Lisa didn't think the girl would help much, especially given her demeanor but she was open. She liked the little fox running around- a fennec? Maybe it was a sand cat, she wasn't entirely good with creatures that naturally avoided her. She liked them but they didn't quite like her. In any case, the girl mentioned that the age of the young man who died was quite young.



Yes, he was merely a babe still compared to someone with Lisa’s age and tenure in living or to someone like her apprentice who had existed longer than she even. Then they mentioned it was for the better and just as before, Lisa mentally agreed with her, then she voiced to the both of them going inside and unblocked the door, picked up her excited little pet, and Lisa entered the building with her,



“Yes, human life doesn't tend to account for much in my opinion until after the 100 year mark, they are a bit wiser then. Ironic, since it’s close to their expiring age if they are lucky.” Lisa voiced, “If it helps us find the body, I do not mind if you use me as collateral; I'm sure people would be more helpful if they thought they were helping the hospital out in a sensitive manner.”



“Thank you for your own help, by the way; I appreciate it.”

Lisa smiled as he took a seat and quietly sat by as he began it with a flick of his hand- then the room began to change. It was a disheartening feeling to be sobered by a motion but she wouldn’t have wanted to be sobered by anything else given the circumstances. She was surprised and pleased to be clear-minded by the imagery of his mother and father. She found his mother beautiful in her own way and his father strong and they both looked capable. Lisa smiled; she loved the detail he put into his description and how the image looked.

It must have been hard on him for being alone so long, however; there were days it was hard on her.

“I…” Where to begin?

Did she speak of her upbringing, first? Was she to speak of Mama Chamberlain and how she was involved yet distant with her family outside of her intense bond with Papa Chamberlain, who loved his daughters and the ground they walked on but beat his sons black and blue for living and for any trouble his daughters fell into? Was she to tell him how she lived in silent fear of Papa Chamberlain growing bored of hitting his sons and instead, turning the abuse onto her or her sisters?

Was Lisa to speak of the flicker of sorrow that leads to the great bonfire of relief when her family died? Or how she gave to panic and ran around looking for her apprentice to ensure that the one sliver of happiness she had found still thrived and lived?

“I was born in Constantinople, around what is called 722 AD. I am the only one of twelve that remains.” She said slowly as she looked at Xander, “...When… In 740 AD, an earthquake ripped through the country, so fierce that waters receded so far from the coastal towns, that when they returned? They flooded the very towns they had so long lived in harmony with. Some parts of the walls came down and my family estate was beneath one such portion. I had run away from home the night before and was making my way back during everything. I found myself an orphan when I returned home, and I buried the bodies of my family.”

“My lichdom was… a moment of bitter pettiness brought on by emotional vengeance against my first husband, Claudius, who was a witch.” Lisa said, “And a cheating bastard. Did you know, by the time he was dead, he had over a hundred other women besides me?” She pushed the blanket aside and got to her feet, walking around the chair and towards the west side of the room where a large, ornate and locked cabinet of dark wood and stained glass-with-lead-lining windows rested. She opened the glass doors of the cabinet to reveal bottles and bottles of wines and liquors, nothing newer than 1945 in the space and she reached in, moving some aside, and pulled out a whisky bottle. Old Elgin 1940, read the tired but well-maintained paper label, and she broke the seal, pulling a glass from the cabinet too, filled it three-fingers high, and put the cap back on.

“My beloved Claudius, who I had been with ten years before his death, had twenty-six wives, thirteen mistresses, four girlfriends, and eighty-nine children. All of which I didn’t know of until one of his wives pulled me aside in a market and told me she and Claudius had been married for twelve years and even had sex on our wedding night.” Lisa said and had a swig of her liquor before shutting the cabinet after returning the bottle to it, “That number does not include those who were pregnant which were in the dozens.”

“He… has eighty-nine children, when I couldn’t even bear one.” Lisa said sadly as she went back to her chair, “How much deeper of a blow could a man do to a woman he vowed to cherish- near the end, it was almost like he was mocking me; ‘look how many I can have and you can’t even carry one to the full term’.” She said as she sat back down,

“I tricked him one night; he was open with only me about his occult dealings. I asked him for a way for the both of us to be together for eternity and he advised me of the curse. I would be a lich, sure; but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about good or evil; I just wanted Claudius to lose in the worst of ways. I wanted him to lose like how I had lost and miscarried every child I tried to give him.” She took a deep breath, “I woke up after my death first; I made a big scene about his, make a speedy funeral, and that night, went back to his grave; it looked like he was beginning to wake up. So I burned him- dead or undead, I don’t know to this day if he was or wasn’t, but as he burned I felt justified in my rage. I took his life and his little black book of occult spells, curses, and whatnot; and I sit before you now, tired of my age and ashamed of my reactions… but if I had the chance to do it again if I was that woman once more? I would have done it twice.”

How does one politely tell someone: ‘I didn’t know my own job duties since someone else applied and got the job for me’. Was there a way at all? Lisa didn’t take the words to heart; humans had stopped phasing her long ago. She refrained from responding to the quip about complaining about her job and pulled out her phone, looking at it in her black leather-gloved hand and reading the message over.

She read it verbatim, first, prattling off the address of the apartment building then the following: “Male, 28, Ivan Zwarny, dead; a body bag is only needed upon the scene. Contact the provided phone number once the body was been bagged and await transportation services.” Lisa advised in an emotion-muted voice more akin to warmed cinnamon honey butter dissolving upon toast. She looked from the screen to the person, then went to the front doors and looked at the apartment call box and through the names of apartments able to be buzzed up to and who could allow entry into the apartment.

