It didn't take too long to make it back to the village, but Ellie felt like the exhaustion seeping deep into her bones and settling there was incredibly disproportionate to the amount of movement they'd done. Usually a walk to Boone left her a little tired, but not entirely beaten. By the time she got back to her door after the walk back up from the cemetery, only half the distance to Boone and back, Ellie was more than ready to sleep for the next year.

Her eyes were half closed and her muscles ached as she turned the key in the lock, Kaz right behind her. That was good, considering he could catch her if she collapsed. Maybe there would be time for a nap later, she thought as she pulled open the door—

Only for a deluge of water to pour out on top of them both.

It rolled off the edges of their hats, mostly, but both Kaz and Ellie's clothes were entirely drenched in moments, the already soggy ground becoming a little more like a small, dirty lake in front of the house. Ellie stood with her mouth open, jaw slack from sheer shock as she looked from her soaked clothes to Kaz and back again. A flash in her peripheral vision barely alerted her in time to dodge the bucket that fell from under the eaves on her roof overhang, and it smacked to the ground with a harmless splash.

"What... What the living shit was that?" She spoke through gritted teeth, struggling to at least keep her volume down even if her tone was not at all even.

"Prank, most likely," Kaz said, removing his hat as he squinted up towards the roof, already scouting for the source of the water.

"Who dumps water on someone in this weather?!" Ellie screeched as a gust of cold wind kicked up, tearing right through her soaked clothes and down to her skin. It wasn't cold enough for a freeze, but it certainly was not warm, especially with raging mountain winds kicking up every thirty seconds.

Kaz didn't seem to mind the wind, though. Instead he looked at his dripping sleeve, moving his arm back and forth as if seeing it from a different angle might reveal new information about the water.

And then he licked his sleeve.

Ellie blinked, eye twitching slightly. She was an herbalist and not a stranger to licking objects to identify them, but this was water. Even with his demonic abilities, she wasn't really sure what extra information he planned to glean from tasting his own clothing.

"Mm. Holy water," he said softly, smacking his lips. "Too much salt, though."

Holy water?! Ellie went cold with dread for a brief moment before she realized that Kaz looked completely fine. He was wet, sure, but he didn't seem any more affected by the water than she was. On the upside, it made much more sense why he'd thought to lick his sleeve.

Holy water involved exorcised water and blessed salt, so normal water would taste different than holy water. It also, thankfully, helped the shelf life. Curious, Ellie brought the back of her hand to her mouth, licking it hesitantly. It was, indeed, salty.

That wasn't enough for Ellie to confirm it was holy water by itself, but Kaz certainly would have been able to. Ellie looked him over, but besides appearing wet and reasonably annoyed, he seemed fine. That was... odd.

"It... it doesn't bother you?" she asked slowly. Based on everything else she'd heard, most demons found it unpleasant at minimum and toxic at worst, but Kaz actually rolled his eyes.

"Why would it bother me? Besides drenching my clothes in cold weather, that is," he scoffed. "I've already told you that I'm not from the Hell you're thinking of. I have no quarrels with your God, so why would Their blessing bother me?"

Okay, that made sense. Ellie nodded slowly, still jumping through mental hoops to make this logic work as Kaz continued to look for the mechanism that triggered the deluge.

"Then how do you know it's holy water?" Ellie asked, eyebrow raised and hands folded across her chest.

"They boiled the hell out of it," Kaz said very seriously.

Ellie blinked.

A tiny laugh bubbled up from her chest. Then another. Then suddenly she was doubled over laughing, shaking her head as she smiled. It might have been the sheer ridiculousness of his answer, the surprise of the water, or the emotional stress of their visit to the cemetery finally cracking her open, but she couldn't stop laughing.

"That's not funny!" she protested, still giggling, now wiping away a few tears as she righted herself.

"Clearly it is!" Kaz also laughed, a wide smile on his face that showed his pointed teeth. "In all seriousness, you know I can sense emotion left behind on objects. That extends to blessings, to a degree."

That... actually made sense.

"Come on. Let's get inside, it's cold," Ellie said, wrapping her arms around herself. As she opened the door, a feminine shriek cut her off.

She turned to see a familiar face scrambling towards them, basket in hand and loose red curls bouncing in the wind. Alice's eyes were wide and she had her skirts hiked up to her knees to move faster, picking her way around the worst of the puddles and mud holes as she came closer.

"Oh, good lord! What happened?" Alice scurried up to the wet mess in front of the door, looking back and forth between Ellie and Kaz. To ger credit, she seemed genuinely concerned.

"Prank, I think," Ellie said with a shrug. "Annoying, but harmless. We're okay."

"And salty," Kaz added, holding up his drenched sleeve.

"Who the hell keeps this much holy water just out and about?" Ellie muttered, squeezing some of it out of her braid. Even she and Granny only ever kept a couple of cups at a time around for light cleaning. "Guess my yard is nice and blessed now, at least..."

