Chương 269: Day Two Hundred And Sixty-Seven

Dear Diary, Okay, when a Trickster God looks askance at your Rube Goldberg of a plan, you may need to re-evaluate your planning skills. So, Isnomi slept through the night last night. I know this, because after a night spent trying to ignore the stench to the south while gazing at the stars looking for mom, my wife and maid woke me up snogging.

On the one hand, I felt kinda good that I'd moved back to my 'bookend' position with Saffron in between us while we slept, since that meant they both thought I'd recovered enough to, y'know, not need them protecting me while I slept. On the other hand?

"Really?" Saffron just Grinned at me and said, "consider it motivation to get that book back to Sister Cheryl." I smiled back, because I had A Plan.

"Nah. But I'm gonna get the prohibition on extra credit for Law and Custom of Phileo lifted."

"Really?" I nodded.

"Yep. I might need a little help though." Now she raised an eyebrow.

"What kind of help do you need?"

"Not much. Just to take the menace to Loki's today for some time with Sigyn." I turned to Marie.

"How often do you guys clean out the unused rooms?" And what will you be doing this fine Monday, my Champion? SHENANIGANS! Plots and plans and UN-stealing things! Paper rustled. This I cannot wait to see. She looked at me while putting on her Maid's outfit.

"Yearly."

"Like, once a year you clean all the unused rooms, or you clean out rooms once they're vacant and then you clean them once a year?" After a brief pause while she pulled her dress on over her head, she said, "Latter."

"If there's anything damaged in the room, do you fix it right then, or before you open it up?"

"Yearly." A mischievous grin spread across my face.

"When's the next yearly cleaning and repair?"

"Equinox." When I asked, "Summer?" she nodded. I couldn't help it, I rubbed my hands together with a mad cackle. Saffron, who'd gone into the other room to collect Isnomi, came back in and stood her on the bed to help her get dressed.

"Should I ask why you're doing a reasonable impression of a madwoman?"

"Nope." Before she could get another word in, I crowed, "Plausible deniability!" She nodded.

"Well then. I'll be off. Will you be joining us later?"

"Absolutely. I want to see what Loki thinks of Magnificent Plan!" I wait with bated breath. Okay, I'd been shuffling around like an old head all week, and I finally felt spry enough to get up to some shady shit. Which, frankly, I hadn't done in a while, and I missed it a little bit. I gave Saffron and Isnomi hugs and kisses, at which point she turned to Marie.

"Would you like to come with us today?" Marie shook her head, frowning slightly when she said, "Can't."

"Well. Let Tabitha know if you finish before she comes to join us."

"Yes!" With that the two of them stepped away, and I'm sure I heard more rustling somewhere in the back of my brain.

"Hey, Marie? Could you do me a favor?" When she looked at me, I said, "nothing awful. I'm just gonna need a soup tureen full of water at the Library after breakfast. At that she nodded, and I said, "Thanks, sweetie!" then hopped up to give her a kiss before she left for her morning of Marie things. I pushed my Blend up, popped The Dress on, then walked to the Armoire and pulled my purloined books out of the drawer.

I set them on the desk, then Co-Located down to the Dining Hall for breakfast, dropping the Blend on the me there back to normal. I felt kinda weird what with nobody else at the ROTC table, but a minute after the doors opened the crew rolled in. Well, some of the crew. Fred and Raven.

"Guys! When did you get back?" Fred looked a little surprised to see me sitting there, and Raven beat him to the answer when she said, "yesterday. Angel and Bill were with us, but they've got Devotions today."

"Right, right. It's great to see you guys!" I hopped out of my seat and walked over to give each of them a hug before getting back to the Serious Business of eating. Raven took the hug in stride; maybe she tensed up a little, but she wasn't, like, totally averse to touching. Lachlan still had hands, after all. Well, he did last time I saw him. Fred, on the other hand, looked a little bit poleaxed.

As I sat back down, I remembered that I was wearing The Dress, and since I'd insta-changed into it, I'd forgotten the expected item. After a few seconds to reboot, he said, "why are you all dressed up today?" I nodded, trying to look all wise and shit, what with being a High Priestess of a God of Wisdom and all. Wisdom? What? It says so right on your temple. Anyway, I said, "I'm doing High Priestess things today. Just like my Boss does in all the stories, I'm the one who's gonna set shit straight."

"Wait, what?" Wait, what?

