Olivia woke before the building did.

  That alone felt like an accomplishment.

  The bed, naturally, objected. Sheets tightened just enough to make their displeasure known, the mattress subtly reshaping itself around her hips as if hoping she might reconsider. Olivia negotiated—five more minutes, a promise of a nap later, maybe with one of the heavy blankets it liked so much. Eventually it relented with a faint, sulky creak, and she slipped free.

  Victory.

  She padded into the bathroom and started the shower. Hot water filled the space with steam, loosening the last traces of sleep from her shoulders. No ears. No tail. Just Olivia, bare and unadorned, letting the heat ground her in herself. She lingered longer than usual, palms braced against the tile, breathing slowly as the station’s ever-present hum threaded through the walls.

  By the time she stepped out, towel wrapped around her, the day felt clearer. Sharper.

  She dressed carefully, deliberately. Clothes first—soft fabrics, familiar cuts. Then, with practiced hands, she retrieved the ears and tail from their place. They settled into position with the ease of long habit, the gentle weight of them immediately shifting her posture, her sense of balance. The reflection in the mirror made sense again.

  Last came the shoes.

  She stared at them for a long moment.

  Then… didn’t put them on.

  The thought surprised her, but the decision felt oddly right. The floor beneath her bare feet was cool, smooth, alive in a way she hadn’t noticed before. She flexed her toes once, experimentally, and felt a quiet little thrill run up her spine.

  “Huh,” she murmured to herself.

  She left the shoes by the door.

  The halls were quiet as she made her way toward the breakroom, footsteps soft and nearly soundless without soles to announce her. The station’s hum rose subtly through the floor, faintly vibrating through her arches, like a distant purr.

  The smell reached her before the doorway did.

  Butter. Sugar. Warmth.

  Inside, Charles stood near the table, already in motion, his coat open—burgundy today, trimmed in silver that caught the light like stage drapery mid-rise. Miss LaDonna sat serenely at the table, hands folded around a delicate cup of tea, observing the proceedings with calm amusement.

  Charles reached into his coat.

  And produced a silver-domed plate.

  Then another.

  Then another.

  They stacked neatly, impossibly, as if gravity had decided not to argue this early in the morning.

  “Good morning, my dear,” he said brightly when he noticed her. His gaze dipped briefly—just briefly—to her bare feet. His smile widened. “Ah.”

  Olivia slid into her chair, toes curling instinctively against the floor. “Morning. I convinced the bed to let me up.”

  “They rarely forgive such things,” Miss LaDonna said gently.

  Charles placed a dome before Olivia with ceremonial care. “Breakfast, then. Fortification is important on days involving courage.”

  He lifted the dome.

  A tall stack of buttermilk pancakes steamed invitingly, golden and perfect. On top sat a sunny-side egg, its yolk glossy and rich, butter already melting into its edges.

  “Texas One-Eyed,” Charles announced. “A classic.”

  Beside the plate sat a tiny crystalline bottle, facets catching the light like trapped sunrise.

  “Essence of Maple,” he added, voice dropping conspiratorially. “From the Summer Court. Acquired through a trade arrangement involving three riddles, a favor owed, and—briefly—a deeply offended dryad.”

  Olivia stared.

  Then laughed softly, breathless. “That’s… a lot.”

  “Mm,” Charles agreed, seating himself across from her. “But today calls for it.”

  Miss LaDonna sipped her tea. “You have something on your mind.”

  Olivia cut into the pancakes, syrup cascading in slow, perfect ribbons. One bite in and she had to pause, eyes closing briefly as warmth settled deep in her chest.

  Okay. Yes. Fortification achieved.

  She looked up, tail shifting slightly behind her chair.

  “So,” she began carefully, “I wanted to ask you something. A favor.”

  Charles set his fork aside, attentive. “Go on.”

  “The front desk,” Olivia said. “The logs. Schedules. Visitor records. Intake forms. All of it.”

  She gestured vaguely, encompassing decades.

