Kurby, suddenly animated with purpose, ceased his browsing and veered off to the Grimshaw's crickety stand. Lazarus followed as much to join in the curiosity as to make sure Kurby didn't, oh what, spring a  trap or something. The human had been so nice and it would be a shame to lose him.

At the stand, Lazarus struck a match and lit a cigarette which had gone nearly soggy enough not to catch. He took a puff, smacked his lips and leaned over the table. He looked but didn't touch - his face was close enough. Naturally, the book was the most interesting to him.

"Very pretty," he commented. "Hmm, haven't seen that one before. No, not even once. Lookit that." Which was saying something. He'd read the entire Chicago library at one time and was working through the old one in York's minster until he was found out. There'd been an exorcism, even.

A raven appeared and Lazarus straightened up. Cigarette hanging from his lip, he waved his hand at the merchandise and asked, "are you the, uh-hem, proprietor of this establishment. Good sir?"

Caw!

"Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am."

Caw! The raven flapped it's wing and nibbled her chest feathers.

Lazarus turned his shoulder towards the bird to address Kurby under his breath.

"Terrible service, always terrible service here."

Kurby studied the bird, his brows knitting together.  It certainly looked like a raven — or possibly a crow, since he would have been no better off flipping a coin to decide between them.  It was larger than many of the corvids that he typically saw around London, and it looked well-kept, at least as much as a bird could be.

Laz had reappeared with his usual sudden stillness; his movements weren't always quick, but it often seemed as if the world had simply blurred around him, changing his scenery even as the vampire stayed in place.  As the raven cawed, it seemed to catch Lazarus’s attention too.

Debates over proper form of address aside, there was no reason to think that this was the same raven that had come to pester them at Figaro’s.  Corvids were a Knut for a murder; they were all over the city, lingering in the streets and lounging at the Tower.  But Kurby still regarded it silently, even as Laz turned to complain to him under his breath.

“I dunno, I reckon it depends on when you catch them,” he said off-handedly.  Sighing, he tore his gaze away from the bird, away from the unmanned stall representing the ominous tailor shop.  They hadn’t come here to dive deeper into the mystery surrounding Grimshaw Tailoring, and somehow, it felt like that was an adventure best left for another time.

“So where do we go to find this lineage of yours?” he asked Lazarus, giving the strange little book one last, lingering look.  With some effort, he forced himself to turn his back on the stall, glancing to the vampire instead.  “You said it’s in a book, aye?”

Lazarus and Kurby moved along from the ramshackle stand that ought to have packed up years ago by Lazarus's smokey reckoning. Yet it would linger on its own stretched and strained timeline, he supposed thoughtfully. Sometimes mortal things did that, touched by something old that extended their life beyond their kin.

Up ahead was another sort of terminus where two more passes converged with the first. Circular archways above and a murky canal down the middle. Planks made many slipshod crossings. The traffic became tighter just for lack of space.

"I been thinking about that, yea, I've been thinking about that," Lazarus said, strolling, tipped back on his heels. He puffed a cloud of smoke in the air.

"Mmm, more likely a soggy journal than some," he waved a hand and twiddled his fingers, "gilded gospel. Something more back pocket if you get me. Probably stolen."

"Best thieves are house elves, but you knew that," he said. Then his attention turned all the way around as a hooded figure the size of two children stacked together pushed a cart by, vials of dark red liquid clinking together.

The tailor stall lingered at the very edge of his vision as Kurby followed the vampire, reluctance dragging his steps.   Even in the best of times, it could be difficult to follow Laz's strange way of thinking, so at least his comrade's meandering speech forced him to focus on something that wasn't the grimoire, the dress shop, the ossuary, the unseen ledger. 

"Mmm," Lazarus was saying, wiggling his fingers into the air as if he could still conjure up the aforementioned lineage with a wave of his hand.  Kurby had plenty of personal experience with the sort of relatives who spent far too much time chronicling generations of their family pedigree. At least when it  came to pureblooded wizards, it seemed incongruent that such haughty attention to detail would allow the fruits of their labor to land in a so-called 'soggy journal,' but maybe genealogy was less of a point of pride for vampires.

