continuation for devildo || its terrible potential has begun

[americanvvitch]

[continued from here]

The ending came quickly, as they so often did.

Little fanfare surrounded Alastor's exit... no floating appendages, no jovial crackling of her radio. Only the quiet ringing of piano keys to play him off as he vanished from sight, the last notes of a doleful wake. It seemed an inappropriately sober outtro, in contrast to the tone of the rest of the evening.

With Alastor gone, deep silence settled over the cabin. Save for soft footsteps while the flour and whiskey were tucked away, and the creak and latch of the door. The radio show he had pulled into existence dwindled away by the time she had finished, and then all that was left was the sound of grit and sand as it blew over the horizon and the occasional pop of the fire in her hearth. Little by little each trace of him faded, unsustainable without his magic, but even as his essence seeped out of the world, Lotte felt the creature take root in her mind. The worn mattress beneath her gave no comfort or relief. The red stag and the thrill and terror of it might very well haunt her for the rest of her days.

The feeling that had long plagued her, of feeling somewhere lost between this world and another was only intensified now. Time would flow, dawn would come, nothing in her little home would stretch itself larger than its physical shape ought to have been, and the world would return to its previous state. All would mend itself now.

All but her.

The idea that she could not be the same after what she'd done followed her, like her own gauzy shadow, through the following week. The days rolled in and out, hazy with dust, fragrant loaves of fresh bread and the slow drying of the original, ordinary bottle of whiskey that predated the harvest night. Lotte had never missed anyone, so she couldn't really say for sure that the strange restlessness she couldn't quite shake was covetous. Or that it had anything to do with Alastor in particular. If she had called something else up, would it have been such a distraction? Well, there really wasn't any way to know with Alastor and his like down there and Lotte wasting away up here - and that was just how it would have to stay.

She had no excuse to call Alastor and what good sense she possessed (along with pride, perhaps) prevented her from making another social call. She was stalwart in that, or so she thought.

But Lotte was not any great mountain or a deeply-rooted tree. She was kindling, and a spark of fire and a rush of air was all it ever took to change her course.

∅ ∅ ∅ ∅

Near a week and a half had passed, before the storm hit. It wasn't a surprise - this was probably closing in on the fiftieth storm Lotte had weathered in this place. The static electricity had woken her before dawn and she'd wasted no time tugging on her boots and wrapping the bottom of her face with a double piece of old cotton before she ventured out of the cabin to check that each sigil at the edge of town was intact. The farmers had instructions on how to refresh the sigils placed at the center of their acreage and along the borders - they would be on their own with no car or horse at her disposal to check them.

Surrounding the town itself, there were three. The head of the triangle lay about two miles up the road, just off a crossroads. She'd noticed early on that most of the storms rolled in from that direction, and so she'd created the barrier's tip there with some hope that it would slice through the force of nature and help distribute the power along the sides of where the barrier ran, rather than letting it hit them head on. That one had to be checked first, then she'd double back along the fence line to the other two.

After that, things had happened fast. Dark clouds had rolled in on her way to the last sigil point, and cast a shroud over the land that turned it black in a matter of moments. There'd been no choice but to run for the last sigil and then pray the storm held as she ran harder back through the fields to the shack, sparks of blue flame snapping at her her hair from along the fence line as she went.

There hadn't been enough time to seal up the shutters, plug the cracks in the door with rags and blankets and scribble a sigil on the door as she normally might have. Instead, she'd had to disappear into the basement with little more than a blanket to shield from the dust.

Dust storms came and went quickly, at least.

The cleanup had taken longer. Several hours of sweeping the sand and dirt from surfaces, dragging all the linens out to hang outside and beat the dust from them - because the barrier couldn't keep a storm out entirely. No, it only curbed the force, mitigated the damage.

It was well into the evening by the time she'd finished that, eaten some cold stew, a piece of bread, and settled in at her table with the whiskey Alastor had given her.

She'd earned a bit of celebration hadn't she? She'd managed to get a fire going, all the doors and windows were open to air things out, and she did have a little cough that needed soothing.

Of course, Lotte planned to make the bottle to last, so she hadn't poured too much. Which was.. admittedly hard to do after tasting it for the first time. Little favors allowed her to be alone for the coughing fit that followed her first sip. It was smooth, very smooth, but also by far the strongest thing she'd ever put in her body.

But it was good. Very good, really.

So good that Lotte didn't quite notice the warm, easy slide that took her from pleasantly tipsy to quite drunk all in her first glass.

And how she'd gone from the cheery warmth of sitting by her fire, reading a book by candlelight and listening to the radio to painting a rather large, improvised sigil on the wall of her shack well.... she really didn't know. She felt warm and loose all over, and it seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea to invite Alastor back for a chat and a drink. Why shouldn't she?

He had been more of a friend to her than anyone here! He was clever, had more than a bit of wit, and she missed the particular heat and bite of his magic. Like cinnamon and clove in mulled wine.

Lotte stepped back, wiping the blood on her pale green dress before her eyes fluttered closed and she called. This sigil was not so carefully crafted, but she felt no lack of magic in it, if anything, she felt like she knew how to call for Alastor better. Not at a physical place, so much as a wavelength in the magic, her intuition told her that this sigil was right for what she sought, and it was nothing to funnel her own magic through it to create a proper invitation. A door. All he needed to do was step through, because that was what she wished.

Why don't you come join me for a drink, Mr. Radio Demon?

Comments

[devildo]

Fair answer or not, Alastor chuckled, his nose twitching like a rabbit's for a moment. If Everything had only been a real answer, he could have snapped his fingers and made it so, littered the earth as far as her eye could see with every dish he could think of. That would be shocking, but...dull. A cheap party trick, useless in every conceivable way, since such an amount of food could never be eaten by one woman with no icebox, anyway. Besides, most of the time, that sort of thing was half illusion. No one would ever bother to try and eat every food you could think to conjure, so half of them needn't even be real.

This place, to be frank, needed something real. It was rare that Alastor got to do anything sturdy and simple, anymore. He could have made it happen with the blink of an eye, but he wriggled his shoulders, and turned his palms over, pointing those slightly extended middle fingers towards the ground. Far, far below, deep into the ground, the tendrils of his shadow and his much-less-visible infernal energy groped for water. It was deep, but it was there. His fingers curled towards his palms, drawing it forward and amplifying what was there.

"Trees," he said, "some old busybody will notice." A tree didn't leave quite enough room for reasonable doubt. Not a tree large enough to grow apples, anyway. If he was going to bother making something, it ought to at least get some use before it was stolen from or chopped down for its clearly unnatural nature. A garden, though? Someone could have simply not noticed that, before.

