Alone in the elevator, Viri just stood there for a moment, wishing she had time to go outside and clear her head, especially after her worthless visit with Reeve. But she couldn’t afford to risk Darik’s threat, so with a deep exhale, she pressed the down button, ignored the prickle of ellixen as the lift began to move, and prayed to the Elders that she would get stuck between floors and have a valid excuse to skive off the rest of the day.
Unsurprisingly, the Elders weren’t listening—the gods of old apparently had better things to do with their time—and all too soon the doors were opening at the Nox archives.
A single step into the cavernous white-walled space was all it took to remind Viri why she hated the archives so much. It wasn’t just the piles—andpiles—of paperwork. Nor was it the floor-to-ceiling bookcases that traveled farther than she could see, all overflowing with ledgers and reports covering everything from small crimes to serial killers. It wasn’t even the stuffy desks crammed together in one corner and the weary-looking archivists sitting behind them. None of those things were appealing, but nor were they bad enough to make Viri want to leave as quickly as she’d arrived. Instead, it was the air itself that made her struggle not to flee—because she’d forgotten how strong the archives’ preservation wards were, the ellixen so powerful that it was like a physical attack on her senses.
Usually, Viri didn’t mind being more sensitive to magic than most, but at times like this, when it was concentrated enough to feel like an overstimulating assault, she wished she could be morenormal. Not even the Underlock cells used this much magic—but they also didn’t need to protect flimsy records from being destroyed in the moist inner-mountain air.
Standing still, Viri closed her eyes and breathed in the calming aroma of paper and ink as she waited for her body to adjust. Only when the feeling shifted from lightning bolts zapping her nerve endings to a soft humming beneath her skin did she shake off the sensation and reopen her eyes—to find every archivist in the room staring at her.
Clearing her throat, Viri started toward the group in the corner, but was intercepted by a short, bald man who appeared from between a set of bookcases.
“Viridia Solace?”
“That’s me,” she confirmed, realizing he wasn’t short so much as hunched, no doubt from years of bending over a desk.
“I’m Head Archivist Thornton,” he said with an imperious sniff, then turned and headed back into the bookshelves. “Come with me.”
Viri hadn’t had much experience with archivists, but Soren and his Nox friends always joked about the record keepers being a serious bunch. “Prickly” was the word they used. Thornton was already living up to the description.
Swallowing her pride, Viri followed like an obedient dog, her boots clicking on the pristine white floor as they passed row after row of bookcases, then finally reached a pale wall with an open door cut into it.
“This is where you’ll work while you’re with us,” Thornton said, gesturing for her to precede him into the room.
Viri nearly hissed as she stepped through the doorway andencountered another strong ellixen ward. She gritted her teeth until the feeling passed, then looked around the small, sterile office that had paperwork covering every surface, including the sole desk and chair.
“We’ve been understaffed for the last few months,” Thornton said, explaining the mess. “Certain things have been neglected so we could prioritize more urgent cases.” He moved to the desk and picked up a pile of papers. “Everything in this room is a crime, a complaint, or a concern that has been reported to the Nox. Noise disturbances, theft, graffiti, trespassing, assault, possession of illicit substances—you name it, and it’s here.” He set the pile back down. “Your job is to sort through all this so it can be filed away.”
Viri gulped at the sheer amount of work ahead of her. “How?”
Thornton grabbed a page and pointed to the top, where the number seven was written in green ink, then reached for a different page that showed a blue number eleven, before he indicated the rest of the chaos so Viri could see all the various colors and numbers. “Everything is coded into offense categories. All you have to do is put them into piles by color and arrange them by number.”
“Sounds idiot-proof,” Viri commented.
Thornton looked straight at her. “It is.”
Viri almost laughed.Prickly, indeed.
“I know you hunters are used to working at all hours,” the archivist went on, “but this week you’re on a strict day shift with me: eighta.m. to sixp.m., with two ten-minute breaks plus a half hour for lunch.”
Viri sighed quietly at the unexciting daily structure, already missing the freedom of her hunting job.
“I’ll be back in a few hours,” Thornton said, heading for the door. “You’re only to leave this office for your breaks or if you have questions. Understood?”
He didn’t wait for her answer before vanishing from the room, leaving Viri alone with her mammoth task. She doubted she would sort through even half the piles before her week was up, but she silenced her misgivings, straightened her shoulders, and got to work.
The first hour passed slowly.
The second was glacial.
The third and onward were borderline torture.
But still, Viri sorted paper after paper, going one step further than the colors and numbers to also arrange them by date—partly because she was bored to tears and it gave her an added distraction, and partly because she didn’t want Thornton telling Darik she’d done a half-assed job.
Over the course of her shift, the Head Archivist returned a handful of times to see if she had any questions before quickly leaving again. When one of his midafternoon check-ins arrived, Viri had finally cleared a section of the desk large enough to notice a pattern that piqued her curiosity.
“There’s a lot of red here,” Viri commented to Thornton, who stood half in and half out of the doorway, eager to return to whatever he’d been doing.
He nodded. “Red is something reported as missing. It’s a common complaint.”
