Free Indexing by Seanan McGuire Page B

wants to adopt, and
he’s worried that writing ‘redacted’ on our papers will slow the process down.”
    “Did
you try pointing out that you work for a government agency, which will probably
make it easier for you to adopt?”
    Andy
leveled a cool look on me. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, Henry—you
know I love you and Jerry both—but if I let the folks who run this place help
me find a baby, I’m going to get a kid who’s already halfway sucked into a
story, and I can’t do that. Not after what happened to my brother.”
    “No
offense taken,” I said quietly.
    Jeff,
our official archivist, was nowhere to be seen. I put a coffee cup and a donut
down on his desk, where he could find them later, assuming no one stole them in
the meantime. Our office may be responsible for preventing fairy tale
incursions on the so-called real world, but we’re still paid like government
employees, and unguarded food has a tendency to go missing.
    The
last member of our little team didn’t even wait for me to get to her. She
literally climbed over Andy’s desk, knocking over his pencil holder in the
process, and grabbed for the bag. I jerked it back, out of her reach.
    “Give
them to me,” snapped Sloane, and grabbed again.
    “No,”
I replied. “You either wait for me to offer, or you ask.”
    “I am asking,” she said, making a third
grab. This one nearly knocked over the picture of Andy and his husband. He
picked it up and hugged it to his chest, frowning at Sloane. Even Demi lifted
her head, attention caught by the shenanigans unfolding in front of her.
    “Are
you allergic to the word ‘please’?” I asked, finally allowing Sloane to snatch
the bag of donuts from my hand.
    She
crab-walked triumphantly back into her seat, where she folded herself like a
particularly content praying mantis and began rummaging through the bag. “Yes,”
she said, not looking up. “It’s a legitimate health complication that comes
with my position on the ATI spectrum, and I don’t feel very good about you
rubbing it in my face like this. Maybe I should be reporting you to Human
Resources for discrimination, huh?”
    “Shut
up and eat your donuts,” I said, and turned to Demi, who was looking at me with
a blankly questioning expression. “Sloane is full of shit. She’s not allergic
to the word ‘please,’ which is good for her, since if she were, we would all
stand in a circle around her making polite requests until she went into
anaphylactic shock. She just enjoys being horrible to the rest of us, and we
let her, because we honestly can’t think of a way to make her stop.”
    “I’ve
thought of a few, but we never get them past the folks in HR,” added Andy in a
low rumble.
    “I’ve
told you before, Andrew, dousing her with a bucket of water won’t make her
dissolve, no matter how much she chooses to act like
the Wicked Witch of the Worst.” Jeff appeared between two desks, smoothly
winding his way around the obstacles in his path as he walked over to sit in
his chair. He had a large book open in one arm, and never looked up from its
pages, not even as he settled, picked up his coffee, and took a long drink.
“Thank you, Henry. You always get the exact right amount of sugar.”
    “I
try,” I said, claiming my own coffee cup before someone could get ideas about
swiping it. “Where were you?”
    “Dispatch.” He finally
looked up from the book, gray eyes concerned behind the wire frames of his
glasses. “Birdie left a note on my desk asking me to come and see her as soon
as I came in. Since I was running early—”
    “When
are you not running early?” muttered
Sloane. “Kiss-ass.”
    Jeff
ignored her as he cleared his throat and tried again: “Since I was running
early, I thought I would go down and find out if she had any pressing news
before the rest of you got here. That way, we could hit the ground running, if
necessary.”
    I
nodded. “Good thinking.” As our primary dispatcher, I didn’t