fluttering your lashes like ashes and embers

Time passed, for Alastor. There was no notable difference in its passage now, to what there had been before, but that was not to say he wasn't keenly aware of Lotte's absence from his life, which was as sudden as her presence had been. The idea of "missing" something that had taken up a mere hour of his life (no longer, yet, than a more fortunate mortal man's might have been) was incomprehensible, and so he would not say that he missed her. Still, those garnet-colored vials of Lotte's blood sat upon the shelf by the fireplace in Alastor's front room, and he gazed at them nightly. Some nights, the temptation to pop the corks, hold the glass in his hand, swallow them in one hot mouthful like a shot of fine brandy, was almost too strong to handle. When it did happen, he did exactly that - took a mouth-filling gulp of brandy and stared at them while he did so, imagining the difference between the two, the sharpness that would settle on his tongue when he finally deigned to drink the blood, in contrast to the burn of alcohol in his mouth.

The light would catch on the vials, shining through them like stained glass, when he lit his fire. This was every night, and it made every night agonizing. If anyone asked (which they didn't), he would say he was only playing a little game with himself, seeing just how long he could deny himself the pleasure of the drink before it drove him insane and he had no choice but to indulge. He would not say, for he did not believe, that it had anything to do with the company of the woman who slashed her wrists and bled for him.

And yet, inarguably, he thought of her: the flames dancing in his hearth, all cliches aside, resembled the color of her hair in the lamplight. The pull of his summoning, the few times it took place in the weeks since his visit with Lotte, sent a flare of curiosity through him - each time, he wondered if it might be her. Each time, it wasn't. (And each time, in truth, he knew better. The feeling of a more practiced act of black magick was incomparable to the artless reaching of someone like Lotte.) Therefore it must be true, in some way, that it was her absence that he missed when he thought of the blood slipping thick down his throat, coating his stomach, settling softly there. Perhaps he would warm it, he thought, before he finally drank it. Doing so would pale in comparison from harvesting it straight from its source, but even the imitation had its worth.

How long he intended to leave those vials there, gazing at them every night from the safety of his favorite armchair, he wasn't sure. The occasion would feel right, one night, he was sure. Or perhaps, some particularly wrought transaction would take place between himself and some insufferable mortal soul who called him up from Hell. Then, he would feel he deserved it, had earned it, could spare the finest vintage in his cellars. So far, the time wasn't right. The days passed, just the same as every other series of ten or so days, in and out, dull and uneventful.

This was the reason for this feeling akin to longing, when he looked at her blood in the firelight. The evening Alastor spent with her was the first in a long time that didn't feel just like the others - the first with a spice, a panache, that the ordinary rhythm of his days just couldn't match. He spilled blood, struck deals, grew interminably and intermittently stronger, but nothing happened.

The blood on the shelf, in itself, was not maddening, but tantalizing. The maddening thing was his sudden awareness that there was no end to this stream of days, repeating endlessly, over and over again. It called to mind an awareness of his youth. There were things here, so many, far older than Alastor. What would be his lot, when he reached their age? Would his mind dull, bashed in by the drudgery of thousand, million, identical days? The thought sent a shudder through him. If he'd contemplated it before, in his time here, it was never with such sincerity.

He wasn't willing to admit this was it.

The night Lotte called for him again was just like any other.

He sat in the same armchair, the same snifter of brandy pressed to his lower lip, poised between sips, the same amber glow shining through the steadily darkening blood on the shelf by the fire. His legs were crossed in the same way as always, one dangling over the other's knee, the same shoe planted in the same pile of the same rug. Light danced off the lacquered shine of his coffee table, tickled at the edges of his vision where it caught the gold leaf in the wallpaper, and dissipated to almost nothing, in the far corners of the opposite wall.

All of this was the same, and he was caught in the same lull of normalcy that nearly every evening possessed, when a heat gripped his chest.

A living man might have thought he was dying. Alastor was startled by it, but no more than that. He looked around, ears craning behind him, listening out for the sign of company at his front door. But it wasn't that. The company was closer, and much more foreign.

Across from him, the barely familiar and yet unquestionably identifiable blackness was growing in the corner of the room. His ears perked, his hair stood on end. If this wasn't Lotte again, he'd be damned. He could swear that it was, the opening between the worlds felt so similar. Racing ahead of him, his shadow slithered across the floor, towards the growing shadow of a doorway on the wall. It wanted to go. It was sure of something he told himself had no reason to be true.

But he stood, setting the glass down and following it. One moment, the fire was crackling behind him, the next, it was in front of him, as he stepped through the passageway, and back into Lotte's familiar home.

She swam into focus in front of him as he parted the veil, the fuzziness of the light bouncing off her curls in that familiar, golden way, until it focused down to a faint back light, a soft halo around the strands of hair that frizzed up from the rest. But she looked wild tonight, her eyes bright and manic, her smile easy. Alastor spied the whiskey bottle on the table, from the corner of his eye. Ah, there was the reason. She'd been enjoying herself, without him.

His feet fully met her floor, bringing him solidly into the room, just a few paces from her. His smile, though practiced and automatic, was genuine. It was a delight to see her so undone, so filled to the brim with the extra boost of confidence that good whiskey would bring. "Good evening, my dear," he purred, and his throat was so hot with the words it was as if he hadn't spoken in a week. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"