The first patient of the afternoon stopped in front of the graffiti and did not come in.
Tessa saw her through the side-door window. The woman read the painted words, stepped back, and took out her phone. She spoke to someone briefly, then walked toward the tram stop without approaching the clinic.
Ruth set down the brush. “Should I go after her?”
“Not unless she asks for help,” Tessa said. “She may not want to talk about it in the street.”
Eli stood beside the bucket. The black letters were still wet in the deepest strokes. He could remove them now; the photograph and Tessa’s note preserved what had been there. But the patient had already seen the accusation, and a photograph of the wall might travel farther than the patient herself.
“I’ll clean it,” he said.
“In a moment.” Tessa photographed the full wall again, then the edges of the paint and the pavement beneath it. She wrote that Ruth had seen the message ten minutes earlier and that it had not been present when Ruth arrived that morning. She did not write a time for when it had been painted.
Leah came to the door with the appointment book closed in her hand. “Was that Mrs. Patel?”
“I think so,” Tessa said. “Can you call and ask whether she wants to reschedule? Don’t ask her to explain why she left.”
Leah nodded. She went inside, where the conversation would not be audible from the street. Tessa put her phone away and handed Eli the brush.
“Now we can remove it.”
They tested the cleaning solution on a small patch of brick. The paint smeared before it lifted, leaving a gray shadow in the mortar. Ruth brought a second bucket of clean water. Eli scrubbed the word fraud until the letters lost their shape; Tessa worked on the sentence beneath it. A man passing with a shopping bag slowed to watch, then continued without speaking.
“Do you think Pell did it?” Ruth asked.
“I don’t know,” Tessa said. “We have a record if the person returns or another message appears.”
Ruth rinsed the brush. “The man with the umbrella was here again this morning. Across the street, near the tram shelter.”
“Did he speak to anyone?”
“I didn’t see him speak to anyone.”
Tessa added Ruth’s observation to the notebook, including the time and the fact that Ruth had not seen the painting happen. She called Nora Singh and left a message describing the graffiti and the earlier observation. When she returned to the wall, Eli had cleaned most of the letters from the bricks. The mortar still held a dark trace.
Leah opened the door. “Mrs. Patel answered. She said she’d call back about the appointment. She asked whether Eli was working here today.”
“What did you tell her?” Tessa asked.
“That he volunteers here and isn’t treating patients. She didn’t ask anything else.”
Ruth looked at Eli. “Can you take a talent from someone who’s alive?”
The question was direct enough that he could answer it. “No. My registered talent shows names and causes of death. I cannot take a talent from a living person.”
Ruth’s eyes moved to Tessa. “What about the things you did at the damaged building?”
Eli felt the weight of the answer before he gave it. Weak-Point Sight had helped him warn people about the clinic wall and the dungeon support. It had come after Darius’s request was fulfilled, accompanied by a private fragment. He could name the ability without naming Darius, but doing so would invite questions about its source and whether anyone else had been affected.
“I noticed damaged stone. I’m not ready to explain everything about how.”
“Is that what you did at the building?”
“Yes. I also noticed damage in Corvin’s gate and on a recovery job.”
“Where did you get it?”
“Explaining everything would involve someone else’s private information. I won’t claim I understand all of it.”
Ruth studied him. “Did anyone agree to what you did?”
“I don’t know.”
Tessa remained silent. Eli had promised not to share the family memory, not to pretend the question of consent was settled. Ruth had asked a question he could not answer fully, and he could not make the answer comfortable by inventing certainty.
“Could it affect a patient here?” she asked.
“I have no ability to take anything from living people. I haven’t seen anything like that happen.”
“That’s different from knowing it can’t.”
He thought of the system notice and the conditions he had seen. “I have no ability to take a talent from a living person. I can’t prove every limit of a system I don’t understand.”
Ruth looked at the clinic door. “I need time to think.”
“Of course,” Tessa said.
Ruth set the brush down and went inside. Eli watched her leave, then turned back to the wall. He had given her more information than he had intended to share. He had not named Darius or described the memory. Still, the question had reached the edge of a promise that belonged to both him and Tessa.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For the paint?”
“For putting the clinic in the middle of it.”
“You didn’t write it.”
“My ability is why the accusation can sound plausible.”
“Your secrecy is part of what makes it hard to answer. That doesn’t make the accusation true.” She rinsed the brick and checked the remaining shadow. “We need to decide what we can tell people who ask.”
Nora returned the call while they finished cleaning. Tessa described the message, the photographs, and Ruth’s sighting of the man with the umbrella. Nora asked whether anyone had seen the painter. No one had.
“Keep the originals of the photographs,” she said. “Write down any further approaches, including the exact words where you can. Don’t accuse a particular guild without evidence.”
“Can we ask the shop next door whether they have a camera?” Eli asked.
“You can ask. Let the owner decide whether to review or share anything. Don’t promise patients you can keep them out of a recording you haven’t seen.”
Mrs. Ortega spoke to the neighboring shop owner while Tessa called the registry’s community desk to report the vandalism. The owner said his camera faced the front pavement but did not cover the clinic’s side wall. He offered to check whether anyone carrying paint had passed during the relevant period. Tessa thanked him and asked him not to send images of patients to the clinic without their permission.
