Nearly an hour later of drinks and gentle snarls, Sayre slipped into the corner, shadowed by a towering green plant. He sipped his drink, eyes still over the crowd, but his resolve tested.

Maybe it was a brash notion to think he would find her. She wasn’t the only witch, or even High-Priestess in the city.

Certainly the most powerful, said a part of his brain he quickly smacked away.

He was so hellbent on finding her, he didn’t actually think to make sure she would be here. Sayre was just convinced by the way Howard had rolled his eyes and said, “This is why we don’t make deals with witches,” had to have meant her. Who else could possibly be so vexing?

So…hexing and infuriating…

Sayre took another sip. Something had to have been wrong with him. She must have done something while he was in her operating room. The gold that flooded his veins and eyes, the thing she said was her curse—It must have infected him, too.

Why else, he pondered furiously, why else would he be here, desperately searching for her across the sea of people. Why else would he be so outraged that she still had some hold on him. Why else was he aching to taste that impish grin?

Lust, teased the boundaries of his thoughts, and echoed.

Sayre growled and knocked back a longer sip. He dropped it to a table, then ran his cold fingers over his forehead, massaging away whatever foul concoction of thoughts had sprung up and blossomed at the thought of the Witch’s impish grin.

He watched another group of women walk by him. Beautiful gowns, bared shoulders, long gloves upon otherwise naked arms, and a neckline that left little to the imagination.

In 1880-whatever, when everyone had to be buttoned up high and tight, evening gowns were the one exception. 

Sayre drilled fingers against the bridge of his nose. Everything was so strong here; the sounds, the smells, the palpable desires.

If he didn’t already want to enact a murderous revenge upon the Witch, he would now, for the fact that he was here suffering this indignity.  

When another of his headaches threatened to spike through his head, triggered by a lethal dose of cologne, Sayre forced himself straight and searched for the quickest exit. Maybe he could find a garden, or a room without so much. Hell, a smoking lounge would be better than this affront to the senses.

He groaned and slipped into the crowd, ignoring the people who stood and chatted. He curled around an enormous feather from a woman’s headpiece and spotted a smaller door frame where a blessed cold breeze slithered in.

The scent of food yielded the thought to Sayre that a door for the kitchen staff meant somewhere less chaotic, or at least far better smelling than where he was. He bee-lined for it, and as the cold night air rushed up his nose, clearing out the foul, overpowering cocktail of hundreds of people and their perfume…something dark found him.

Something familiar.

He knew that scent in an instant.

Sayre rolled his scowling glare across the crowd, beyond the slicked back hair, and up-dos and curls, and various fascinators attached to them. He searched and studied, but didn’t spot her.

He lifted a hand to his forehead again, feeling the wave of a headache brewing, and as he stepped to give up—at least until he had some fresh air—he saw her.

Their eyes locked. Through the mass, turbulent crashing sea of people, he caught moonless dark eyes, and he knew at once he had found the Witch.

Her dark hair was up, with a singular long curl down her bare shoulder, reminiscent of a time long passed. Her eyes were dark-rimmed. Her lips were painted somehow even darker. Against her skin, black pearls and diamonds, and that black velvet choker with the stone in the middle. Her dress—Oh fuck! He didn’t even register that all those dresses he watched with the low-neckline would be something she wore, too—was a dark, shifting red. At one moment, it seemed black, but a change of her posture made it fade into a dark carmine. Her gloves were of the same make, though sheer.

Sayre absorbed the sight of her, and a murderous frenzy filled his bones. An unholy urge to rip her apart. Starting with that shadowy pocket at the corner of her jawline.

No.

At the terrible, wicked, impish smirk that bloomed across her lips as the recognition on her face settled. A look of pleasant surprise filled her. It drilled a dimple into her cheek. The longer she stared at him, the more her teeth teased her bottom lip. Until, with a drop of her own glass to a passing attendant, the Witch abandoned the people around her for Sayre.

He straightened his shoulders. He kicked back the ache in his brain from the impending headache. Then he charged forward, shoulder leading as he wove around people.

The ocean of people parted into an isthmus: bridging a swath of open between and separating the tumultuous waves of party-goers dancing, drinking, and laughing; a small school of dresses and suits skittered by like up-ended crabs, before all that stood before Sayre and the Witch was the beautiful hardwood floor (empty and waiting), the weight of what to say first, and who would be the one to do it.

