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.

He didn't need to watch her; he knew what she saw.

Eight women, two men; three little girls, one boy. The sort of poor that was easy to forget, killed in the sort of place no one liked to remember. And each with a mark, gouged out of the right shoulder, just above the breast. Most of them died of blood loss, wrists slit by a wolf's claw. Three had died from rough handling in the rape.

Miss Finn laid the photographs out, then sat down. Her heart was beating fast enough to boil her blood—Ivan could still feel her body's burn from this distance—yet, she didn't move. She merely sat there, the colour in her eyes slowly draining to match those of the victims. Ivan could almost smell the blood William had spilt all those years ago, leaking back out of her.

Two tears fell, then three, catching on the smooth curve of her cheek.

She sniffed and wiped her nose on the corner of her sleeve.

Ivan realised, alarmed, that he wasn't imagining the wet, coppery smell of blood. "You're bleeding," he told her, quickly setting his coffee on the counter behind him.

"Oh." She looked down, blinking numbly at the red blossoming over the white linen on her shoulder. "S-sorry. It's the mark." She sniffed again and gratefully took the handkerchief he offered her.

She slipped the loose neckline off her shoulder and the blue-washed light smeared a glare over the oozing red down her scar-tight skin.

True marks were meant to seep into the skin; scent slipping from teeth to blood as careful as embroidery from a needle's eye, threading new colours through a scent like stained-glass over a sunset.

But when a mark was done without consent, the body rejected it, gnarling the skin like a fox's gnawed bones in a trap.

Until then, Ivan had only seen drawings of failed marks—a beast's mark, as the old books called them.

Over time, Miss Finn's had healed in folds and knots; a flesh-made rose positioned further along the shoulder than those in the photographs. While the outer edges seemed fine, a cut was torn through the centre. Like being here had taken a scalpel and reopened the heart of things.

She dabbed at the drips of blood and pressed the handkerchief to her skin.

Lianne Finn. The only living victim of his Pack's beast. Marked, and still bleeding for it.

"Does, does that happen often?" Ivan asked, pulling out a chair. Looming over her wasn't going to help.

"Only when... well. If he's too close." Lianne looked back at the photographs. Her bottom lashes were still wet with tears. "I always wondered how he kept feeding the demons. Who would've thought... so many. How has no one caught him yet?"

"His scent isn't on the victims," Ivan said. And that was a pretty solid evidence in wolf circles. "And no one connects the charming new alpha of a pack to these brutal kills." That age-old bitterness had returned to his voice. "Furthermore, his alibi has him... cities away." Ivan shook his head, his long fingers fisting.

"But you know they're his," she said, looking right at him. It might have been a question, but he heard the certainty in her voice, read it in her eyes.

Ivan tried to shrug it off. "Like I said, I was involved in the cleanup of your case. These scenes are just recreating what he did with you."

"Except they die," she said plainly, shifting the handkerchief on her skin and turning back to the photographs.

"They do." Ivan watched the blood crawl up the white linen; he could smell it darkening her scent like a shadow. "But you survived," he said.

He reached behind him for his coffee. He traced the crack in the rim again with his thumb. "I've also... known William for a long time," he said. "It makes it easier to recognise his work."

Lianne winced at his phrasing, fiddling with the edge of a photograph. It was one of a streetworker, killed and left in a dumpster in a city far, far away. "I don't even remember what he looks like. When he visits me, he's always in wolf form."

Ivan's grip tightened on the teacup's handle. "He visits you?"

"Not like that. I have...." She licked her lips, evaluating him from the corner of her eye. Her scent spiked with the salt of nerves. "I have gifts that demons like to take advantage of. William can... make deals with them to visit me through their world. That's what the wards are for."

Ivan was careful to keep doubt from his voice. "Gifts?"

"Eyes that see; hands that heal." Her eyes wandered his face, picking up on some hidden tension. "You don't believe me." She almost smiled, amused. "The Lady of the Lost. Power coveted by demons and beasts alike. At the very least, the gifts'll be what keeps me alive when he comes for me."

Ivan wasn't sure anything could keep her alive if William got her between his teeth—feral was feral, no matter how well-masked.

"The deals with the demons are probably how he keeps up his alibis elsewhere," she said simply, sipping her coffee.

Ivan stared at the black brew in his cup.

What emotions he couldn't control, Ivan was trained to silo away; leave alone and untouched behind walls reinforced with time and will power. But pressure points to buckle the carefully grouted stone always remained; places one forgot to brace over time. It wasn't so much Lianne's words that had this crumbling effect—her theory was wild and improbable and useless in court—it was that she theorised with him at all. No one did that anymore.

But Lianne knew, maybe better than he did, that William was a beast.

So, silo cracking, he felt all his hate fill every inch of him until he thought it would rend from his skin and howl at last: a beast more feral than William and all his demons.

Ivan raised the teacup to his lips and pressed the howl deeper down.

There, as he quietly rebuilt the silo, he found a new structure had formed alongside it. It was small and empty, but warm and smelling of yellow light, turned soil and growth.

Ivan set his coffee down on the table.

Hell no.

"You're a good wolf, Ivan," Lianne said suddenly, wiping the last drop of coffee from the rim of her cup with her thumb.

He didn't realise he was shaking his head until she smiled. "You are. All justice. Hell-bent on avenging us poor forgotten ones. If you weren't a wolf, you'd be a hell of a catch."

She said it teasingly, but Ivan used those words to lock up that sun-smelling room inside him. He leaned back in his chair and tried to match her for levity. "When I get to judgment day, Miss, I'll be sure to inform Heaven's doorkeep I was half-decent. For a wolf."

"But they'll still take you to hell, is that what you're saying?"

Ivan shrugged. "A beast's a beast."

Her lips squirmed in distaste. "Wolves really believe that? You're all going to hell?" She flipped the handkerchief; Ivan was surprised there was so much blood, hot and shiny on the fabric. It left a red-black smudge on her neck.

"A long stint in purgatory, at the least," Ivan said. "If you take your earthly penance seriously enough, that is."

"And do you? Take penance seriously?" Her chin tilted up, unintentionally baring her throat to him. The skin of her neck stretched over the line of her pulse and he watched it flutter for a moment, a butterfly of a beat beneath her rich brown skin.

"Very seriously, Miss," he said, watching the spot of blood on her throat move with her swallow.

"Hm," was all she said.

Something in his eye must have given him away, because she moved to leave, folding up the handkerchief. "Beast or not, my dreams haven't been as bad since you came. And these people..." She cast a last look to the photographs. The lamplight caught a glare in the gloss of the print. "I am trying to say that you're doing the right thing, Ivan. And that is admirable."

Lianne reached out a hand to touch his arm in comfort. Ivan's whole body tensed. She saw the tendons raise on his forearm and caught herself. Her hand fisted and fell away.

The stretching silence was a reminder. To the both of them.

She stood and he followed suit.

"Thank you for the files, wolf. I appreciate it." Miss Finn curtsied.

Feeling foolish in their formality, Ivan bowed. "Of course, Miss."

She returned the handkerchief to him and righted her stained blouse.

Ivan ran his thumb over the wolf embroidered in the kerchief's corner, the black threads blacker for the blood.

Miss Finn licked her lips. "Keep everything locked up tonight, would you? And pray an extra prayer before bed, religious or not." She glanced at him, but her eyes didn't reach his face. "There's no moon tonight."

She gathered up her skirts and left.