When Sayre had stormed out of his belfry earlier in the night, he didn’t pay much mind to the mess he had left. He grabbed what he needed, then he stalked. As he slipped into the broken, abandoned cathedral now, he groaned at the idea of sweeping the glass and debris away, but instead he found it piled in a corner.

The sight of it stopped him. His head canted. His brows and eyes narrowed to study it. As the words were about to leave his shaping lips, the answer to his unspoken question appeared.

“Ha! You’re not dead…again.”

Sayre didn’t flinch, but his body tensed in surprise. He righted his posture and expression. “Was this you?” he asked, turning to Lark, the ghost-boy.

Lark nodded. “Sure was. Can’t have you making a mess in our home.”

“My—”

“Our!” 

Having no choice, nor the time or patience, Sayre conceded. He said nothing else to the matter, and began to peel off his outerwear. His frock coat, scarf, gloves, hat. Then his suit: jacket, vest, shirt.

Lark hovered in the corner stroking a ghostly pigeon in his arms. “Do they still hurt?”

Sayre glanced up. “Does what?” he said as he rummaged through the broken wardrobe where he hoarded his clothes. Decades of fashions shoved behind the doors, and luckily for him, ones that changed little. Still, tonight would require a special suit; and a special air about him.

He was intending to look as devastating as he could. After all, there was revenge on the line, and how could he dare be underdressed for that?

Lark bobbed slowly in place. His ghostly eyes ran up and down Sayre, seemingly as confused as any child would be (see-through, or not). “You were holier than the Pope just the other night” —Sayre growled— “and—all right, all right. Forget I asked.” Lark huffed and nuzzled into his bird. It cooed.

Sayre pried open a trunk and fished out a box. As he knocked back the lid as Lark hovered over his shoulder. “Oooh, those are shiny? What’re you doin’? You meeting the King? The Queen? The President!” Lark gasped.

“No,” said Sayre flatly, hoping to end the conversation.

“Where’re you goin’?”

“Out.”

“I figured that. No one dresses up like that to go to a place like this, even when it was alive.”

Sayre wiggled out of more of his clothes and poured water from the vanity into the basin so he could wash his face. In the little mirror, he caught Lark still watching. “What?”

Lark shrugged. “You look like my father.”

Sayre’s eye twitched. His hands planted on the vanity, arching his shoulders into a grotesque, bony mountain range. “What?” he repeated. The white of his fangs glinted in the reflection.

“My father, when we’d get ready for service. I just…I remembered it all of a sudden.” Lark’s ghostly eyes lowered. As did his head. He sank in the air until he landed on the corner of Sayre’s mattress. Then, when the moment remained quiet, he sank through the floor. It was a silent action, but to Sayre, there was a weight to it that sounded deafening.

He felt a twist in his chest, but he shoved it away.

Revenge! His revenge! Against the Witch. And, oh, ho, ho, not just any witch. A High-Priestess. A cunning, brilliant, deadly witch! With her dark eyes, and her wicked disposition, and that curl of a grin. That horrible, delicious curl. 

Oh, yes, he was going to enact a revenge so…so…monumentous, the city would be reminded why he was to be left alone.

Sayre ran his hands over his face, washing away the grime and blood. The wounds he had sustained earlier were long gone. The worst: little faint lines of scars. As he washed in the mirror, he caught a couple more. Instead of lingering, he snorted, and shaved his face. Then, he slipped into the black tie suit. A black, so perfectly dark, he thought it was made of shadows. Same with the jacket, and top hat, and various other accessories that were demanded he bring. 

When he caught himself in the polished mirror, he scarcely recognized himself. He wondered if the Witch would. Though, as he stared, he didn’t look all that dissimilar. He had done little different to his hair—slicked back; the ruddy brown almost mud-colored, like dirt after a heavy rain—and he always sported a clean-shaven face (far easier to wash away the blood). His eyes were the same striking, stormy sapphire he had had for centuries, and centuries. Yet, as he studied himself, Sayre noted something off. His posturing felt different.

Then, he snorted with a gleeful, murderous grin. Of course, he chuckled to himself as he turned away,  he was going to see the Witch again—and he was going to make her—

When he skipped down the stairs again, he heard a whistle from the broken pews. “Wow, when you go out, you sure do go out!”

