Page 112 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

I hurried out of her office. Moira was waiting six feet away, pretending to inspect a framed print of abstract blue lines.

I stopped beside her. “Subtle.”

“I was admiring the art.”

“Name one thing about it.”

“It’s blue.”

“Powerful analysis.”

She looked at the folder in my hand. “Well?”

I hugged it to my chest, feeling the weight of it, the opportunity and warning, the whole terrifying shape of being taken seriously.

“I have a memo due at two-thirty,” I said.

Moira grinned. “Look at you.”

“Don’t be proud of me yet. I could still embarrass us both with terrible formatting.”

“You won’t.”

“No,” I said, and for once I let myself believe it for more than half a second. “I won’t.”

The coffee machine made its suffering noise again, and from somewhere down the hall, someone called, “Intern, printer’s jammed.”

Moira and I looked at each other.

“Someone else can suffer,” I said.

Moira’s grin widened. “That’s my girl.”

14

RAFE

BRING HOME THE SINGING SWORD

By Friday afternoon, I’d learned that progress didn’t always feel like relief.

Sometimes it felt like holding one’s breath more efficiently.

Georgiana Sorel attended the Friday meeting with her collections counsel, her assistant Elaine, two museum representatives, and outside counsel who had arrived prepared to defend every inch of institutional ground. Quinn had been there with a binder of tabbed exhibits, a clean timeline, and a resolution framework Helena Wallace introduced as “Ms. Bradley’s memo.”

The framework was simple, but then, good strategy often was. It laid out ownership, access, interpretation, and transition. First, acknowledge the Virelli family’s documented claim. Second, preserve public access through a defined loan period. Third, revise the exhibit language so the sword was no longer displayed as an orphaned object of “post-war migration,” but as a family relic separated from its owners during the Winged War. Fourth, create a replica and digital archive before the original was returned to its rightful home.

When Georgiana questioned the display language, Helena had glanced down the table and said, “Ms. Bradley drafted that section.”

Quinn’s pen had stopped for half a second. Then she lifted her chin and explained, clearly and without apology, that the wording didn’t require the museum to confess wrongdoing. It required the museum to stop treating uncertainty as neutrality when the family history was strong enough to merit acknowledgment.

Even the museum’s counsel had written that down.

By the end of two hours, the sword wasn’t home yet. No formal transfer had been executed, and it hadn’t been packed for delivery. But Georgiana had agreed, on record, to present a structured return plan to the board with her recommendation attached. Elaine had committed to beginning the replica and imaging process immediately. The museum would revise the temporary exhibit language within the week, and counsel for both sides had begun drafting a transitional loan agreement that would keep the sword on display for thirty days before its return to my family.

Thirty days.

After generations of absence, thirty days should’ve felt like a mere blink of time. It didn’t.