"Holy water?" Alice gasped, eyes wide as she looked from the puddles to Kaz. "You could have been hurt!"

"A bucket falling on our head is hardly an issue," Ellie scoffed. "I've had worse. Thanks for checking on us, though, hon."

She patted Alice's shoulder with a small smile, which the younger woman hesitantly returned.

"No, I—" Alice cut off, biting her lip. "I meant Kaz. I thought... with the holy water..."

"I'm fine, I assure you," he said firmly.

"That's good," she said with a sigh. "They say enough holy water can outright kill a demon, and I don't want Ellie to go through the worst again."

Kaz grew very, very still for a moment, eyes going wide. He shook his head, pursed his lips, and started to pace back and forth through the muddy mess at the front of the house, disregarding the fact that he splashed dirty water everywhere in the process.

"Kaz? You alright?"

"It's not about him," he said suddenly, an almost manic tinge to his voice as he turned to Ellie. "It's not about him at all. It's about you."

"Me?" Ellie squeaked. Kaz grabbed her hand, pulling her back inside the house. She barely managed to say goodbye to Alice before the door shut behind them.

"We have to look at our suspects again from a whole new angle," he muttered, hanging his hat on the hook. "We've been looking at this like someone had something against Ben, but we need to be looking at who had something against you."

Kaz pulled a legal pad from the shelf and began scribbling, mumbling to himself as he wrote.

"Just— gimmie a minute," Ellie said, walking to the tiny bathroom to strip off her wet clothes. They stuck unpleasantly to her skin, but it was warmer getting out of them. However, she was so concerned about getting the soaked clothes off that she hadn't pulled anything from her trunk to put on, so instead she slipped into a bath robe and tied it securely around her waist.

After she hung her soaked clothes over the side of the bath to drip dry, Ellie emerged from the room and found a blanket to wrap around her body over the robe.

"Are you not cold?" she asked, plopping down in the kitchen chair beside where he was still writing, making notes and crossing out things at the speed of light.

"Not enough that it's dangerous. My body temperature runs high," he mumbled.

She would have protested, but he seemed incredibly absorbed in what he was doing. Pencil in hand, he scribbled and crossed out a series of notes on the legal pad, dripping holy water all over her brick floor as he wrote. At least the floor was nice and cleansed now, she supposed.

... Did it count if the holy water dripped on it from the body of a demon, though?

Maybe not.

"The way I see it, here's our short list," he finally said, passing her a list of names. "It could be someone else, but these are the people that are most likely out of who we've talked about so far."

Well, it certainly was a short list. There were only four names circled, though the names of everyone Kaz had met so far were scattered around the page, plus a few people he hadn't met. Some were crossed out. Most notably, "Granny" had a significant scribble through it. "Simon" was not crossed out entirely, but there were question marks nearby.

The four names at the top read: ALICE. MRS. LITTLE. JEANNIE. SHERIFF.

"Alice? And Jeannie, too? Seriously?" Ellie raised an eyebrow.

"She's already admitted to acting on her mother's orders. We can't rule her out entirely," Kaz said, hands on his hips. "As far as Jeannie, it's the same. We know she was, at one point, opposed to the marriage."

"Okay... Well, the Sheriff I think is at least reasonable, probably, if you're going by who doesn't like me and had a connection to Ben. Mrs. Little might be a stretch."

"Mrs. Little is the only person I've come across so far with the type of rage residue we found on that wire bundle," Kaz said pointedly. "It could be from someone else, but it's too significant to rule out. Besides, they wouldn't be a very good murderer if they were too obvious. Everyone on this list has just enough to keep them out of suspicion if you don't look too closely."

Ellie sighed, biting her lip as she stared at the list of names. "Lemme think a minute. You should change clothes."

She heard, but barely registered the sound of Kaz's footsteps as he walked towards his trunk, now placed next to hers near the bed. The creak of the hinges and thunk of the lid closing washed over her somewhere on the edges of her thoughts, but with every moment Ellie grew more distant from reality. The list of names turned over and over in her mind, growing bigger and louder with every second until only one thought looped over and over.

It's all my fault.

It's my fault my fault it's my fault this is my fault.

The thought surged and swelled and crested in her mind until it crashed over her in a wave she couldn't run from. Her hands shook and her eyes burned. Hot tears sprang to her eyes and ran down her cheeks. It felt like the room was spinning, like she could see everything and nothing at all.

It's my fault.

The dull thump of footsteps in the background and a warm pressure on her shoulder made Ellie realize that her eyes were squeezed close, that her teeth were gritted, and that her palms were clenched so tightly that her nails had left little half-moon marks on her palms.

Kaz knelt in front of her, gently prying her hands open as his fingers traced those same marks. They weren't bleeding, but if she'd kept pressing down much longer, they could have been. Her eyes locked on his as she breathed slowly, trying to focus on catching that flash of gold among the blue. It was enough to bring her back to reality, but not to stop the tears blurring her vision.

