I pull out a copied field report, the kind of dry bureaucratic document that hides panic behind boxes and signatures. There are sections blacked out in thick lines, but the numbers are stillvisible. Too low. Too uniform. Too neat. The language is careful in that way institutions get careful when they're trying not to admit they've noticed a body on the floor.
Cain rises without sound and holds out a hand. Hugo looks at him, then at me, and the fact that he waits for my permission shouldn't make me like him more. It does anyway, which is irritating. I hand the report to Cain and watch his face while he reads it. Nothing moves there, not the set of his mouth or the angle of his head, but the air around him seems to cool.
"This wasn't feeding," Cain says.
"No," I answer. "It wasn't."
Hugo pulls another sheet from the back of the folder. "There was also this. It was attached after I flagged the readings. No explanation. No directive except to close the cases as natural causes."
It's a scan, poor quality, probably copied from something that had already been copied twice before. A small symbol sits in the corner: a circle, an eye, the suggestion of a cross worked through the center with lines too fine for the printer to render cleanly. Next to it, in precise, cramped handwriting, someone has written three words.
Possible gathered divinity.
For half a second, the counter, Hugo's hands, the files, Aven's quiet inhale, and the low click of one mandrake root tapping glass all move too far away from me. Everything stays exactly where it is, and none of it feels close enough to touch. I've seen those words once before, or something close enough to make my hands forget how to hold paper.
"Soren?" Aven asks, and the concern in his voice snaps the room back into place.
I shove the scan into the folder with more force than necessary. The corner bends under my thumb. "It's nothing. It's just more evidence that your department is staffed by idiots,Hugo. Gathered divinity sounds like a middle-management retreat for angels. Some bureaucrat trying to make a triple homicide sound like a religious experience."
I'm lying. Not completely, which is the most useful and therefore most dangerous kind of lie. I don't know what the phrase means, not in a way I can explain without tearing open three locked rooms in my own head, but I know the shape of it. I know it belongs to old language, old rot, old sanctified excuses for things people should have had the decency to call monstrous.
"You know something," Hugo says.
For a second, the detective in him, the man who actually cares about justice despite the beige coat and the pathetic eyes, overrides the crush. He leans in, searching my face for the crack in the performance. The folder is still open between us, three dead people and one ugly phrase spread across the counter like an accusation.
"I know many things," I say. "Most of them are rude, expensive, or actionable in small claims court."
"Soren."
There it is again, my name in his mouth like a plea he's trying to keep professional. I hate him for it for half a second. Not because he's done anything wrong, but because fear needs somewhere to go, and Hugo is standing directly in front of me with careful hands, sincere eyes, and three bodies his department wants to bury under paperwork.
"It means I don't know yet," I snap. "Which is different from it meaning something useful."
Hugo doesn't back down. "You went quiet."
"I'm capable of silence."
Aven makes a small sound from the end of the counter, and I point at him without looking. "Don't."
"I said nothing."
"You thought loudly."
"I'm very gifted."
Hugo's gaze flicks between us, then returns to me. His voice drops lower, stripped of almost everything except exhaustion. "There are families at the precinct who know these weren't natural deaths. They're being told to go home and grieve quietly. I don't know what to tell them."
"Try the truth. Humans find that refreshing when it's not actively ruining their lives."
"I don't have enough truth."
"No one ever does."
He looks at me for a long moment, and I hate that he doesn't push. I hate more that he looks like he wants to, and he's choosing not to because something in my face has finally convinced him the answer might be worse than the question. He slides the scan across the counter and leaves it there.
"Keep the copy," he says. "In case you remember something. Or in case it becomes something you can't ignore."
"Hugo—"
