CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEEN

Subsequent trips to the St. Canard University library proved more lucrative for Gabriel, as well as easier to execute. That is, she had fewer qualms and misgivings about being on a campus she was certain she would never go back to.

A couple of those braver boys approached her during her walks to and from the library. She told the less attractive one that she was too high-maintenance for him. The more attractive one, she told she was already married. He looked at her strangely before walking off. Gabriel had actually managed to forget she had a couple years on these kids. Perhaps marriage was still a far-off concept like it would have been for an eighteen-year-old boy. When the hell did that happen? She wondered.

Gabriel had spent two nights of research exclusively on Tegwen and her family, scrounging for every last morsel of information she could find. It all went into her notebook in her spectacularly illegible handwriting, which she'd been keeping in Tegwen's pilfered F.O.W.L. dossier.

With everything she found, Gabriel was no longer surprised why Tegwen kept her secrets. And she completely understood why she was so bitter and cynical. Even more unnerving was a thought she couldn't shake that she knew more about Tegwen's past than Tegwen did at that point.

She'd found everything she could think of looking for on Tegwen's history so she moved along to the next little mystery: the medical record she'd purloined from Dr. Rueppell.

While Gabriel had been unable to figure anything out, Sylvia the librarian was able to piece together some of the more legible areas of handwriting. Her background as a Registered Nurse came in quite handy, and Gabriel expressed her gratitude.

On what would be her final night of research at the library, Gabriel concentrated on the so-called concussion Dr. Rueppell diagnosed Tegwen as having and this drug, Malozarpa, he'd injected her with.

Sylvia had never heard of Malozarpa, which was not especially surprising considering F.O.W.L.'s Research and Development department was well ahead of society at large, and Dr. Rueppell had indicated that the drug was still in its experimental stage. Despite that, Sylvia was able to deconstruct the name of the drug and figure out to which class it belonged and what it was likely related to.

Gabriel reviewed the information she could find on the drug's relatives only to find that it was a hefty sedative. And judging by the typical dosage of the related drugs, the amount of the Malozarpa Tegwen had been subjected to, it was nothing short of a miracle that she hadn't been sedated to the point of no return.

In her research, Gabriel verified Tegwen's symptoms against the drug and against the diagnosis. Perhaps she had suffered a concussion; the circumstances and symptoms lined up.



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