A wisp of something bright and airy dashed by his right ear, nearly making him start.   The werewolf hunter swiveled his head to look after it, but whatever it was had already zigzagged away into the crowd, dodging between the legs of what could only be a lumbering, full-blooded giant.

"The best thieves are -- what?"  Half-distracted, he jogged to catch up with Lazarus again.  The best thieves were house elves?  His mother's aging, loyal family servant, whose tiny hands shook even when she tried to dust the countertop, popped into his head.  He couldn't imagine Giddy stealing anything, let alone doing so effectively.

Lazarus had slowed again, his attention fixed on a lumpy-looking figure pushing a cart up ahead.  Kurby's brows knit as he examined it, eyeing the red liquid sloshing inside the small, clinking glass vials.

"This soggy journal's written in ink like any other book, isn't it?" he asked, suddenly alarmed. 

Vampires...lineage...blood... Taken in that context, it made too much sense, in an undead, awkward kind of way.  And it wasn't necessarily wrong; Kurby knew that vampires had different traditions and ideas about acceptable behavior than the living, and he'd already thought he'd made his peace with that for Laz.  But the idea that they'd come all this way to try and hunt down some poor, dead bastard's stolen blood was deeply unsettling, in a way that made him feel considerably more sober than he'd been mere moments before.

Kurby had seen the blood pass by as well and Lazarus laughed raspy at the connection Kurby'd made between the goblin's wares (spiced blood whose smell wasn't stopped by any cork) and the particulars of the book they were after.

"Oh, sure sure sure," Lazarus reassured him, "depending on your taste."

Laz side-stepped another goblin to let her pass. These goblins were much different than who you'd see at Gringotts. They dressed not in coats and vested and buttons shirts but the trappings of their own culture; no need to set any wand-waver's mind at lease. Lazarus led them to a small cart with a low desk and a high sign written in Gobbledegook. Books were not this shop's chief concern, but instead all manner of things. Furniture, jewelry, a bust of Nefertiti, many shoes, what looked like muggle electronics, but yes, stacks of books.

The proprietor was a house elf. Three feet tall and stout. They wore a colorful scarf around their head. The long pointed ears underneath provided an interesting scaffold giving the head scarf the character of a two-horned hennin. Their other clothing was extravagant and well kept, bright in the dim space.

"Tellme," Lazarus said, dropping to a crouch to meet their gaze. The house elf was dusting off the ornate frame of a family portrait painting.

   "Blood sucker," Tellme replied. "That's not a human is it?"

Lazarus furrowed his brow as if he had no idea what Tellme was talking about, then turned round to Kurby for his answer.

The presence or absence of ink hardly seemed like the sort of thing that depended on one's taste, which made the vampire's response hardly reassuring.   But Kurby, who recognized that he hadn't been asked along on this misadventure to share his disquiet for blood-printed books, kept his mouth clamped firmly shut as he followed behind Lazarus to their apparent destination.

The small cart ahead of them was barely noticeable, laden down with beaten-looking furniture, a strange statue head, and odd, mismatched shoes.  Kurby eyed the Muggle electronics on display with considerable suspicion; he deliberately stopped on the opposite side of his vampire guide, keeping as much space as possible between himself and what looked to be a strange, silvery mess of wires attached to a strange black contraption with a burned-out red light.

The owner of the mismatched cart looked just as odd as their wares.  This was, Kurby realized, certainly a free house elf, which meant that any resemblance to family servants or dusty countertops was probably best left as unmentioned as possible.

Lazarus wasted no time in getting down to the house elf's level.  "Tell me," he said decisively as he dropped down to meet the proprietor's strange gaze. 

It was an unusually firm command even for the eccentric vampire, but the house elf seemed unfazed.  Their attention barely left the ornate portrait frame that they had been dusting off, even as they creaked out a reply that had nothing to do with Lazarus's instruction.

"Blood sucker," the house elf croaked.  "That's not a human is it?"

Lazarus, who in all fairness probably forgot that his companion was even there half the time, let alone remembered his species, furrowed his brow in confusion as he glanced at the werewolf hunter.  Kurby raised his both of his eyebrows, his expression exceedingly dry as he eyed his friend, and then turned to look over his shoulder.

"Where?" he asked perplexedly, craning his neck as he peered at the busy crowd passing by.

