Free Indexing: Reflections (Kindle Serials) (Indexing Series Book 2) by Seanan McGuire Page A

inexplicably looming beyond the football field, he had to wonder if it had all been for nothing.
    His sophomore Creative Writing class was as silent as a room full of teenagers could be, only whispering and shuffling a little as they tried to complete their papers. This wasn’t one of the “easy A” electives, and he usually got the kids who were serious about the idea of being better writers. Half of them just wanted to get better so they could improve their Pacific Rim hurt/comfort fanfic, but there was nothing wrong with that. Besides, one of them had let slip that a good portion of the class was posting on Archive of Our Own, and he’d spent a few nights with a beer in his hand, learning more about his students. He hadn’t read the NC-17 pieces—there were professional limits—and yet he felt he respected them more as writers because he’d seen what they were capable of when they weren’t being graded.
    “Suzie, can you come over here please?” he asked.
    One of his students—a gawky, bespectacled girl who was going to be gorgeous when she finished her awkward stage, and who wrote extremely involved coffee-shop AUs about everything she came into contact with—looked up from her paper. “Sure, Mr. March,” she said, and rose, walking over to join him at the window. A few of the other students looked up as well, curious about what was going on.
    Gerry pushed the window a little further open. “What do you smell?” he asked.
    Suzie gave him a sidelong look and leaned forward. Then she blinked. “Gingerbread.”
    Gerry March, who had spent the better part of his life running away from fairy tales, and hence recognized them more readily than most, closed his eyes. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
    “Mr. March?” asked Suzie. “Are you all right?”
    “I’m great,” he said, opening his eyes and turning to give her what he hoped would seem like a reassuring smile. “I just remembered that I need to call my sister tonight. That’s all.”
    Call his sister, and tell her to get her bleached butt over here before the witch in the woods devoured them all.
    # # #
    Things I enjoy: driving.
    Things I do not enjoy: driving for long periods with my entire field team in the van, because taking two vehicles would be fiscally irresponsible in these days of short staffing and expensive gas. Jeff was in the passenger seat, having claimed it by sheer dint of will, and by agreeing to let Sloane control the radio. Which meant, naturally, that we’d been listening to a band called “Five Finger Death Punch” since leaving the office, and I was starting to consider the virtues of earplugs.
    Demi had already given in to temptation. She was wearing noise-canceling headphones and had stretched out across the van’s rearmost seat, playing air flute as she listened to something light, classical, and less likely to make her eardrums bleed. Andy, caught in the middle as always, was sitting with his arms crossed, feigning sleep, while Sloane was methodically ripping the magazine she’d brought for the trip into confetti.
    And we still had over an hour to go.
    “You’re riding in the back on the way home,” I said, glancing to Jeff. “I can’t handle another three and a half hours of screaming men telling me about carnage.”
    “I understand completely,” said Jeff. He looked back to the book he was balancing on his knees. “Since we’re almost there, are we ready to address the elephant in the room?”
    “Which one? The one where this is the second narrative incursion my brother’s been involved with in the last six months, or the one where this is potentially the second three-two-seven Demi’s been involved with?” The first one had nearly led to us losing her for good. We still didn’t know whether that was solely due to Birdie’s influence, or because Pipers were uniquely vulnerable to the witches who built gingerbread houses.
    There was only one way to find out for sure. The places where stories rubbed