He took a deep breath, leaned forward, and blew. It wasn't forceful, but long, far surpassing any amount of air a human could have held in their lungs. The movement of air rushing forward cleared not just the atmosphere for several yards outside of the bubble, but all the dust from the grass below them, which was steadily livening, knitting itself together, blushing green. The dust vanished, when it was blown away - a cloud at the end of the yard, and then nothing. It wasn't piled up anywhere, wasn't floating higher into the atmosphere, simply wasn't there, anymore.

Alastor straightened, and looked back at Lotte, his hands briskly turning upright again, and flicking towards him at the wrists. In the instant his wrists snapped up, so did two neat, mounded rows from the earth (rich, dark now, full of moisture and all the things plants needed, to thrive), and from these mounds coiled the pale shoots of infant vines. "Now, a few tomatoes? No one will see that." The shoots continued to climb steadily out of the ground, the bright, hard bulbs of unripe tomatoes beginning to pop from them now and swell, turning redder by the second.

[americanvvitch]

Indeed, Alastor had been about to do something, but Lotte found herself just as interested in watching Alastor perform magic as she was in the potential of something other than a boiled potato. The way his hands moved, and the way he simply willed things in and out of existence. Lotte felt something shift the earth deep, deep below them, and she felt, too, the way the sand simply ceased to exist. Unlike the barrier that shielded the town from storms, which simply dispersed the energy and force of the sand, Alastor simply rid himself of it entirely.

Her eyes were so fixed on the curl of his fingers and the flip of direction of his palms, the flick of his wrists that it took her a moment to realize something had been pull up with the motion. Her head snapped back to the garden where thick, black, wet soil was bubbling up from the ground, followed soon by sprouts and branches that peeked forth from the dirt. The grass around them, too, began to color and Lotte turned in place, watching the world come back into color around her.

There were likely more than a few witches and wizards in the world that would have been envious, taken offense, that Alastor had this power and they did not. But what did it matter who wielded the power, really? Alastor's hand had done it, but Lotte had brought him here no differently than he pulled these vines up. Together, now, the first living thing that had graced this land was blooming before their eyes. Lotte felt no envy or jealousy, only the thrill and satisfaction of creation.

She looked up at him, eyes brimming with life and possibility and all the things she couldn't help but feel whenever she looked at Alastor, before taking a step forward and sinking down onto her knees in order to lean in and take a deep breath, inhaling the scent of fresh soil and the savory tang of the tomato leaves. Her herbs and spices were all long dried, meant for spells... but this was life, pure and simple and real beyond any shadow of a doubt.

The tomatoes continued to swell, bending the branches of their vines as they matured until they were ripe and red. Lotte gripped one and picked it, the long forgotten snap of freshness ringing through the air, and it made her laugh. She wasn't even sure why, really, but it didn't delay the first bite or the flood of ripe juice that spilled into her mouth and down her chin. The rolled sleeve of her dress was gladly sacrificed to wipe her chin clean, before Lotte rolled back onto her heels and tipped her head up as she swallowed, savoring even the tiniest sensation that came from eating something fresh and healthy and good. There wasn't a honey cake in the world so satisfying as that first bite of tomato.

Lotte hummed, holding the tomato in her palm as she considered it. "They never tell you whether or not Eve regretted eating the forbidden fruit." Her fingers pressed into the flesh of the tomato, watching it drip down her wrist. "Probably cause they don't want anyone to know that she didn't."

A grin crept across her mouth and she stood up, taking another bite before turning to him.

"Can we make strawberries too?"

[devildo]

Once, magic was something Alastor was required to practice. Something that came from outside of him, for which his body was a conduit. (This was not the say that the human body was not innately holy on its own - it must be, to conduct power beyond itself.) When he was saddled with this, with being ordinary, there was an ache that came with the completion of his spells, a feeling of letting go, of being unable to do (or go) farther. After a point, the success of what you'd sown was up to the power of something much greater than you were, by far. That never fully sat right with Alastor.

Of course, he denied it, when he was living. It would have been sacrilege not to, and more importantly, it would have been disrespectful to his mother, who did her best to teach him everything she knew, and the best to instill in him a proper reverence for the earth and for every living person who walked its paths before him. He never told her, never revealed the truth of how he felt, because what would it do, besides hurt her? In some way, perhaps, this was why Alastor eventually took his fate into his own hands.

Because the type of magic that relied on something else to bring it to its conclusion was not enough.

It was nothing like Alastor's magic now, that was for sure. This came from inside himself, seeped from his very pores, was now embedded in every cell of his body, in a way it never was, when he lived. It was as if life, itself, had been traded for raw force. This, the instant conjuration of something so benign, so nothing, at the end of the day, as a few tomato plants, was infinitely more to him than any working he'd ever been a part of in life.

His eyes narrowed, and his fingers tightened, his grip on the air strangling the ether pressed between his fingers, while Lotte sank to the ground and bit into the tomato. In the moonlight (now visible and silver, cutting and cold, in this dust-less bubble around them) highlighted its color and tinted it the ruddy-black of blood, in the dark. If not for the seeds sliding haphazardly down one side of Lotte's chin, caught in the elbow of her soiled dress, it might have been too easy to imagine it was a heart she sated herself on, arterial blood that dripped down her chin and stained her pale throat.

Alastor cleared his, one loose fist coming up to his mouth, to cough politely. "Hm," he said, "if that's what you wish. I think you're onto something, about Eve. They won't tell us a thing about her, either!"

He shrugged - he wasn't truly convinced Eve was ever a person who existed, anyway. If she was, wouldn't she be down in Hell, too, with all the other fools who were only doing what God asked them to? If she was, he'd never met her. His fingers, pointed now like a pistol, flicked out from his body, and in their wake, two of the tomato plants folded over on themselves, disappeared under the earth for a moment, and with another flick of his wrist, reappeared - this time as strawberry plants.

These plants popped up in kind, extending a few more feet down the yard, until there was an equal number of each type of plant. "How's that?" he asked, watching her keenly, waiting for that new burst of juice to wet her face.

[americanvvitch]

A quick flick of his wrist, a change in the position of his long, clawed fingers was all it took for tomatoes to disappear, immediately replaced by strawberries to Lotte's utter delight. Lotte finished the tomato, strolled over to the strawberries and plucked a few, looking them over. Perfectly red and ripe... "I would think scripture has to rely on not telling you a good deal of what really was or is. Too much knowledge and you start to wonder what else you're not being told."

Her teeth sunk into the plump strawberry, so ripe the juice flooded her mouth and coated her fingers, and Lotte had never been so pleased to feel a mess. Maybe she'd simply never felt this pleased at all! She swirled each finger in her mouth to suck them clean once she'd swallowed the fruit itself, perfectly careless about the traces of red liquid that stained her lips and rested in the little upturned divots at the corners of her mouth.

