2. Artemis
ARTEMIS
I washed my hands and dried them thoroughly before I keyed into the rare books like I was entering a place of worship.
The temperature dropped five degrees the moment the door sealed behind me. My nervous system unclenched like it had been waiting all day for permission.
I preferred this room, because the air here was lighter and the humidity controlled. The light was diffused in just the right way, and there was minimal noise. In this room, no one expected me to make eye contact or small talk. No one expected me to soften my voice or make myself smaller.
They expected competence.
And competence, I could fucking provide.
Tonight’s task rested on the padded table under museum-grade lighting: an early ritual manuscript. It was of Greek origin and had marginal notes in two different hands. Binding fatigued along the spine. Ink thinning at the corners, like it had been exhaling for centuries.
This manuscript had survived war, migration, translation errors, and at least one incompetent idiot with a fountain pen.
I respected perseverance.
I leaned in, adjusting the cradle supports. The stitching told a story before the text did. Tension at the headband. Uneven pressure along the hinge. Someone careless had opened this aggressively.
“Of course you did,” I murmured to the long-dead scholar who’d added half the margin notes in cramped, self-righteous handwriting. “You’re arguing with the text instead of listening to it, you pedantic little dickweed.”
I scanned a line. Paused.
“Oh, absolutely the fuck not.”
The margin translation was wrong. Legible, but confidently incorrect.
I shifted closer, reading under my breath. The cadence settled into me like muscle memory. I didn’t even realize I’d switched languages until I answered him back in Greek.
“You’re forcing the accusative,” I said quietly. “It’s locative. The emphasis is spatial, not moral, you sanctimonious walnut.”
I read the line again, slower this time, savoring the correction.
Centuries dead and still wrong.
“Also, your handwriting is abhorrent."
God, I loved this.
Outside, thunder rolled over the Hudson. The sound vibrated faintly through the old building. In here, it felt distant and irrelevant.
Except my body didn’t get the memo.
The lights flickered once. My shoulders jumped before I could stop them.
My pulse kicked up hard and fast, like I had been caught doing something wrong instead of reinforcing a manuscript older than most governments.
The hum of the climate control sharpened.
The seam in the parchment blurred for half a second as my focus tried to scatter in six directions at once.
Too loud. Too bright.
I adjusted the page weight and continued, deliberately slower. The ritual of it helped. Hand to linen. Linen to edge. Edge to margin. Order. Sequence. Most of all, control.
A familiar line rose in my head before I could stop it, and I spoke it out loud. “So I spoke, and the heart within me grew steady.”
The words settled into the room like an extra brace under a weak beam. Saying it felt like pressing a palm to my sternum. My hands stopped trembling, and my breathing evened out. The Odyssey never failed me.
Sometimes, the ancient Greeks understood nervous systems better than therapists.
Ancient words had always calmed me.
For a second, I let myself imagine writing something that carried even half the weight of the epics, the classics. A poem. A story. Anything. Then, the truth slammed into me with its usual force.
I would never finish anything. Not when I tore up every draft before it reached page two. Not when my own mind felt like a committee arguing over the right to use the same pen.
“And there it is,” I added softly. “That’s the point.”
Silence.
Then—
“Ms. Ripley?”
I turned.
Three interns stood frozen in the doorway. They had clearly been there long enough to witness me correcting a fourteenth-century scholar in another language.
Intern One blinked. “Were you… speaking Greek?”
“Yes,” I said.
They stared at me like I had just levitated.
Intern Two whispered, not quietly enough, “She does that?”
Intern Three whispered back, “That’s terrifying.”
I pressed my lips together to prevent either a smile or a sigh. Both would have been misinterpreted.
“What do you need?” I asked.
Intern One swallowed. “The lights flickered.”
As if summoned, thunder cracked again. The lights dimmed for half a second, then steadied. I stared up at them. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
My brain immediately did the math.
Electrical surge. Humidity fluctuation. Temperature variance. Paper expansion risk.
I moved before finishing the thought, crossing to the environmental panel.
“Building surge protocol compensates automatically,” I said, checking the readings. “We’re stable.”
The interns continued staring.
Intern Two leaned forward. “Should we… evacuate?”
“For a thunderstorm?”
Intern Three nodded.
“No,” I said. “If the building catches fire, we save the incunabula first.”
