The Huntress' Name (sequel to The Huntress)

Chapter 3- People watching

Song to the side for Eliza is one that I think really fits her. Who I am Hates Who I've Been by Relient K

************

For probably the first time since getting to London, I woke up before James. I stretched my arms over my head, my wrists bending against head board and cracking under the pressure.

I got out of bed and padded to the bathroom being quiet enough not to disturb James.

I stopped just short of the bathroom door seeing something sticking slightly under the door. 

I looked through the peep hole to see if there was anyone out there. When I saw no movement I opened the door just a crack. I looked down to see a paper on the ground in front of the door. My brows pulled together in confusion. I didn't know we got papers. 

I picked it up off the ground and went back into the room sitting at the desk with the paper. 

I nearly dropped it when I saw the front article. It was about a string of murders that had been taking place the past two weeks. 

I read all the gory details the papers had printed. The victims had been found with chunks of flesh removed. There were no pictures to accompany the story, at least none of the victims and what they looked like. I was both grateful for that, and slightly disappointed. 

I wanted to know what the markings looked like. 

I was fairly certain that the ghoul that I'd killed the previous night was linked to it. It had to be on some level. Mentally going through the creatures in the bestiary, ghouls were the only ones that ate flesh. Werewolves were capable of it, so I couldn't count that out but the description in the paper made me lean more toward ghoul. 

I heard James stir on the bed and I looked up from the paper to see him looking back at me.

"What are you doing?" There was something in his voice. 

"Reading the paper. Did you know we got a paper?" I asked with a brow raised. 

"No, I didn't."

I frowned. "You know, I may not be a werewolf who can sense the changes in a person, but I can most certainly tell when someone is lying to me."

He was silent before sighing and sitting up, the blankets falling down and pooling in his lap. His chest was bare. Bare and very distracting at the moment. 

"Why haven't I known that we got a paper?" I asked the question, but I was pretty sure I already knew the answer. 

James' eyes moved down to the front of the paper seeing the cover story there. They moved back up to my own and the look on his face said just as much. I think you know. That's what his eyes were saying. He'd been caught and he knew it. 

"You were hiding the papers from me because you knew about this." I tossed the paper onto the bed, the front splayed out showing the article that he'd already seen while I was holding it. 

"You've known that this was going on as long as it has been." It wasn't a question. This had been going on for a couple weeks, just shortly after we arrived to London. If I didn't know him better I would have gone back to my werewolf assumption. I knew that James would never do something like that though. From the description of what had happened to those people-

No, James would never do anything and I felt disgusted with myself for letting my mind even entertain the idea hypothetically. 

He sat there quietly. Apparently he'd started to learn that when I was getting angry he should just keep his mouth shut. While that normally would be good, it was really starting to irritate me.