"C'mon, everything from conning Odin's general contractor when the one-eyed monster promised to pay more than he had, to being the fall guy when shit goes south, who's the one who manages to turn a loss into a win for Asgard in every story he's in?" Fred tilted his head sideways, like the thought wouldn't quite fit in unless he shoved it into his ear.

"Okay, point. So what are you fixing today?"

"Somebody stole a book from the library, and I'm gonna help Sister Cheryl find it." Raven interrupted, saying, "wait, wait, wait. As High Priestess of Loki you're the one who's finding stolen property?" Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. I nodded, grinning at her.

"absolutely. Who better to catch a rogue than another rogue, right? Besides, you two are focusing on the wrong thing."

"Oh?" asked Fred.

"Yeah. It's breakfast, and it looks like endless cornbread muffins and butter today. Time to get our eat on." As I said earlier, I'd Co-Located down to the Dining Hall. While one of me sat there very visibly going ham on the ham, the other me picked up the books, wrapped a strip of copy paper around them to hold them together, and stepped to a room I hadn't been since the day I met Loki.

Before my feet hit the floor, I hit my MIMIC (Size) to shrink to the size of the smallest book, maybe fashion doll sized overall, Translocated to lay face down atop the falling books, then Translocated into the big bottom drawer of Auriemma's desk. I wound up kinda pressed between the books and the top of the drawer, but that was fine by me. I reached out and Mineral Bonded a spot of the drawer to the desk itself, then stepped back to our rooms, taking the strip of paper with me.

Finally I stepped back to the me in the Dining Hall. You're blaming the theft of the books on a dead woman? Okay, first of all, she's dead. Is this gonna fuck with her afterlife somehow? Well... no. But her reputation? Yeah, as the Archivist? The Book Lady? Shit, I can think of half a dozen reasons why she'd take a couple books back to her room, and at least half of them qualify as 'taking her work home with her'. Which isn't exactly 'omigod, what a fiend' material, is it?

So how are you going to disclose their location? Wait and see, Boss! I stepped back to myself and spent the rest of breakfast erasing the slight aches at my rapid repeated Translocations with vast amounts of cornbread, butter, and fruit preserves. I'm not even sure what kind of preserves, really. Just, y'know, sweet and sticky and eminently nommable. When breakfast was done, I stepped to the Library and went looking for Sister Cheryl. I found her in the Archivist's office.

Before I could say anything, she looked up and said, "can I help you, High Priestess Diaz?" I smiled at her casual, unaffected use of the title that matched my outfit. Is it weird that I felt kind of proud of being recognized as Loki's High Priestess? Y'know, what with the whole lifelong atheism thing? I should hope not. After all, you're not an atheist now, are you? Maybe. After a moment of stunned mental silence, Loki thought, You've... you've met me. You've met other Deities.

You are yourself the Avatar of a Deity. HOW? I shrugged. Like the wise woman says, 'that's no call to go believing in them. It only encourages 'em'. I ignored the sound of a paper bag slithering out of somebody's hand and dropping to the floor, looked at Sister Cheryl and said, "I had an idea about finding the missing book." She carefully put away the book she'd been working with and turned to face me.

"How?" I shrugged.

"Loki showed me how to Scry on people. When I was in Lancaster, I learned how to do it to buildings. I figure I could do it to the missing book." She nodded.

"That makes sense. Will you need any assistance from me?"

"I'll need all the current copies in the library; that way I can kinda look for the 'missing piece' of the set. I hoped you'd come with me to wherever it is, if you have time?" She smiled up at me.

"I would normally say that any staff member leaving the Academy is generally accompanied by a Guard, but I suppose the woman who destroyed two Armies will do."

"Hey, we can even take Marie along!" I pretended not to notice Sister Cheryl's involuntary shudder.

"Well. The two of you certainly will do for bodyguards, I suppose." She stood and said, "come with me." She led me down to the shelf where the whole class set lived, then carefully counted out twenty nine books.

"Good. I'd hoped that none were in use. Will you need anything else for your scrying?" Just then Marie came into the library, a tureen atop her cart. Cheryl cocked her head and said, "lunch already? Did I lose track of time?"

"Nope, she's here to help out with the scrying." I turned to Marie and said, "could you put the tureen on the floor here?" and pointed right in front of the bookshelf with the class set of Law and Custom of Phileo. As she did so, setting it down so smoothly that the ripples settled almost immediately, I said, "thanks, Marie. Wait here, please, we won't be more than a minute."

It actually took me more like three to sort out the shaping, since I wasn't looking for a person or the whole of something that I had a piece of, but once I properly wrapped my head around the idea that the 'missing' book was part of the set I was staring at, the water clouded, then went black. Sister Cheryl frowned.

