The Sinner Hunting System

"...You’re laughing at me. You absolutely are. You complete jerk..."

Elena walked down the street holding Raphael’s left hand, expression somewhere between confused and offended.

She lifted the edge of the glove with her free fingers and found herself looking at a mannequin display hand.

"Where did you even find this?"

Raphael scanned the street around them and answered without looking at her.

"Alley behind a clothing store yesterday. The hand detaches, and the wrist section is hollow by design, slides right on. Clothes and glove over the top. Passable."

Elena squeezed it experimentally. The texture was profoundly wrong.

"Thanks, I suppose. If my mom ever found out I was holding hands with a man I’d known for two days she’d tear me apart."

Raphael glanced sideways at her.

"Your family is that strict?"

She exhaled and swung their joined arms without thinking, nearly dislodging the mannequin hand entirely.

"My father disappeared when I was young. My mother raised me on her own. She’s a Chief Justice, very senior, very respected, and very conservative about everything as a result.

No relationships until my career is established. No getting close to men. Limited contact with friends. No pursuing things I actually want.

Follow her planned path, complete her planned education, become a Chief Justice exactly like her."

She deflated slightly.

"I do understand her, though. My father hurt her badly and she’s never moved past it. The protectiveness turned into something more like control. Which is why I’m here on ’vacation’ during the university break."

Raphael nodded and said nothing. His own life was too strange for normal frameworks, and he had no common reference point from which to offer anything useful.

They wandered the street. The stalker didn’t appear. The route eventually brought them to a food district, stalls and small shops, the smell of cooking oil and sugar in the warm air.

"Hm? Puddle?"

Elena looked at a stretch of standing water near the gutter, genuinely puzzled.

"The drainage here is supposed to be good. This shouldn’t be here."

Raphael glanced at it. His mind went, in sequence, to: water ghost, underground cult meeting in the sewer, corpse blocking the drain.

Behind them, an engine opened up.

A car, coming fast, tires aimed directly at the puddle with the precision of complete indifference to bystanders.

Raphael looked at Elena, this unawakenened witch, wandering through the world in total oblivion to what she was, and reached back with his right hand.

His fingers closed around hers, firm, knuckle-hard, the grip of someone who is not particularly worried about comfort.

"You’re, you’re hurting my hand..."

The rest of her sentence didn’t arrive. She felt herself lifted, the ground departing under her feet, Raphael’s strength pulling her through a half-rotation that swung the street around her in a fast arc, and she found herself looking at his face from a new angle while everything spun.

"Waaah—!"

The car roared past. The puddle erupted into a brown curtain of muddy water that landed exactly where Elena had been standing.

She came down on Raphael’s right side, clean and dry, the dirty splash spreading across the pavement an inch from her shoe.

"Idiot," he said, in the same tone he might use for a weather observation.

Elena stood there with her face caught between embarrassed and annoyed while he withdrew his right hand and extended the mannequin hand again.

"Fine. You’re fast. Thank you."

She batted the fake hand away and grabbed his right hand instead, squeezing it with the force of someone registering a complaint.

"I’m holding this one. My mother has informants everywhere and she’ll know about today eventually, I’ve already taken the risk. If I’m holding hands at all, I’m holding a real one. Otherwise what did I even risk anything for?"

She looked sideways and away from him, walking fast, ears going pink.

"Don’t read into it. This is like buying a low-sugar cake, it’s technically the diet version, but you still paid for it, so you might as well eat it."

Raphael let her lead without comment.

Then it arrived, a gaze with weight behind it, almost a physical sensation, carrying something ugly underneath the surface.

He turned toward it. Too many people, impossible to isolate a source in the crowd.

"He’s here."

Elena’s stride hesitated, then resumed normally.

"Good. That’s what this is for."

Something shifted in her after that. She got focused. She took the food district seriously, pulling him from stall to stall, buying things, eating while walking, doing a convincing impression of a couple on a leisurely afternoon out.

Raphael had no interest in food. Crispy fried potato wedges: too oily. Coconut ice cream: aggressively sweet.

Cheese mashed potato: he described the smell with one word that Elena pretended not to hear.

She refused to give up. She tried half the district, ate until she was uncomfortably full, and finally found the thing.

"Here. Try this."

She handed him a portion of salt-baked chicken breast. He took a bite and his expression changed.

"Interesting. The exterior is coarse salt and water, the brine penetrates during curing, adds salt and retains moisture. At least sixteen hours of cure time.

Olive oil on the surface, small amount of black pepper, baked in foil wrap. The seal keeps the moisture inside. The result is flavored all the way through."

He paused.

"And it’s healthy."

Elena watched this with her mouth slightly open.

"Are you a chicken breast expert?"

She gave up trying to understand his taste profile and eventually steered them into a small tea house for a break.

She ordered iced coffee for herself and an espresso for him, dropped into a chair, and let herself stop moving.

They’d eaten their way through half the district. She was full and tired and her feet were registering opinions.

But also, unexpectedly, it hadn’t been bad.

"Company," she thought, quietly.

She understood it a little more now. Growing up with a busy mother and staff who treated her with formal deference, a house that only had lights on when she was in it.

Even fake company, even a wooden block of a fake boyfriend, was its own particular thing.

The coffee arrived. Raphael drank.

Rich, full-bodied, the cocoa fat giving it texture, the roast coming through clean, bitter-forward with something toasted underneath.

"Not bad."

He set the cup down.

Then he stood up and looked through the window at the street.

He took out the letter, turned it over, compared what was on the back, the Profiler’s detailed reconstruction of the landlady’s memory, against what he could see.

Confirmed.

"Done hiding, little rat."

He pulled his jacket on and pushed through the door.

"Stay here and wait."