Bart had insisted on meeting him at the bar down the road. The place made Seth antsy, and it wasn't just because Nona would be upset to see him, as she put it, drinking his life away. What really made Seth's stomach twist was the overabundance of supernatural beings that crowded the converted barn. As the sun slipped below the distant horizon, more and more showed up.

"Calm down, kid. No one here bites, unless you ask them to," the bartender joked as he set down a glass of beer. The man's steel blue eyes glowed under the hanging lights.

"Alvis, stop scaring the boy," Bart said. A third untouched beer sat in front of him. The first two had gone down quickly while they waited for Bart's mystery guest.

"I'm not scared," Seth insisted. Deep down he knew he wasn't scared, but he couldn't shake the worried feeling deep in his bones. After the news about Anna that morning all he had wanted to do was keep his loved ones as close as he could. Instead he was out at a bar with the only person he trusted to keep themselves out of trouble.

Alvis smirked and squeezed Seth's shoulder. "You're going to do the right thing." He walked away without any explanation.

"Damn seers. I haven't met a single one that doesn't speak in riddles," Bart grumbled. His shoulders slumped as he huddled around his drink. "Not even a full seer. He could at least be a little clearer."

Seth suppressed a laugh. "Who are we waiting for anyway?"

"His name's Varren, he's an old acquaintance."

"And why does he need us to help him hunt? Isn't he fine on his own?" Seth glanced at the door as more people entered. Some supernaturals he could spot on sight. On a first glance someone might mistake the signs as a birth defect or even just an odd style. Seth could never understand how people explained away things like razor sharp teeth.

"He'll explain it himself, he wasn't too clear on the phone." Bart waved his hand at a lanky man who headed for their table immediately.

"A drink for you, sir? I'd offer you a tall glass of water but I see you handled that on your own," Alvis said, standing opposite the table from Varren.

"Whiskey," he barked, ignoring the bartender's very obvious attempt at flirting. When it was just the three of them again, Varren cleared his throat. "This is the kid?"

Seth dug his heel into the ground and gnawed at the inside of his cheek. "That's me, though most people call me Seth."

"Does it look like I care what your name is? That isn't going to do much to help me catch this wraith," Varren snapped. He went silent when Alvis dropped off his drink, waiting till he left to continue. "Names are just another thing to forget after someone's died."

A low whistle pushed its way between Bart's teeth. "You didn't mention you were hunting a wraith."

"Does it matter? It's one of them so it needs to go," Varren said.

"One of them? Have you encountered many wraiths?" Seth asked. He leaned forward over the table. His drink was slowly warming under the warm lights. The condensation on the outside pooled around the base of the glass to make a ring. Scattered across the table were dozens of similar rings etched into the table from the hundreds of drinks that had sat there before his.

"Them, those damned unnatural things," Varren explained.''The whole lot of them should be exterminated. Some day. We'll have enough hunters to take them all out." His hands tightened around his glass till his knuckles went white.

"They're not all bad," Seth said. Around him, the clamor of voices had dulled to a hum in the background. The crowd had thinned out a bit as well, and Seth noticed more people shuffling out the door.

"What do you know. A rogue hunter couldn't begin to understand the trouble the hunter's lodge has gone through to cull the population. You wouldn't know anything about the lives lost to those disgusting things," Varren said through gritted teeth.

"We should focus on the matter at hand," Bart promoted. "If the two of you are going to get out there tonight, we have to lock down a location."

"Two? You're not coming with us?" Seth questioned. A knot of unease began to twist in his stomach.

"I have to meet my guy at the morgue. Whatever attacked Anna wasn't a wraith." Bart rubbed the back of his neck roughly. "A wraith, a wayward incubus, and a mystery, just in time for my niece to show up."

Seth winced as he recalled the eager young woman he'd trained earlier that day. Prisha had picked up on things quicker than he'd expected, leaving him fumbling for more complicated steps to teach her. She hadn't shared much about her personal life but had asked plenty of questions about him. If she followed his movements as closely as she had followed his instructions he worried she'd pick up on something she shouldn't know.

"Sounds like you two have a bit of an epidemic on your hands," Varren observed. The smirk he had made both men tense.

"We can handle it. You just worry about that wraith," Seth said.

"You're the one who should be worried, kid. If that thing leaves it's host before we can seal it in, it'll jumó from body to body until it's had it's fill or finds a vessel strong enough to hold it." The hunter pulled out a long necklace. The red chord was weighed down at the center by a small silver circle. It swayed like a pendulum hung on the man's finger.

"Thought the lodge didn't associate with witches," Bart said.

"We don't. But some of them provide useful information during interrogation and it's not that hard to replicate a sealing charm." Varren laughed and tucked the necklace. "If we can get that around the wraith's neck it'll be trapped in a corporeal state while we take it out."

"How do we get it out of the host?" Seth asked.

"Get it out? Do you know anything about wraiths at all?" Varren's fists tightened on the table. The scars lacing the backs of his hands and traveling up his forearms stood out against his tanned skin. "There is no getting it out. Once someone has been inhabited by a wraith their only way out is death. Either the wraith tears them up on the way out or we do. Either way, their soul is gone the second it enters."

"There could be a way," Seth insisted. "Maybe some sort of magic."

Varren reached across the table, hands reaching for Seth. Before he could grab ahold of him, Bart flung and arm out. It caught Varren in the chest and forced him back into his seat.

"Touch him and you'll have worse problems than a wraith on your hands," Bart threatened. "Let's finish this outside. I've got a good idea where that wraith may be." They walked out together, leaving Seth to settle the tab.

Around the bar, the remaining patrons watched him curiously. The few supernaturals that hadn't run nodded to him when he looked their way. A few of them Seth had enounctered on less than friendly terms. He'd been able to stop their more aggressive hunting and, as he'd promised, left them alone unless they started to slip.

If enough of them banded together, he wouldn't stand a chance. Maybe the only thing keeping them from coming after him was the idea that he had more hunters waiting in the wings to fight with him. What would happen if they learned it was only him and Bart that held that pencil thin line of order?

"Sorry about all that," Seth said to Alvis as he passed over his credit card.

"It's not the first time someone's come in to cause a ruckus, and it won't be the last," he assured Seth. "Now you be careful out there."

"You didn't happen to see if we win or not, did you?" Seth asked.

"Even if I did, who knows what telling you about it would do." The bartender slid the card back and pulled a bottled water from under the counter. He passed that to Seth as well. "But I will say, she's not all that bad."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Seth sputtered.

"Look, Seth, I'm not a full seer. I only get flashes, glimpses into situations. Sometimes I get a feel for people. That hunter is bad news but I'm not too worried about him. It's who he hunts I worry about." Alvis almost looked worried for the first time that night. "Find that wraith and get him out of here as fast as you can. There's a split in the path up ahead and I can't see past it. But one side is definitely worse than the other."