"You remain, far and away, my favorite thing I've ever done." She hummed cheerfully, a well-earned, genuine admiration in her tone along with that liquored smoothness, that tipped up as a bright grin split her face. He was very impressive. The concept of magic like this would have been beyond her imagination a few weeks ago. Yet here he was, conjuring things left and right. And he hadn't asked for a single thing in return, this time. "I bet you really could bring this whole place back to life like it was nothing if I asked you to."

Lotte plucked a few more tomato leaves, taking in the spice of their scent as she walked back over to him, turning on her heel to stare at the garden she'd come into possession of with a little wobble. Truth be told she was tempted to eat every single piece of fruit this very instant but she was used to eating so little it, in combination with the whiskey, might have made her sick.

"Alastor..." Lotte began, then paused, swaying a little as she considered the tomato leaves. "Why did I get you? When you came that first time, was it dumb luck? Or did you choose to come?"

[devildo]

Ripe as they were, those berries would stay that way for days, untouched by time until just a little too far past their natural inclination. And new ones would sprout where the stems were empty, over and over again just a little too fast, until the first frost of the winter. By then, if she had any sense about her, she would have canned them, and Alastor thought of her next spring, opening those jars, inhaling the scent, thinking of him.

And where would he be, then? Precisely nowhere, uncorking those bottles of her blood and doing the same. Or perhaps he would have slurped them down by then, and this would only be a memory, like so many other strange and pleasant moments in his life, which were too few and far between. Hell was so strange, in such a particular way, all of the time. It didn't hold any of the mystery the living world did. It wasn't nearly so unpredictable.

He watched Lotte's fingers disappearing into her mouth, a move that should have seemed pointed, lascivious, uncomfortable. Maybe it was meant to be, how should he presume to guess? But coming from her, it only looked as innocent as everything else she did, innocent in how genuine it was. She was really enjoying herself to that extent, the extent that she didn't care how she looked, or perhaps didn't even notice it. That was something. That was a kind of wanton abandon you never saw in Hell.

"I could," he purred, his smile close-lipped and coy, his eyes a little narrowed, the corners curling and feline, again. "I could do anything you asked me to, and then some. I'm remarkably cunning. But then, so are you."

He considered her question, curling his tongue around itself inside his closed mouth, his cheeks sucking in as he did so, the hollows beneath his cheekbones darkening to bruisey, unearthly depths. In truth, he didn't know the answer any more than Lotte did. The question was, whether or not to admit that. But he'd already promised her he was no liar. "Who can say?" he asked her, with a shrug. "I was minding my own business, enjoying my fireplace, you know, and then I saw you."

[americanvvitch]

Lotte considered what that could mean, pure chance that they were connected, or something more? Of all the demons that played this game, Alastor had come to her, and they got on so well! Lotte hadn't specified what or who she wanted to call, but she wondered if there wasn't something about them that rang on the same wavelength. A reason why they'd locked in on one another. Perhaps Alastor was as lonely and bored as she was. Otherwise, why would he have time to come and pay her calls?

Or perhaps he simply wanted more than what the world around him had to offer. Lotte couldn't imagine that hell could be boring, but it seemed possible that it could have been as mundane to him as this place was to her.

"Am I cunning?" She hummed and turned in a circle, letting the leaves flutter to the ground and watching them as they did. Cunning was not how she would have thought of herself - after all she had no ulterior motives in calling Alastor, or allowing him to do this work. She had no grand design. Her want came and went and she indulged it if and when she was able. More so now than she might normally have, but what could it hurt? A little whiskey never hurt anyone.

"So all this... is this to tempt me to use you for something with a little more grandeur?" After all, it would make sense if he wanted to more to do.. wanted more from her. Be that blood or a soul, though to his credit he wasn't pushy. In fact, given her current state of inebriation, he was being quite the gentleman.

Lotte walked a few steps away and then turned back to him, hands clasped behind her back. Her chin stuck up a little and she smirked back at him, teasing. "If you want more blood you can just ask me, you know~"

[devildo]

Alastor raised his hand in front of himself, palm facing Lotte, and shook it lightly from side to side, in time with the shake of his head. "No, no," he assured her, "I would never presume to impugn on a lady's honor like that. Nor at all, in fact!" His smile opened up, brightened. This was the truth of both matters - if she wanted to sell him anything, be it her blood or her soul, she would have to want to do so for herself. It was a dime a dozen, crossing paths with those who wanted to sell. That wasn't worth anything, for as often as Alastor saw it.

Not, of course, that her blood was worth nothing. The way he kept it, like a precious thing, impossible to replenish, indicated otherwise.

"But say," he said, gesturing widely to the space around them with open arms, "Say you could have anything you wanted. What would you have me do? Mend this whole place, take you out of here, smite the ones who wronged you?"

He smile narrowed, turned sly. "Surely there must be someone. Your parents who won't write, perhaps?" And they weren't here, so that would be a new adventure, in itself. He spun on his heel and turned to walk the length of the row of plants he'd called up, running his hand through the air above them, fingers outstretched. The reverberation of their life force hovered in the air, rising with the warmth it possessed, to touch his fingertips. The earth was supple, now, beneath his feet, and his shoes sunk into it with every step.

"Tell me," he mused, bending to touch the plants he'd created. Touching them sent a little thrill through him, even though he could only just feel the texture through his gloves. "Let's play a little game, again, shall we? I'll ask you something, you can ask me. What did they do to you?"

[americanvvitch]

"Mend this place...." Lotte sighed and swung her arms around her. "But this place is so awful! And if I were going to kill someone... well, I think I'd want to do it with my own two hands... or at least my own magic. I can't imagine the reward is as satisfying when someone else does the dirty work," she purred.

The bitter, ragged rage of her parents' carelessness had haunted her for a long time, slowly dulled and smoothed out by the endless barrage of sand and silt. Still, somewhere deep down, it smoldered, awakened now by Alastor's query.

"What did who do to me?" Lotte watched him walk the rows of plants, touch them, saw them respond to their creator in turn, the way they arched toward him, the source of his power.

She walked along with him in parallel, boots kicking up the dust as she looked up at the sky. "My parents? They used me happily to keep their own little village alive, tending to their crops, making them remedies. It wasn't hard, the area wasn't hit nearly as badly as this place. They ended up with an excess of crop just as all the prices dropped... wheat that should have sold for sixty cents a bushel selling for ten, maybe... and then what else of value did they have other than their darling, witch child to sell at that point?"

Lotte dug her heel into the sand, crushing something under her boot that couldn't have been seen by the naked eye even if it were truly there.

"They told this town that the surplus was all my doing, that I was a miracle worker... when they came to collect me, my parents hadn't told me a thing. Dragged me out of my bed in the middle of the night with only the clothes on my back and shoved me into the back of a truck. They were kind enough to send most of my journals and supples for spellwork with me. No goodbyes. Just let me scream and scream and cry until I was out of sight."

