kicked her foot, hard, into Sayre’s boot and moved to her desk. Hazel fell into her chair, pulled open a drawer, and dropped a thick, buckle-bound grimoire with a thud!. With a huff, and a refusal to look at Sayre, she unbound and flipped it open. “I’ll work on gathering some information. I assume you’re still at the safe-house apartment.”

“I haven’t lived there since the twenties.”

The frantic flipping of pages stopped. “…Fine. Then…I guess…you better just stop back here again, because if I know where you live, I’ll probably stake you.”

“I…actually have an idea. I know someone.”

Hazel’s scowl rolled up to him. “Oh my god, you have friends.”

“He’s not…” Sayre shook it away. “I know someone who hears a lot of chatter. How, I don’t know, but he does, and it’s always good.”

“Fine.”

“You’ll have to go on your own.”

“Hell no!”

“You’ll just have to trust me, Hazel!”

“Hell, no,” she growled. Her voice deep, magicked. Some of the room shook.

Sayre leaned palms into the desk. He caught her scathing, fury-burning glare.  He didn’t blame her. He couldn’t. The two of them had once been close. He once considered her family. A part of him still did. Always would. “Trust me. Have I ever—”

“Yes. Once, and it was enough,” she brimmed with hatred. “Once, and it cost me my sister.”

He stood straight. Their eyes locked, but Sayre exhaled. “He’s at the pier. Bring a slice of pizza. Ask for Bodhi.”

“When?” she said after a long, hate-filled moment of silence.

“He’s at the pier.”

“When?”

“It doesn’t matter. He’s there. Don’t give me that look.”

“It’s the only look I have for you.”

“Unfettered hatred? Yes, I know. But, for a fucking second, I need you to put that aside, and go talk to Bodhi. You’ll like him.”

Hazel scoffed so hard she sprayed the desk. “If he’s anything like you—”

“Fuck, no!” Sayre cringed. He fluffed his leather jacket in retaliation. “He’s nothing like me.”

A terrible smile slipped on Hazel’s lip. “Hhm! Maybe I will like him.”

Sayre stepped away and spun the ring on his finger. “See what he knows, and I’ll stop by later. —Don’t worry: I’ll knock,” he said, nodded, then headed for the door hoping he could get out before she could ask.

“Sayre.”

He turned. Don’t ask. Don’t ask. “What?”

“...It…was good to see you.” Hazel’s eyes fell to the grimoire and to her still hands over the pages. 

She always wore her emotions. It made reading her intentions rather easy, but it never made the ache of seeing her in pain any less gutting. She may have been Her younger sister, but in a way, Hazel was his, too.

 Her brows flexed. Her anger lost for a moment. Sayre had no doubt that her saying those words took everything she had. It came from some place deeper than her hatred. It came from loneliness. From grief.

A love they both lost, that now, even after the years, still bound them.

“You, too,” he said equally as earnestly. 

“Your hair is awful.”

Sayre loosed a laugh through a snort. “So is yours.”

The room shifted to reverence, to sadness. When Sayre tried to slip out again, Hazel called him back with: “Oh, what kind of pizza? Does it matter?” He bit into his lips and her face soured. “Sayre,” she growled.

There were a lot of ways to piss off a witch deeply. Trust him, Sayre knew. He barely survived them, but there was one thing deeper, one offense he couldn’t, wouldn’t, daren’t mutter to a life-long citizen of the city.

He grabbed the door handle and stepped through, using it as a shield as he spat out, “Ham and pineapples.”

Hazel roared and burst with a list of curses just as Sayre pulled the door closed, and something thudded against it.