Free Indestructible by Alycia Linwood

him. “You mean it might be a nickname? A fake name?”
    “Why not?” He shrugged. “If she was his lover and had to keep their relationship secret because she was a carrier, she might have invented the name.”
    If the floor wasn’t so dirty, I would have rolled over and banged my head against it. “Then there’s no fucking way we’ll ever find out who she was!”
    “I found a list of people who went to university with Jonathan.”
    I looked up at him in surprise. “Do you think he met Rosalia at university?”
    “I don’t know, but he decided to keep only one picture of his university days and the people on it could have meant something to him.”
    I jumped to my feet and took a closer look at the picture. “There are at least nine girls here.”
    “One of them could be her.”
    “Yeah, but which one? This here is my great-grandpa.” I pointed at the smiling man in the middle of the picture. “But none of the girls stand particularly close to him.”
    Adrian flipped the photograph, revealing a list of names. “He wrote down everyone’s name, but none of the girls have a name that starts with an R or anything that could be turned into Rosalia.”
    “But Rosalia was a carrier who couldn’t keep an element. How would she even go to university? They all require the use of magic on a daily basis. Even if she was killing people, it would be complicated to hide the disease.”
    “Maybe she didn’t have the disease back then.” Adrian gave me a meaningful look.
    “But...” I bit my lip. “We don’t even know how my great-grandpa got the disease, but if he infected her, why would she stay with him?” Could love be that strong? Or were there things we didn’t know?
    “No idea, but maybe neither of them had the disease while they were going to university. The disease might have developed later than usual, or they might have contracted it somewhere else. Jonathan could have gotten married and gotten back with Rosalia later. If they stumbled upon each other after so many years and realized they were both carriers, they could have bonded over their mutual secret.”
    “Umm, okay,” I drawled. “But how do we find out which one of the girls is Rosalia?”
    Adrian tilted his head. “Do you know what happened to my father’s journal?”
    I opened my mouth, closed it. “I think it might have stayed under the ice back at your room at the University of Magic.”
    “Fuck.” Adrian ran a hand through his hair. “There is a list of people with the disease, but I never got to the end of it.”
    “You think your father might have come across Rosalia?” So Adrian hadn’t lied about the names in the journal? Because he’d been lying to me a lot when it came to that journal.
    “Maybe. He knew a lot of rich people, and he might have met your great-grandfather and Rosalia. We could compare the names in the journal and the names on the photograph. What are the chances that a person who went to university with your great-grandpa contracted the disease and moved in the same circles later?”
    I squinted. “I don’t know. At that time, people who went to universities were practically obsessed with pure elements. I don’t think anyone would mess around with someone who didn’t have a pure element, but if a carrier had an element, there was no way normal elementals could have known it.”
    “Alright, so it’s possible some of Jonathan’s female friends contracted the disease later, but how many of them still have living offspring with the disease? We could even look for photos of the great-grandchildren to see if anyone looks like the woman who attacked us.”
    “But we don’t have your father’s journal! And we’re not detectives. I don’t feel like looking up nine or more different people and searching for their family tree.” I yawned. “I’m tired of all of this.”
    “Maybe we can get the journal back,” Adrian mused. “Someone must have collected my things from my room.”
    “Yeah.” I gave