Inside, Leah had reached Mrs. Patel again. The patient wanted to keep her appointment but asked whether Eli would be present during treatment.
“He won’t,” Tessa said. “And she’s free to ask who will be in the room before she comes.”
Leah relayed the answer. Mrs. Patel agreed to return. Tessa asked Eli to take the cleaning supplies upstairs while she prepared the treatment area. He did so without arguing. He was not a medical worker, and the patient’s preference did not prevent the clinic from functioning.
After the appointment, Mrs. Patel came to the table. She had a bandage around her wrist and held a folded referral in her other hand.
“I don’t want to accuse anyone,” she said. “But people are asking whether they’re safe here.”
“What have you heard?” Tessa asked.
“That a man at the clinic takes abilities. Someone said a hunter lost one after he died. Someone else said it can happen while you’re alive.”
Eli sat across from her. “I can’t take an ability from a living person.”
“Can you prove that?”
“I can explain what my registered talent does. It identifies the dead. I’ve also gained an ability that shows structural strain, but I don’t understand every part of how it happened.”
Mrs. Patel looked at him. “If you won’t explain it, people will fill in the missing part.”
“I know.”
“Then let them ask you in a room where you can answer.”
Ruth, who had returned to the table, shook her head. “A meeting could draw more people here just to watch. We already have someone standing across the street.”
“It could,” Mrs. Patel said. “But the questions are here whether you hold a meeting or not.”
Marisol joined them after finishing her notes. She proposed a small neighborhood meeting outside treatment hours, with a separate entrance for anyone who needed the clinic. No patient would have to attend or identify themselves. Questions could be written down as well as asked aloud.
“What would Eli show them?” Leah asked.
“My registered ability,” he said. “If a family agrees to an identification and we can do it respectfully.”
Tessa looked at him. “That’s a separate request. You can’t use a family to prove your case unless they understand what you’re asking.”
“I know. Nora may know someone who wants an identification and is willing to discuss it.”
“Don’t assume she does,” Ruth said.
“I won’t.”
The group agreed to explore a meeting, not announce one immediately. Leah would find a room that did not interrupt clinic appointments. Marisol would prepare a way for patients to enter separately. Nora could advise on the demonstration and any permission needed. Ruth offered to write down questions if the meeting went ahead, though she still worried it would attract attention.
Eli asked her whether she wanted him to stop volunteering until then. She considered the question rather than answering immediately.
“I want to see what you say when people ask,” she said. “I don’t want you handling patient records.”
“I haven’t handled them without Tessa or Leah asking.”
“Then keep it that way.”
Tessa added the boundary to the volunteer schedule. Eli would carry supplies and perform deliveries; he would not sit in on treatment or handle records. The arrangement protected a patient’s choice without treating the painted allegation as established fact.
After the others left, Tessa and Eli sat at the table with a blank sheet between them. The wall outside was clean enough that the words could no longer be read, but the dark mortar remained.
“What will you say if someone asks where the second ability came from?” Tessa asked.
“I told Ruth I couldn’t explain everything without involving someone else’s private information.”
“You didn’t name him. I heard.”
“Is that enough?”
“For the boundary we agreed, yes. I can’t decide whether it’s enough for the people asking about their own safety.”
He wrote down the questions Ruth and Mrs. Patel had asked. Beside each he wrote an answer he could support: his registered talent identified the dead; he could not take an ability from a living person; he had an additional ability he had not described publicly; he did not know whether accepting it had harmed the person whose request preceded it.
The final line stayed blank. What does the system take?
“I don’t have an answer,” he said.
“Then say that. Don’t fill the space because silence feels dangerous.”
He looked toward the window. Across the street, the tram shelter stood empty. The observer might return, or someone else might paint the wall again. Eli could not control either action. He could decide what he would say before an audience forced the choice in front of Tessa and the volunteers.
Nora called back with a possibility. A family representative had been looking for an independent identification of remains recovered from an earlier incident. The family wanted privacy and had not yet agreed to any public demonstration. Nora would explain the request and return only if they wanted to discuss it.
“Make sure they know the meeting concerns an allegation about Eli,” Tessa said. “They need to know why we’re asking.”
“I will,” Nora replied. “They can refuse without losing the chance to seek identification elsewhere.”
Eli thanked her and ended the call. He added a note to the sheet: No demonstration without informed agreement; family controls what is shared. The line was easier to write than the answers above it. He hoped that would make it easier to follow when the room was full and he wanted desperately to prove himself.
Before closing, Leah replaced the appointment notice beside the side door. The paper had been splashed while they cleaned. She printed a new copy with the same hours and the same statement about the clinic’s limited services.
Ruth stood with her while she taped it up. A neighbor stopped to ask what had happened to the wall. Ruth told him there had been a painted accusation, that it had been documented and removed, and that the clinic was arranging a way for people to ask questions. She did not repeat the words as a fact.
Eli watched from inside. He could not make everyone trust him by scrubbing brick. The next conversation would require him to answer what he knew, admit what he did not, and accept that someone might still decide not to stand beside him.