Absit Omen RPG

"Hmm..." Lazarus murmured and opened the bag for his own confirmation and curiosity. True enough, inside were four wands, distinct in design and size. Were he still a wizard, he would have felt them, the mote of magic in him reach out for the potent magical cores. But alas, he was dead now, no wizard's magic left in him. They were but sticks.

He took time to look at each one. True, one showed evidence of having been cast into a fire but recovered before it was reduced to ash. Otherwise, its condition was good. All of them were in fairly good order considering how old they were, how long ago they'd been stolen.

It had taken some months for Lazarus to track them down, his trail leading him through records of sale and old stories. He'd hunted high and low for them until he discovered they had ended up in the hands of the great and noble Ollivander family. He'd convinced Tamzin at long last they must be returned or, came a gentle threat, she could not expect to have warm wishes from the vampires of London.

In the end, it wasn't the danger that had moved Tamzin, but the rightness of it. It was wrong, she believed, that a wand be owned by strangers. They were to be buried with their hand or treated as a private heirloom. This, apparently, had not been an ideal shared by her grandfather, who hoarded rare and interesting wands.

Tamzin spoke when Lazarus was quiet for too long. "Well?"

"Can't know how long it's been. Can't know, can't know, who knows?" Lazarus said. Then he added to release the witch, "well and good."

"Then it's done?" she asked.

"Done as a doornail," he replied. "Good night, Tamzin Ollivander."

With that, he was away, leaving Tamzin in the moonlight.

fin

The orange light of Lazarus Blackburn's cigarette would have signaled his approach if it wasn't for the blindness of Tamzin Ollivander, who clocked in him another way regardless. He ambled between the headstones, making no sound, only breathing so far as it took to draw smoke from the dart. He saw the witch in the crook of the stairway, her white hair reflecting the moon's faint light. He could smell her anxiety-touched blood. She turned and looked in his direction, a flash from reflective glasses briefly glinting. Lazarus smiled. She was dramatic, he could tell.

"Well, good night, Miss Ollivander," he said as he got close, for it could be none other. His voice was like coal and gravel and as warm as.

Tamzin lifted her chin, took a shaky breath and held out her hand. "Tamzin, please. Am I speaking to Lazarus Blackburn?"

Lazarus noted in her movements that she was blind, but had no cause to pay it any mind. He took her small hand in his, feeling her heartbeat. To Tamzin, the embrace was ice-cold.

"No one else," he affirmed. "Only me and my sins."

They did this, these two.

They talked at this table, or a different one. Sometimes, Dido asked questions like she was looking for a real answer, like she thought Lazarus would be a good face to ask. Lazarus liked it because it was new. What kind of girl came to the blood sucked out of her neck wrist thigh but brought philosophy in her pocket? He never knew what she was going to say.

"No, not weird," he answered, watching her set aside her clear drink still with the ice. She still knew what she was about tonight. He chuckled with his cracked throat. "Not weird for you, anyway. I'd be shocked, shocked I say..."

He sat back and made a gently lolling mockery of being scandalized, "to hear you'd ever looked away."

Then the vampire set his long hand down on the table further from himself and closer to Dido, and drummed his fingernails once.

"Loads of times," Lazarus rumbled with a toothy smile. "Loads of times. God. They're ..."

He paused long, his mouth paused open between words, searching his foggy recollection. His dark gaze landed on Dido's neck, then he blinked and returned.

"... something. Mmm. Really something. Once, I saw one fall from a tower. I think it jumped."

Lazarus had happened on the scene by chance, and watched it happen disturbed, incredulous, and fascinated. He was not upset now by this memory. He did, however, want something to do with his hands now. He propped his head up on his hand and looked up at the living thing from sideways.

"Crazy, crazy, crazy," he moved the words around in his mouth. "What about you, Dido T?"

Sometimes the person answering got to choose what the question was about.

"Full moons," Lazarus echoed, his own accent not dissimilar to Dido's, though hers was fresher, her voice unscarred. He set down his book without dog-earing the page and moved his lanky limbs around - his elbows found the tabletop. He scratched at his jawline. He liked that Dido wasn't in a hurry; the anticipation was nice.

"Do you go nocturnal those nights?" he asked. Dido wasn't the only living soul Lazarus had come to be fond of and liable to fail for. The other was the dog-catcher Kurby Bagnold who was better in a crisis than a conversation. Crude and fast. "Are you your boss's ears and eyes for her?"