Without anyone to block their view, there were no words, just eyes that cast up and down one another until finally, the Witch smiled devilishly and stepped in closer.

“You are not Fergus,” she said. Despite the din of the party, he heard her perfectly. Her magic, he suspected.

“No.”

Her eyes rolled all over his facial features. If he didn’t know any better, he swore something flushed across her cheeks. As a vampire, he should have been able to tell, but the commotion of the party frazzled and confused all his senses. (And so did the Witch, though he would never admit it). “Forgive me, why are you here? And, where is my date?” she asked.

Sayre kept his eyes on hers, though he wanted to follow the line of pearls down, down, down. “We have to talk,” he gruffed.

The callousness in his tone shredded her smile, and her air—flirtatious, another thing he would never admit—dropped dead.

The fingers she had traced along the pearls clenched and dropped. Her arms crossed defensively. “About what?”

“You need to remove whatever you did to me.”

“I beg your fucking pardon!” She rolled her indignant eyes. “What did I do to you?”

“Your en—” he stopped as someone backed into him. Sayre wrapped a hand around her bare arm—bare skin to skin, ignoring the spike through his back—and pulled her elsewhere so they could talk. “The enchantment,” he hissed. “Remove it.”

“Take your hands off me!” the Witch snapped. Something golden flickered in her pupils. “How dare you!” She leaned in, furious and fanged. “How dare you accuse me! How dare you spoil my evening!”

“Spoil your—” Sayre growled and rumbled. “If you want to speak of spoiled, allow me to show you the remnants of my house, and the holes someone tried to put through my chest!”

The Witch’s expression changed. “What?” she tried to ask, but Sayre stormed onward.

“Now, whatever it is you did, whatever thing you’ve done, remove it!”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Your…curse,” he spat, sotto voce.

Her brows furled. “Aw, don’t tell me the big bad vampire man is afraid of catching a curse,” she said patronizingly.

Sayre fought the shock in his chest that wanted to bury his fangs into her neck. “Whatever it is you did, remove it. Now.”

She drilled a pointed finger into him. “I didn’t do anything to you!” the Witch gritted through her teeth.

“Something is wrong with me—”

“That’s painfully evident.”

“—and it happened after—”

“Nothing I’ve done intentionally.”

“ —I met you!” Sayre roared with an anger fueled and instigated by her interruptions and comments, though only as much as their secret conversation could allow.

The Witch’s jaw lowered, mouth open to form words, but instead she snapped it shut. Her expression shifted. Her nose flared and her breathing snorted. “What is it that you think I’ve done to you? —No! More importantly, why? Why would I do anything to harm you? That would be astronomically moronic on my part, wouldn’t it? Since I employ you!”

“How do I know this isn’t just some hex? Some…something” —he flicked his hands to motion magic where words had begun to fail him— “that’s befuddled my thoughts, and—”

“What is it?” she pressed. “What is it that you think I’ve done, exactly?!”

Sayre clenched his jaw and bore his human eyes into hers. He chewed on the words before he managed to grumble, “You…infect my thoughts.”

The Witch stared blankly before a snort and scoff broke her. She held back a guffaw.  “I do what?” 

“Don’t mock me. My senses are dulled, distracted.”

“And how is that my fault?” she derided, before she let that impish smirk slice across her lips, and her fingers trace across her bare collar bones. “Actually, I've got an idea…” Her eyes rolled out of his and over him.

“This is serious.”

She kicked a laugh back down her throat. “For you, I’m sure it is.”

Sayre grabbed her arm again and snarled. “I told you last time, if you controlling me happened again, I would—”

“In an entire room of people?” she challenged. “You’re good, but not that good.”

“You don’t know the extent of my abilities.”

She stepped in closer. Close enough he felt every expel of breath from the “Nor do you mine,” the Witch threatened. 

Sayre glowered. His furious glare locked into hers. He felt his cold, dead blood ache to boil. Something stirred in his chest. Something crackled across his jaw. “Remove it,” he said, fangs bare and eyes dancing between hers and the impish smirk he wanted to bite off her face, “or I will—”

“Find that there is a lot more wood in the room than you realize.” The lifted fingers she held between them sparkled and shimmered with magic.

Sayre snorted.  He stepped in closer. “I will rip out your heart, and stomp on it.”

“Before I manage to send the champagne table through your chest?” She pressed the magicked finger into his heart, and the fury that rose from that point rocked his spine.