The young officer gulped. He was here. He was here in the station and not downstairs using His fell powers to determine how the latest unfortunate soul to end up on His slab had met their demise.

He said that it was His medical training and His experience as a gravedigger of all things that had given Him his uncanny ability to determine cause of death, but it was unnatural how He could spot a murder that even the most experienced M.E.s missed, and He was right all of the time...

Nobody was right all of the time. Nobody but Him...

But, then again, He wasn't human.

He knew, because his grandfather had told him the story of how he'd hauled the Riverman out of the East River in the Fifties. The old man even had a copy of the booking photo they'd snapped back then. About the only thing that had changed with the Riverman since then was his hair and clothing.

As he stood, amazed at the bravery of Lieutenant Reece and Detective Martinez who were actually using the Riverman to solve cases, something happened to cause his heart to nearly stop. The Riverman had looked straight at him!

Before he could look away, his eyes met those of "Doctor Henry Morgan". They looked surprisingly human considering...

His older brother had told him that the Riverman ate souls, and would eat the souls of those who looked directly into his eyes unless the intended victim presented an offering with which to appease him.

What to appease the Riverman with though? What was his soul worth? Could he trade one of the criminals in holding...Or...?

"I could literally kill for a good cup of tea!"

He could...The Riverman could literally kill for...

He was saved! All he had to do was make a cup of tea that met His approval.

But how?

Something told him that the Riverman wouldn't just want any old cup of tea made out of a bag from the breakroom with a couple of packets of sugar tossed in.

Pulling out his smartphone, he started frantically running searches for how to make a proper cup of tea. Several searches later, he had the basics, as well as the names of a number of stores in the city where he could get the supplies he needed.

It would be expensive, very expensive, more than a week's worth of pay expensive, but...

Three hours later, the young officer's heart felt like it was trying to escape from his chest as he made his way through the morgue and towards the office which had been given entirely over to the Riverman despite such space being at a premium and usually shared between all of the shift supervisors. The fact that the Riverman had a supervisory position despite his "youth" and academic credentials which didn't include any major universities spoke volumes.

The young officer carefully held the thermos he'd brought with him, doing everything he could to keep his hands from shaking. He had considered getting and bringing an entire tea service, but the Riverman tended to react poorly to such offerings, preferring to pretend to be "Normal", so he'd opted for a thermos that had been advertised to keep hot beverages hot for hours. He hadn't killed anyone who had gone above and beyond when trying to appease Him, but the dark looks those who'd "gone too far" had gotten and the fact that almost everyone who displeased Him suffered misfortunes shortly afterward instilled fear in all who knew Him.

After a walk that seemed like an eternity, he walked up to the glass fronted door of the Riverman's office and debated knocking, since the Riverman appeared to be busy with paperwork. Before he could work up his nerve, the Riverman looked up and straight at him.

"Yes?" He asked expectantly.

"I heard earlier that you wanted a good cup of tea, and since I'd recently been to that teashop a few blocks from my apartment, I thought I'd..." The officer started, hoping he hadn't failed in his mission, especially since the tea he'd specially made was probably going off or something, considering the fact that a proper English tea wasn't supposed to be kept in a thermos. The teashop wasn't anywhere near his apartment, but the Riverman didn't need to know that.

Being careful to not show any fear, he stepped foot in the Riverman's office, walked to His desk, and set the thermos down. The Riverman reached over and grabbed the offering, twisted open the thermos, and took a whiff of the the still steaming contents.

"Thank you." The Riverman said, looking and sounding genuinely happy at the offering.

"You're welcome." the young officer said, glad that his offering had apparently been accepted, and that he'd be able to keep his soul one more day.

"I'm afraid I'm rather busy so, if you don't mind..." the Riverman said, gesturing to the paperwork piled on His desk.

Realizing that he'd been dismissed, the young officer turned towards the door, trying not to seem as if he were in too much of a hurry to leave and wondering how many prayers he would have to say to atone for making an offering for, and giving an offering to a demon.

In his office, Dr. Henry Morgan once more sniffed the tea in the thermos that the young officer he'd occasionally seen wandering around the department when he went over there to help Jo solve a case had given him. It was a rather expensive blend that he rarely indulged in, and he wondered how the young man had been able to afford it on his salary since he could barely afford it on the wages he got from the city.

Either way, he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.