They weren’t there.

She looked back at the woman,

“The address does not include an apartment number.” Lisa advised and pointed to the call box, “And there is not a similar name here.”

She wondered if she should phone her apprentice to advise them to come to find the damn body himself.

The elevator hadn’t moved but she could hear him walking up the stairs, and pulled some of her hair forward and over her shoulder. Earlier in the evening before she was drinking, she had been typing out and deleting messages to send to him, while she was adorned in her jewelry. But once she had warmed up a bit from the liquor, she had taken her earrings, rings, bracelets and necklaces off and opted to be more ‘bare’.

As Xander came up the stairs still, she wondered what she should say. Her mind wandered to phrases caught between ‘How was your day’ and ‘have you killed anyone today?’ Those were not appropriate. She had sent the summons and he had answered as although she could have texted him without drinking, she had done the opposite. Now, as he hit the landing, and gave her a half-smirk, she found herself more… distractingly enchanted.

Maybe it was the lighting, perhaps it was the addition of the alcohol softly fuzzing the rounded edges of her view but by the gods was he more attractive than usual. She found herself wondering how his hair would feel against her but as she had an overwhelming urge to run her nails through it, she instead combed her nails through the strand of jet black, straight hair she had pulled over her shoulder as the rest fell down and came to her mid-back,

“Thank you for coming. Did you have difficulty finding your way here?” She asked as she fought against amorew lewd and outlandish ask of Xander.

It was a darker night outside but within her home it was warm; so much so that the contrast of temperatures was evident on the windows of her ‘townhome’, which was just her affectionate term for her four-floored home. Temporary. It had a basement, the ground floor, two flights of stairs to the second floor, two more flights of stairs to the third floor but an operational, historically accurate birdcage elevator of black and scratchless glass that would take one to the attic, the floors below, and therein. Tonight, it sat on the ground floor, not far from the small lobby of her building; normally the door was locked. That? Rested in the center of the flights of stairs but was nearly flush to each floor it carried its passengers too; aside from a 3-centimeter gap.

This time, it wasn’t, as Lisa passed by the call button that would summon the elevator up, on the second floor, walking back to her bedroom.

The sun had set earlier than usual tonight, or so it seemed, but then again everything and nothing seemed to be its normal way after she killed a whole liter of Everclear. She had felt in the mood to drink, and as she set the nearly empty bottle down with just a swig left, on a nightstand, she walked across the room to a chair not too far in front of a fireplace, sitting down in her slinky, black satin nightgown and stared into the fire. She smiled into the flames, warming her and her room to make up for the lack of circulation within her blood. She had put on black lipstick and raised her hand, chuckling drunkenly into her curled, mocha fingers with their dark reddish-brown painted nails. She had gained some courage from the liquor and had texted Xander, who had given her his cell phone number, and she kept it mysterious and short. She sent her address first and then the following:


Now she need only wait to see if the other immortal would show as she pulled her lips back enough to make her smile look more sinister than playful, her straight, perfect, routinely-whitened teeth almost intimidating the flames slowly lowering in the fireplace before her.

“The lack of a lung biopsy is my fault entirely.” Lisa voiced, opening the cabinet for him to pull out the body on the slab again, “When I got here, the number of bodies going out was too much for even the funeral home and crematorium drivers to even load up, so I asked that biopsies and time consuming autopsies be refrained from, until the flow had steadied- so Mr.Grayson was, most likely, a casualty as we simply went with blunt force trauma for a death reasoning.”

She walked off, opened a drawer and produced several packages of sealed, singular cotton swabs, before walking back over to Xander, “Would these be of any help to you?” She asked as she offered them to him, “We have cotton balls too.”

She listened to him as he spoke and she paused, wondering if people she had spared had caused more problems. Her phone chimed and she pulled it out of her pocket to find a new text from her apprentice.

[ Two have died; one by my hands, another tried to run from me and got into a car crash. Killed instantly. I checked. Twenty remains.] The text read and she frowned, sighing and pressing the button on the side to lock it and darken the screen. She could hear Amelia returning.

“As heavy as this topic is- thank you for speaking with me.” Lisa said, “I enjoy your companionship and our talks.” As she finished, Amelia came back into the morgue with the paperwork she had gone to go grab, in tow, and Lisa smiled,

“Welcome back, Dr.Conway; please go over the results you’ve brought us with Mr.Xander.” She said and pulled the sheet respectfully back over the young boy, sliding him back into the cabinet and locking him in, “Dr.Conway is the one who performed the autopsy on Mr. Grayson.” She said as she produced a small doll that looked similar to Amelia, from her white lab coat pocket, as Amelia looked at Xander- Lisa ran her thumb across the doll’s forehead, “Mr.Xander has provided the proof of clearance.”

Amelia smiled at Xander, “Thank you for providing proof of clearance.” She said as Lisa tucked the doll away, turning and walking away to go to where she had put her sodas and took one out- Dr.Pepper- wait-

“Why does this say ‘Doctor Thunder’?” Lisa grumbled and inwardly cursed the cheap humans who put knock-off brand soda in the name-brand soda vending machine. “I can’t stand humans.” She mumbled to herself unhappily as she cracked open the soda and took a swig- then sarcastically blanched, sticking out her tongue, “Bleck- they don’t even taste the same. Acetone cherry.”