"Valentine, go to sleep. We'll talk tomorrow. Now be quiet before I start asking myself those exact questions."
"Speaking of questions, you've never even told me your name."
"Duvalier. Alessa Duvalier."
"Appreciate the assist, Duvalier. Never thanked you properly." He reached out and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze.
"Don't press your luck."
Gold-plated bitch.
"I meant for back in Oklahoma. You saved-"
"Cats need their sleep. Good night, Valentine."
With a diamond setting.
Frustrated, Valentine wrapped himself in a blanket and let the booze win. He turned his back to the fire, feeling as though he were in the bottom of a canoe in white water. The pair vented their mutual hostility in deep, regular breaths. As Valentine drifted away to calmer waters, he noticed that they were also breathing in unison.
Valentine hadn't smelled real coffee more than twice in the last year. So the aroma of Duvalier brewing it in an aluminum percolator over the rebuilt fire startled him into wakefulness.
She saw his head rise. "I figured you could use some coffee. I'm glad you're not the puking kind of drunk."
Valentine's tongue felt and tasted like the defensive end of a skunk. "The morning is still young. That can't be coffee."
"You'd be surprised at what I get out of the KZ. Here, have a cup." She poured a generous amount into a scratched plastic bowl. Valentine wondered if he was supposed to lap it up, but eventually got some down without burning his lips.
The sharp, stimulating taste made the morning appear rosier.
"Ever read detective novels?" he asked.
She shook her head. "Where I usually circulate, I'm lucky to have old dishwasher warranties to read."
"They're stories about really smart people who solve murders. They always spot a tiny little clue everyone else missed, and explain themselves to the rest of us poor idiots at the end. Once you start reading them, they're kind of addictive."
"And?"
"My point is I feel like one of the idiots, waiting for the puzzle to be put together under my nose."
She smeared something in a skillet and reached for her jacket. "Your file said you were well read. Wish I could help. My puzzle is missing a few pieces, too. Maybe together we can fill in the blanks."
He met her gaze, but she didn't elaborate.
Depressed, half-sick, headachy, Valentine wished he could just spend half the day in bed, as he had during the long Minnesota winters when there wasn't much else to do but read away the short days and long nights.
She cracked a pair of eggs in a pan, and they immediately began sputtering in the hot grease. Her elfin features were the picture of concentration as she poked at the eggs with a handleless spatula. "Don't get used to this. I don't know if it's because I feel sorry for you, or because I know what it's like to have a hangover. The bread might have a little mold on it, but the eggs were freshly swiped this morning from one of the good citizens of Montgomery. The only trade good I have right now is the coffee, and I don't want to part with it. Besides, I'm keeping my presence here quiet. I've got only one plate, so I'm just going to eat out of the pan if you don't mind."
She passed him the cooked over-easy egg and a hunk of green-dusted bread. Valentine mopped up the egg with the bread and ate the sticky combination. "This is great, thanks."
"You like it that way, too, huh?" she said with a smile, eating her own egg-yolk-smeared bread. "Okay, how do you want the story, from now working backwards, or from the beginning?"
"I don't think I can think backwards, so you'd better do it from the beginning."
"Easy enough. I came across some interesting stuff reading your reports. Four years ago you had a run-in right after you were invoked as a Wolf. You stumbled onto some Reapers hunting a Cat in the Yazoo Delta."
"Yes. That's the first time I saw that Twisted Cross insignia."
"At first we just brushed it off as another faction of the Kur. Sometimes they use little symbols to note their houses, or clans, or whatever you want to call the groups of Kuri-ans." She consulted a thin notebook in a leather case, like a waiter's order pad he'd once seen in Chicago. "The summer you ended up hiding in Wisconsin, one of the Freeholds we communicate with went silent. It was a small one, really just a valley or two in the Smoky Mountains. Scouts from the New England Freehold found buried Quislings. And some mass graves. But back to the Quislings, they had Twisted Cross insignia on their uniforms. A swastika is another name for it, I'm told. So the Cats kept their eyes open, and now and then these Quislings were seen in other parts of the country. So the insignia did not mean just one geographical group of Kurians.