No name. No signature. No context needed.

I showed the screen to Belle under the table. Her chips stopped moving toward her mouth. Her eyes found mine with the sharp focus of someone whose survival instincts had just kicked into overdrive.

"That’s her, isn’t it."

"Has to be."

"How did she get your number?"

"She’s a Diamond-tier Davenport. She probably got my dental records, my birth certificate, and my childhood pet’s name within an hour of arriving on campus."

"You had a childhood pet?"

"That’s not the point, Belle."

Jordan, who had been inhaling pasta with the single-minded dedication of someone who treated every meal as their last, paused long enough to look between us. "Why do you both look like someone died?"

"Nobody died. Yet."

"Great. Love the optimism." He went back to his pasta.

Naomi set down her fork. "What’s happening?"

I turned the phone so she could read the screen. Four words. Twenty minutes. The countdown to something I couldn’t avoid and couldn’t prepare for.

"She wants to meet," Naomi said, her voice dropping.

"She wants to size me up. In private. Without witnesses."

Belle’s expression hardened into the cold calculus that made her dangerous in ways that had nothing to do with combat. "You’re not going alone."

"I have to go alone. If I bring backup, it signals that I’m scared enough to need protection. That tells her I’m hiding something worth protecting."

"You are hiding something worth protecting."

"Which is exactly why I need to look like I’m not."

The logic was sound even if the execution terrified me. Cassandra wanted a face-to-face evaluation. She wanted to see how I moved, how I talked, how I responded to pressure in a controlled environment where she held every advantage. Bringing friends would tell her that the lottery winner felt threatened, which was information she could use. Going alone told her that I was either innocent or too stupid to recognize danger, and either conclusion served my purposes better than the alternative.

Naomi’s hand found my knee under the table again. This time she didn’t let go.

"Text Misato," she said. "She should know."

"Already on it." Belle’s thumbs were moving before Naomi finished speaking. The group chat lit up with rapid-fire messages that I didn’t bother reading because the content would be variations of "don’t go" and "this is stupid" and "if you die I will personally resurrect you just to kill you myself."

I finished my chicken. Drank my water. Stood up from the table with the controlled ease of someone heading to an appointment rather than an ambush.

"Twenty minutes," Belle repeated, checking the time on her phone. "That gives you twelve now."

"Then I should get walking."

"Monroe." Belle’s voice stopped me. I turned back. She sat there with her blue hair catching the sunlight and her expression caught between irritation and something that lived too close to real fear for either of us to acknowledge. "Don’t volunteer information. Don’t fill silences. If she asks something you can’t answer safely, redirect. And for the love of everything, do not try to seduce a Diamond-tier hunter."

"I wasn’t planning on seducing the scary investigator, Belle."

"Good. Because your track record suggests otherwise."

Naomi stood and hugged me. Quick, fierce, public enough that people would notice but brief enough that it looked like a goodbye between friends rather than a girlfriend sending her man into enemy territory. Her shell necklace pressed cool against my collarbone through my shirt.

"Come back," she whispered against my ear.

"Always."

Jordan raised a breadstick in what might have been a salute or might have been him simply holding a breadstick. With Jordan, the distinction was often impossible to determine.

I walked out of the dining hall into the California afternoon, turning north toward wherever Cassandra had set up her temporary office. The campus sprawled around me in its usual state of organized chaos, but everything looked different now. The students were potential witnesses. The buildings were potential traps. The security cameras that monitored every pathway were recording equipment that a Diamond-tier investigator could access with a single phone call.

Twelve minutes. That was how long I had to construct a version of Jace Monroe that could survive professional interrogation by someone trained to dismantle lies the way surgeons dismantle tumors.

The real Jace Monroe: transmigrated soul, milk vampire, ability thief, serial seducer, federal criminal, and the proud owner of a death timer that nobody could see.

The version Cassandra needed to meet: lottery winner who got lucky, trained hard, and happened to be in the right place at the right time. Nothing special. Nothing worth investigating. Just another kid from nowhere trying to survive a world that wanted to eat him.

Simple. Totally simple. I’d been lying about who I was since the moment I opened my eyes in this body. One more performance for one more audience.

My phone buzzed again. Aurora this time.

"addison just woke up. she can’t walk straight and she’s smiling. whatever you did last night broke her brain in the best way. also she says you owe her three coffee jellies and she will accept payment in person tonight."

I typed back one-handed while walking.

"might be in federal custody by tonight. rain check?"

"lol. don’t joke about that."

"who’s joking."

The building where Cassandra had set up shop came into view. Administrative wing. Third floor. The kind of office that visiting consultants and external auditors used when conducting academy business. Clean, professional, impossible to bug because the IHC swept these rooms monthly.

She’d chosen her ground well.

I climbed the stairs at a normal pace, neither rushing toward the meeting nor dragging my feet to avoid it. Just a student heading to a meeting. Nothing more interesting than that. My reflection in the hallway window showed someone who looked like they belonged at a hunter academy: broad shoulders, defined jaw, the kind of build that came from either excellent genetics or something far more unusual. The bite mark on my neck had faded to a faint pink shadow that could pass for a training bruise if nobody looked too closely.

Room 312. The door was closed. A small placard had been affixed to the wall beside it: "C. Davenport, External Consultant."

External consultant. What a polite way to describe someone sent to determine whether a lottery winner needed to be disappeared for the sake of a family’s reputation.

I knocked twice. Professional. Unhurried.

"Come in."