Comfort the Wolves

7. The Sight of Blood

Miss Finn wanted to see the files. She told him so in the privacy of her green-cabinetted kitchen after the coffee had brewed.

She poured him a cup and handed it to him a slosh over its rim. It burnt Ivan's finger, but he graciously let the excess drip to the floor.

"May I ask why you'd like to see them, Miss?" Ivan kept his voice gentle as he studied a hairline fracture along his teacup. The coffee smelt sour but looked better than the grimy stuff they served at the garage.

He'd known the dinner was about the files in the first place; a meal in exchange for his information on William. With the way his wolves ate, it seemed fair. What surprised Ivan was his own reluctance. That file had been his personal obsession for so many years. He'd learned to keep it close to his chest.

Miss Finn poured herself a cup and returned the French press to the counter. Before answering his question, she considered him from under her lashes, fierce and blowing steam from the rim of her cup. She said her words slow enough to gauge his reaction. "The demons didn't like you bringing your files on William here."

Ivan nodded, slowly. "Demons."

She gave him a grave look over her teacup. "You shouldn't laugh. Demons are more common than you'd think. Your Curt's got several hanging off him like leeches. Thomas: a gargoyle-ish one on his back. Dismissing them is foolish."

Ivan clarified, "And these demons don't like me having files on William."

He was sure he kept his expression neutral, but Miss Finn's eyes narrowed slightly. She brushed the rim of her cup over her full lips. "Demons are all about territory," she said, watching him. "You asking for those files shifted something in their world. They're uneasy, now. More angry. And I want to know why."

Though her voice was even, her eyes too focused on his to reveal any of her own emotions, Ivan felt something toss and turn in her at the thought of these files. Something restless and anxious and alone.

There was nothing worse than a restless kind of loneliness. Ivan, most of the time, was the tired sort of alone. But to be scared and alone—that gnawed through the bones of a person.

"Granted, there is more to it than that," she said stiffly, as if following his thoughts. "I didn't know William... had others. Or, well, had done more. Than me." She grimaced at her own words.

Ivan lowered his teacup a fraction, realising rather unexpectedly that the files he had on William could be considered more hers than his. While he could relegate the beast to personal obsession, she had to wake up with the beast's mark on her breast every morning and somehow make peace with it.

Ivan sipped the coffee, swallowing slow enough to let it scald the roof of his mouth. Eventually, he nodded, his eyes not leaving her. "If you think you can take it," he said, wary of the tremor in her teacup.

"I can." She tightened her grip on the cup until it stopped shaking. "Now would be good, if you please. I don't want to drag it out."

In Mrs Whimble's kitchen, Miss Finn handled the photographs like they were relics, carefully laying them atop the autopsy reports and interview notes like flowers on a grave.'

It wasn't until a cat flit between his leg and her skirt that he realised how close he hovered behind her—close enough that the air was still warm with her body heat. Her scent clung to him, smelling like dusty sun and coffee; honey colours brushing the cold night and bleached light of Mrs Whimble's lone kitchen lamp like firelight.

Ivan stepped back. He leaned against the kitchen counter with his coffee cup and watched the moths flit around the lamp, bumping into the hot bulb with suicidal determination. Ivan drank the hot coffee to sear her scent from inside him.