Lazarus had come to know quite a bit now about the Werewolf Wing, at least that Dido's boss was a werewolf herself, turned on the job. She'd been turned like Lazarus had, both their lives doubled. Werewolves lived two at once, while vampires started one over.

"That'd be nice of you, helping out, taking notes."

4 Aug 2012
Late late late on a Saturday
Camden Town Hookers

The recent coverage of the move towards legalization of voluntary bites had caused a surge in patrons at the London vampire coven. It wasn't welcome by everyone, namely vampire Lazarus Blackburn. Money and volunteers had not in the past few decades ever been in short supply at Hookers, and first-timers were a hassle. All the hand-holding - imagine, comforting your dinner! Then there were the second thoughts, the hemming, the nervous laughter - good lord sit still. Some of Laz's cos's went for that, but Laz kept to his regulars.

Tonight, Lazarus was at his cafe table in the corner with his feet up on the other chair. His black hat was sat well back on his head and his cigarette was burnt way down. He reading something new - something he'd missed - by the light of a fat stumpy melting candle. The pub-like place was busy. His cousins, most of them, were occupied. No one had attracted this old vampire's attention and his manner and aloof pose stood off any virgin approaches.

Sometime late, he smelled Dido Tansi's perfume and looked up. He kept his feet on the chair until she made a move to come over. Sometimes she came directly, sometimes she visited the bar first; Lazarus was never in a rush, eternal and eternally patient.

This thin waifish American was young and not normally Lazarus's type, but she'd been cool as coal on her first go and when she kept returning they'd begun to enjoy each other. He found himself her confessor and she brought him humanity.

"Dido T, come back to me, I see?" he said in his gravelly voice through a puff of smoke before extinguishing it in the candle's caldera of wax.

Even if Motley lacked the manner, the maturity, and instead seemed near feral and fully famished even in this moment, she at least knew the right things to say to pay proper deference for her new brothers.

"Cousins," Lazarus decided. Suddenly and lightning fast appearing on his feet, then nearly across the room then around the bar to impose on Anaïs's domain. Back there was where he'd last left his ledger. It wasn't some massive ancient thing, covered in dust, with cracked goat-vellum pages. It wasn't bound in the leather of anything, it was not clasped with cursed brass or silver. No, it was like one you'd buy in a store, of a reasonable size. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about it was its age. This volume was, oh, a hundred and twenty-five years old. In the intervening years, it had benefited from a strap to keep it closed when not in use.

Lazarus had without being asked long ago taken on the self-ascribed role of - what would you call it? Historian? Archivist? Genealogist? Whoever kept the book of names.

He laid the book on the bartop, licked his finger and began flipping through the pages.

"Ink will work just as well," he said to her, humming as he perused the ledger. "Who's your mother, father, savior. Who ate your lunch? If you like? Or don't you know?"

Ever vampire was made by another vampire was made by another vampire. Lazarus wasn't the only one of his kind who liked to keep track.

Lazarus grunted and grumbled some kind of agreeable affirmative. He loved when something unexpected happened, for the unexpected happened so rarely. Humans were predictable usually, and so they might know themselves, if they survived longer than a century more often.

He followed along, unworried by the silence, adopting a passably mortal gait, allowing his mass and volume to give his footsteps sound and make mark on the damp cobble stones. Their two sets of long strides halted at the door of Atticus Roark, and Lazarus watched a few extra paces away as the man unlocked his locks.

Whether it was tradition or a fundamental law of nature, Lazarus would await a proper invitation. Something tickled inside him, a sweet anticipation, not of business negotiations but the thrilling strangeness of being asked inside.

Lazarus stood up away from the bar with a grunt and fully turned his back on the empty mirror, on Motley and Hooker, too. Something had woken up Terry and bright and bloody Motley, oh, she was dangerous and oh, damn too easy to move. Lazarus didn't like it.

"Old Thunder, they call him," muttered literary Lazarus ungracefully from where he was headed bringing to mind an ominous epithet of old Captain Ahab of Melville. He slid out a chair at his favorite table, sat down and put a boot up. He looked for all intents and purposes like he'd have a nap right then. From under his hat he continued his complaint.

"Drink and drain all you want, just don't bring the mess home. It's earlier than you think."

