The embalming room of Bagnold Funeral Home was on the lowest level in a half basement. There were two small windows set just above the ground line, used to air out the place or to let in a breeze. Dervla had been called out to pick up a body shortly after she had settled into bed for the night- but this was something she was used to. Some things had to be taken care of right away. Currently she was leaning over the body of a dead witch, attempting to set the features of the face just right. She was having particular trouble getting the witch's mouth to look natural instead of like a complete and total grimace.

But it was quite difficult to focus on her job as one of the small windows continued to rattle in the frame. She jumped when it went from simply rattling to repeatedly opening and slamming shut. Damnit! Dervla slammed down the spool of suture string in her hand, stripped off her gloves, then snatched her wand up from the instrument table. She stomped up the stairs, threw open the front door, and moved over to the small alleyway between her building and the empty shop next to it.

"GO AWAY!" she yelled at the ghost which was stooped over her window. Dervla had enchanted the entrances of her building to prevent ghosts from finding their way in. A funeral home was apt to end up haunted, especially considering some of the more nefarious activities she got up to in her private time. But this particular ghost had no reason to be haunting her. Dervla had done nothing to her body other than prepare it and put it in a coffin.

Dervla flicked her want at the ghost, a ball of light coming out and blasting through it. The ghost disintegrated, but immediately re-materialized and continued to rattle her window. She pinched the bridge of her nose. At least it was late at night, and at least the shop next to her was empty. Ghosts were pesky things, especially when the ministry spirit division hadn't bound them off yet to haunting one specific place.

This particular spirit had been harassing Dervla for weeks. She'd banished it more than once, but it was persistent, and kept finding its way back to her shop. The woman was convinced that she had stolen a pearl necklace from her body. The woman's daughter apparently couldn't find the heirloom piece of jewelry and had decided to accuse the funeral home operator of stealing it from the dead body. Which was ridiculous. Dervla didn't even wear jewelry. "I do not have your necklace!" she snapped. "I've never seen your damned pearls! Bugger off, I've got work to do!" Dervla threw another spell at the translucent figure, and the figure simply responding by rattling both windows instead of one, moaning loudly about its pearls.

The night was dead quiet -- which was how he liked it.  Dead, departed, deceased: a cadaverous silence like one would expect in a grave.  At this hour, even Diagon Alley was practically empty; all of the bustling, lively shoppers from earlier had given way to the bereft, barren shadows of the night.

He hadn't been able to sleep.  The air in the shabby hotel room where he was staying had felt like it was burning up, and it didn't matter how many times he fumbled with the stupid Muggle thermostat or how many windows he opened; it was going to be one of those nights.  Aviad had finally given up.  He'd grabbed a hoodie -- just so he wouldn't look totally out of place, wandering the Muggle streets without any sort of protection against the cold -- and headed outside to walk.

It hadn't taken him long to end up back in Diagon.  That was because of Tzippori -- his stupid bird-brained familiar was not doing well with being cooped up all day, and the manager of the hotel had already asked him what could possibly be making that constant banging whenever he was out.  There were only so many places that he could wander when he was stuck being followed by a half-competent shadow; far better to have to explain away the apparent necromancy than to have to explain it all to a Muggle.

The mage had been ambling down the street, enjoying the sharp chill of the night.  Every so often, a shadow passed briefly over him; Tzippori was far more adept at leaping and gliding than he was at actual flight, as much as the skeleton might think it ought to be airborne.  But even that sudden movement was comfortable, here in the dead of the darkest hours.  He was alone.  Unbothered.  That was how he liked it.

But unfortunately, as always, it couldn't last.  The sudden cries and the slamming windows were enough to make his head hurt.  He stopped short, his forehead creasing as he took in the scene up ahead.  A spirit -- the edges of it still sharp, which meant that it was only recently deceased, or still in full quest for its purpose.  And a person.  A woman.  Young, by the sound of her voice.  Angry.  Spirited.  Potentially pretty.  Aviad cocked a brow.  He could keep collecting adjectives, or he could go see which ones really fit.  Judging by the shouted words, apparently the woman was also the source of the spirit's distress.