Whenever she thought of it, Lotte felt a fire build up in her that was hard to tame. The very tips of her fingers began to turn black, and she held them up as little sparks of flame spit and hissed around her nails.

"I tried to escape more than once. State troopers kept bringing me back. They locked me in this cabin, nailed the shutters and the door closed, for about a month until I gave it up. Threatened to tar and feather me, burn me at the stake... throw me to the witch hunters to be kidnapped and raped if I tried to run off. 'Course they wouldn't. Witches are expensive... I'm too valuable to give away, but I didn't know that then. And I wouldn't damn another poor girl to live here now."

Her fingers curled closed and she extinguished the flames, smoke curling up from her hand. No one was going to touch her with lust or threat of violence. She'd made that clear early on.

"My parents did send a letter once! I threw it into the stove without opening it, and I'll likely sentence them to a similar fate if I ever see their faces again." If she saw them again... who knows what urges might overtake her good nature. Lotte looked over at him, still burning up with righteous anger, a want for vengeance deep in her belly.

"But if I could have anything... I'd go far away from here. Somewhere lush and brimming with life and magic and things like us! If such a place exists." She exhaled, could almost feel the ash and smoke seep from her belly full of embers and hot coal. "My turn! Who were you when you were alive?"

[devildo]

Well, Alastor wanted to say, but didn't, this place may be awful, but Lotte lived here. So what did it matter that mending it would affect other people, who didn't deserve it? If a person had to live somewhere, they may as well enjoy it. And so he watched her, bemused, his hands once again politely folded behind his back, while his shadow reached out to investigate each leaf of the plants he'd brought to life, in turn. Slowly, as it moved its way down the line, each leaf was gently flicked and raised, caressed by the darkness that emanated from him, and determined worthy the continue on. In one place, his shadow sprung fingers, and dipped into the dark and fragrant earth, feeling it out, nudging at the depths of the strawberries' roots.

"Yes," Alastor did say, toeing through that same dirt. He kicked at it gently, with the pointed toes of his shoes, upturning it in bumpy little rifts. Hell was all pavement, nothing you could sink into like this. Hell smelled like the exhaust of a thousand cars, a thousand bonfires, which at times had its appeal, but it was nothing like this, the dense, dark softness of fertile soil. "Your parents."

And she answered him, and he nodded along, made soft sounds of agreement where it was appropriate to do so. It wasn't until she mentioned the state troopers that he bristled, looking up from the plants to try and meet her eyes again, only to find that they and her fingers were dark. His nerves sparked, hair stood on end along his spine, to the carefully concealed tail beneath his jacket, which bristled at the thought of Lotte in the back of the paddywagon like some common criminal. What had become of this earth, while he was gone? What good could he have done, if he'd never left? He never had such cause to wonder about it as he did now, looking at her, knowing that what she said was so far out of line with what was fair.

His eyes followed the plume of smoke from her fingertips, into the sky, gently polluting the clean bubble of protected air around them. If he could have blown it away, without seeming disrespectful, dismissive of her magic, of her emotions, he would have. But her emotions were hers to feel, they were not Alastor's to take away, nor to try to unburden her.

"I know a place," he said. He was watching her intently, bright eyes glowing red and fixated on the blackness of Lotte's fingertips. "I was born in New Orleans, it's beautiful there. You'd love it! Not a speck of this dust in sight." Quite the opposite - the air there was warm and wet. At least, it was as he remembered it. A momentary streak of panic ran through Alastor when he wondered if, somehow, against all odds, his home had lost itself to some similar fate as this place, in the decade he was gone. "I was myself," he told her.

And that was true. Was anyone not? Dying didn't make you any less who you were. "I owned a bar, you know, when that was downright illegal. They never did catch onto me for that, I was quite selective about my patrons. If I said I could take you away, would you do it? Answer me, and it's your turn."

[americanvvitch]

Alastor's eyes were on the blackened tips of her fingers, and she followed his gaze to stare down at them. Lotte had long thought it an omen of her eventual fate - fire or hell or some similar type of inferno. A warning against the consequences of her own actions, but she had no proof in support or argument of that theory. No one had been around to tell her why they turned black or how, after all. It didn't happen with normal, everyday magicks. The inky blackness only crept onto her skin when she was angry, and only ever in this way.

"New Orleans?" The name slipped out, repeated after Alastor uttered it with no shortage of curiosity. She'd heard of it, seen it mentioned in journals as a hub of great magic along with places like Salem... somehow it seemed fitting Alastor was from a place like that (not that she had any real idea what a place like that was like, really). Why, she couldn't say, but it would have surprised her to hear he was from some nowhere little town like her. There was a style to him, something that could have been honed, perhaps, but not learned. Not the way it dripped from him, even in quiet spaces where a conman or someone putting on an act might not have thought to fill.

As soon as she'd digested that fact, Alastor dangled another before her, and though it was clearly meant to dodge her actual question, she couldn't help but take the bait.

"You owned a bar during prohibition. In New Orleans." A brow quirked, and Lotte grinned a little. "Sounds dreamy."

Eras and decades were defined by their highs and lows and prohibition, the roaring twenties were probably no different. Day to day life for most people was somewhere in the middle, no doubt. Still, Lotte imagined what a time it must have been, to have been old enough to enjoy the way the world changed. Alastor must have had a front seat, which was plenty to chew on by itself, but it also gave her another interesting bit of information about Alastor - he wasn't all that old, for a demon, anyway.

Lotte was quiet as she considered the question asked with his turn, watched the black seep away from her fingers like ash blown away from a hearth, like the dust Alastor had cleared from the air.

Her eyes met his again, crimson red and glowing, staining the air around them like blood in the water.

"Leave here with you? I'd do that in a heartbeat." It wasn't a hard choice. Lotte had dreamed of escaping every night since she'd arrived.

Her turn.

"What did they catch onto you for?" He had said no one found him out about the bar, specifically, which seemed to imply he'd been found out about something else.

[devildo]

With her own two hands, Lotte had said, a moment ago. Alastor thought of it, as he looked at her darkened fingers. The soot-blackness of them wrapped around the throats of her oppressors crept into his mind, and he wondered if she'd really have the mettle. Could she, truly, squeeze until there was no squeezing left, until muscle and bone and skin compressed together so tightly that nothing could get through, until she and her victim were one, the impression of their throat imprinted on her fingertips as surely as those fingertips were imprinted on the throat. He pictured them, dark like this, against the pallor he imagined her parents to possess.

"Hm," he trilled, eyes tilted skyward, no longer actually focused on Lotte herself, so much as the image in his mind. She was speaking, he heard her, but he was looking at something that wasn't there.

And then he became too aware of it, and leveled his gaze back on her, over the rim of his monocle.

