She sat back. Stared at the ceiling for a long moment.
"Maybe you're just really good at this," she said finally. Her voice was light. Teasing.
Her eyes weren't.
"Ivy."
"I don't know, Lumi." She spread her hands, gestured at the books surrounding us. "There's no classification for this. No theory. No precedent in any of these texts. And this is Tomlinson's collection—if it existed anywhere, it would be here."
That should have been reassuring. Maybe I was just special. Maybe I had some gift no one had documented before.
But it didn't feel reassuring.
It felt wrong. Like a hole where something should be.
"I'm going to talk to Neal," I said. "Maybe the medical archives have something."
Ivy nodded slowly. "Keep me posted?"
Neal's office was quiet.
He was behind his desk when I arrived, laptop open. His white coat was draped over the back of his chair, sleeves of his henley pushed up to his elbows.
He looked tired. He looked gorgeous.
"Lumi." His face softened when he saw me. "This is a nice surprise."
"I need to ask you something."
The softness faded. He closed his laptop and gave me his full attention.
"What is it?"
I sat in the chair across from him. Made myself keep still.
"The old council records," I said. "The ones from before the restructuring. Do you have access to them?"
"Some of them. Why?"
"I need to know if there's any precedent for what's happening to me. The way the ferals respond. The way they treat me like—" I stopped. Took a breath. "Like pack."
Neal was quiet for a long moment.
"I've looked," he admitted. "After the run. I spent hours going through everything I could access."
"And?"
"The archives are fragmented. Incomplete. Entire sections are missing."
"What do you mean, missing?"
"Gone. Not redacted, not sealed. Gone." He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
The frustration I'd been carrying all afternoon cracked open.
"So there's nothing?" My voice came out sharp. "No answers, no explanations—"
"Lumi—"
