She grinned at Nemo's use of the word darling, sounding very much like one of her aunties greeting her at the doorstep after a period of many years - they were only missing exclamations of how much she had grown since she was seven.

Dido stored her honey sweet in the cheek of her mouth as she took a long drag of the joint, which was burning down to its expiry.

"Yeah, I've seen Vaillancourt smoking on level four," she dreamily conjured the image in her head of the bored looking Frenchman leaning over the Beings secretary's desk with an unlit cigarette in his mouth. "It's funny, huh? Old man in a body like that."

The witch got up, incited by the gillyweed, leaning forward against the ledge wall to look down at the street below: Saturday night, drunk groups toddling along to their next destination. Or maybe home. It was easy to think everyone else was having a wilder evening when you choose to spend yours cosy in the flat.

"Do you think vampires get married? To, like, each other?" she handed the rest of the joint back to Nemo to finish. "I would attend a vampire wedding. Bet they know how to party. Unless," Dido snorted, "I'm an hors d'oeuvre."

Nemo could hear music, her heady mind attracted to the strain.

"I don't know," she said of vampire weddings, taking a long puff of the last of the joint, stopping before it burned her fingers. She set the smoldering nubbin in the glass.

"What would the vows be? There's no sickness or health, no death for parting," she said.

"I met a vampire," she said, finally making a concrete claim to support her insinuations. "I was quoting Silvia Plath on top of Tower Bridge and playing my violin. And he comes as a bat. Or like a moth maybe?"[1]

He wasn't the first vampire she'd met, but it was the night she wanted to talk about.

"He was a poet with a voice like hot coals."

Nemo felt starry and heavy-lidded.

"He said, I remember, that he trying something new. He was curious, too."

She glanced to Dido, pinning the thought. Nemo didn't seem afraid of the vampires while she told this little story. She'd almost forgotten it because it was pushed aside by that blackjack night.

"He was called Lazarus." Nemo had been raised next to Christianity, so she knew the namesake. "Who names their baby Lazarus?"

Who names their baby 'Nemo'? Perhaps it was the same answer.

1.	18 Nov 2011 - I am! And So Are You

She wondered. Maybe vampires promised something else, something people like Nemo and Dido couldn't dream of because they were so young. Practically children compared to some of them.

"Sylvia Plath and a violin!" she echoed as she dropped herself back on the stool, whistling. What a theatre kid! The kind Dido would have made fun of at Ilvermony... but here? In this place, at this point of her life? She thought it was kind of cool that Nemo could do that, just unapologetically feeling whatever she wanted to feel.

Dido listened with a hazy smile, letting the words wash over her. A voice like coals, a mysterious vampire. A curious one! Wasn't that nice, she thought in her gillyweed-addled mind!

To be so old, probably, and so curious about stuff? That was hopeful. Sometimes Dido felt jaded, felt like the myth of the New Yorker who'd seen it all and didn't ask unnecessary questions.

But if a vampire could still be curious, so could she. Always asking questions and being open to the world, like on this rooftop.

            "Who names their baby Lazarus?"

"I dunno. Someone with a sick baby?" Dido yawned, smiling at her friend in a dreamy way, as if this conversation were a dream. "Like, back in old times, they didn't name babies right away. My grandma was called honey until she was eight months old or something...."

She trailed off, tasting the candy in her mouth. "Maybe some lady had a sick baby, and she thought, hey, I'll call him Lazarus?" Dido made a grand gesture with both arms suddenly. "And voila! Jesus gave her blue-faced baby a breath of life!"

The curly-haired witch laughed before lowering her arms and rubbing her face tiredly.

"Weren't we doing something? Poirot?" she peeked at Nemo between her fingers, brows lowering.

Nemo was, in her own way, a performer. She didn't bask in a spotlight, but she liked to see her music and stories reverberate. She performed for herself, she felt good telling a story. Dido told stories, too.  She hadn't thought any further about Old Laz and his naming, but Dido had. Nemo muttered something in response, a mumble of hearing and agreeing.

"Eh voila," she concurred. Dido was smiling and Nemo felt she was floating away - she'd gotten that feeling with weed, and a bit with gillyweed sometimes.

She moved away from the wall to another stool to stop herself lifting off the roof. She popped the candy to further ground herself. Poirot.

"Oh, yeah. I forgot," Nemo giggled. "You're wonderful."

The line seemed absent, Nemo barely aware her warmth had leaked out. The night felt perfect, it only lacked music.

"Let's go in," she suggested and got right back on her feet. "So we don't miss who done did it."

Was she? Wonderful?

Dido stuck out her tongue between her teeth, neither confirming nor denying the statement. She got up and followed the other girl back down - they left behind their makeshift ashtray for future excursions or like-minded neighbours. The night had begun with plans to listen to the Wireless and it would stay on that track, one way or another.

When they got back into the warm flat, Dido hung up her scarf and focused on the noise off the radio.

"Sounds like he's about to do his whole," she gestured with one hand, "you know, sit down and I'll tell you whodunnit act."

But then, predictably, the show went to advertisements and Dido decided to disappear into the bathroom. She rejoined the other girl after a moment, make-up dissolved and face gleaming with her nightly layers of creams and oils.

"Okay! I'm ready for the finale!" she fell back on the sofa with a satisfied sigh - nothing better than that gillyweed couch-lock. "Hand me that popcorn."