"Ah," he said, "a dream itself is but a shadow, dearie, there's nothing to it. This was real, better than that." What good were dreams, anyway? They ended quicker than anything, all created and destroyed in an instant. The better thing, by far, was to live a life you chose for yourself, create a paradise you could wake to, not one you need escape to, in sleep. He'd done that. He'd done that he thought, in bitterness, his fists clenching at his sides, his fangs baring.

"Dreams are stuff and nonsense - you know that's true, or you wouldn't say you'd go with me." And she wasn't lying, he didn't think so. For better or worse, he trusted that she'd said she, too, was no liar.

But liar or not, she certainly was curious. Alastor paced around the row of plants, back to Lotte's side. She looked ordinary again, but no less entrancing, with her fingers returned to their usual color. He was almost grateful - if she'd gone on looking too strange, he might have doubted his own senses, believed himself in Hell still. "Nothing you need to worry yourself with," he told her. "Suffice to say you can only kill so many people, unnoticed."

[americanvvitch]

"Well, I guess wouldn't know. Never lived a life that felt like a dream."

There was a snap and shift in the air, and Lotte could taste the sharp bitterness of unfinished business in the air, hear the telltale crunch of leather gloves as his fingers curled into a fist. Alastor's lip curled and he insisted that dreams were nonsense, that she knew it to be true just as he did - and she wouldn't correct him because as usual, he spoke the truth.

With each question and answer she learned a little more about him, not from his words, which are as contrariwise and vague as ever, but from things like this. Glimpses of what had been, what was left behind in the form that stood before her now. The notion that he'd been a murderer wasn't surprising, really. Murderers came in all shapes and sizes, and he'd had to do something to go to Hell anyway. What piqued her curiosity was the gnawing hunch that he wanted to remain in this world. Go back to where he'd come from. But why?

Surely not to murder! He could do that in this form, whenever and wherever he wanted no doubt. It made him oddly... human. No less strange, but just a little more real than the last time, and that humanity made him all the more alluring.

"But I'm certainly tired of dreaming of the life I'd like to have." Lotte looked up at him, "Are you forfeiting your question? I'll ask another, then."

A step forward, and then another turn on her heel and she was in front of him, emboldened still by the whiskey she'd been drinking since well before she'd gotten foolhardy enough to summon Alastor to her home for the second time.

"Why would you want to go back to New Orleans with little old me? Or is it that you need me to take you?"

[devildo]

"Well," Alastor laughed, "You don't give me much choice, do you?" It was fair to say that he'd been so distracted by his own thoughts that he forgot the game was still afoot, but even if he hadn't, Lotte was so quick to jump in line, it didn't matter, either way.

That, likewise, told him something about her. She craved the answers she asked for, to get ahead of him with so little regard for what his reaction might be. For all she knew, he might have balked, might have bit at her for breaking the rules. And that told Alastor something else - Lotte wasn't afraid of him.

In one, fluid motion, he stepped, traveling farther than the length of his stride should have taken him, until he was nearly right up against her, just a few inches from her body, and bending slightly at the waist, to hover above Lotte's face. His lips were closed, but still smiling, and he blinked at her a few times in quick succession, her face blurring between blinks as he looked down his nose at her. And there, from that uncomfortably close vantage point, he laughed again, a sharp and well-enunciated HA-HA that seemed less to come from Alastor himself, as from the static around him.

"I should certainly enjoy your company!" he said, "A man is not limited to any one such mode of transportation, but I dare say it would be all the easier and more pleasant with you!" And that, without revealing much of the nature of the situation, was true. There were things Alastor could do, if he tried, to increase the odds that he would be seen, felt, pulled to a summoning in New Orleans. But even if he was, and even when he had been, it was one thing to see the inside of a house, feel the breath of the damp air, and be barred from going far enough to touch it. It would be another thing to go and be free. And since he wasn't, he didn't try. Witnessing it through a distance, unable to step foot on the streets, unable to breath the air outside the stagnant pool of the incense smoke of the summoning circle, was torture.

He straightened up, his spine cracking like a whip. "If you must know," he confessed, "being all powerful isn't all it's cracked up to be, you know?" One clawed hand raised, and he examined his nails, turning his hand over in the moonlight. His fist curled in again, his gaze flicking back to Lotte. "I can do whatever I want, but I can't go where I please. Can you imagine that? Of course you can. It's what they did to you. So tell me, this is my question - if you could take pity on the victim of a plight such as your own, would you?"

[americanvvitch]

Lotte did crave answers, didn't see any reason not to, but then she'd always been that way. Getting them was another matter, of course, and much more dangerous than simply wanting, but at least in her current state, she felt she could take whatever came of her interrogations in stride.

Easier said than done.

No sooner had the quip left Alastor than his body sprang into motion and came to a stop hardly a breath away from her. There was no helping the choked yelp that escaped her. It was the closest he'd come to her all this time, much nearer than the last time he'd loomed over her this way, always smiling all the while. A tenseness gripped her, and one foot stepped back, sinking into the sand and dirt, threatening to knock her off balance for a brief moment before steadying herself.

They stayed like that for a long, silent moment as Alastor looked down at her, and Lotte refused to let her eyes leave his. A break of eye contact felt like some sort of concession, though she had no idea if she was being measured up or if Alastor was simply attempting to throw off her nerve or her focus.

Well, he wouldn't accomplish either so easily.

But as soon as Alastor spoke it all became clear. Whether or not his descent upon her was calculated or not, the more Alastor said the more the puzzle pieces snapped into place. Alastor might enjoy her company - she certainly hoped that was the case, but that wasn't all there was to it. She represented an opportunity to him, a glimmer on the horizon much as his summoning had to her.

The realization that Lotte had more power here than she'd initially realized, that Alastor in his infinite ability, might actually have need of her was a rush akin to a shot of whiskey but so much sweeter.

However far her guest could wander from the source of his presence here, the summoning circle hastily scrawled on her wall, there was a limit to it. Alastor was no more free to move through the world than she was, and it clearly festered in him just as deeply. Perhaps more so... to possess such boundless power, but be tethered to the person and place he was called, subject to the whims or another, would have driven her mad too. It spurred an odd sensation of kinship to him, and gave even more weight to his question.

With Alastor no longer looming above her, Lotte pushed up and let her heels snap back together with a soft hum. She considered him quietly for a moment, eyes sharp and fixed on his.

"Just any old victim? I don't know about that." She hummed, perhaps for the first time in her interactions with the demon feeling like she was the cat rather than the mouse.

Alastor wanted something, and Lotte was the one with the power to give it to him.

She took a decisive step forward - one that would either have her bumping right into him or that would compel him to move.

"But I might help you, if you asked nicely," she purred.

