“Ms. Harper? Please, just listen for a second. We’ve managed to stabilize the electrical activity, but the seizure was a setback we didn’t anticipate.”

The voice on the other end of the burner phone was a sterile, clinical hum that made the air in the library feel like it was thinning out. I stood in the furthest, darkest corner of the room, my shoulder pressed against the cold mahogany of the history section.

“A seizure?” I whispered, my voice a jagged, broken thing. “You said the intracranial pressure was down. You said he was stable.”

“He was, Celeste. But the brain is a volatile landscape. The tremors lasted ninety seconds....