I say nothing.
Soren drags both hands through his hair, leaving it standing in wild red-orange pieces. "Cain's family moves supernatural bodies. The Church drains souls. Hugo's case wasn't a case. It was a hook. The spy spirits were a hook. Ezra was a hook."
"And the scout?" Ira asks.
Soren looks at him. The room tightens for half a breath, then loosens because neither of them looks away. "A confirmation. Maybe a test. Maybe both."
Cain's voice is low. "Those systems are touching somewhere."
"Touching," Soren repeats, bitter. "That's one word for institutional rot holding hands across a table."
I look back at the three spirits. The child's head tilts. The wire at their throat trembles. They're not people anymore, not fully, but they were. That's what the Seminary counted on me forgetting. Spirits as symptoms. Spirits as tests. Spirits as temptations, demons, warnings, anything except people with something done to them.
"How do I break it?" I ask.
Soren's anger shifts toward alarm. "Aven."
"I'm not doing it right this second." My hands flex at my sides. "I'm asking how."
"Breaking the chain is only the first part." He comes around the counter, careful now. Not gentle in a way that insults me. Careful in a way that admits the danger is real. "If you leave the residue in the spirit, it keeps rotting what's left. You have to cleanse the wound after you cut the wire."
"Fine."
"It'll hurt."
"Everything hurts."
"That's not a plan."
"It's a starting point."
Soren studies me for a long second. His eyes are too bright, his face too tired, but there's pride under the fear. He hates that there's pride. I can tell.
"You've always been terrible at doing things halfway," he says.
I look toward the wall where the chains run south. Now that I've seen them, I can't unsee them. They pass through wood and brick and distance, thin dark proof that Ezra sat across from me with coffee cooling between us while his dead things whispered through the cracks in my head. He asked me to trust him. He asked me to come back before this place ruined me. He used truth because lies alone wouldn't have been enough. He used fear because he knew exactly who had taught it to me.
The porcelain woman whispers again, softer this time. "The vampire collected—"
"No," I say.
The word cuts through the shop.
The spirit's mouth keeps moving, but no sound comes out. I don't know if I did that or Soren did or the bond answered for all of us. I don't care. For one breath, the wire at her throat flickers.
Cain steps close behind me, his mouth pressing to the back of my head, right where my hair ends and skin begins. I let my eyes stay on the dark lines leading toward the Seminary.
"What do you want to do?" Ira asks.
The question surprises me because it's a question. Because he asks it in front of everyone and waits like the answer belongs to me.
I breathe in. The shop smells like dust, magic, old paper, and the faint cold of bound spirits listening for commands from somewhere else.
"I want Hugo to find out who aimed him at Soren," I say. "I want those files checked against Vera's books again. I want to know where Cain's family touches the Church. And I want to learn how to cut those chains without leaving the dead worse than I found them."
Soren nods slowly. It is not approval exactly, but it is close enough to keep moving.
"And Ezra?"
