The Bureau wanted to keep me.
Of course they did.
Fenric had been approached three separate times by Director Nightstar (she got a promotion based on the work we did. That's totally fair. Not.), who apparently believed that a woman whose power now registered as "cosmically inert" on all Bureau sensors was still somehow their most valuable asset. He'd delivered theoffer with the careful neutrality of someone who had absolutely filed seventeen preliminary reports before bringing it up to me, and whose left eye had twitched precisely four times while I read through the contract terms.
"I appreciate it," I'd told him, handing the contract back. "I genuinely do. But what they're describing isn't a job. It's a display case."
He'd looked at me for a long moment. Then he'd closed the folder.
"The library," he'd grinned.
"The library."
I'd been terrified, briefly, that returning to my old life would feel like failure. That going back to shelving books after literally reshaping cosmic order would feel like stepping from a stage into the broom closet. Instead it had felt like setting down a backpack full of rocks I'd been hiking with for months.
I breathed easier in the stacks.
The first day back at Arcadia University Library, I'd stood outside the main entrance for a full minute, hand on the door, absolutely unable to make myself believe I was actually here doing this. Then my knee had ached with the coming rain and I'd pushed through, because that was just the kind of grounding detail the universe provides.
Malko was at the circulation desk.
He looked exactly as he always had, gray-green skin and crossed arms and the expression of someone who had catalogued seven supernatural crises before lunch and found them all insufficiently filed. He took one long look at me, the faded scar on my forehead, the way I moved, something in my eyes that hadn't been there before.
His mouth opened. Closed.
He turned back to his computer.
"New scrolls from the Mesopotamian collection," his gravelly voice rough. "Mediterranean dig. They've been sitting in processing for months because apparently my assistant decided to have a mystical journey instead of doing her job."
I pressed my lips together. "I am so sorry about the organizational chaos."
"The organizational chaos," Malko repeated, very precisely. "Yes. That's what I'd call it." He pulled up something on his screen, studied it intently, then said without looking at me: "The scholars in the ancient languages department have been asking about you."
"Are they upset?"
"Concerned. And also, one of them tried to reclassify the Athenian poetry fragments as administrative paperwork. I had to reverse that." A pause, significant and heavy. "It took four hours."
"I'll fix it."
"You will." He finally looked at me, and something in his usually impassive face shifted. Just slightly. "Your keycard still works. Don't break reality in the special collections room."
"That was completely accidental."
"Most things that change everything are," he went back to his computer like he hadn't just said something quietly profound.
The scrolls in processing were a disaster, partially mistagged by someone who'd clearly been working at speed, and I found myself sinking into the quiet ritual of it, the careful handling, the cataloguing, the way each artifact had a story waiting to be properly named.
By the third day, Professor Exavir from ancient languages had stopped by twice, ostensibly about acquisitions, and stayed both times to talk about a new find from an Anatolian site that had everyone baffled. By the end of the week, I'd also been conscripted into the ongoing row between Professor Wickhamand Dr. Nashy about the proper storage temperature for papyrus, which was exactly as passionate and academic as it sounds, and was also, genuinely, the best conversation I'd had in months.
Wadsworth hada little of his power back.
Not much, barely a thimbleful by his own cheerful description, but enough that the hedges in his maze now responded to his mood, and once he'd apparently made a security guard's keys turn into a very briefly confused sparrow before turning them back.
"Progress," he spoke gravely before cackling.
I visited on a Sunday afternoon, when the retirement community was quiet and golden with late autumn light. We walked through the maze together, which was less of an ordeal now that Wadsworth seemed inclined to let me navigate it successfully rather than using it as a cosmic evaluation tool.
"Most of the gods who were not interested in destruction or revenge have received some of their power back," he waddled alongside me with his usual dignified air. "Small amounts. Enough to remember who they were. The vengeful ones remain somewhat diminished."
