Sayre shook off the cold with a quake of his shoulders as he stomped up the stairs from the subway. He had been taking the line for decades, but for all those years he could never really get over the oppressive chill, the unique smell, and the even more unique people.

Once on the sidewalk, he curled around the iron frame work and moved down the street. He stuck out like a sore thumb. At least not because of his fangs and penchant for blood, but his bleach-blond hair and aggressive wardrobe. His eyes rolled when someone stepped out of a record shop, looked at him, then their Billy Idol vinyl. Their eyes lit up as he flicked a glance their way, and just to see if he could make it worse, Sayre winked, and watched the human crumble into their friend group. He chirped, but in the end felt nothing.

He swiped a pair of sunglasses from a table, ripped off the tags, and slid them on. Hopefully it would help. The eyes still followed him, but at least they left just as quickly.

The streets stretched out into longer blocks, and with it, the buildings began to shrink. He walked through underpasses, fed on a human who threatened him with a knife, and made himself to the front doors of his destination.

The opaque and sun-faded merlot doors were propped open. Papers and posters plastered against them. The building wasn’t anything spectacular—a long gray colored rectangle. Some of the windows were diner-glass, others were blacked out. From the doors, he caught the scent of something delicious and knew he was in the right spot (also because the first food kitchen in the basement of some grand, gothic church yielded very little—a juice box from a lovely older woman and a cookie in the shape of a cross.  No, the irony was not lost on him, even as he ate the cookie).

Sayre stepped into the building (public, so he wouldn’t need an invite, and especially not after a poster that read ‘ALL ARE WELCOME’ in retina-offending colors), and followed the scent of food. He passed by a large gym, where the squeak of shoes felt like stabs to his eardrums, past a smaller room where a circle of chairs would eventually be filled by chattering faces, and to the swinging double-doors that led into the cafeteria. It had an odd scent, bleach and fried chicken; cleaning products of industrial strength, and chocolate brownies. The folding tables were lined in perfect rows; their benches taken up by all kinds who sat with worn plastic trays of food before them. A train of them lined up by the glass and metal counter, where volunteers scooped and smiled.

Sayre lifted his sunglasses into his hair. He trailed over the figures. Too many scents mixed and clouded his nose, until it was too late. A tingle rolled up his spine. Into his neck. He felt the hand in the air before it fell onto his shoulder.

“Welcome, friend. We’re—” the voice stalled as Sayre turned over his shoulder. “Well, shit,” Howard said. His brown eyes rolled over Sayre’s unchanging face—he hadn’t aged—and to his bleached hair. “Sayre?”

“Howard,” he greeted.

Howard gasped in delight and pulled Sayre to his chest for a hug. Now, Sayre, by all accounts, was an average sized man. He wasn’t strikingly tall, or strikingly broad, or strikingly muscular in the way that most fantasize running a match down his abs and setting something aflame. He was unsuspecting. Could meld into a crowd easily. It was the combination of his face, and piercing stare that made him unbearably attractive. Compared to Howard though, whose black shirt and trousers, and thin strip of white within the collar, all barely containing the muscles of his form, despite the onset of crow’s feet and age spots, made Sayre look unbearably human. The fact they were about the same height made Sayre pout in a way he hated.

“It’s good to see you!” Howard pushed Sayre back with both of his hands on the vampire’s shoulders. “Aw, you look as ever a sour puss as I remember.”

“Hhm,” Sayre grunted through a thin smile.

“Come, come! Are you hungry?” he said, a decibel too loudly.

“I…am,” Sayre returned the faked gesture.

Howard patted a hand on Sayre’s shoulder, wincing at a spike, as he led him towards the line of food. Howard pulled a can of soda and a bag of chips from the woven basket by the unused register, before hauling Sayre to an empty table in the far corner. Howard lifted a black leg to sit on the attached bench. 

“What brings you to my humble establishment?” Howard said, still too loudly. He cracked open the soda and the bag of chips, which he placed between them, even though he would be the only one partaking.

Sayre sat on his folded leg, leaning an elbow into the table. “You can drop the act now.”

“I haven’t had the chance to enchant the building,” he mumbled into a chip. “The local coven is…extortion at this point.”

“Doesn’t Hazel cover this part of—”

“Ha!” Howard laughed. “No!” He shook his head, still mismatched in its colors, but decidedly more gray. “No. That coven hasn’t had that much territory since—” His brown eyes lifted from his chip to Sayre, then darted away as he shoved it on his tongue. He chewed, instead of talking.

Sayre lowered his gaze to the soda, then forced a sip. It was sickly sweet. He took another.