His normal reaction would have been to be annoyed at the living; once broken, the silence of the night was hard to get back without resorting to irreversible and ill-advised tactics, like a snapped neck.  But irritation was one thing; it was quite another when the source of that irritation was a young, fairly attractive woman.  There were times when it paid to be forgiving.

Aviad smirked, and then shuffled over.

"That's not how the line's supposed to go," he put in nicely.  He crossed his arms and leaned back lazily against a building.  Checked his posture, cleared his throat, and then cocked an eyebrow at her.  The ghost could wait for the moment; one thing that he'd learned from the past few years was that the dead had far more patience than the living. 

"Go ahead," he encouraged her with only the slightest hint of a smirk.  "I'll help.  Say it again."

Dervla jumped when she heard a human voice, spinning around, brandishing her wand at the strange man who was leaning against the building next to her own. The way his eyebrow was cocked, followed by his smirk, rubbed Dervla the wrong way- and rubbed her the wrong way very, very quickly. Exasperated, tired, and already short tempered from the meddlesome old witch-ghost she had little patience for some stranger who was obviously finding some level of amusement in her current state of inconvenience.

Deciding he wasn't a threat, she lowered her wand, placed one hand on her hip, and tossed her hair indignantly. "Thanks, but no thanks," she told him. "I am more than capable of handling this situation on my own. I don't need your help." Really, the audacity of this stranger to just waltz right up, lean against the adjacent building, and start throwing around his offers for help. Dervla didn't trust him, and it offended her that anyone should think of her as incapable of solving her own problem...

Not that the ghost-witch was really a problem. She'd managed to run it off before, it just kept coming back. Dervla would just have to change the lines of the spells and runes she used to protect her funeral home from spirit infestation, move it out to the line of the road. At that point any meddlesome spirits would probably be handled by the ministry. If they were pestering the public then suddenly the ministry seemed to care... The ministry, however, had little interest in aiding a woman who ran her own funeral home, because naturally she asked for the complications by choosing to go into that profession. And, of course, the ministry knew about the rumors of her past and thought she probably deserved whatever came to her in the form of annoyances of the dead.

But it was hard to stay annoyed at the stranger as the ghost continued causing such a fuss over at the windows of her basement. "You infernal, cantankerous old witch! You break my windows and I will banish you from this entire planet!" Dervla knew just the spell to take care of the ghost- but it was complicated, and not exactly the kind of magic that you performed in front of strangers. It was a good way to get the authorities called down on you. There weren't many people in the world who dabbled in death or ghost magic, and it was misunderstood by wizarding society as a whole. (Hence why Dervla was now living and working in a funeral home instead of being locked away in the bowels of the ministry.)

She turned and glared at the man. "Right then, off you go," she said, waving her hands dismissively. "Go about your business. There's nothing to see here. Just a ghost poking around a funeral home. Nothing unusual about that." Besides, she couldn't properly take care of the ghost until he gave her the privacy to do. Dervla moved to head back around to the front of the funeral home, hoping that maybe if she went back inside the guy would lose interest in his spying and find some other place in Diagon or Knockturn to lurk.

It seemed that this was his month for having attractive women point their wands at his face.  Aviad heaved a sigh, giving a long-suffering roll of his eyes as the wooden stick was lowered once more.  The only thing in all the world that was worse than being the only one who got the joke was when your opposite didn't even have a sense of humor.

The ghost did not seem to have even noticed his approach.  It was still rattling the windows with all of its might, occasionally interjecting a low, spooky wail.  Aviad watched it silently for a moment, dark eyes locked on the silvery figure.

"Yeh," he agreed, his attention snapping back to the woman again.  "Nothing unusual about it.  Except for the fact that most individuals don't pass away with their last intention being to break back into their funeral home."  He was pushing the matter, he knew it.  This wasn't really his business.  But something about it -- the way the woman had snapped, her threats to banish the spirit, the way she waved her hands, as if she could just banish him too -- were irritating enough that he wanted to fire back.  This might not be his business, but he could certainly get up in arms about it.

