Page 32 of Impawssible Magic

When the bowls are empty, she produces an ancient iron key.

“Now then. The archives. Follow me, stay close, and don’t touch anything that glows red. The red things bite.”

“Bite?” I push back my chair. “What do you mean, bite?”

She’s already disappearing through a door I didn’t notice before. Aslan catches my eye, shrugs, and follows.

The Registry archives are a labyrinth that smells like old paper and regret.

Narrow corridors wind between shelving units that stretch toward a ceiling I can’t see. The light pulses as we move. Grandmother Peach’s voice floats back to us—the organization system being “interpretive” now—and then she’s gone, vanished around a corner that leads to a dead end.

“Helpful,” Aslan says.

“Incredibly.” I scan the shelves. “So we just... start pulling books?”

“There’s a system.” He moves closer, examining labels. His shoulder brushes mine in the narrow space. “Dates in the upper right. Symbols below.”

“You’ve been here before.”

He pauses. Sadness flickers across his face.

“Once. A long time ago.”

I don’t push. Everyone has histories they don’t want to discuss.

Glowing red catches my eye on a nearby shelf.

“Is that⁠—”

“Don’t touch it.”

“I wasn’t going to touch it. I was going to observe it. From a safe distance. Like a sensible person who values her fingers.”

The red thing—which appears to be a book—pulses ominously.

“Right. Moving on.”

We work in silence, pulling volumes based on dates and symbol categories. The space between shelving units is barely wide enough for two people, which means every reach for a book brings us closer. His arm extends past my shoulder. My hand brushes his as we grab the same spine.

“Sorry—”

“You take it⁠—”

We’re both frozen there. Him behind me. I feel heat radiating off his body. My pulse kicks.

He inhales sharply. He felt that.

The red book pulses again. Hungrily.

“The next section.” Something’s gone tight in his voice. “I’ll check the next section.”

He steps back. Cool air rushes in.

An hour passes. Then two. I get bonked on the head by a falling volume that I’m ninety percent sure threw itself at me on purpose. Aslan gets into a brief standoff with a shelf that refuses to let him access its contents until he says “please.”

“Did you just have a politeness negotiation with furniture?” I ask.

“The archives have standards.”