Lazarus coughed a laugh at Kurby's lovable attempt at misdirection. He supposed it would be enough for the house elf. Well, mostly.

      "It's not allowed to touch," said Tellme to Lazarus.

"No risk of that," Lazarus reassured them. "We're not browsing. I understand you've been to see the Hollowreds, Tellme."

The house elf laid down their polishing cloth and came full on to the desk, clearly happy to confirm the rumor.

      "I have. Relieved them of their ill-gained abundance, I did. What? You want some?"

"Thought I oughta."

      "I should hope so, blood sucker. Finder's fee applies, of course."

Tellme was not apologetic, not in the slightest, and Lazarus had come prepared. He laid a stack of gold in front of the house elf.

"Franciso Alhambra should be the name."

It took a moment or two for Tellme to find the little book. It looked no bigger than a journal, no more than hand-written field notes. It's pages were worn and yellowed. Lazarus thumbed through it. Dozens of names and dates and places, one after the other. It was exactly what he was looking for.

He got to standing and immediately tipped forward in a deep bow from the hips and tipped his hat.

"We in Camdentown salute you."

      "Go away now, blood sucker, and take your pet away, too. Stupid of you to bring it," Tellme said by way of farewell.

Lazarus did so, using a spin and a bump on the shoulder to gather Kurby up. He tossed over the ledger.

"The Hollowreds are collectors. Collected this right from under us," he said stuffing his hands in his pockets. The lineage ended in the 1980s.[1]

Lazarus was wandering in the general direction of 'out', but up ahead, a ruckus was brewing. Raised voices.

1.

Thinking the Hollowreds are a wealthy magical family with a fetish for collecting vampire memorabilia. They obtained this ledger when vampire covens were the subject of intense Ministry concern in 1984 when a dead young woman was found in Grimshaw's. Lazarus mentions the incident to Fauna Blake and Jonas Trevelyan here: 19 Dec 2011 - Little Tailor Shop of Horrors

"Whatareyoudoing?" 

The words slammed into each other as they exploded out from his tongue, a quick blast of English hissed through clenched teeth.  Aviad stared at his companion, his eyes practically bulging out of his head. 

This wasn't what they had talked about.  It wasn't what he'd agreed to when he'd said yeh, he could probably find a way to get them into this hag shopping center or whatever the hell the British magical creatures called it.  Vesta Baddrick, Tawse's new favorite half-dead instigator and Hunt's latest favorite nuisance to torment, had merely grinned at him with her twitching smile when he'd tried to lay out the rules for this little mission.

Considering that Baddrick seemed like she had one foot already in the shadows of the grave, Aviad had hoped that she would be inclined to listen.  But here he was, desperately hoping against hope that she'd reign herself in and refrain from further offending the animated skeleton in front of them so that it could finish giving them directions and they could go finish running Hunt's damned errand.

If they had been in any other place, the mage would have grabbed his wand and just hexed her, but wands weren't exactly a welcomed tool here -- not to mention that Baddrick's knowledge of dark magic was far more extensive than his.  Shooting her a pointed, anxious look, Aviad returned his attention to the skeleton, which was clacking its jaw impatiently.  Although it didn't have eyes, the two ink-black sockets in its skull looked as if they were trained on Baddrick.

"Sorry," Aviad said weakly.  "You were saying, brother?"

The skeleton stayed still for a long moment.  Then two.  Finally, a pale light seemed to flicker deep in its sockets, and it slowly raised one arm, lifting it until its humerus ran parallel with its collarbone.  Clenching its bony hand shut, it left one blanched white finger bone extended, pointing the way to their destination.

Baruch HaShem.  Aviad let out the breath that he hadn't realized he'd been holding.  For a half second, he almost looked as if he were going to grab Baddrick by the arm, but he quickly thought better of it.  Instead, he shot her a pleading look, and then started off in the indicated direction.

"You want to sharpen your teeth on something, wait until we fetch Hunt's drink first, yeh?" he muttered at her, casting a very nervous look over the crowd.  They were starting to attract attention.  Three goblins to their right, who had unmistakably been staring straight at them, turned to mutter to each other as they passed by.

"It's an aphrodisiac," Vesta replied and stuck out her tongue. She was handling a carved erupment horn, taken without permission from a shop stand. A hag without a tongue was rasping that she return it.