He pushed off from the wall, tapping the fingers of his hand idly against his thumb.  A moment later, he'd dug his hand into his pockets.  He'd hardly come prepared -- his normal bag of supplies was back at the hotel -- but there was a candle stub in his jeans, and a bag of something in the front pocket of the hoodie that he thought was probably salt.

"Like I said," he informed the witch nicely, as he followed her over to the door.  "You had the line wrong."  He jerked his head at the spectre, which was still wailing as it disturbed the air near the windows, sending them bouncing shut yet again.  "It says, 'Where's my pearl necklace?'  You say, 'I've never seen your pearls.'  So it says," he continued, teeth flashing in a quick grin, "'Well, that's too bad.  Maybe you'll want to hang around my neck inst--"

Dervla rolled her eyes. Yes, haha, very funny. She could do without the sarcasm and jokes about ghosts trying to into the funeral home rather than trying to escape it. Dervla got enough snide comments about her trade of choice during a normal working day, she didn't need them this late at night when she was already in a foul mood thanks to the meddlesome ghost. (That and she just wanted to get some sleep. Prepping a body normally wasn't particularly time consuming, she'd been doing it so long that it was almost second nature.

She hadn't realized, at first, that he was following her. He had kept talking, and she had kept walking. Making some joke about the pearl necklace. He better be careful with that line of humor- it wasn't exactly innocent and being sexually propositioned was not on her to do list for the evening. When she reached the door and he was still talking, she turned around just in time to catch the grin he flashed her. Dervla slugged him- hard- in the arm before he could finish his sentence. Those kinds of lines weren't funny right now.

"I don't know who the hell you think you are, but you can't just show up on my sidewalk, start taking pot shots at me and my predicament, then flash your charming smile at me while trying to use a ghost as a medium to hit on me. I don't know how much experience you have with women, but that's a good way to get your boys hexed off." She jerked her wand in the direction of his crotch and made a slashing motion. Under any other circumstance, Dervla would have probably been flattered that some stranger just walked up and started trying to make her laugh and be charming. Unfortunately for Aviad, he'd managed to get his timing on that all wrong.

Gripping the doorknob, she opened the door to he shop and took one step in. "Unfortunately I don't currently have the time for your oh so amusing comments and plays on words. I've got a cadaver in the basement who needs its features set and needs to be embalmed right away. Now unless you intend to help me wrestle a naked dead body, I'd suggest you head down to one of the pubs if you're looking for a good time and a loose woman."

It wasn't that Aviad didn't want to pay attention when other people were talking.  It was more that he could usually guess what they were saying without really trying to follow along.  In this case, it was something like Blah blah, angry, blah blah, charming smile -- at which point he flashed an even more charming, devilishly crooked grin -- and then suddenly they were talking about naked wrestling?  It was almost enough to make him wish that he had been listening more closely.

He ignored the wand's unfortunate positioning, with all the devil-may-care attitude of a young man who had grown used to having such regions threatened.  It was a pity that she thought he was only interested in the ghost so that he could hit on her; when really, it was the other way around: she was the medium by which he'd have an excuse to act as a medium.  Well, to be fair, he was really interested both in hitting on her and in the ghost, but who was actually counting?

His arm ached where she'd punched it, but Aviad had gotten quite good at using a concentrated effort to avoid showing pain.  "So you like wrestling?" he asked with an enormous grin, one that threatened to nearly split his face.

He shrugged, fully expecting to be hit again and not particularly wanting to see it, and looked away towards the ghost.  "Tell you what," he said, planting his hand firmly on the door so that she couldn't close it on him without an effort.  "You invite me in, and I'll take care of the spirit so that you can do your thing with corpses.  No charge," he added, and winked at her.  "Although if you still want help with naked bodies afterwards, then we'll have to have another discussion about the terms for that."

Dervla grunted. She should have known better than to talk about wrestling naked- even if she did mean just a corpse. "Depends on the type of wrestling and the partner," she answered. "But the kind of wrestling I was speaking of is not exactly enjoyable." Not for her, anyway.