[devildo]

The less power one had, the more easily it was stripped away. The slightest breeze could topple it like dominos, the most negligible overuse could burst the dam, crack the cup, reveal a leak in the faucet. In the early days of his afterlife, Alastor knew this too well, lurking in shadows, never quite letting anyone catch sight of him while he worked. How many territories had he claimed that way, waiting in the dark, a silent, calculating sniper, and what a shade of himself he had felt like then. The silence encroached on him. The hiding nearly destroyed his morale. Neither of those had ever been of Alastor's ilk.

In those days, any demon who got the jump on him could have taken him down. It was only by sheer force of willpower and a decent propensity for good luck that Alastor climbed the ladder of his own resolve and found himself in a position to show his face again.

This wasn't Hell, and Lotte most certainly couldn't kill him, but he would be remiss to pretend the stakes weren't there. He would be lying, too, if he said he couldn't tell Lotte was aware of the situation, before she fully answered him. He heard it in her voice, this sound beneath her words that was both a seductive purr and a solid bedrock - conviction mixed with pleasure in herself. She knew, and that, he reminded himself, was essential to getting what he wanted. One couldn't exactly get these things without ever revealing there was anything to be gotten.

He was no psychic, after all, though it might have served him better if he was, for all the warning he had before Lotte appeared in his space. There was a slight movement in her eyes, a barely perceptible tensing in her muscles, before she moved, and that was all there was to alert him. It was about as close to startled as Alastor could remember being. His face, careful as ever, stayed frozen in its grin. But his dead heart, in his chest, thudded invisibly against the confines of his ribs.

Alastor slid backwards - not quite a step, but a shift in space that left little drag marks in the dirt under his shoes. It wasn't far, but far enough. The rest of him never moved, the index knuckle of his closed hand bent and resting on his chin. It tapped there, considering. He wasn't really considering anything, except the feeling of that one dramatic thud in his chest. Near-silently, a low thrum in the static barely audible to humans, he chided his shadow for failing (or refusing?) to notify him that the girl was about to move so close. It only laughed in response, a higher frequency that, while not at all identifiable as laughter, Lotte could certainly hear.

"Hm," he said, knuckle still pressed to his chin. The pressure tugged at his lower lip, drew it down just slightly. He remained this way for a moment, before becoming brightly animated again, his shoulders loosening and arms extending from his side in a large and gregarious shrug.

"Why not?" he asked cheerily. "Miss Lotte, would you do me the honor of releasing me from this eternal torment, and accompanying me to New Orleans, as my traveling companion?"

[americanvvitch]

In life (and perhaps in afterlife too) there were moments of stasis and moments of becoming, all of which eventually settled up to the metamorphosis that resulted in what a person was meant to be. Not to be confused with some kind of inevitable complacency, but the idea that a soul eventually came into itself in its entirety, that a person could and would reach their full potential given enough time and a bit of luck - which Lotte believed wholeheartedly - it was impossible that this moment didn't fall into one such stage of becoming.

The destination was still unclear, shrouded in choices she had long yet to make, but the thrill of a destination that wasn't this place, this her was more than enough fuel for the flame that burned inside of her.

She didn't make any further move to advance on Alastor, there wasn't any need. She'd gotten him to move at all, which was all she'd wanted and hoped for, and she wasn't foolhardy enough to touch him without permission. Still, a victory unto itself, and one she would savor just as fondly as the whiskey sitting on her table back inside the house, and just as long too. Maybe longer.

Alastor seemed to chew on her request for a beat, and then another as a shrill static crackled through the air, and she found the stillness... odd. Real. He was usually such a creature of motion, moments when he didn't interact with the space around him were the rests in a bar of music, silent but certainly not still.

But then, people with the most to hide from usually were that way, and who didn't end up in hell that didn't have something following them to the grave.

Lotte hadn't really expected any of that carefully veneered facade to break, anyway - the raised hackles and spindling limbs from the blood letting had no place here. There was a moment, though, quick and sharp as lightning, when she thought she saw a shift in his pupils - a narrowing.

And then Alastor was happening again at full speed, shrugging good-naturedly as he played along with the little game she'd laid out for them.

"Well, what manners!" She hummed, pleased and not in any mood to hide it. Her hands clasped behind her, in part to prevent the eager crackling around her fingertips at the possibility such an agreement offered. "As it happens, Alastor, I'd absolutely love to."

[devildo]

If this was an agreement, then it was a deal of some kind. Alastor must surely know that. But in this moment, he'd offered nothing. That was a rare kind of thrill, the knowing that this woman was agreeing to what he asked, without setting any terms by which he must abide. That was all he could ask for, all he could want.

He looked around at the little garden at his feet, at the encroaching cloud of dust, dismal and filmy, beyond the bubble of clear air around them. There was a sort of soft focus lent to the surrounding countryside - it almost looked dreamy, viewed through the film of dust. If only it was. The reality, out there, was death and ruin. It would be a shame for something so banal, so boring, to be visited upon his summoner.

His eyes, though narrowed, were bright. "Is that so?" he asked her, craning every so slightly forward again, into the shared space between them. "It doesn't come cheap," Alastor said. "Oh no. There's a price you have to pay to ride." This was punctuated by one finger thrust in the air, and his eyes closing momentarily as if in contentment, though it was anything but.

He paced off to the side, circling Lotte, examining her. He could see every grain of silt caught in the folds of her dress, every wrinkle there well worn in from over use. She had very little to her name, that he had long since been able to tell, and what he would give to dress her up in something more befitting her station. Though rest assured she didn't think of herself as having any station at all, and that was the appeal, really.

"Halloween is coming soon, isn't it?" He asked this as if it had nothing to do with what he'd said, but in truth, it was everything to do with it. His blood boiled, his face flushed with the idea. He wasn't sure it was possible, really. But he knew how to try, and knowing how to try was all that had ever gotten Alastor anywhere. "You'll have to cut me loose from my fetters." He rounded on her again, taking in the full moon of her face. "Does that appeal to you?"

[americanvvitch]

Lotte thought it was rather bold to ask for assistance as a victim of similar circumstances and then state there was a price - but of course there was. Nothing was given without something else being taken away, and whatever creature or force held Alastor, it would not be easily persuaded to release him. Lotte claimed little knowledge into the workings of hell, or what being a deal maker like Alastor entailed, but she was certain a man such as this wouldn't be subservient to anyone if there was any choice in the matter.

They were alike in that way, too.

Lotte stood with her shoulders back, chin titled up as he circled around her, tried not to be shaken by the way his glowing, narrowed eyes bore into her, like he was looking at every atom that made her up and beyond.

"Nothing worth having comes cheap, and outstretched hands rarely come with no strings attached. I think I know that about as well as you." she hummed, "Well, nearly." Her eyes following him as he circled her.

