Lazarus swayed in place with a raspy laugh and took a long pull on the cigarette. His unused lungs filled with smoke and he pushed it out through his nose. It curled in the hazy light of the city lights reflecting off London's cloud cover.

"Maybe..." he echoed. Their Kurbys were one and the same or else she'd have just told him no. Children were funny little things, not afraid of enough things, like they'd only seen fire but had never tried to touch it. What had happened with the little sparrow and her brother had soured Old Lazarus on children. Maybe. Or maybe it gave him some kind of hope. She really ought to crack away, crack away to someplace save and free of lurking things like Old Laz who could only do his best.

"He wouldn't kill you, but what might he say, hear you've been on a roof with Old Lazarus and not pop on away when you had the chance?"

Moira’s stance was slightly sideways as she looked more to him from her left side. Her right hand hidden by her leg - which currently supported most of her weight - inched up inside her sleeve brushing her fingers against the wood of her wand. Best to be ready, just in case.

There was no way she could match his speed, if it came down to it, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t hit him with a spell if he got too close.

He finally said his name. Lazarus. He also titled himself as old. Meaning he had been around for a while and was comfortable with his vampireness. She really was an idiot.

Kurby would tell her uncle, is what he would do. Duncan knew about what happened during the full moon and while the following conversation hadn’t been much of a lecture it still had been unpleasant. Moira would almost have preferred being locked up for a few days or longer.

“I’m just wondering how someone like you knows him.”

She didn't answer his question, so he wasn't going to answer hers. Lazarus chuckled to himself and wandered his side of the roof. His foot falls on the pitch were silent. He was patient and he was old and he was at a funny time in his long life. Kids These Days. He wondered if he'd ever been this way. Maybe. He'd been a firefighter. Was Lazarus Moira's burning building or vice-versa?

His pacing brought him closer to Moria. Smoke followed him.

"Someone like me." It wasn't a question. "Someone like me. Someone like me."

Did she hear herself? Still here on the roof. Who was more curious, Old Laz or the little fighter?

When his movements brought him closer, Moira shifted back a step. The distance between them might as well have been an illusion, but it was one she would like to maintain.

Yes, someone like him. A vampire and a werewolf hunter playing together? It sounded absurd under any circumstance.

Lazarus had practically asked her a satisfaction survey. Had he done something similar for Bagnold one night? She had no idea what the hunter’s views on vampires were, that wasn’t something they had covered at the bar.

Blue eyes stayed trained on the strange vampire but her skin felt sensitive to her clothes and the rain while her ears picked up faint noises in the streets. Her eyes narrowed slightly.

The girl stayed quiet. Maybe she was still waiting for an answer. Maybe he'd misjudged her age and she wasn't able to crack away and she was up here on the roof like a pigeon with a broken wing trying not to show it. Lazarus looked at her a long moment, completely unhurried except for the nagging thirst in his guts.

He clicked his tongue at her and shook his head.  Humans. Her evaluation of his helpfulness would probably needle at him for a good while. Perhaps it was that his assistance this night was ill-timed, or that it was unasked for. Yes, maybe that's it.

As if he'd been speaking all of that out loud in his ashy flat-Midwestern accent, he nodded and smiled with the tiniest chuckled in his throat.

With that, he turned and walked away, waving 'toodle-oo' over his shoulder. Then with a flit and flap, he disappeared into the form of a little brown bat, nearly unsee-able in the dark.

Moira had no clue what was going through ‘Old Lazarus’ ‘ head as they stood there staring at each other. He fidgeted more while he thought than she did. She breathed in her stillness while he didn’t (because he had no need) in his movements. That was all she knew.

Then he did what Moira wouldn't do. He turned, waved a goodbye, and left. Well, transformed into a bat she couldn't see anymore. All she could do was assume that he left. She didn't really like this either.

Suppressing a shiver she glanced around before apparating a short block away to a Diagon street. One drying and one warming charm later, she tugged her hood back up and proceeded to take that walk, her pulse slowly returning to normal.

Fin