Avi's jumpiness was funny. They were wix and all these garbage little creatures were no match for them. She believed that there'd be nothing of any substance to stop them if they just took what they wanted, but the Wizarding Blood Alliance had an in-road or two that a diplomatic incident of any scale could not endure. So they had to pay and ask and hide their wands and faces.

The skeleton did what it was good for and acted the living signpost. Vesta brushed past Aviad and the spat at the goblins who crowded too close.

"Mother Hunt will get what she wants," she assured Aviad.

"Ach."  Aviad rolled his eyes, too skittish to bicker.  Let Baddrick poke and prod and stick out her tongue through her scary, too-sharp teeth.  The faster they found what they were looking for, the faster he could get away from her and let slip to Hunt that the slightly-undead sorceress was annoying him.

Where in this unearthly place was a vendor selling unicorn blood?  The goblins that Baddrick had just expectorated upon spat back with a nasty word in Gobbledegook as Aviad trailed unhappily in the witch's wake.  Most of the stalls here were haphazard and ramshackle, much less organized than even the magical shuks back home, and Baddrick's impatient pace wasn't making it any easier to look. 

"Would you slow down --" Aviad started to hiss after her, losing a step as he very nearly treaded on a tiny rat-creature wearing a top hat.  Dodging out of the way, he managed to bump into another hag, which turned and hissed at him, rotten teeth bared and long black tongue extended as he scrambled back out of the way.

To hell with all this.  The mage was very nearly tempted to simply apparate out of here and go finish Hunt's errand in some other way, when, in the midst of all the chaos, he heard the tinny clink-clink of glass clanking together and spotted a lumpy-looking figure pushing a small cart laden down with small glass vials filled to the brim with red liquid.

Finally.  Aviad was too tense to let out a sigh of relief.  Anxious, he looked around for Baddrick, half-hoping the witch had gotten herself lost.  Now all they had to do was negotiate with the hooded vendor for a vial of unicorn blood, and then get the hell out of this place and back to the Black --

Suddenly, a teeth-rattling roar erupted behind him.  Aviad froze, hoping against hope that the barrage had nothing to do with them, that some loafish house-elf had merely trodden on an unsuspecting ogre's toe in the crowd and they could get on with they errand and escape.

Except he was never going to be that lucky.  As one with the rest of the crowd, Aviad held his breath and turned, only to spot an impossible-to-miss oafish figure that was stomping towards him, clad in the gold-and-green that denoted the hagsmarket's hired security trolls.

L'azazel.  In his head, Aviad let out a long string of curses, which started and ended with Baddrick's name, just as the enormous troll stepped over the rat in a top hat and stopped short, staring down at him from a height of at least five meters.  It was then that Aviad spotted the hag -- the same tongueless one from earlier -- peering around the troll's leg to leer at him.

"HOO-MAN," the troll roared, extending a beefy, rock-like finger to point at him.  "WHO STEAL HORN?"

He'd caught on well enough by now to understand his place, and so Kurby had stayed silent for the vampire's exchange with the house elf.  The Hollowreds.  That name struck a faint chord of familiarity, but the werewolf hunter kept his mouth pressed carefully shut as Lazarus finished his transaction and then turned, bumping him as a clear signal to go.

They were off on their way again, leaving the strange house elf behind them as they started back through the crowd.  Lazarus tossed him the little book and Kurby caught it, cocking an eyebrow as he examined it curiously.

Another ledger.  And one with pages and pages of names, much like the one that he'd stumbled upon in Grimshaw's.  But where the book in the tailor's shop had kept track of sums and transactions, this one seemed to be a strange sort of lineage, with parents and children denoted in elegant, faded cursive.

Before he could really look closely, there was a loud roar from up ahead.  Kurby looked up, eyebrows raised, as what looked to be a security troll tromped through the crowd, roaring something about a human stealing.

Had some vendor spotted him and decided to cause a ruckus?  Casually, Kurby slipped the little book into the pocket of his cloak, releasing it and closing his fingers instead around his wand.  If he hadn't been in uncharted territory, and clearly here as Lazarus's guest, he might have found a bit of dark humor in it, in the idea that wixes here would be as unwelcome as hags or goblins might be if they found their way into human magical spaces...

