“Could I have forgotten about her? Could I have left her body on the floor by the backdoor?” Ava’s breathing goes frantic, the girl speaks at an impressive speed. “Was she ever buried?”

Next to her, Frans stoops down to her eye level and takes her hand in hers. She shushes Ava gently and asks the girl to look at her.

“Breathe, Ava. Look at me, look at me. Inhale with me,” she counts to three. “Good girl, now exhale.”

Seth and Sylva can only watch as the Lead Investigator guides the girl through her breathing practice. Frans is good at it, Seth observes, and soon Ava is breathing normally again.

“Shall we take a break? It’s time for lunch now.” Seth asks, knowing that the topic of food would interest the girl.

Ava takes his bait and looks at Seth with expectation, she nods excitedly. Seth laughs and nods back at her, then at his colleagues. He opens the door and calls on the officer who guards the door to accompany her to the cafeteria.

“Can’t I eat with you instead?” Ava asks, looking at Seth and Frans.

“I’m sorry, it’s the rule,” Frans said gently, tucking the girl’s hair behind her ear. “It won’t be long. Just an hour, I promise. He’s a good guy too, see? When you’re done eating, you can ask him to show you the library or the lounge where you can watch the TV, okay?”

Ava nods and Frans calls her a good girl. The word seemed to lift her mood a little bit, and she left for the cafeteria with a smile on her face. 

Sylva turns off the memory orb and puts it back into his pocket. “I think she hates me now.”

“Gee, I wonder why.” Frans scoffs.

Seth smiles at Sylva and pats his shoulder. “It’s all right. Everyone screws up at least once,” he nods to Frans, “She acts like that, but she offended someone so badly one time, they refused to be questioned further and asked for a lawyer.”

“That was one time!” Frans rolls her eyes and walks out of the room with a stride. The two follows suit.

“Lawyer?” Sylva’s eyes shine with amusement. “It wasn’t a serious crime, then? Why not have a Magus instead?”

“Not that serious, but it was a pretty big case. What was it, bank robbery, right?” Seth teased.

“Fuck off!” she strides off and disappears on them. The two of them chuckled.

“So, a bank robbery, and you were involved, how?”

“I wasn’t,” Seth shakes his head, his grin widened at the memory. “She called me after work for a drink and ranted the whole thing to me.”

Seth cringes as soon as he arrives at the autopsy room. They had determined that there were 86 gargoyles at the school and its surrounding area. If that’s the number of gargoyles in total, then supposedly there should have been more children in that school. No one but Ava knows how many children there were before, and the thought makes him sick.

“How was the interrogation, Boss?” One of his subordinates, Erica, asks. She is touching one of the gargoyles with one of her hands while the other holds a scalpel, trying to find out what subjects were transmuted together into the creature before her.

“Very good, the girl had been very cooperative. We’re just taking a little break right now. Aren’t you going to have lunch?”

“And what, come back to this after?” She gestures at the gargoyle in front of her. Seth smiled.

“Yeah, that’s why I skip lunch too,” he puts his hand on the creature’s back. “So, have you found anything yet?”

Erica grunts and Seth looks away as the woman lifts one of the creature’s hands to show a pair of eyeballs sticking together on its palm. “Your deduction was correct. These are two, or more, humans transmuted together,” the short haired woman says, pointing at the creature’s hearts—one is inside its body, while the other is bulging from its cheek, visible from the outside. “They died about three days ago. So, knowing the gargoyle's lifespan, they were probably transmuted the day before.” 

She clapped her hands and nodded to herself. “Now, about the human body from the creek, though, he might have died before the gargoyles did.”

Seth raises his eyebrows at that. “Really?”

“Uh-huh, probably the same day the gargoyles were transmuted,” she hands him an envelope, “maybe he was trying to run away from the scene?”

“Huh, that’s odd.” Seth opens the envelope and skims through the file. “Cause of death: Stab wound?”

The other shrugs. “We couldn’t find any weapon, but she could’ve just transmuted a weapon that would disappear with time.”

“Like an ice weapon” Seth suggests, “I mean, it would melt, and he was in the creek, so she had the subject to transmute an ice weapon to stab him with.” 

Erica nodded. “It can also be a blood weapon, but I’d be impressed if she can transmute blood at that age.” 

The two alchemists stare at each other and Erica knows that look very well, it’s the look Seth gives when he’s about to brag about something. “What? Don’t tell me you could transmute blood at her age?”

“Well—” Seth starts.

Erica covers her ear. “All right, we get it, you’re a genius.”

Seth chuckles. “By the way, you should ask a Magus to help you with this man. Ava, the girl, said that he was an escaped diablery master. Let them try and see if he matches with anyone in their database.” 

“On it,” she says as she takes her phone. 

“So, what about the things from the medicine cabinet? Has anyone checked them yet?”

“Someone from the crime investigator division has, but they’re not here right now—obviously, I’m the only one here—but you get the point. Do you want me to ask them to send the report to you immediately?”

“That’d be wonderful, thank you.” Seth nods.

“Anything else, Boss?”

He shakes his head and checks his watch. “Not for now, we’ve only just got started with the interview too. I should be going. Thank you, ‘Rica.”

Erica waves her hand and yells, “You’re welcome!” as soon as he’s out of the room.

Frans was already in the interrogation room when he arrived, she was sitting on Sylva’s seat and had two cups on the table in front of her. Noticing his presence, she motions Seth to sit beside her.

“You should have eaten with Sylva. You just threw up twice, wouldn’t you starve later?” She slides one of the cups to him. “Got you some ginger and peppermint tea. Thought you wouldn’t be able to stomach coffee for now.”

“Thank you, and yeah, I guess I am hungry now, but I don’t know what she’s going to talk about later, so.” He takes a little sip of the tea.

“So, was our deduction correct?” She asks.

Seth hums. “Unfortunately, yes. Except they are all humans; no animals.”

“Well, shit.” Frans sighs, her shoulder sagging. “I shouldn’t have eaten too.”

The door opened the same time Seth laughed, and Sylva and Ava came in at the same time. Frans gets up from her seat and smiles at the girl, and the girl nods in reply. 

“So, how was your lunch?” Seth asks after Sylva gave him a nod to let him continue with the interrogation.

Ava smiles slightly at the question. “Good. I haven’t been this full for a long time.”

“When was the last time you ate a proper meal before today?” Frans asks.

“Four? Maybe five days ago?” Ava answers. “Father made a huge meal for us the night before he forced us to, you know, transmute each other.”

Seth takes a deep inhale to calm his heart down before asking, “Do you know why he asked you to transmute each other?”

The girl shrugs. “He already got what he wanted, I guess.”

“What did he want?”

“I already told you. His experiment, turning Sana into an impostor.” Ava answers calmly.

“That’s all he wanted? Just one of them?” Seth asks and Ava shrugs. “He didn’t want to create, what, an army of them?”

She blinks at Seth for a few seconds. “Why would he want an army of them? The war is over now, yes?”

Frans asks, “Then why would he need a lot of you?”

Ava stays silent at the question, looking away to stare at the wall, instead. So far, the girl has always answered, and sometimes when she needs to word her sentence better before answering, she’d tap her finger on the table lightly. This time, though, she is completely passive, her hands folded on the table and her eyes are staring at the wall, blinking slowly. It was as if she was refusing to acknowledge the question.

Seth clears his throat to get her attention, and she tilts her head to look at Seth. He asks carefully, “Why don’t we continue where we left off?” Ava blinks. “They took you to the school, what happened then?”