By the time Raphael made it back to the guesthouse, the sky outside had gone fully bright. The room was empty, the small shoes that usually sat on the mat were gone. Elena had gone out somewhere.
"Strange. What does she have to do at this hour?"
He shook his head, collected a change of clothes, and went to the bathroom. The warm water worked at the dried blood on his skin, and where blood had mixed with dust and mud and rainwater it had consolidated into a grime that came off in pieces. He'd arrived looking less like a person and more like something that had crawled out of the ground, he'd even had to borrow money from the landlady to pay the taxi, given that the search of Blitz's remains had produced only the half-moon badge and a hard decorative case, and he hadn't had time yet to examine either.
