The Demon in the Pastry Shop

59: Before It's Too Late

"And what's your point?" Ravitavah supposed, pacing around the empty coffee table. His words sounded cool but he looked like a cornered cat to Kit.

Two other beings entered the house behind Lovell, the carpet allowing them passage too. Lovell took laboring steps across the room and settled his wolf-body down in the armchair, paws tucked underneath him quite comfortably. It gave Kit a shiver. Ravitavah faced him from the coffee table. A little cat challenging a big, mean wolf. It didn't look right. Kit's mouth felt dry.

"I knew you would lead me right to your ward. You've got kind of a bumbling nature to you," Lovell remarked. Kit got the strangest feeling that right now, it didn't matter that the rest of them were in the room.

"He's not my ward. Silus is a friend of mine."

"You can call him whatever you want, but you'll-" Lovell gasped for air, taking out his handkerchief again to hack into it. His pale face flared an awful chartreuse before his eyes, bloodshot and beady poked back at Ravitavah, "you'll be saying goodbye to him now."

Kit would have fallen backwards into the begging teeth of the stairs if Jude hadn't steadied her back with his hand. Silus was lost, falling into the conversation between Lovell and Ravitavah. She saw his eyes darting to the sofa and his snakes coiling tight to his head in terror.

Fear and understanding boiled thick and gluey together in her stomach. He must have left his first heart on the couch. The only thing between it and Lovell was a ginger cat and a coffee table. The cat was an Ace Under Creation, the most magical kind of cat, but still a cat under the stare of a wolf. She gnawed on her tongue. How could they possibly get it back? If she tried to use the porcelain trail, Lovell's henchmen would surely stop her before she got there.

Kit's own heart bled for Silus. She felt it ripping through her core. The thought of watching the very thing you desired most in all the Realms (the very thing you just got back), sit precarously in the eyesight and practically with in the arm's reach of your greatest enemy (who knew how much you desired the very thing) was nearly enough to coax a rusty, grated scream from the pit of her stomach.

Kit wasn't a creature of great power. She was only a Bell Spirit -a mute one- and a baker. So she cried soundlessly and took gentle hold of Silus' hand. His ring brushed against her finger and she turned to look at him. He was shaking but he managed to look back.

Not only did Ravitavah have the power to shatter teacups, but also to shatter moments into a thousand, thousand little pieces. With a swish of his tail, Ravitavah stared back at Lovell and said, "it's not your fault Victor was killed."

Just like that, the room broke into those thousand, thousand little pieces, enough for each person in the room to pick up their own handful and examine. Kit poured over her own handful in distress, recognizing the words spoken to Lovell as a mirror of words spoken to her after Luca's death. She didn't like that Lovell needed the same consolation, that the two of them shared a life experience. She didn't like that she cried tears for Lovell too.

Silus' hand fell out of Kit's. Not out of intention, but out of shock. Silus couldn't seem to believe Ravitavah would say such a thing to Lovell. The name Victor likely meant something to him. Kit hoped it wasn't anyone very important to him.

Lovell faltered, his veiny hands gripping the plush arms of the sofa chair were the only things keeping him from pitching forward before he stammered, "that's n-not-"

"And it wasn't Silus' either."

Another emotional strike whammed into Kit's chest. Then she reminded herself what Silus' occupation was -who he was- before he became her protector, before he became Jude's. He had killed before. It wasn't out of the ordinary for him to be implicated in someone's death -whoever Victor was.