She was ready to leave him on her doorstep when he reached out and held the door open for himself. Invite him in? And he would take care of the spirit? Dervla arched an eyebrow at him, obviously skeptical. This guy thought he could get rid of the ghost she'd been trying to get rid of for weeks? Dervla was no stranger to angry spirits and ghosts, she dealt in death- had been for more than ten years now. If she couldn't get rid of the ghost, then she doubted some random guy off the street would be able to... But it might actually something hilarious to watch. It might be worth letting him in just to get the chance to watch him strike out with the spirit and get squeamish as she poked around her embalming room.

Plus, it didn't seem like he was going away any time soon. He seemed determined to bother her. Dervla knew letting determined strangers into her home was a risk, but she'd done riskier things and there wasn't much she was afraid of. She had her wand at hand if she needed it. "Alright then. You can come in- but I've got work to do. So you better not be squeamish. If you vomit in my basement, you can clean it up yourself. And I'm not offering you food or drink- because I don't have any handy and I am too busy to get any ready."

Dervla ducked her the arm that was holding the door open. "Lock that behind you," she told him. "It's late." And it wasn't unusual for young people to try to break in and poke around, or people he'd heard rumors about her past.

She lit up her wand so that he could see, and made her way through the funeral home back to the basement stairs. They passed through a casket display room, a viewing room, and a memorial prepared for business the next day along the way. Once back downstairs, she pulled on a clean pair of gloves and adjusted the lights hanging over the embalming table. "So what makes you so sure you can get rid of that woman?" Dervla asked, raising her voice over the still rattling window. "I've been at it for weeks now and she just keeps coming back. I can't give her what she wants because I don't have it. Never in my life have I met such a determined spirit."

He was only half surprised when she agreed to his suggestion without further argument.  Flashing a smile -- a charming smile, he amended in his head -- Aviad flicked a hand in agreement.  As he moved to follow her inside, he paused briefly in the doorway, glancing over his shoulder to scan the street, but there was no hint of anything moving about in the darkness.  Giving a long-suffering sigh, he silently bade his familiar to best the usual odds and behave itself, and then followed the mortician into her den of darkness.

The inside of the small funeral home was icy cold -- easily as cold as it had been out on the street.  Perhaps it was because the freckled witch apparently hadn't cared to start a fire before she'd begun her night's work, or perhaps it was the lingering effects of so many spirits; he thought he felt the hidden eyes of one or two peering out at him as he made his way inside, although it could have only been nerves.  Either way, he was grateful for the chill.  Aviad locked the door behind him, and then followed after the woman, matching her descent into the cellar.

The basement was obviously the main work room of the mortuary.  The air felt heavy, but in a brisk, wintery sort of way; already, he felt even more cheerful than he had up on the street.  "Who said that I was going to get rid of her?" he asked cheekily, finding the zipper of his hoodie and tugging it down.  "I only said that I would take care of her.  And really, the whole thing was a charade to get you to invite me in."

He'd already begun to glance about the room, taking stock of what was inside.  There were two metal tables, one of which was currently supporting the body of a gentleman who was no longer amongst the living.  No hint of anything was-living there either; evidently that gentleman, however he had passed, had not chosen to linger.  Unfortunately, though, there was no other furniture that looked suitable; metal was hardly ideal for his purposes.  Sighing dramatically, Aviad gave the lone, unoccupied metal table one last, forlorn look and then looked down to examine the floor.

The flooring of choice in a mortuary was hard, institutional linoleum tile that looked as if it had never seen a good day.  The mage bent to kneel, and then ran his fingers over it, letting his hand linger briefly against the assuaging icy surface.  Again, not ideal -- wood or unbroken stone was really the best -- but at least this would work.

The ghost was still rattling and banging unhappily against the windows, but the frigid air in the cellar made him feel more alive than he had for days. Aviad expertly pushed his sleeves up past his elbows, letting the hoodie hang unzippered against his chest, and then gathered his meager assortment of tools from his pockets.  The candle stub, a bit of chalk, the small bag of -- yes, he pressed a bit of it against his tongue to check -- salt.  His wand was laid parallel to his legs; he wouldn't need it until later.

