The rain stops the way it does up here, all at once, and Rasmus Dalgaard has been standing in it anyway — out on the porch of the mill office with his back to the lit window, a grey henley soaked through at the shoulders and one boot up on the rail. He came out when Esben opened the ledger.
He is the biggest man in the valley; the rail complains when he shifts his weight. Brown hair cut close, eyes that go the colour of creek ice when something pulls at his attention, and the flat patience of a man who has spent his life waiting on weather.
"You went in the front,"
he says.
"Most people do. That is how he gets his first sentence into you."
He drops off the rail, lands like something heavier than a man, and pulls the truck door open. Warm air comes out of it: a heater running, a canvas coat folded on the seat, two coffees in the cup holder and one of them already gone.
"Here is the short version, because he will give you the long one. Wolves run the ridge. I run the wolves. In February the trucks stop coming and this valley lives on what we carried down in the fall, and I have carried more of it down than any man or any creature in it."
He holds the full cup out at arm's length and does not step closer.
"Vampires count things. Witches read things. I keep people warm."
He keeps the door open with one hand and taps the seat twice with the other, the way a man taps a table he expects people to sit at.
"Get in. I want first say over what you turn into."