Except that privately, Lotte didn't plan on asking Alastor to do more than he'd offered. Oddly, she found that the idea of escaping off into the night with Alastor was plenty exhilarating on its own... and she thought, too, that they'd come to some sort of tenuous and tentative agreement between them, not to play tricks. To dictate to Alastor would have been to break with that gossamer bond, and likely be considered quite rude.

Though tossed in casually, there was little to wonder about the significance of Halloween. Lotte may not have had much in the way of literature on witchcraft, but she wouldn't have needed it to identify the feeling of the veil between worlds turning paper thin every Samhain. She'd known that like a splinter deep in her bones long before she could have called herself a witch of any kind.

"It sounds like a challenge, which we both know appeals to me," she said, the words accompanied by a half smirk that curled over her lips and sparked something in her eyes, embers burning and curling through sage. "But what exactly does that entail... breaking you from your infernal bonds?"

[devildo]

Lit up, alive, Alastor buzzed around Lotte. He couldn't have stopped moving around her in his circle if he wanted to, his pace methodical and even, crushing a dented path into the newly-fertile earth. Well, that wasn't true - he could do anything he wanted to, but he didn't want to stop moving, even if it felt compulsory to do so. The grinding gear of his steps mimicked the gears whirling in his head. His shadow followed him like a plume of dark smoke. This was more intoxicating than whiskey. He almost didn't know where to begin, and the idea that something was just on the border of stumping him, of feeling impossible, made him laugh out loud.

There was almost no risk. He wasn't expecting it to work, anyway, so what did it matter if he said it out loud? What did it matter if he gave voice to things that mortals weren't supposed to hear? And why, really, did such things exist at all, if no one was meant to hear them?

He chuckled in response to Lotte's words. Yes, a challenge. That was exactly what it was, a forbidden game, a test. Alastor was so imbued with magic now, so a part of the fabric of it, he didn't feel magical anymore. Not in the way he had when he was a boy, anyway, wandering the streets at night. Not in the way one did when they stood on the veranda in the rain, hiding a cigarette from their mothers, craning a painfully human ear for the strains of music floating down from the street bands around the block, playing on in spite of the rivulets of water streaming down the gutters, down the edges of the streets. Not in the way that one felt magical crouched under the canopy of the bayou, tending a flame in a cast iron pot stolen from home. No, those feelings didn't quite come, anymore. But this was similar to it. This was enough.

"Nothing much," he said, a manic brightness in the glow of his eyes. It would be difficult to look at, just a little too bright and stinging, though the light that burned in them didn't illuminate far beyond Alastor's body. "It's a secret." He paused to look Lotte in the eye again, waggling his finger at her. "You better not tell. What trouble we'd be in, then!"

Pacing again, he went on, gesturing widely with his long fingers to punctuate his words. "All manner of spirits walk free on Halloween - myself and the Hellish host included. When the clock strikes midnight, the Queen of Hell goes riding, did you know that? I'll be with her. No summoning required."

[americanvvitch]

All of Alastor was difficult to look at, but only in the way that human eyes never seemed to want to focus on the strange and unusual for too long. Something ancient in their wiring, perhaps, a kind of survival instinct. Looking at something meant it could look back, after all. Alastor's eyes reminded her of her little stove with the door shut, flames glowing behind the bars, barely contained, really, along with the buzzing of electricity from the static almost felt like the charge in the air before a storm. He was excited, and for better or worse it was contagious.

Lotte watched his finger wag at her, amused by the performance and for drama's sake, took a moment to look around at the barren wasteland surrounding them before answering.

"Hmm... Well, I don't see anyone to talk to, other than you, so I think your secret's safe with me."

She turned on a heel, turning with him as he paced and listening to information he scattered in his wake, like seeds in the ground, taking root deep in Lotte's chest.

"She rides through rural Oklahoma, does she? Surprised I never caught that before." Lotte quipped, teased a little because Alastor was nothing if not witholding on the details of their new arrangement.

What she knew of All Hallow's Eve and spirits passing into this world hadn't included the knowledge that Lucifer himself stepped on mortal ground. Beyond that, she had little idea who the Queen of Hell might be... but confident in herself as she was feeling currently, Lotte wondered if she would actually be able to break Alastor from his binds. What might happen to her if she failed. Losing her powers, being taken prisoner, or dragged down to hell prematurely... all had varying degrees of disagreeable consequences... but the worst, more nagging notion was what might happen to him should she fail. Nothing too dire, if he was willing to take the risk to begin with... Alastor didn't gamble recklessly, she reckoned.

Which either meant that they had a good chance, or the outcome was worth the risk. To him, anyway... but maybe to her, too.

Her eyes raised to meet his, and she took the sting from the glow of them in her stride, moving to stop his circling and stand in front of him. "So on this midnight ride, I'm to... what? Drag you from your horse and abscond with you? Keep you here beyond when the veil closes? Invite the queen of hell for tea in my shack and reason with her for your release?"

[devildo]

That was true, wasn't it? Lotte had no one. She didn't even really have Alastor, though he supposed he was the closest thing she had to having someone, from what he'd gleaned of her life in the two nights they'd met. There was no one she could tell anything to, she was absolutely right, anything he said was safe with her. It might have seemed a terrible imbalance of power, but the truth was, Alastor had hardly anyone to speak of Lotte to, either. Those he did, he hadn't. Not for any pressing reason, really. It wouldn't matter, if he did. But he'd wanted to keep it for himself, when it had only happened once. Something to take out and look at on the long, smoke-scented nights, like the bottles of her blood glistening on his shelf.

To have a secret, that was something. That was magic, on its own. Judgment, what anyone else would think of him, didn't matter much, didn't really factor in. But the thrill of knowing there was something only Alastor knew, that was worth playing close to the vest.

"She rides everywhere," he said, glittering bright with energy. "All at once. It's frightfully clever of her, don't you think? You only have to know where to look."

He could see those gears turning in Lotte's head again, clanking behind the egg white milkiness of her eyes in the dark. It would take so little to pop them out of her head, see her brain at work behind them for real, not just in his imagination. One long reach of his claw, one little curve, to pluck them out. And he might let her see again afterwards, terrible, psychic second sight. But he wouldn't. He only stared into them long enough to dare her to look away for fear of being burnt out by his brightness.

"Exactly that," he hummed, pleased at the astuteness of her guess. "She will try to stop you, that's the rub. She'll turn me into all manner of horrible things, I imagine, to make you let go. A lion," he supposed, though he didn't really know, precisely, "A terrible, biting badger. Hot iron. What can your skin withstand, my dear? You'll have to find out. There's no letting me go until it's over, and it won't be over until I'm a man again."

[americanvvitch]

Alastor, bright as a firecracker, crackled with energy and magic that made all her hair stand on end. Being near him was akin to holding onto a sparkler too long, watching it quickly get too close to the skin. But Lotte was transfixed, she wouldn't look away, even if the risk was being burnt. If she could burn, it meant she was alive, that she wasn't the same as the rotting grass and barren dirt.

