Page 17 of Honeyfires

Everything here was quiet and old and organized.

Everything here was Vera.

I felt immediately and completely out of place, which was a familiar feeling and one I had long since stopped letting determine what I did next.

"Now, Mrs. Martinez, that little folder icon right there. Yes, that one. Just click it, and there are all of little Miguel's photos, waiting for you."

I followed the voice. She was bent over a computer terminal at the reference desk, one hand on the back of an elderly woman's chair, the other pointing patiently at a monitor. Emerald dress under the Antique Bridal Whisper cardigan. Gold hair twisted up in a loose chignon, with a few strands escaping to frame her face. Black cat-eye glasses today, not the violet ones from last night. Professional ones, librarian ones, which made her look, somehow, even more irresistibly attractive.

She looked like a 1950s photograph that had achieved sentience and decided to dedicate itself to public service.

The elderly woman pressed both hands to her cheeks. "Mija. Look at little Miguel with the missing tooth! Vera, you are an angel."

"I really am," Vera agreed warmly, and the woman laughed heartily.

I hung back. This was Vera in her element, all patient and bright and entirely genuine, making someone feel like finding a folder of photos was a moon landing because to her, right now, in this moment, it was. She didn't perform the enthusiasm. She just owned it.

I was so completely in trouble.

When Mrs. Martinez shuffled off, a small stack of printed photos pressed to her chest, I drifted into the science fiction section and pulled a book off the shelf at random. Something about robotic ethics and consciousness. I pretended to read the back cover. I was not reading the back cover.

Then, the quiet sound of books being pulled from the row directly in front of me.

A gap appeared. Then another. Then, framed between Asimov and Le Guin like something that had been arranged specifically to undo me, a pair of cornflower blue eyes.

They blinked.

"Hm," said Vera.

"Hm," I agreed.

"We have a policy," she said conversationally, pulling another book and widening the gap, "about loitering in the stacks."

"I'm not loitering. I'm browsing."

"You've been holding that book upside down for two minutes, Petra."

I looked at the book. It was, in fact, upside down. I turned it over with my dignity not entirely intact. "I was checking the spine quality."

"Of course." Another book disappeared. Now I could see the curve of her mouth, the way she was fighting a smile and losing badly. "Asimov. Are you a secret science fiction fan?"

"I'm branching out. Libraries seemed worth exploring."

"I thought libraries weren't your scene."

"I'm revising my position."

"Based on new evidence?"

"Based on extremely compelling evidence, yes."

She pulled another book. Her face was properly visible now, the emerald dress, the cardigan, the long lashes. She was doing the thing where she looked at me like I was a new library filing system she was still figuring out.

"You look very alert," she said, "for someone who survived a seven out of ten fire yesterday."

"Five and a half."

"You revised it down overnight?"