  “They’re beautiful. And important. But they’re fragile. Slow. Hard to search. I think—” Her ears tilted back just a touch. “I think we could protect them better if we brought them into the digital age. Carefully. Respectfully. Originals preserved. Nothing destroyed. Just… backed up. Searchable.”

  “So nothing gets lost,” Miss LaDonna said softly.

  Olivia nodded. “Exactly.”

  Charles leaned back, fingers steepled, studying her in silence. His gaze drifted once more to her bare feet, resting comfortably against the floor.

  “…You know,” he said thoughtfully, “most people fight the building. Shoes on, walls between themselves and the ground. It’s rather nice to see someone listening instead.”

  Olivia blinked. “Listening?”

  He smiled, warm and approving. “Yes. Quite.”

  Then his attention returned fully to her proposal.

  “Digitization,” he mused. “Indexing. Redundancy. Safeguards.”

  “Yes,” Olivia said quickly. “And clear rules. About what must never be altered.”

  Charles nodded once. “Progress, when done properly, is preservation.”

  Miss LaDonna inclined her head. “The records have waited long enough.”

  Charles stood, retrieving his own syrup. “Very well. You may have your project.”

  Relief flooded Olivia so fast her tail thumped once against the chair.

  “But,” he added gently, raising a finger, “we will do it correctly. With care. And with the understanding that some things are not merely data.”

  “Of course,” she said immediately.

  He smiled. “Then eat your breakfast, my dear. You’ve a great deal of work ahead of you.”

  Olivia looked down at her plate, syrup glinting like captured sunlight, toes curling happily against the living floor.

  She’d known this morning mattered.

  She just hadn’t expected it to feel like this.

  She hadn’t expected it to go so easily.

  In fact—somewhere between the first bite of pancake and the warmth settling into her chest—Olivia realized she’d been braced for a fight. A spectacular one. She’d half-expected Charles to clutch his ledgers to his chest, declare the sanctity of paper, rant about ink and marginalia and the spiritual importance of coffee stains that had absolutely never been coffee.

  The thought slipped out of her mouth before she could stop it.

  “…Honestly,” she said, fork hovering midair, “I thought you were going to kick and fuss and fight me tooth and nail over this. I figured you’d barricade yourself in your office with the ledgers and a dramatic speech.”

  Silence.

  For half a heartbeat.

  Then Miss LaDonna let out a soft, knowing chuckle, the kind that carried years of shared history in it.

  Charles froze.

  Very deliberately.

  He drew himself up, chin lifting, shoulders squaring as if wounded to his very core. “I will have you know,” he said stiffly, “that I am a paragon of reason and flexibility.”

  His expression held for exactly two seconds.

  Then his mouth twitched.

  Then his eyes crinkled.

  Then he broke, laughter bubbling out of him, warm and genuine. “Oh, I absolutely would have done that a century ago,” he admitted cheerfully. “Possibly with props.”

  Miss LaDonna laughed openly now, lifting her teacup in quiet victory.

  Olivia stared at them both—and then realized what she had said, how easily it had slipped out, and what it implied.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Her face went scarlet.

  “Oh my god,” she said, covering her mouth with one hand as she started to giggle despite herself. “I—I didn’t mean—well, I did, but—oh no—”

  Charles waved a hand airily as he rose and returned to the table with his own plate. “My dear, if one cannot be gently mocked by one’s own staff, what is the point of immortality?”

  He sat, lifting the silver dome from his plate.

  Beignets. Light, airy, piled high. They were dusted with powdered sugar—and something else, faintly luminous, sparkling with its own inner light like crushed stars.

  “Vanilla,” he said happily. “From a place that no longer exists.”

  Olivia watched him take a bite, then looked back up, still pink-cheeked. “So… you’re really okay with this?”

  Charles chewed thoughtfully, then swallowed. “Olivia,” he said, “you are doing exactly the job you were hired to do.”

  She blinked. “I am?”

  “Of course,” he continued, gesturing lightly with his fork. “You are the Receptionist. The keeper of the threshold. The steward of records, schedules, visitors, names, notes, scraps of paper that somehow become important five years later.”