She had spent her years here grasping at the smallest traces of life and purpose and the thing left unsaid - the thing she couldn't yet say was that she wouldn't have told a soul about Alastor even had the option existed. He was hers, as much as anything had been hers. This game, at least, this experience was hers and she wouldn't have shared it with anyone for all the whiskey or flour in the world.

Every piece of the puzzle Alastor placed before her should have been frightening. Someone in their right mind shouldn't have considered the concept of facing off against the Queen of Hell remotely possible, let alone... exhilarating. But Lotte credited herself with a will more formidable than most, if very little else.

It had given her all the magic she'd possessed, after all, and it had given her Alastor. A chance for something different, something more than wasting away choking on dust.

There was nothing else to be done now. Lotte would wrestle Alastor free from his bonds and escape here with him... or die trying. Really, death waited for her at the end of that long, empty stretch of road one way or another. Why not wager on something better? Something brilliant and bright. Why not burn.

"Would we call what you are now a man?" She gestured to the ears with a quirked brow. If there was a bit of cheek in her voice, well, she figured he'd appreciate it if anyone would.

"I figure I've already faced up against a fair bit more than your average girl. Don't reckon I've ever seen a badger or a lion in the flesh but, well, we already know one has to spill a little blood to get what they want... and I think our little dream's a worthy enough cause."

Lotte brushed her hand on the folds of her dress to rid it of any linger wetness from the fruit before holding it out toward him, a little crackle of electricity flicking in the air around her, making her curls lift gently from her face and quiver in the air. "It's a deal."

[devildo]

One should never deal without the rules being clearly delineated. This was the first rule of Alastor's station, he knew it intimately. And there was something amusingly mundane about Lotte's words, the first mundane thing she'd done in his presence, and yet this failed to disturb him. It should have been disappointing, after all this, for her to say those words. It wasn't. It was intriguing in how ordinary it was, how expected, because it had only come now, and that was not expected.

"And what do you want out of it?" he asked, bending again at the waist to loom over her, a cloud that blocked the brilliance of the moon peeking through the clear patch of air that surrounded them. Alastor sucked in a breath again (though he didn't need to do such things, anymore), just to taste what he had created. One day, he would taste that blood in those vials, and think of it the same way - as his own creation. Something he brought forth into the world. Lotte wouldn't have done it for just anyone, he imagined.

Her hand hung in the air between it, and he looked down at it, sheltered in the shadow of his body, but he wouldn't take it yet. Not until she answered him. These were the rules, everything had rules.

"An adventure, a companion? If I am a man, and I am, I could be that for you." It might be funny, he thought. Imagine that, if he really did become ordinary again, after this whole thing was over. What would that be like, to play at an ordinary life? He hardly had, when he was living. Then, ordinary seemed boring, impossible to bear. He hummed to himself and stood straight with that familiar snap that implied his bones weren't meant to move the way they did, in spite of the apparent ease with which they did it. "Do you want a lovely garden? The finest house on the block? Tell me, I'd so love to know. A deal is a two way street, you must want something."

[americanvvitch]

Alastor bent again at the waist, which she was swiftly growing used to, the way he loomed over her like a storm of red static and radio interference. It didn't throw her off half as much as his question, because she'd thought it was clear what she was getting out of this.

New Orleans. A chance at a real life, somewhere far from here, her ticket to ride, as he'd so aptly put it. It hadn't occurred to her to ask for more. Part of it, probably, was that she'd never really thought about what more could look like before now. A life away from here had been a far, distant dream... something to nurse quietly in front of the fire or sitting on her porch on warm, somewhat clear nights. Shapeless, wavering on the horizon like a cloud of heat. Look too hard and it'd disappear.

But blindsided was the only word for how off-kilter she felt at the possibility of companionship Alastor presented, gleaming on a platter like a wax feast. The suggestion hit her hard enough that Lotte was the one to take a step back this time, eyes wide as saucers.

Alastor was a man, however she teased, and not a bad looking one. Odd-looking, to most humans perhaps, but Lotte wasn't blind. She even found the things that made him pointedly inhuman appealing, if she were completely honest with herself. Somewhere in her reeling there was an odd fluttering in her chest, an uneven thud from her heart that threatened to push her further off balance, though she wasn't sure quite call it. Desire? Longing? Fear was in there somewhere, too, more recognizable than the rest she couldn't surely name.

But as quickly as it came it went, leaving something hollow in its place.

Fine houses and gardens aside, whatever she wanted from Alastor himself... she didn't want it as part of any deal.

Lotte thought of being grounded, and it came to her at her bidding, like roots extending from her heels into the ground. She chose her next words carefully, though even she wasn't quite sure what she was trying to conceal from Alastor this time.

"Well, I certainly enjoy your companionship... but I don't see how that'd be much different from whatever chains I'm breaking you out of now. The whole point of this is that you get your freedom, isn't it?"

If it didn't come freely, it wasn't really hers.

But she wasn't foolhardy enough to think she'd have an easy time of it in a new city with no other friends, no jobs, no other deals on the table.

"But the house and the garden... I'll take you up on that, why not. With an open invitation to drop by for a glass of whiskey and good conversation, if you'd like."

[JESUS FUCK FORGIVE ME OH GOD MY BRAIN THE NEXT ONE WILL BE FASTER AND BETTER]

[devildo]

Alastor's pupils, narrow and thin like a cat's, revolved slowly in the center of his blood-red eyes. Sound rumbled out of him, low and slow, a trembling in the loose, damp flesh of the dirt beneath his feet. He felt it there, every loose clod of soil shaking against the next, right up through the soles of his shoes, such a low vibration that he wasn't sure yet if Lotte could feel it, at all.

The witch's words were fine enough. Perhaps she didn't know the freedom she gave him, by offering him entry to the house she agreed to exchange for her help. Or she did know - it made no difference. His fingers unfurled like willow branches, finally extending into the shadow space between them, to offer his hand.

"Splendid!" His voice crackled in his throat, the sound of a match hissing to life. The charred smell of fireplace ashes followed it, sharp and chalky at the same time, the scent of the corpse of some foreign wood that didn't grow here, beneath that. "Then a house you'll live in, and a garden you'll grow. And I'll be sure to see you safely deposited there," he promised, just in case she was smart enough to wonder if he meant to be tricky about it, after all.

Well, he did. But not in that way. Lotte would have her new home, the bounty and the comfort she deserved.

The slow rotation of Alastor's pupils stilled, the blackness there pulsing gently in his glowing eyes, a dead heartbeat. "This, in exchange for the winning of my freedom, this Halloween. Now, if you'll take my hand it's a deal."