Morgan Alistair's Story

Evading the squad sent by the Court had not been easy, but she’d done it. It had been Lenore’s turn to throw off the pursuit of her coven this time, and it was a duty which she took very seriously, using decoy vials of the members’ blood to create a false trail, manufacturing paperwork and airline tickets, and so on. The goal wasn’t to make the Court’s agents think anything in particular, only to obscure the truth with alternative possibilities. They would be found eventually—they were always found. What mattered was that it wasn’t so soon that they would have no time to recover. Perhaps this time, they would even be able to settle for a few decades or so. It was unwise to remain in one area for more than ten or fifteen years, because eventually it became impossible to hide that they were not aging, but lately, the Court had been finding them even sooner than that.

It wasn’t that they couldn’t handle a truly nomadic life, only that it was hardly a life at all. Sometimes, she did not understand why Ephraim did not simply choose to stand and fight them—it was well within their capabilities to do so. The Court would have to mobilize more of its resources than it should be wiling to risk to pose a threat to the twins, and even then… it was hard to say what the result would be. That was probably why he never pushed it; he had no interest in knowing, not when it could get one of the others killed.

He was really quite a bit kinder than he generally gave himself credit for. Lenore released a breath, straightening her shirt absently. She wasn’t exactly in formal festival attire, or at least not compared to some of those humans she’d seen so far, but the jeans, leather jacket, and red shirt were not inappropriate for the setting, either, so it would do. She needed to find Ephraim and Virgil eventually, and make her report, but right now, she would be quite contented if she could simply see any of them. It had been a good two months since they’d parted ways, and she found no shame in admitting that she’d missed them.

The town was still wholly unfamiliar to her, so Lenore simply wandered, picking up occasionally the scent of this or that Coven member—Ari and Morgan seemed to be the closest, but so was a peculiar human scent, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to interfere with… whatever was going on. She couldn’t tell from just the smells alone. Ephraim was further off, but she tracked him anyway, because Virgil and Arya were further still. The tall woman wound her way through the crowd with a sort of easy grace that she’d had even as a human, but refined simply by observing Virgil—he could touch everyone or nobody in a crowd as he moved past, depending on what he wanted, though she erred always on the side of decorum, slipping past those who stood or strolled with the ease of a fish in a river. What on earth was Ephraim doing around so many people? He hated people, generally speaking. There was another strange human-smell around as well, and she caught sight of his retreating back over the heads of the crowd, a human woman walking in parallel.

An intended victim, perhaps? It was most unlike him to select one from a crowded place such as this—Ephraim preferred a bit more of a physical challenge when possible, and tended to go after hunters or those hiking, making their injuries easily ascribable to accidents. This was not his method, so she was left to conclude that perhaps he was here for another reason. Blinking, she shook her head and decided to leave that alone for now. He would doubtless have detected her presence by now, and she would leave him to make his own decisions about what to do about that.

Turning instead to a vendor, she ordered a cup of tea, scrunching her nose faintly when what she received was a teabag in hot water, but she would drink it all the same. Waste was not something she liked, however inconsequential the matter. Wrapping her hands about the paper cup it came in, Lenore picked a spot against the side of one of the stalls and leaned comfortably, embracing the opportunity for a small respite. Like any of her kind would, she gained substantial attention for her mere presence, but she was used to ignoring such things by this point. Humans were naturally curious, and their aesthetics were generally similar—vampires had adapted to that. This fact was neither here nor there, really. She was a little curious herself, honestly, particularly about these odd scents she was picking up. The woman with Ephraim had one, as did someone—a male, she thought—near Ari and Morgan. Virgil was at least in the vicinity of another, probably much more overt about his interest in such a smell than she would ever be, and there was yet one more, wandering seemingly without aim through the shifting mass of the crowd somewhere nearby.

How very peculiar.

This human was rather peculiar, she thought. She has interacted with many of them, both before and after her changing, and perhaps it said more about her than him that she had not often encountered any who would demonstrate this level of concern over what happened to a stranger, especially considering how minor the injury really was. Still, it was not as though she could offer her guarantee that no mark would be left, for if she were indeed what she pretended to be, it may. So she canted her head slightly to the side, amused beneath her gentle expression to be on the receiving end of such ministration. She’d been a doctor, and now she was something else, a healer of a more supernatural kind, and as such, she’d always treated herself. Even in her distant childhood, she’d been the caretaker of her siblings, all eleven of them, so this was almost surreal in its strangeness.

It had at least given her a sense of how to be a good patient, and so she did not shift or stir uncomfortably as the handkerchief was applied to her burn, and accepted the compliment with grace. “My thanks—it is kind of you.” She allowed her meaning to remain ambiguous between the comment itself and the general nature of his present action, as in truth she referred to both. Lenore felt a vague sense of bewilderment, but took care not to let it cross her face. Occasionally, people still surprised her, even after this many years. It was not wholly unpleasant, but she would never grow to expect it, by any means.

Regardless, she was a woman who paid her debts, a trait engrained in her by some combination of disposition and following Ephraim Solomon around for more than a century, so she made note of this one. She would find a way to repay it—while it was true that it was only a small thing, that was not necessarily obvious, and did not count against a certain reciprocal obligation. Small things could be quite important, as well.

A feminine voice broke into the scene, so to speak, and she was reminded quite sharply that the world still moved at the same pace around them. How curious. Judging by the fact that this human responded without hesitation to the name, it would logically be his. Liam, then. She would not forget it until she could find some suitable form of recompense for this kindness. What would happen to it after that was not her concern—they were all too nomadic, and human lives too transient, to allow for any other attitude. She did not know the third person to whom they referred, and it was hard to smell anything else at all when Liam was in such close proximity, but now that she was actually paying attention, she realized that the situation at hand may not be so far beyond her as she’d initially supposed.

She managed a half-smile at his apology, and shook her head faintly. Her mind was half-elsewhere, but that did not stop her from replying. “Think nothing of it,” she replied mildly, inclining her head in response to the offer. It was at least a clue about how to go about paying this debt, and she lifted her uninjured hand in reply to the silent farewell. If she noted the fact that the other woman was apparently less-than-pleased with her presence, she gracefully ignored it. Was it a function of the brevity of human lifespans that they were so quick to jump to conclusions? If so, there was nothing she could do about it, and she refused to correct every misunderstanding or explain every action she took. People would think what they wished to think anyway.

She waited a few moments before striking off in another direction, sensing that perhaps Virgil would be better-equipped to smooth over what might be a very uncomfortable situation than Ephraim would—and she simply lacked the authority. Ari and Morgan had no particular incentive to listen to her, assuming she would even know what to do in the first place.