Page 152 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

Client first, I reminded myself as he got in beside me.

Future first.

Professional reputation first.

The car pulled away from the curb, and Rafe looked down at the signed buyer’s copy in his hands with such joy on his face that my heart twisted.

Zero dragons stealing my heart, I added.

But even I knew my mantras had become aspirational at best.

19

QUINN

CANINE SOCIAL ENGINEERING

By the fourth week of the Virelli matter, I had learned that legal work was mostly the art of making other people respond to things they were professionally committed to ignoring.

There were exceptions, obviously. Sometimes legal work was research and drafting. Sometimes it was standing beside a copier at eleven-forty p.m., whispering encouragement to a machine that had decided justice would have to wait until someone cleared tray two.

But mostly, it was pursuit.

Letters. Follow-up letters. Emails referencing the letters. Phone calls referencing the emails referencing the letters. Calendar holds for meetings nobody had agreed to yet. Memos explaining why a person’s silence had become legally meaningful. Entire afternoons spent turning “they refuse to talk to us” into phrasing Helena Wallace could put in front of a judge without sounding like she wanted to bang her head gently against a conference table.

The second museum was worse than Georgiana Sorel’s.

At least Georgiana existed in public and owned working phones. This one, the Arkley Museum of Olden Folk Decorative Arts, had responded to Payton & Wallace’s demand letters with an aggressive commitment to silence. Their board chair was unavailable. Their owners were traveling. Their director, Alistair Fenwick, had received the letters, according to tracking receipts, but hadn’t acknowledged them.

We had entered the grim stage of the case where everyone still used polite language, but the politeness had teeth.

Meanwhile, my life had become so busy, I felt like I was stuck in a blender someone had left running.

I was still fetching coffee. That hadn’t magically stopped because I had written one useful memo and briefly impersonated an auctioneer. The copier still jammed. Partners still asked for lunch orders, though Rafe had set up a daily food budget for the whole team after discovering, apparently to his genuine horror, that several of us survived on coffee, office mints, and whatever crackers we could scrounge after meetings. The budget arrived through official channels, described as “client-approved efficiency support,” which was an incredibly Rafe way of saying, Please stop letting my legal team work when they’re starving.

I nearly choked on a forkful of quinoa when Moira mentioned it.

“He discovered we had a workflow inefficiency,” I said.

“He sent grilled chicken and three kinds of dressing.”

“Protein improves productivity.”

“Quinn.”

“What?”

“Oh, nothing.”

I still took lunch orders sometimes because interns took lunch orders. I still filed exhibits, labeled binders, and found conference rooms that were mysteriously booked by people who hadn’t entered them since the previous fiscal quarter.

But now, more and more, associates stopped by the intern bullpen and asked, “Quinn, can you look at this wording?” or “Do you remember which case had the museum-access footnote?” or “Can you check whether Fenwick has any shell entities connected to the collection?”

Little things. Nothing glamorous. No one handed me a sword and asked me to slay the doctrine of laches. But little things was how the work revealed trust. A question here. A request there. Moira leaning over the cubicle wall to say, “Tell me if this sounds too accusatory,” and actually waiting while I read the paragraph.

It felt wonderful.

I had to keep telling myself not to look too happy about it around the other interns.