The matter wasn't really about who was investigating.
I understood that before she finished saying the name. In a world where ability meant everything, where gifts burned out without warning, where your level determined your worth and your worth determined everything else, a sudden jump from level four to eleven didn't just raise eyebrows.
It raised questions that had answers someone was going to find eventually.
"Mable," Annabelle said.
I leaned back and let the pieces arrange themselves.
The illusion in class. Too precise to be random. Too targeted to be accidental. Annabelle was pyrokinetic, fire was her lane, confirmed twice today by a machine without opinions. Pyrokinesis didn't produce illusions. Mable's ability was illusion creation.
Which meant Mable hadn't just been sitting in class this afternoon. She had been running an operation. Collaborated with Annabelle to construct a perception directly inside my head, specific enough to feel completely real, precise enough to deliver a message and dissolve before anyone else noticed.
And last night. Annabelle had snuck out and Mable had covered for her. Friends. Close ones. The kind that noticed when something changed overnight and started asking questions because they cared enough to.
"I can explain," Annabelle said, leaning forward.
"Go ahead," I said. Listening cost me nothing and she'd clearly prepared this.
She explained exactly what I'd already assembled. Missing from the dormitory for a full night, Mable covering the gap. Then returning the next morning and performing at a level the entire school had never seen. Nobody who knew Annabelle was going to believe she'd simply studied and practiced harder.
"She knows something happened," Annabelle finished. "She just doesn't know what."
I nodded. The surprising part wasn't that Mable suspected. The surprising part was that Annabelle was sitting here telling me instead of managing it alone. That meant she wanted my help. Which meant she had a plan.
"You see the woman by the door," I said quietly, not pointing.
Annabelle turned. Daphne was standing at the library entrance running a scan she didn't want to look like a scan. Her eyes moved across the room with casual efficiency, landed on us for exactly one second, and moved on. She left.
"She's investigating too," I said. "Miss Brown sent her."
"I know." No surprise. She'd been expecting it since the ability assessment.
"So what do you tell Miss Brown when she comes?"
Annabelle looked at me with the measured expression of someone presenting a solution they'd already finalized.
"Her attention shifts if another student levels up," she said.
I looked at her. I really looked at her.
"You're asking me to charge someone else," I said. "Why? I'd have thought you'd want to keep this to yourself."
She was quiet for a moment. Then she said it plainly.
"A level eleven doesn't belong at Hogsby, they'll transfer me to a greater institution. Maybe to the city. I've known it since the practicals." She held my eyes. "I'm not going without Isabelle and Mable."
[LEWD LEVELING SYSTEM]
[Lucky.]
Was that a joke? I thought. Did the system just make a joke?
"So what's the plan?" I asked, controlling the part of me that wanted to respond to this information with significantly more enthusiasm than was appropriate for the setting.
"Simple," Annabelle said. "You pursue Mable. I handle Isabelle."
[Mable: Illusion creation, level 4. Current relationship: Mute. Status: Distant.]
"She has a boyfriend," Annabelle added, like she'd read the notification herself. "But he's been pulling away lately. She's not as guarded as she looks right now." She paused. "Will you do it?"
She was asking me as a favor. She was asking me as a favor to pursue a beautiful girl with illusion creation abilities who was already on the top of my list and had been since the moment I walked into that classroom.
"I'll try," I said, with the restraint of a man who had learned on the other side of the wall that desperation was never the right face to show first.
Annabelle smiled. Stood. Straightened her clothes.
"I'll go back to class," she said, and left without waiting for anything else. I stayed.
The library settled around me. Junior students turning pages, not knowing and not caring about the conversation that had just happened in their corner of the room. Old books on old shelves. The smell of paper and time and things that had survived longer than they were supposed to.
My eyes moved the way they always moved through new spaces. Cataloguing. Sorting. And then they stopped.
Upper shelf. Thick spine, worn at the edges, the title pressed into the cover in faded lettering that had survived everything the years had thrown at it.
The Prime Charger. I looked at it for a long moment. Then I pulled a chair over, climbed up, and took it down.
I had a plan, a target, and an ally I hadn't expected. But before I hunted anything, I needed to understand exactly what I was.
The library was empty enough. The day was still long enough. I opened the book.