“Ten years?!” Cass Motley steamed at the ears metaphorically. Her long, pale fingers gripped the front page of the newspaper and she frowned deeply. If she wasn’t a vampire who aged slowly she would avoid stretching her skin quite so angrily so as not to encourage wrinkles.

“But that’s hardly fair. I was turned six years ago. Why am I any less reliable than you lot?” She gestured in the general direction of the coven assembled in the bar. It was meant as a rhetorical question at worst, but she wouldn’t mind hearing some reassuring and consolatory responses. Such was the ego of one who worked in media, even the dead of night on the radio.

“What do you think of this?” She asked, tossing the paper across the table in irritation.

Old Laz Blackburn had his elbows on the bar, a tumblr glass of Oh-Neg swaying in his hand. His hat was cocked back on his head. The hundred-seventy-five-year-old American vampire, he hadn't seen hide or hair of the werewolf hunter, or the little blonde waif, or Dido, not in awhile. He'd been scarce, doing his little business around the countryside, collecting things and putting names in a book.

"I think that I don't really care to say please or thank you more than I already have to," he said to wild Cassandra Motley in a surly rasp.

Laz played well with others and followed the rules. He considered it good diplomacy, a necessity for otherwise peaceful survival. But this new law was going to mean more opportunities for ... conflict, which never ended well for vampires. He'd liked the idea when he'd first heard about it, he'd stopped liking it when he'd heard about all the red tape now attached to his breakfast.

This was always going to happen.

That's what Terry thought, leaning against the counter with his dark eyes on Montley. The law was always going to roll this way, if you waited long enough (and oh how long indeed they could all wait) and quietly enough. But laws can be retracted. Have been, by different Ministers wearing the same old scowl.

"I don't write their rules, luv," he shrugged, picking up the paper for the second time today. "Suppose they expect good wee boys and girls until they turn ten, hm?"

Inane. Terry didn't much like the idea of having a rulebook to follow after so many years spent making up their own rules in the shadows. "You're all gettin' licensed," he threw the Prophet down and looked first at Anaïs behind the bar.

      "Seriously?" she raised her eyebrows, unimpressed. "I don't even drink anyone besides--"
"Yeah, exactly," he interrupted impatiently. "Easier to hide what we don't want 'em to see."

It was known that Anaïs has a little lover and pet who quenched her appetite on a regular basis; she didn't 'serve' at Hookers, so to speak. Terry turned his attention to Lazarus - good ol' Blackburn, whose opinion was closest to his own.

"Or maybe you disagree, Laz?"

Laz always had a good response. Cass supposed it was being so bloody old. He’d had enough years to think back over conversations and come up with better retorts to use in future.

“But I can’t,” Cass pouted, then brightened artificially, framing her face with the back of her hands, “drawbacks of youth.” Her mouth twitched in irritation. “I have to wait a decade in hope that I don’t get fed a brick or staked?” She folded her arms. “This is almost as bad as finding out I had to learn how to turn into a bat…” This was something she’d more recently got the hang of - after getting stuck in a Diagon Alley tailors along the way…

Lazarus had an understanding for the trials of the wild Cassandra Motley, so green she was (poor kitty) in the throes of her fresh un-life. The coven was best served keeping vampires like Cass close and coddled or else they'd go rogue and therefore inspire a torches and pitchforks parade right at their door. Terry knew this. Laz knew this. There were rules that protected them all. And now there were new ones.

Terry confronted Lazarus directly on his sullenness. Lazarus raised his eyes but not his head.

"I don't know, boss," he said. "I don't know. Trying to think of a time where a list of names was a good thing for anyone with a name on the list."

Then, to Cass. "You'll get the hang of it." Pun intended.

The young one was going to be a problem. If she were to fly off the handle, bat form or not, that was on his coven. And Terry would sooner deal with one of his own than let the Ministry wield the stick it took so much pleasure in waving around.

"We'll sort you out," he told her pointedly, rapping the bar counter.
        "Time's nothing anyway, Cass..." Jin-ho piped up in a drawl, perched as he was on a booth table. "Weeks become days, months become weeks."

A chorus of rolling eyes and groans, seeing as how Jin-Ho Kim was hardly half a century old but talked as though he'd seen Moses split the bloody sea. Terry was more preoccupied with Blackburn who, at least, posssessed the aura of someone who'd witnessed biblical sights.

"I ain't saying it's good," he glanced round the bar, raising his hands. "Just saying we got away with a lot of shite by playin' nice with the Ministry before. Now they know who we are, don't they? We got them eyes on us. There's no changing that. We play nice."

Unfortunately. Terry lowered his hands and shrugged. "Least until they give us reason not to."

“We’ll sort you out.”

“Thank you,” Cass replied smugly to Hooker assuring they’d sort her out. This was another reason she joined the coven. “I’m sure, mate,” she agreed with Jin-ho. Patience wasn’t one of her virtues.

Hooker continued to hold court with Laz:

“… we got away with a lot of shite by playin’ nice with the Ministry before…”

Cass narrowed her eyes, intrigued.

“What sort of shite?”

"I'm nice," Lazarus agreed and lit a cigarette. He'd never lost the taste for them, even if they did nothing for him anymore. "Nice as kitty cat."

He wouldn't defy Hooker; it was a card he played only rarely.

Now Cass begged a history lesson. Lazarus had only been in the coven since the 1980s; old man, new brother. He laughed his grungy old laugh.

"The bloody kind," he said sucking in some smoke. "The kind where we bite whoever comes to dinner. And people who don't. Notice poor old grandpa got sucked dry over Christmas and no one knock-knocked at our door."

Cass had got picked up for that, but were Aurors in Hooker's house? Was Cass back at home? A no and a yes.

Laz took point, answering their latest pair of fangs through cigarette smoke.

"Don't think that the Ministry lot, they don't know what happens round here," Terry added with a snort, elbows back on the counter. "They turn the blind eye. We answer what questions they got, keep our ears open."

He dragged his dark gaze across the room - across watchful eyes he had known for decades, any one of which earned the right to be defended by the collective. While they played by coven rules, Terry would personally put himself out there for any one of them.

"So long as we don't send them down roads leading back to us, isn't that right?" he raised his eyebrows, which did most of the asking.

A couple of nods here and there. Anaïs tapped the counter in agreement, sighing. That was as good as he'd get out of her. "Let's keep our heads on then," Terry added. "You got regulars, you tell 'em we're going legit now."

Camden Town Hookers were going into business. On paper.