They went very still.
“Was that a joke?” Intern One asked.
I considered it. “Mostly.”
Their eyes widened.
I exhaled. “It’s fine. Storms stress old buildings. The structure complains. That’s all.”
Intern Two looked at the manuscript. “What is that?”
“Ancient ritual text,” I said. “It’s been mistranslated twice, and annotated by someone with confidence and no talent.”
They blinked.
“Cool,” Intern Three said faintly.
Thunder boomed again. The lights flickered harder this time.
Intern One jumped.
“You’re good?” I asked.
“Yes,” Intern One said quickly. “We just thought you’d… know what to do.”
“Oh,” I said, because I hadn’t expected that. “Yes.”
They nodded like that confirmed something mythic, then backed out of the room with the reverence of acolytes leaving a shrine.
Then Intern Two pivoted back, visibly bracing herself.
“Also,” she said, voice small, “when you have time, could you maybe come help us with the matcha machine?”
I stared at her.
Behind me, an ancient manuscript was open to a passage about cosmic order and structural harmony.
Outside, thunder cracked like a warning shot.
And here, a twenty-three-year-old was being defeated by powdered tea.
“Of course,” I said, because apparently I was fluent in both dead languages and appliance diplomacy.
All three of them exhaled at once. They backed out of the room again, this time with less reverence and more relief, like I’d agreed to disarm a small bomb.
The door sealed behind them.
I looked back down at the manuscript.
Matcha did sound good, though.
Of course you know what to do, my mother would have said. You’ve had plenty of practice cleaning up your own messes.
I adjusted the page weight with deliberate care.
“Different context,” I murmured to the parchment. “Different audience.”
Sighing, I stepped back from the parchment. Time to rejoin the land of the living. And historically, that was when everything went wrong.
I made my way through the library toward the break room, making a mental list of all the things I needed to do. Head Librarian meant everything fell on me—not excluding matcha machines.
I pushed open the break room door, already tasting the drink I planned to bribe myself with. In the corner, the new machine with its glossy buttons and unnecessary features hummed cheerfully. It had become the highlight of my entire week, which was a bleak statement I refused to unpack.
Interns One, Two, and Three hovered in a tight cluster around it, their wide eyes telling me that the small appliance had defeated them.
Their whispering stopped the moment I walked in. All three stared at me with the same expression patrons used when they realized the restricted section existed: reverence mixed with fear.
Which was a ridiculous way to look at someone.
Fantastic. I had accidentally become a cryptid.
I had not consented to this social role and did not want it.
Attention came with rules, ones I’d learned but never made sense to me the way they seemed to make sense to other people.
I had learned them young. Step one was always smile when someone was paying attention to you.
Step two was wait for your turn to speak.
Though I’d learned these rules, I rarely employed them.
Intern One raised a shaky hand. “Ms. Ripley. The machine made a noise.”
Intern Two nodded with grave seriousness. “A loud one.”
Intern Three swallowed. “We don’t want to break it.”
I approached them with the composure of someone defusing a minor diplomatic incident.
Calm was always safer than exposing my true feelings. Calm never invited commentary or judgment.
“It’s fine. It’s not broken. I’ll show you how to use it.”
Intern One leaned toward the others and whispered, “She sounds confident.”
Intern Two whispered back, “She always does. It’s terrifying.”
I suppressed a shiver. My mother used to say I was too confident for a girl with nothing to be confident about.
Which was a ridiculous assessment, considering I had two degrees and could read three dead languages before coffee.
And yet, her malice still affected me on a cellular level. Even without contact.
I pressed the correct combination of buttons. Hot water cycled through the chamber. The machine released a steady stream of matcha into the cup I placed beneath it.
The interns inhaled sharply.
Intern Three said, reverently, “She did it.”
Intern One said, “I knew it.”
Intern Two stared at me like I had just performed a minor exorcism. “She commands the machine.”
I had once presented at a conference on marginal corrections in fourteenth-century liturgical texts and made three tenured men visibly sweat. But yes, let’s focus on my beverage skills.
Jesus Christ. Please, universe, now would be a great time for a fire alarm to go off. Divert the attention. Create a getaway.
They weren’t mocking me. Not yet. Historically speaking, that would most likely change eventually.
I took my cup and stepped away before my dignity suffered irreversible damage.