"So."  He picked up the piece of chalk first.  Without further preamble, he started to draw on the hard tiled floor, pressing heavily to make certain that there were no breaks, even where it ran across the gaps between tiles.  "Did you take its pearls?" he asked the witch in a perfectly conversational tone, his attention entirely focused on the work before him.  A circle, about as big as his hand with the fingers outstretched, divided by slashed lines into four quadrants.  "I'm not judging; just so I know what I'm about to take on."

"Well, if you can't get rid of her then I have no idea you meant by 'take care of'. Unless you intend to marry the host, take her home, and be her mortal lover? I suppose that's one way to take care of a ghost..." She tossed her own smirk at him, then adjusted the light over her embalming table. With her wand she turned up the brightness of the magical flame. She stood there, in front of the table, watching the strange man she'd allowed in her funeral home. She arched a brow at his dramatic sigh, and tilted her head slightly when he bent over to inspect the tiling on her floor. He pushed up his sleeves and started emptying things out of his pockets. Dervla covered her mouth, stifling a laugh when he licked the powder from his pocket. Then he laid his wand down.

Ritual magic. Dervla was definitely familiar with it. Necromancy used a lot of ritual magic, and she curiously looked on as he started to draw on her floor with his chalk. She scoffed at his question. "Of course I didn't! I don't steal jewelry from the dead! Everything that was on her person when she got here, I turned over to her family. So either her family got those pearls, her family lost those pearls, or whoever brought her body hear lose or stole those pearls along the way. Really, what use would I have for a nice strand of pearls?" Dervla asked. "They don't come in handy in my line of work."

She wanted to watch what he was doing, but needed to finish her current task. Dervla focused on setting the final features, cast a quick preservation spell, then moved to where the strange man was drawing on her floor. "I don't suppose you've got a name?" she asked, bending at the waist to get a good look at what he was doing.

The circle was smaller than the ones she usually saw drawn to do this kind of magic. He'd then divided the circle into quadrants. "Interesting set up. Filling the section with runes of some sort?" She wasn't sure he could fit many runes in that small circle. Then again, he might not need them, depending on the type of spell he was casting. "What's it do?" Dervla squatted down across from him, and reached out with a gloved finger, cleaning up a smudge on the line nearer to her. "If it doesn't get rid of the spirit, how's it supposed to keep that damned woman from driving me crazy? Or this circle part of your ruse? Just making it up as you go along so that I don't kick your ass up the stairs and into the street for misleading me into thinking you could rid of the thing?"

Her tone this time was not nearly as threatening. He'd caught her interest now, and her mood was starting to improve in response to his own jovial nature. This guy definitely had spunk, and she liked that. "I hope it's legit, because I don't really have time to kick your ass tonight."

The mage had been intently focused on his work, once again only half listening to the witch's response, but at her question, he abruptly looked up.  "Now you want to know my name?" he asked bemusedly, his teeth flashing in a pleased smile.  This was certainly how he would have expected the night to go.  "Aviad.  It means 'my eternal Lord.'"

The circle had taken shape in an expert way -- if it was lopsided at all, it would take only the most critical of squints to note it.  Smirking, Aviad returned his attention to his work.  Swiftly, he began to chalk the Latin alphabet around the outside of his initial drawing, one letter next to the other in a tight ring.

"Yeh.  You have me."  Smiling broadly, he kept his eyes on his writing.  As he ran out of room in the first circle, he continued the alphabet into a second.  "I wanted an excuse to watch the wrestling.  Which you haven't started yet," he chided, flashing her a smirk.  "I was promised naked bodies, and I'm going to hold you to that."

He was coming to the end of the second alphabet, two thirds of the way through the outer circle.  Aviad frowned, his forehead creasing as he eyed it.  How many letters were there again?  Twenty-four or twenty-five?  Oh well -- in the long run, it didn't really matter.