But for once, they didn't seem to be at the middle of the uproar.  The troll had stopped some distance away, pointing a meaty finger at a human-like figure that did, indeed, seem to be the right size and shape for a human.  Relaxing slightly, Kurby loosened his grip on his wand, just as a flash of pale smoke rushed past him, headed straight for the commotion.

A pentral?  Frowning, Kurby followed it with his gaze for a moment, and then glanced ahead at its seeming destination.  What the hell was a pentral doing down here?  From all he'd heard, after the incident at St. Mungo's[1] the strange spirits hadn't really been seen.

And then -- with a swiftness that was as sobering as if someone had just conjured a bucket of ice water and dumped it over his head -- he realized who was at the center of the uproar.

Kurby went intensely still.

"Laz," he said, calmly and easily.

1.	October 17, 2011 - Storm of Souls

Lithe Lazarus was not quick to alarm. This venue entertained all sorts and there were bound to be explosions popping off from time to time. Jumping at a loud noise was so touristy. So the vampire hardly cared when things started to go hairy a bit further ahead. It was Kurby Bagnold who claimed the vampire's attention.

Laz paused and put his head on level with Kurby's to see what he was seeing. It seemed there were three humans at the Craeky Hob this night, and two of them hadn't the good manners to stay invisible.

"They're going to ruin the fun for everyone," Lazarus said where he stood next to Kurby. Then in a gesture that could be mistaken for affection, Lazarus laid his long arm full and heavy over Kurby's shoulders.

"You should do that thing," he suggested, keeping his eyes on the developing scene. "No one's looking. Do that thing you people do."

For all the casualness of his tone a moment ago, the werewolf hunter had gone deathly still, dark eyes fixed on the growing clamor in front of them.  In the quiet moments before hexes had started flying at the zoo during the cold moon back in December, Kurby had made sure to take a good, hard look at Tawse and his accomplice.  Here in this otherworldly market, diffuse with a different kind of strange green light, he couldn't quite be sure, but there were only so many wizards with such a lean, dark look to them.

The vampire's arm draped itself heavily around his shoulders.  That thing you people do.  Kurby ignored him.  He'd started this night spoiling for a fight, and if he couldn't vent his frustration on the unctuous Balfour Spectre, he was damned well going to take his temper out on someone who actually deserved it.

The security troll was roaring something that only seemed to half be in a human tongue, and the crowd was parting quickly now, giving way to the growing confrontation with a growing murmur of disapproval.   Kurby found his wand in his pocket again, and he wrapped his fingers around it tightly, silently judging the distance from here to the other wizard, from the other wizard to the troll.  He hadn't come equipped for a confrontation, but if he could get in close quickly enough, he could probably grab Tawse's henchman and apparate him somewhere more convenient.

"That's the arsehole from the zoo," he told Laz in a low voice.  "Isn't it?  The bastard with the candle."

The situation had taken a turn. The vampire's suggestion his wizard companion snap and crackle the two of them out of this tinderbox went unheeded. Lazarus could hear and feel the rise in Bagnold's heart rate. The arm over his shoulders wouldn't do much if the wizard decided to act - and act he could. On their first meeting, Bagnold had proven to be fast and effective.[1]

Lazarus tipped his hat back and made a show for Bagnold's benefit of having another look at the pair of interlopers. It was easy for a vampire to gloss over which mortal was which for they came and went so quickly from this world, but they were of great importance to each other. They lived like explosions. That had been the case that night in November at the London zoo.

The bastard with the candle. Old Laz looked. Then Old Laz's pupils dilated to the maximum. It was him, that bastard with the candle. They'd come face to face that night, face to face, banter to throat.[2] That bastard and his candle had abetted some murder and Lazarus had nearly, so nearly, had him before the bastard did what wizards did and popped away.

Lazarus moved without moving to stand directly in front of Bagnold stock still. His recognition of the bastard was plain on his face, but his message was all caution.

"Mmm, bad idea, Bags," he said, his voice like ash. What if something happened to him, pulled out from under his arm? "No explosions now, Bags."

1.	10 Nov 2011 - Bark or Bite
2.	Archaic North American term for a pentral