Sayre adjusted his suit and planed a flat palm across his slicked back hair. “Watch the house,” he said.

Lark stood and saluted. “Yes, Captain!” The ghost-boy floated over as fast as a run. He beamed up at Sayre with awe, and for a moment, Sayre relaxed. He handed over his cane and hat, which Lark held dutifully, as Sayre buttoned his overcoat and adjusted the collar.

“I’m sorry about the window,” said Lark.

“Wasn’t your fault.”

“I’ll do better tonight.”

Sayre held out his hand for the hat. “I don’t doubt.” He affixed it and flicked the brim with his finger—something he had seen his father do all his human life with his bycocket. An odd feeling moved over Sayre, something like longing and connection, but he cast it aside.

He had plans. Murderous, bloody plans.

Sayre moved for the broken door. He peeled it away, but Lark whistled.

“Here!” He tossed the cane over, and Sayre caught it deftly. Lark waved and crossed his legs, hovering in the air.

With a couple fingers, Sayre waved farewell and slipped into the cold, dark streets. Though he fought for his murderous thoughts, something far more deadly moved through him. 

He wondered how many times he would have sat like Lark did, watching his own father leave to tend to the fields. He wondered if his own father felt this pang in his chest, something like an ache. Such human emotions.

But, Sayre hadn’t been a human in a long, long time.

His parents were long, long dead.

His ancestors, long-since worm-food.

These thoughts shouldn’t have plagued him.

He shouldn’t have been thinking about his family, or the fact that he was looking forward to seeing Lark when he returned home. He wondered if Lark would shudder at the recount of his bloody vengeance, or would he laugh and giggle in the way that children did when you said you wanted to gobble up their toes. 

Sayre snorted then through his nose. Despite the cold, there was no plume of white. No hot breath. He was as cold as a corpse (the idiom and irony did not phase him. …This time).

His cane tapped furiously against the cobblestone, until he waved down a carriage and rode the rest of the way to the party. When he eased his way out the little door, head peeking first, he saw a beautiful facade of stone, with illuminated lamps and lanterns, flickering upon the trellises of climbing ivy and wisteria, and sending a dancing glow against the crowd still waiting to attend.

He paid the driver, stepped into the crowd and donned his most charming and human-looking smile. People around him smiled back. Quick prattles of compliments to dresses and excitement for the party filled the time until Sayre stepped up the stairs to the well-dressed, but still obviously guard.

Sayre presented his invitation. The guard nodded, taking it from him. Sayre stepped to the threshold.

Shit! he panicked. He had attended plenty of parties and crashed more, but those were public ones. This was very clearly someone’s home—though if the small glimpse of the foyer was anything to go by, a grand one that he would be visiting later to avail himself of new amenities. 

He poked a black leather shoe, toe first, at the threshold, expecting the invisible wall, but his foot went through, and so he forced the rest of him inside.

Apparently, invitations were enough. He mulled on this as he peeled off his overcoat and left it with the attendant. The ticket he slipped into his pocket. Then he moved out of the entryway and into the sounds and smells of a massive, mortal party. 

Through the carved mahogany arch, a sea of well-dressed denizens lilted, prattled, chatted, and drank. The men were all in black, the women in a variety of colors with accessories in combinations he could scarcely comprehend. Jewels sparkled beneath the candelabras. Perfume suffocated the air. Beautiful music filled his ears. It was a buffet for his senses. His jaw ached. His hunger growled.

There were so many corners to slip into. Rooms that seemed to extend into another. As he moved through the crowd, it became evident that this chamber was only one of many. Each had its own staff, its own quartet, its own ebb and flow.

A trio of women in gold, purple, and teal moved around him. Their hair high, their shoulders and upper-chest bare. Their dresses swooped across their bustline. Sayre watched them as they stared at him. Their fans lifted to their lips. A smile moved across another.

With a sigh, Sayre kept on. It was far too crowded to use his stronger senses, in fact he had to make a conscious effort to dull most of them. When that became taxing (along with the gentle hands that kept moving across his back and down his arm), Sayre plucked a drink from a silver tray as one moved towards him. He grabbed the attendant, ordering him to stay, as he downed the drink, then took another.

Rip out her heart, he thought to himself like a hymn. Watch it waste upon the floor.