"Here.  Put it this way," he said abruptly.  With a flourish, he abandoned his work on the alphabet and returned to the quartered circle once more, writing a bold YES just below it.  "You must know something about ghosts, yeh?  Why a mage becomes one?"

Aviad. Dervla didn't recognize the name, and arched a brow when he stated what it meant. That was a strange way to introduce oneself... Maybe he fancied himself a lord? Had delusions of grandeur? It wouldn't surprise her if he did. He seemed the arrogant sort. Entertaining, yes, but arrogant. "Dervla," she chose to respond with her own name instead of commenting on his name. "Bagnold," she added. "No idea what either of them mans... But I am the namesake of this fine establishment for all of your standard, post-mortem needs."

The Latin alphabet began to take form around the outside of the circle, and then he commented on the naked bodies and wrestling. "There's a naked body on the table," she jerked a gloved thumb over her shoulder, "if you care to take a peek. But I promise it's not exactly something the every day person from the street would actually want to see. As far as the wrestling, that's for when I have to put his clothes back on him. Not time for that yet. Still have to finish the embalming process. I've only gotten the face set so far. Still have to pump him full of potion to preserve him long enough for his funeral." When she died she wanted a closed casket, that was for sure, she didn't want people filing by to stare at her dead body. (If she even had a funeral that people would come to. If she were to die any time soon, the likelihood of that was very slim.)

"But you're welcome to get as naked as you like. Bit cold in here, though," she commented, her gaze shifting downward as she smirked. "So perhaps that's better saved for another time, when we are more... well acquainted."

The conversation got serious again as he asked if she knew anything about ghosts, why a mage would become one. She shrugged lightly. "I know a bit about ghosts, yes. But from what I can gather the reasons why seem to vary. Mostly it's because the witch or wizard is afraid of dying. They don't want to be dead, so they aren't. Some also have a strong connection to the place they haunt- wanting to protect it or something of the sort. Moaning Myrtle haunts the girl's lavatory at Hogwarts... I haven't heard any official reports stating as such, but I believe there are other reasons a person becomes a spirit. And I don't think it is always choice, as most modern texts seem to state. I did some minimal studying on the subject at the ministry, but was far more interested in..." Dervla trailed off for a moment, furrowing her brows. "Well, in other things..."

"I've read that ghosts cannot go beyond the veil if they choose to remain on the earth, that they are forever trapped here. I don't believe that, either. I think it is simply something which has not been studied extensively enough. There are too many accounts to the contrary in magic of other countries and cultures... What do you know of ghosts?" she asked. "Anymore than the basics?"

Aviad flashed a quick, fierce grin at the mention of becoming better acquainted.  This adventure was definitely shaping up the way he had expected it to, which was almost a victory in itself -- it wasn't every day when things went exactly as he plotted.

"Me?" he asked cheerfully.  He added a NO with bold, confident strokes next to the YES, and then leaned back to examine his handiwork.  Not the most elaborate version of a spirit board that he'd ever used, but for tonight's purpose, it would surely be good enough.  After all, they weren't trying to divine out great mysteries of ages long past; they were simply going to have a conversation about a necklace.

"How much do you think I know?" he asked, flashing Dervla -- he'd have to remember to look up the meaning later -- a quick smile.  Picking up the candle, he placed it with care in the exact center of the circle where the two perpendicular lines met.  "I have certainly never studied them at the Ministry," he mimicked, briefly taking on a fair approximation of the woman's accent.  "So we will have to assume that you are further along than me."

He picked up the bag of salt, pouring a little into his hand, and then began to sprinkle it around the outside line of the circle.  "You're right -- most ghosts are afraid of dying," he said with a shrug.  It always felt uncomfortably odd to discuss this -- as if he might be dissecting his own fate, not so far down the line.  "Or rather, the person was afraid, before they stopped being a person and became --"  He broke off from his salt sprinkling to wave a hand impatiently.  English was too imprecise.  "You know.  But what they are not afraid of -- at least no person that I've ever met -- is that the nice witch from the funeral home might steal their pearls after they are dead.  Some other fear made this one stay."  He gave a sharp, fierce smile that showed all of his teeth, his dark eyes flicking up briefly to meet Dervla's.  "So I thought that maybe we might ask it wh--"

The windows hadn't stopped rattling, aside from a brief pause every now and again while the spirit seemingly gathered its breath.  But suddenly, there was a hard, sharp tapping, as if someone had decided to join in the cacophony by hammering on the glass with full force. Aviad looked up sharply, his eyes narrowed, and he huffed out a single, annoyed breath.

