He's about to launch into the standard routine – the one where he says he hears crazy head-exploding things all the time and wouldn't she like to tell him a little bit more so he can sit and listen and nod attentively and decide whether this is a lead worth pursuing or whether he'd be better off telling her she's jumping at shadows and they really are just pest control and not exorcists or whatever she's looking for – when she drops the bombshell, and for a long moment he can't say anything at all. That anyone knows that name is cause enough for pause; that someone should be claiming to be Anna is unfathomable. Dead people don't just get up ten years on and wander in through your door like nothing ever happened... or at least, don’t walk into your office like customers would, during daytime. Under the cover of darkness is a different story, which is why they’ve got the reputation they have, where the grave-robbing Satanist rumour comes from, because you've got to be careful… but he digresses.
Keeping his eyes on her, he slides his hand along the underside of the desk, finding the intercom button and tapping it just so - dot-dash-dot-dot dash-dash-dash dash-dot-dash-dot dash-dot-dash (and he wonders retrospectively why they decided on morse code when it takes so damn long to spell out anything) dash-dot-dot dash-dash-dash dot-dash-dash dash-dot – while he looks her over, tongue darting out to lick his lips almost nervously. Or at least he tries to keep his eyes on her, because they keep trying to compare the girl – if indeed she is a girl – in front of him with ‘the photo’, the one Tara keeps nagging him to get rid of and Cassie thinks is ‘sweet’, currently tucked into a cheap Ikea frame which, with its sterile Scandinavian lines, highlights just how mauled the picture is, from being carried in his pocket and rescued last-minute from previous HQs and the like.
“Anna. Right. Of course you are”
The rational part of his mind – the bit which usually takes control without any question, and it more than slightly put out at having to fight the newly-vocal (and, in its usual opinion, illogical, irrational and heck, just plan stupid) spikes of emotion – is pointing out that it makes no sense; he’d been at her funeral even if they had buried an empty casket, because the body was never found… but that’s not the point and totally failed at tracking down any sign that she was alive thereafter and he’s damn good at that, always had been, so it’s insane to think she could have escaped his notice, even if he had trained her in avoiding precisely that ‘tracking’ and... and none of that really helps with the matter at hand which is what to do with her. His smile is sharp, unamused, a narrow knife-slash of a thing which says I really don't appreciate you fucking me over like this, world. and his hand moves from the button to the drawer, pulling it out just far enough for him to see the glint of metal within (which is less reassuring than it should be: they've joked before that all bullets are good for is shooting yourself when things go south, but they'll slow most things up... and apparently it's okay to have a gun in your desk but weird to keep stakes and globes of holy water and the like), all the while scanning her for some tell that will explain what he's dealing with.
“Mind telling me how you know that name?” because he's struggling to figure it out, and the implications - that someone out there has that sort of intell, knows just where to hit them - hit him - is, to say the least, disturbing. Besides, there's always the offchance she'll start monologuing, right?