Every Bitter Bloom

39. Adrien Moreau's former romantic and culinary partner. Was running the Wren & Finch kitchen largely solo in summer 2023 while Adrien dealt with a supplier dispute in Montreal. Has encyclopedic knowledge of botanical ingredients — foraged herbs, edible flowers, specialty compounds. Never mentioned knowing Halverson, though their tables overlapped three times that summer. Gets very quiet when asked about August.

41. Treated Halverson on August 18th, 2023, and is the reason the preserved sample exists at all. His intake records are precise, his drug inventory meticulously logged — yet a quantity of aconitine-adjacent compound from his botanical toxin reference kit went unaccounted for that July. Claims he spilled it during a training exercise. Has no alibi for the evening of August 18th — was supposedly home, alone, with the dog.

24. Manages the clinic's drug inventory and flagged the missing aconitine compound in her own audit notes — a detail that made her look either vigilant or guilty depending on how you read it. Was seen at Undertow Coffee on August 17th in what witnesses describe as a heated conversation with a man matching Halverson's description. She says she'd never met him. The conversation, she later said, was with a different man entirely.

31. Left Dr. Osei's marine biology program at Bellwick in 2021 — a program she shared, briefly, with Halverson's girlfriend Stina Bauer, who did a visiting semester that year. Isla and Stina were close, then weren't. She knew who Halverson was before he arrived in Caldmere, though she never said so. He visited Undertow four times that summer. She served him personally each time and never disclosed the prior connection.

32. Worked the floor on August 18th, 2023 — one of only two front-of-house staff present that evening. Confirmed Halverson dined at table six but could not identify the second guest. Her original statement to Detective Oakes described the companion as 'a woman in her thirties, dark hair.' She revised this eighteen months later, in a Consortium interview, to 'I couldn't be sure.' The revision has never been satisfactorily explained.