"Devrah ma'atzven," he grumbled, glowering at the glass. With an irritated sigh, he waved a hand at Dervla, motioning her towards the windows.  "You might as well let it in.  The spirit, too," he added sourly, pouring another handful of salt into his palm.  "We're almost ready."

Dervla's arms crossed dangerously as he mimicked her. "Probably not much further. Most of my research wasn't in direct relation to ghosts... At least not at the ministry. I have a lot of texts about the subject from various places in the world. I picked them up when I was travelling with Cir- when I was travelling." Best not to announce to a total stranger she used to travel with a circus. Not that Dervla had any kind of serious act, just ran a little sideshow. The sort that had creepy things preserved in jars for people to pay cheap money to go through and look at. Dervla's collection of weird things like that had grown considerably, but she did not keep them on display in the funeral home proper. Most of it was lining the walls of her laboratory beneath the house.

She could understand why a witch or wizard might be afraid of the nice witch from the funeral home, especially if the old witch would have disapproved of having a supposed necromancer have control of her corpse. But Dervla wasn't going to steal anybody's pearls. She had no reason to. For one, she would never have a reason to wear them and for another, even if she did, she'd never wear a dead person's pearls. That was just in poor taste. And her finances were now at a point where there was no need to try to sell things to make ends meet.

Her head snapped round to the windows when a new sound started. If that blasted spirit broke her windows, she'd make sure it regretted it. Then Aviad was telling her just to let it in... and the spirit too. She arched a curious brow and moved to the window. She cold see a strange figure slamming against the window. She opened it up, and in tumbled a skeletal bird. Oh! How interesting! She shut the window again, and watched the undead toucan pick itself up from the floor. It looked at her (well, she supposed it was looking, it didn't exactly have eyes) and then took a good look round the room before hopping over to where Aviad had made his makeshift spirit board on the floor. "Now that's a curious little thing, what is it?" she asked.

"And I can't just let the spirit in," she explained to Aviad. "The entire house is warded against spirits and ghosts being able to enter. Do you know how long it takes to set up the wards and runes to do something like that? Some stubborn folks like to follow their bodies here and cause trouble, and I can't have that in here." Especially not for the fully conscious spirits. If they were to discover her laboratory and start talking she'd be ruined and be in some great trouble. Better just to keep them all out than to chance even letting one in. "Besides, what if I let that old woman in here and she starts destroying the place? She seems hell bent on doing just that."

Dervla moved back over to the large cauldron sitting against the wall and using a bucket dipped out some of the pale pink potion and carried it over to her table. She abruptly changed the subject as she started to get back to work. "In traditional embalming they drain the blood and then fill the arteries with chemicals," she explained to Aviad. "So the veins don't collapse and the skin looks normal- stuff like that. It's for preservation of the body, mostly, so they don't look disgusting at the viewing. If you get the body early enough, you can prevent that step with a topical potion applied all over the body. Works almost like a sealant. Sometimes the body looks so life like it's terrifying." Setting the bucket on the counter by her embalming table, Dervla dipped in a sponge and began to apply the potion to the dead body. If he wanted to handle the spirit, she'd let him handle it, she had work to do. And if she was elbow deep in potion she wouldn't be able to create a hole in her ward for that woman to pass through to answer whatever questions Aviad had for it. "Skin looks fresh and bright and it prevents rigor mortis even."

And just like that, his half-wit of a familiar had arrived, and any hopes Aviad had harbored of the night continuing to go the way that he would have preferred went flying out the briefly-opened window.  He scowled at the skeleton as it hopped towards him, covering the last few meters in a pigeon-toed scamper.