Roh. Lazarus showed rare surprise, snapping his gaze around to the flamboyant young vampire who was reveling in the attention, ably flexing her tale-telling prowess. Her flowery words were too ostentatious for his tastes, but they carried heavy names. Roh had to be that girl's mother, the volunteer with the singing tongue and protective mums who they'd paid a visit just last night.[1] He glanced at Hook, then off into the distance. That unexpected detail was nearly as interesting as the whole bit about Motley being accused of murder.

"Some people have no manners," Lazarus mumbled in his way, a little absently. He was apparently referring to the Auror's invasion, if context mattered to you.

"None at all, none at all."

1.	12 Feb 2012 - Some Blood in the Cut [M]

Lazarus craned his neck to have a look at the top of Atticus's head, since he brought it up, and found it satisfactory. "Hmm."

It was about then that Lazarus noted that where once the bar had been shoulder to shoulder here near the bar, Lazarus and Atticus now had a healthy amount of elbow room. The vampire had become conspicuous. No matter how much Lazarus tried to make his heart beat, it simply would not and it tended to unsettle (even unconsciously) anything alive nearby. Oh, there would be no torches and pitchforks, but, unlike old Hook[1] Lazarus didn't glow in a spotlight.

For the moment, Atticus's question would need to stay hanging from the tree.

"I, um, left my motor running..." he said. "C'mon."

With a curiously smooth movement with a curiously strong motion, Lazarus sort of shouldered against Atticus as he led the way out of the bar out the front doors. Once outside, Lazarus lingered round a streetlamp and smiled in apology to his latest human attachment.

"Better to step out before I get too popular," he explained.

1.	Terrence Hooker

As soon as Atticus Roark began speaking, it was clear his reputation had been earned well early in his very short life. It was a curiosity, so resourceful the living were, wasting no time. Lazarus wondered if he'd been the same - he had to imagine so to have come to such a dramatic end, to be salvaged as he was. A quiet life had not led him here.

But he must wane the poetic thoughts for, as previously noted, life was short.  It was only polite.

"War, war, thunder and the roar," Lazarus hummed. He'd begun to say something when a sharp voice nearby interrupted them. Lazarus turned over his shoulder.

"Oi - put it out or you'll be out, right?"

The bartender didn't like Lazarus Blackburn's cigarette.  Not wishing to cause any trouble, Lazarus complied, dropping it into a wet-bottomed glass nearby.

Back to it.

"That's all very good as if to say all of that's despicable," Lazarus said with a curl to his lip, some of his amiability faded at discussion of the Hollowreds. Atticus Roark was right about how most vampires regarded collectors. "Who are their friends, I wonder, who'd be friends with a clan like them?"

With Terry's arrival, the hierarchy shifted into order, each in their comfortable place in the close-knit coven (including all the Living who hurried back to their world). Lazarus knew his position and the allowances that came with it, and Cassandra Motley seemed to be guessing correctly at hers. Polite, flattering, attractive.

Lazarus didn't have a notion of why the coven needed her, so he gathered it must be the other way around. It wasn't his turn to speak so instead he raised two fingers to sweet Anaïs for a pair of glasses of whatever was fresh, the catch of the day so to speak.

Atticus Roark knew himself. Good news. Lazarus appreciated this because he didn't have to explain Roark to Roark. They could get on with it.

"That's good, that's good," he said and turned to tap on the bar with muted enthusiasm. "A very helpful little pup. Try this one:"

Lazarus leaned close - very close. "What do you know about the Hollowreds?"[1]

The coven had become interested in them since they'd found out about their 'hobby' of acquiring and collecting their kind's things like they were baseball cards and doing it with impunity. Someone needed to teach them to look not touch.

1.	The Hollowreds are a wealthy 'new money' magical family who collect vampire memorabilia and were recently burglarized, but they did not report it because it's not exactly 'couth' to collect such things. But feel free to riff.

Lazarus leaned forward and accepted the thoughtful gift of fire, taking the harrowing risk of a bartender catching him and (god forbid) pointing at a sign.

"Much obliged. A regular Promethus we've got over here."

He drew the smoke into his otherwise useless lungs which remembered far more smoke than a cigarette could provide, and pushed it all back out of his nose.

"What brings you to Death & Co tonight? I take it you're not much of a drinker."

This made Lazarus laugh, a low grinding sound. "I drink plenty, as a matter of fact. Nothing here though. Not lately, anyway. No, Mr. Roark, I am here for you. I heard you know a think or two. Then, old Laz has been wrong once or twice."