fluttering your lashes like ashes and embers

Alastor chuckled and shrugged. "Free to think what you will," he repeated. She might not think it now, but she would, one day. If she didn't think it now, it was only naivety, he imagined. He'd proven he could do anything he wished, been transparent that he was a killer. There was nothing to think but that he was evil, in his own estimation.

Slow, he stretched himself out on the bed, though his legs still hung over the edge. He sprawled at an odd angle, his waist bent just a little too sharply, even in this form. The cigarette vanished in the air after one more drag, and Alastor sighed at the ceiling, before turning to Lotte again.

"The law doesn't have anything to do with it," he told her. "Plenty of lawmen are evil. You've seen that. The law is irrelevant to justice, you know." But he said this as lightly as if he were commenting on the weather, tapping his foot up and down, folding his hands behind his head, and turning back to the expanse of the ceiling. His shadow rose there like smoke, filling in the corners of the eaves.

"Evil is hard to judge," he admitted, through the faint haze of whiskey billowing around his too-human head. "You see yourself that way, you are. Others see you that way, well, that's less cut and dry, isn't it? They don't know you."