Howard watched him. A finger pointed about it. “Is it true? You’re…a sun-walker now? Or, rather, have been?”

Sayre rolled up his sleeve enough to expose his wrist. He held it out for Howard who dropped finger tips to his vein. Howard concentrated for a second, then nearly jumped for the bench.

“You…you have a pulse, too?”

“Yeah,” Sayre said sotto voce. “I’ve that, too.”

Howard exploded in awe. “Holy fucking shit!” He faked a blessing over himself when eyes darted at the inconceivable notion that a holy man cursed (then again, he was wholly, a man cursed. Semantics). “It’s like the Cowardly Lion finally got a heart,” Howard cooed.

Sayre’s expression sank. “That’s the Tin-Man. The Cowardly Lion wanted bravery.”

“Whatever, I didn’t keep up with movies like you did.”

“You mean…watch them?”

Howard flounced a wrist, dismissively. “Yeah, I was busy.”

Sayre looked about the room, then pulled his sunglasses off before they fell. “Clearly,” he said as he folded them and set them in the hem of his collar. “Listen, I need your help.”

The sip of soda Howard had taken coughed and burbled. He threw a fist to his chest, then waved away those who turned in worry. “Wrong—” he gasped. When it cleared, he leaned farther into Sayre. “I’m sorry. I must be losing my hearing in my old age. Did you just ask me for help?”

“Yes.” Sayre stole a chip and crunched it satisfactorily. “Why’s that so hard to believe?”

“Don’t take this the wrong—Actually, I don’t care how you take it. Sayre, you’re a bastard. You’ve always been one. Now, don’t get huffy, I mean it as a compliment. It’s why we’re friends—”

“Not friends.”

“Sure, whatever.” Howard coughed once more and lifted a chip. “So, you need my help. With what?”

Sayre bit the inside of his cheek. His eyes glanced about the room, searching, before he leaned in, bracing his weight on crossed arms and elbows. “You remember back in…1880—whatever, when we handled those two human hunters who had…”

Howard narrowed his aged brown eyes. “Yeah,” he said cautiously. “What of it?”

“You remember that…blackness—”

“No,” Howard spat. “No, no. No! I don’t want to hear it. It’s been dealt with. We dealt with it.” He leaned in closer and whispered harshly: “Us blowing up that factory to kingdom-fucking-come in the 20s should have done it!” Howard searched his eyes. “Don’t… Sayre, please tell me…”

“I don’t know, but I’ve got a bad feeling. I have a friend who’s a psychic of sorts, she’s—”

“Hold up. A friend? You” —he stabbed Sayre’s shoulder— “have a friend? A friend-friend, or a friend-friend?” Howard wiggled his bushy eyebrows. 

Sayre snapped the hand away with a growl. “Focus,” he threatened.

Howard snorted and scoffed. He pulled his hand away when those eating their food sent a glare. He smiled and waved, then rubbed the sore joint under the table. “See. There’s my boy.”

“Focus!” Sayre hissed venomously. “She has visions, sometimes; and she had one recently, that…” Sayre glanced over his shoulders once more. Then he dug into the inner pockets of his jacket and pulled out the journal. It fell to the table with a thwack!, but given its thin frame, it shouldn’t have hit with such weight. Something else was seemingly soaked into the pages. Something dark and heavy. Sayre pushed the bound thing to Howard.

He wiped his hands over the edge of the table, before carefully, suspiciously, poking and prying at pages with a pen he lifted from a pocket. 

Sayre’s expression flattened. “It’s not cursed.” 

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Howard said under his breath. “We should take this to my office. Grab it.”

Stormy sapphire eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“Just…grab it.” Howard stood and wiggled himself from the attached bench. He slid his palms down the front of his black shirt, and smiled warmly to people who sent him an eye. “Just grab the fuckin’ thing and let’s go,” he grumbled behind his teeth, waving to the cafeteria.

Sayre swiped it with rolling eyes, then followed Howard. But, as he too wiggled out of the bench, something caught his senses. Not his eyes, or his nose, or his ears. Something in his gut twitched and fluttered. He glanced around the cafeteria, but nothing had changed. The doors fluttered to a close, and in the brief moments of the hallway he caught glimpses of, he swore he saw someone in a full black tie suit, cane, and a tophat, as if it were a hundred years ago.

“Wait here,” Sayre ordered as he moved for the doors. He didn’t wait for Howard to respond. Sayre jogged through the cafeteria, skirting around people and their trays, to the doors. He pushed them open with both hands and stepped into the hallway…but no one was there.