"Lama ata hoshev shatah rotzah?" he grumbled at it, as it not-so-gently seized hold of his hoodie with its beak and began to climb up. 

Even though experience had long since taught him that any attempts to shake off the undead bird would fail miserable, Aviad made an attempt nonetheless, shrugging his shoulders as he rolled his eyes at Dervla's question.  "It is a headache," he complained unhappily.  "And a pest.  Don't eat that," he snapped at the skeleton, which had stopped climbing halfway up his shoulder to peer at the design on the floor.

He swatted at its beak, knocking it away from the candle that it had been eyeing, and then heaved a sigh, casting an irritated look in the witch's direction as well.  He was not going to sit outside on the street in order to have a conversation with a spirit.  If he had brought his tools and another candle, he would have just dropped the damned wards.  No wonder the specter was willing to expend so much energy trying to rattle her, if this was how she treated it.

"Yeh, he looks like he's about ready to join you for a dinner party," he said sourly, sprinkling the last handful of salt over the crossed lines.  Under normal circumstances, he might have been more interested in the embalming process -- or at least willing to feign interest in order to get the woman's attention -- but now he was just annoyed.  Who the hell put up wards that they couldn't take down?

"You did the same thing for that one, when it was alive?"  He jerked his head back towards the window, eliciting an unhappy flap from Tzippori as it struggled to settle on his shoulder.  "What was her name?"

"A headache? Really?" Dervla questioned. "It looks so friendly! Cute little bugger. How'd you animate it?" she asked. "I haven't seen an animated skeleton that successful since my days travelling Northern Africa! Did you animate it yourself?" Dervla was suddenly quite intrigued by the mage's skill level if he had managed to pull off that neat little trick. Maybe he could teach her a thing or two. She'd practiced animating smaller skeletons in her spare time, when she could get them, but had not come near that level of success. Perhaps she had actually met an interesting brain to pick for information in this strange fellow. (Probably not, though, Dervla never was that lucky.)

Dervla rolled her eyes at his comment on the body. "Not everyone can appreciate the work I do, I suppose. You should see the muggle way of doing things. Positively barbaric, really. They line up and stare at the casket and they talk on and on. Oh how good he looks! Doesn't he look just the way he did when he was alive? He looks so lifelike! All a bunch of hogwash. Muggle corpses don't look lifelike at all, they look incredibly dead with make up caked on so thick..." She trailed off, clucking her tongue and shaking her head. "Potions and alchemy make this a much more precise art for our kind, and make the bodies actually look lifelike. I mean naturally there are exceptions, sometimes you have no option but to use some of the muggle tools, but I try to avoid it as much as I can." She paused for a moment, dipping her sponge back into the potion. She continued to rub the potion into the man's skin.

"Every culture does it differently," she added. "I've picked up tools of the trade from all over Europe, parts of Asia and Africa, too. That's why my funeral shop is the best one, because I know the most about how to prepare people. But you know how it is," she made a dismissive gesture. "Purebloods are so uppity about things and you get one lemish on your reputation and they avoid you forever, so I mostly deal with halfbloods and such. Wish I could get hold of the purse-strings of some of those families, though... Could always use the extra coins in my Gringotts vault."

After she finished spreading the potion over the man's front, she looked over to Aviad. "That naked body wrestling- it comes into play now. Don't suppose I could get your extra hands to help me turn this fella over?" she asked. "He's a hefty individual." Dervla could do it on her own, she'd done it before, but it amused her more to have Aviad come and roll the body over with her, to see if he would be squeamish or not.

"Her name?" Dervla asked, tilting her head. Her mouth moved silently as she went through the names of recently deceased. "Irene Jones, if I remember correctly. And yeah, same process. Nothing atypical about it. She died at Mungo's, her family sent her here, I set her up and they buried her. Not quite sure where this whole obsession over pearls came from. Crazy old bird, if you ask me." Dervla moved the bucket out of the way and slid around to the side of her table. "Come grab his arm and shoulder and help me roll him."