Max, it seemed, had the right idea. This adolescent posturing was as dangerous as it was annoying. She slid sideways out of the small crowd and came face to face with Glory Grey. She smiled at the other woman, rolled her eyes and mouthed the words ‘boys’, before ruffling the little dogs head and slipping out of the room. She wondered if there was a reason that Wells and Raik hired such apparently unfeasibly young men. Perhaps the relative rarity of magically talented individuals led to a kind of ‘any port in a storm’ effect. Perhaps there were few older males because they destroyed themselves in childish fits before they could get their testosterone under control.
 
Visiting the bathroom on the way to her office, she carefully washed her hands. Some time ago she had seen a demonstration of how many bacteria the average person left after washing and this made her extra fastidious about the practice. Thus cleansed she returned to her office and collected the book, her briefcase and a large tablet she kept in her desk drawer. She pressed her thumb into the finger print scan and unlocked it. Four new messages. One from Mother, wondering how she was. Two were trash that had somehow slipped past her filters, the fourth was from Emmaline, subject line: Ritual. She thumbed it open as she set off down the hall. As always the text of the ritual was covered with notations in bright red pen and tiny German notations. Leaky. Suboptimal. Meta-inocian? Stick with a single syntax at least. She rolled her eyes and muttered something uncomplimentary towards her pedantic sister.
 
She reached the office without further incident. Max was already inside. Raised voices echoed down the hall. She wanted more coffee but decided against risking another trip into the fray. Not taking one of Glory’s corn muffins also struck her as a mistake.  She contemplated further negotiations with future Lenya about working out and decided it might be just as well. Taking a seat across the table from Max she opened her briefcase and removed her notebook, slipping the tablet away as she did so.
 
“And I thought universities were the pinnacle of brooding adolescence,” she commented. She pushed the printed copy of Die Shriken und Wunder across the table towards Max. A further thought occurred to her.
 
“Glory doesn’t read German does she? I don’t want to upset her with a book she might consider unholy.”