Devil You Know

Friday Evening Lone Drinking.

“Sorry, it’s just lovely to see you again.” Elsa stood aside and indicated to her father, “Now you two can say a proper hello to each other.”

Katherine’s face froze and she stared at Marcus whose blush renewed itself with a fiery passion. 

“Yes, yes,” Elsa said blithely, “I know all about you two lovebirds so I’m going home now by myself to leave you to become reacquainted,” she dusted her hands together and walked away, leaving stunned silence and burning embarrassment behind her, “My work here is done.”

She smiled to herself as she walked away, genuinely happy for Katherine and her father. The airport was, of course, miles away from home but that wasn’t a problem for Elsa. She could run home at such a speed that anyone she passed would be aware of nothing but the gust of air she kicked up as she went, she wouldn’t even break a sweat. Home was quickly becoming Sebastian’s warehouse; when she said home, that was the image that sprang to her mind. She wondered what Sebastian would think of that. He’d been so solitary before they’d met, she had really had to break down some pretty hefty walls to reach him. His behaviour when she was there seemed to suggest he liked having her around and there were many occasions when he insisted in one way or another that she stay, but it wasn’t officially permanent – yet.

So when Elsa had said she was going home, that was where she had meant. She had decided to look at her mother’s police file. Her dad was now otherwise occupied and Sebastian had gone for a weekend hunt with Hesper. Elsa wanted to do this alone at first, she didn’t know why, she just felt that alone was how she had to do it.

Back at the warehouse, she sat on the floor, her back against the bed and the laptop on her knees. She took a deep breath, unnecessary as she did not need to breath of course, but it felt like the thing to do. She placed the memory stick she been staring at almost every night since she’d taken the file into the usb port and double clicked on the file quickly before she could change her mind.

There was page upon page of typed notes as she had expected. An interview with her father made for difficult reading. The interviewing officer described him as ‘vacant’ and ‘in severe shock’ as well as noting the high level of blood staining on his clothes, hands and face. Her father had made frantic efforts to revive his wife and Elsa blinked tears from her eyes at the thought of the pain and loss he’d suffered and the horror he’d experienced finding the woman he loved dead in their home. There was a description of the scene as the officers had found it. Gray had called them, knowing that the neighbours already would have, they had to ensure that they were behaving as if this was exactly what they needed the police to think it was, a horrific and violent murder. 

The cover story they used was tenuous at best and Elsa suspected a lot of vampiric persuasion courtesy of Hesper had been used to get the investigation closed. Hesper was present at the scene, able to get there to help long before the police arrived. She delivered Baby Elsa quickly and saved her life but nothing could be done for Sarah.

Elsa knew that her father and Gray had found her mother on the living room floor, her body covered in bite marks and signs she had violently fought her restraints. The room had been ransacked which made the drug fuelled robbery story plausible but the bite marks could not have been so easily explained. All Marcus had ever told her was that Gray had taken care of it but he couldn’t bring himself to explain how. Gray had filled in some of the rest. He had called Hesper; she had arrived way before any paramedics or police could and performed an emergency caesarean to save baby Elsa’s life before meticulously cutting into each bite mark so it looked as if Sarah had been the victim of a frenzied knife attack. She waited till paramedics arrived and used a cover identity, telling them she was a surgeon to explain how she had been able to safely deliver the baby; the interviewing officer had noted how fortunate it was that Hesper had been visiting that evening and was able to intervene to safe at least one life. Here again, Elsa was sure that Hesper had ‘helped’ ensure the whole story was believed, it had clearly been thrown together hastily and her father had been in no state to help. He hadn’t needed to act, he had been genuinely distraught and barely able to speak.