"Well. At least you tried?" I shook my head.

"Nah, that just means it's somewhere dark. Gimme a second." I slowly pulled the viewpoint back until I saw stone in front of me, then rotated it around, through the wall, and into the room to show the desk. I pulled back a little more until we all saw the adjoining door, then pulled out to show a door with a missing nameplate.

"Do you know where that is, Marie?" She shrugged, tilted her head, then said, "Outside?" While Sister Cheryl looked confused, over the course of the past six months I'd somehow learned to translate from Monosyllable Marie to, y'know, normal person. I swung the viewpoint around to look at the outside wall of the Academy again, then pulled back until the viewpoint showed most of the front of the Academy. Right before I showed the whole thing, including the mural I hadn't really gotten used to yet, Marie said, "Yes."

"Lead on, love." I swear if she didn't have full body fur, Marie would have been blushing at that. After putting the tureen back in her cart, she led us out of the library, pushing her cart ahead of her. We had to go to the north stairwell to get up with the cart, but once we got a few stories up, she led us directly to Archivist Auriemma's old room. Sister Cheryl reached for the door, and when it wouldn't open pulled out a little token on a necklace, waved it at the door, and opened it up.

Inside the desk sat right where we'd seen it in my scrying pool. She reached down and tugged at the drawer, but it refused to open.

"Well. That would explain why we didn't find them when we cleared the room." She looked at me, opened her mouth, then stopped as if just realizing something. She turned to Marie and said, "open the drawer." Before Marie could move I said, "if you would, please." Sister Cheryl turned, mouth dropping open as if to say something, then shook her head.

"Pardon me, High Priestess." Before I could reply she turned back to Marie and said, "apologies to yourself as well, Maenad Marie. Could you please open the drawer?"

"Broken?" Sister Cheryl sighed.

"Since at the moment it won't open, it might as well be." Marie took hold of the drawer's handle and pulled. Right as the desk started to slide across the floor the handle popped off in her hand. With an annoyed growl, she pulled her hand back, used her other hand to brace the desk against the wall, and rammed her claws through the front of the drawer. She clenched her fist, and the drawer front crumpled with a sound like a toppling tree.

Nodding, she dropped the remains of the drawer front on top of the desk, then frowned and put a finger into her mouth. While Sister Cheryl knelt to examine the drawer and pull out its contents, I reached up and took Marie's hand out of her mouth. For a moment her arm didn't budge, but when I said, "Marie... I'm the immature one," she smiled and let me look. An inch-long splinter black as the wood of the desk stuck out of her fingertip.

I took hold of her hand, said, "don't flinch," gripped the splinter and pulled it out. She tensed, but didn't move, and I smiled up at her.

"Good girl." When she couldn't decide whether to not-blush or raise an eyebrow, I bent over and kissed her fingertip as the delivery method for a Heal Injury. When I turned back to Sister Cheryl, she had a stack of books about half again as big as the one I'd put there.

"Well. It looks like the books missing from the library weren't stolen, just misplaced." She sighed, putting a hand on the desk.

"Such a loss, don't you think?" I shrugged.

"I didn't know her. She died the day before I got to the Academy." She pulled herself together and straightened up, the books in her arms.

"Thank you, High Priestess Diaz. Will I be seeing Cadet Diaz later for more copying work?" I shook my head as I smiled.

"Nah. I've got Devotion Day things to do." When she'd left with the books, I turned to Marie and said, "and as for you, my lovely recovery assistant?" I put a hand on her cart to help balance as I stood on tiptoe to plant a kiss on her surprised lips, and stepped us both to Loki's cave.

"In my professional medical opinion, you need to rest and recover from your injury in the line of duty. For the rest of the day, at the least." Then I turned and bowed to Saffron, Loki, Sigyn, and Isnomi, who'd started clapping prompted by an initial slow clap from Loki. The menace turned it into real clapping, of course, and shortly thereafter all the adults in the room broke down laughing.

Before the laughter had even died down, Loki waved me over, banished The Dress, and had me lay down for some soul massage or whatever it was he did. As I kinda melted despite the coolness of his touch, he asked, "however did you know that she had books in a stuck drawer already?" I shrugged, earning myself a bit of a teeth sucking noise, then said, "I guess Fate helps those who help themselves."

I mean, they sure as shit better be helping me after all the shit they'd dropped me in over the past eight months, or I might have to pay them a visit.