"It's because of me," Ellie whispered. "If someone did this to get to me, to punish me, then... If I'd left him alone and never gotten close to him, would he still be alive?"

Ellie clenched her teeth so tightly that her jaw hurt. Her thoughts were foggy and spiraling, wandering down a long, dark path that she'd tried to keep herself away from for two long years. It hurt to even think about. She squeezed her eyes shut and more tears streamed down her cheeks, threatening to wash her away in the process.

"No," Kaz snapped, loudly enough that Ellie flinched. "No, it is not your fault. It's the fault of whoever decided to kill him. You didn't do that."

The hand on hers squeezed gently, his thumb stroking the back of her palm, but that only coaxed out another wave of tears. Kaz reached out with his free hand and put his fingers under her chin, scrubbing away a few stray tears with his thumb.

"Look at me," he insisted, forcing her to raise her head. "This is not your fault."

Ellie tried to speak, but it came out as a broken, gasping sob.

"Does it... ever... ever stop hurting?" she whispered, voice shaking.

"I don't know," Kaz said, running his hand through her hair. "I think it gets a little easier over time. Maybe it doesn't go away, but we grow around it and learn to carry it. We find new meaning."

"I can't keep breaking down if we're going to solve this," she said, voice finally steadying a little.

"You're reliving significant trauma that you never completely healed from. I told you that I used to help get people back on their feet. I can handle a little crying." He patted her shoulder gently, flashing a small smile. Ellie gave a watery laugh, wiping her nose with the sleeve of her robe and clutching the blanket more tightly around her body.

Kaz made her feel warm and safe. She felt herself cracking open for him like a flower turning towards the sun right before it blooms. He was... something else. Disarming in a way she hadn't expected. Before the conjuring, Ellie expected a business partner, not someone who would dry her tears and treat her like a friend and... kiss her like something other than a friend.

"Hey, Kaz?" she whispered, voice a little raw from crying.

"Mm?" He hadn't moved from his spot kneeling on the floor, one hand still holding hers.

"Can you... maybe not kiss me any more?" she asked softly. "I know we have to keep up the bit, but I don't think I can take it when it doesn't mean anything."

Kaz paused, taking a deep breath. He moved his other hand to hold her free one, but he dropped his gaze.

"What if it did mean something?"

Ellie didn't know if it was confusion from crying, from panic, or from something else entirely, but her heart felt like it couldn't take the range of emotions fighting for dominance in her chest. "Does it?"

Kaz looked up, hesitantly meeting her eyes. He didn't seem inclined to pull away, but there was some kind of tension between them. She wasn't sure what to do with it, though, until Kaz finally decided to speak.

"It... could. Maybe. If you wanted it to, that is."

"I've barely known you a week," she whispered, but it was a futile protest.

"Oh, it's been at least a week and a half," he said with a smile that showed his sharp teeth, and she had to fight not to smile back. "How long do you want to know me?"

"L— longer than that," she mumbled.

"So you want me to stay," Kaz said with a slow smile.

Ellie's mouth dropped open. She was half mesmerized by that smile and half terrified at the implication.

"I won't force it on you. I promise," he said softly. Finally, he let go of her hands and shifted to stand, but something in her mind seemed to click into place in that moment, and Ellie thought that if she didn't take advantage of it right now, it might slip away forever.

"Wait."

He immediately froze in place, blue eyes locked on hers. Ellie reached out slowly to touch his cheek, letting her fingers trail across his temple and over his horns. He leaned into the touch, eyes fluttering closed for a moment.

It felt like her heart was going to burst. Things were too hot and too cold, moving too slowly and too fast.

"I'm scared."

"That's okay." He reached out to carefully take her hand, twining their fingers together. "I'm not going to run because you're scared."

"Am I betraying Ben?" she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut.

"You knew him better than anyone. What would he say?"

"He... he always said he wanted me to be happy," she choked out, sniffling. "He even said we could leave and find somewhere else to go if it would make things easier, but I didn't wanna pull him away from his family."

Kaz just nodded, pressing his forehead against hers.

"So many times we almost left... So many times. Maybe he'd still be here if we had."

"You can't think like that, rosebud. You can't turn back the clock, and you're only torturing herself by acting like you can," he murmured, rubbing gentle circles on her back.

"What do I do now?" she asked helplessly, leaning her head against his shoulder.

"I can't make that decision for you. I promise you that we'll figure out who did this to him, though."

"I know we made a bargain—"

"No," he said suddenly, pulling away to look in her eyes. "I am not saying this because of our bargain. This is me, Kazerin, promising you that I will do this for you because I... care about you."

As Ellie reached out to hug him, burying her face against the soft fabric of his flannel shirt, she thought that might have been the most beautiful and terrifying thing he could ever say to her.