Chapter 40: That Was Not My Ass in the Evidence

Chapter 40: Chapter 40: That Was Not My Ass in the Evidence

Dante looked from the reception photograph to Iris, who had spent the entire workshop telling people not to trust appearances. She confirmed that he had remained in the classroom, then asked Senn for the original recording instead of judging a printed frame.

"The first picture shows a device touching a line," Dante said, pointing toward Martin’s photograph. "If somebody can make my face appear somewhere else, couldn’t they have changed that too?"

Of course Martin’s photograph could be false, Dante thought, then recognized how convenient that was. He admitted he had no evidence. Iris explained that a disguise could fool a camera without altering its recording, and the visitor’s actions still needed checking.

Dante showed Senn his sketch of Iris’s false sleeve slipping. "Watch where the hands touch the envelope. Would a disguise slip there too?" The inspector requested the moving clip and class records. Dante left Martin’s photograph beside them, despite wanting to apply the trick only where it helped him.

The reception organizer had sent the other recording because the visitor collected an envelope meant for Dante that afternoon. The original invitation had gone to an address the organizer would not confirm until their supervisor checked the booking.

Dante asked what came next. Senn told him to preserve messages and answer any contact from the visitor. No secret assignment, no permission to hunt his double. He could follow that much, though his inner voice immediately described it as waiting for the enemy to reveal itself.

Posey waited outside with two sandwiches and the notes he’d missed, holding one wrapper open so he could take it without fighting the tape around his fingers. He asked which sandwich she wanted before choosing, and she smiled at the small consideration as though he had brought her something instead of simply remembering she needed lunch too.

Posey listened to the instructions, then softly said that stopping the guesses sounded difficult for him. Dante laughed because she had described his greatest talent as a practical problem. She kept her sandwich beside his, clearly willing to sit with the problem anyway.

He thanked her for checking the photograph instead of dismissing it because she liked him. The word liked escaped before he could soften it. She smiled, and for a second he forgot Rhea had asked him to question another photograph he wanted to dismiss.

He asked whether her hands had settled since the morning and accepted her answer without inspecting them across the walkway. She wanted to tell him about the potion formula she had corrected, so he let her. Being frightened for her did not mean every conversation had to become a checkup, and she smiled more as she explained a mistake she now knew how to avoid.

The student center was showing a Breakers replay over dinner. Dante asked the others to eat there because the practice building was closed and he couldn’t face another meal alone with his phone. They chose a quiet table away from the cheering.

Anika attended after confirming her next interview time and the temporary casting restriction. She wore a green top beneath a dark jacket, looking put together enough that Dante briefly forgot how often she had checked her messages since breakfast.

Jett said a university capable of putting football underwater should manage chairs that did not injure recovering students. Lucan found him a padded seat, then demanded that the favor not become evidence of friendship in any future argument.

Dante checked the changing ingredients and collected enough napkins for Jett’s sauces. His plate followed along its rail until he thanked it and walked away. Anika reminded him he hadn’t hired a footman. He retrieved dinner, privately disappointed by the limits of magical service.

"You’re very polite to appliances," she said, taking the seat beside him. "If your mysterious organization recruits through dishwashers, we’re all in trouble."

Jett appointed the dishwasher their wet-work specialist. Dante gave the cutlery drawer recruitment duties until Rhea threatened to separate them. He cleared space for Posey’s notes and asked what her smaller potion dose cost. A future organization needed a budget, and its possible founder could barely afford lunch.

Posey’s fingers slipped from her drink while Dante calculated the cost of a badly measured potion. She caught it with both hands, exposing a faint bruise above one wrist. She could not remember knocking it, and her arms felt too tired to keep the cup raised.

Rhea asked her to sit back and brought the event’s health volunteer over rather than attempting to diagnose her beside the fries. The volunteer checked her pulse, used a reserve charm and compared the reading with the note from Friday’s clinic visit.

The reading had fallen despite Posey’s rest. Dante checked his last cast against Anika’s log. He wanted a rule simple enough to master, a condition he could defeat by being clever. The numbers refused to supply one, so he kept the inconvenient gap in his notes.

Posey worried he’d regret inviting her, and he told her plainly that he wanted her there. When the volunteer arranged student health, she asked Dante to keep his phone free for Senn and check on her afterward.

"You’re coming back to a seat I saved for you," he said, moving her notebook away from the spilled drink. "Nobody gets to treat being tired as an application to leave." She asked if that included him, and he admitted it probably should. He kept the spare napkin near her hands, refusing to turn concern into a promise that a new spell could fix this.

A man in a dark delivery jacket stopped at the end of their table before they left. He had a close-shaved beard, a bent identification holder and an expression that suggested Dante had already wasted a considerable amount of his day.

"You collected the envelope this afternoon," he said, keeping his voice low. "The rest was due before she moved, and I’m not covering it because you decided to have dinner first."

Dante denied collecting anything, and the man looked at Anika as though she might be the sensible person paying for him. Lucan stood beside Jett’s chair while Rhea signaled the nearest event officer.

Dante kept his hands on the table. Part of him wanted to rise slowly and frighten the stranger into explaining himself. That part had recently offered terrible advice, so he let the event officer approach before trying another performance.

The stranger took a receipt from his jacket without moving closer. Its heading named a transport booking service, but the name beneath it stopped Dante before he could explain the afternoon’s photograph. Mara was the woman mentioned in Evan’s saved message, and Senn was still trying to find her.

Mara’s collection payment had been credited to Dante’s name, and the man wanted to know where she had gone after somebody took the money meant to bring her home.