  Miss LaDonna nodded. “You keep what comes in. You make sense of it. You ensure nothing is lost.”

  Charles smiled at Olivia, something quietly proud in his eyes. “If that means computers, then by all means—computers in every room. Filing systems. Backups. Cross-references. That is not rebellion, my dear. That is competence.”

  Olivia felt something warm and strange bloom in her chest.

  “It’s right there in the title,” he added lightly. “Receptionist. The one most open to reception. Of the Signal… and of any other signals we may wander across.”

  He took another bite of beignet, then paused, as if considering something.

  “…You know,” he said, “you might wish to discuss this project with Bernard.”

  Olivia’s ears perked. “Bernard?”

  “He is, among other things,” Charles said dryly, “a creature who consumes archives for sustenance and remembers nearly everything he has ever ingested. He may have opinions. Or insights. Or warnings. Possibly all three.”

  Miss LaDonna smiled into her tea. “He enjoys being consulted.”

  Olivia nodded slowly, excitement beginning to edge out her embarrassment. “Yeah. Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense.”

  She glanced down at her pancakes, then back up at Charles, bare feet warm against the floor, the station humming softly beneath her.

  She’d come in expecting a battle.

  Instead, she’d been handed responsibility.

  And somehow… that felt even bigger.

  Finishing the last of her breakfast, Olivia didn’t linger.

  The excitement had settled into her bones now—bright, purposeful. She rinsed her plate, set it neatly aside, and headed for the stairs. At the front desk, she paused just long enough to grab a notepad and pen from the supply drawer.

  Her laptop stayed where it was.

  She’d made that decision deliberately. The laptop was hers. Personal. A boundary drawn early and clearly. Work would not spill into her living space, not yet, not ever if she could help it. Balance mattered here—she could feel that instinctively—and paper was grounding in a way screens weren’t.

  She tucked the notepad under her arm and started down the hallway toward the Archive.

  She didn’t get far.

  A sharp crack echoed through the corridor, followed by a burst of sparks. Olivia came to a dead stop.

  An access panel in the wall stood open, its interior exposed in a mess of wires and old metal. Three goblins clustered around it, working with focused intensity. One hammered at something stubborn with alarming enthusiasm, sparks flying with each blow. Another jammed a tool into the panel, twisting and adjusting with practiced speed. The third stood slightly back, holding a wire steady while chewing thoughtfully on a cookie.

  They worked without speaking, movements overlapping cleanly, like parts of the same machine.

  Olivia watched for a moment, uncertain whether she should interrupt.

  Then the one with the cigar noticed her.

  He froze mid-motion, cigar clenched between his teeth, smoke curling around his face. His eyes flicked over her—dress, headband ears, bare feet.

  A grin split his face.

  “Well if it isn’t the showgirl,” he called out, waggling his bushy eyebrows around the cigar. “Come to give us another show?”

  The other two stopped immediately.

  The quiet one paused mid-chew, cookie halfway to his mouth.

  The third—so laden with tool belts and pouches he looked like a walking toolbox—turned slowly, metal clinking softly as he stared.

  Heat crept up Olivia’s neck.

  The instinct to retreat tugged at her—but she stopped herself.

  She took a breath.

  Then another.

  And stepped forward.

  “No,” she said calmly. “I came to apologize.”

  That wasn’t the response they were expecting.

  She went on, before anyone could cut her off. “I was in the wrong on Saturday. I shouldn’t have been sneaking around or opening doors without knocking. I didn’t mean to interrupt your work.”

  She hesitated just long enough to feel the weight of the moment, then added, “My name’s Olivia. I’m the new receptionist for the station.”

  Silence.

  Real, startled silence.

  The goblins exchanged looks.

  The cigar goblin slowly removed the cigar from his mouth. “You’re… apologizin’?”

  “Yes,” Olivia said simply.

  The quiet one blinked.

  The walking toolbox shifted his weight, belts jingling.

  “Well,” the cigar goblin said at last, scratching his chin, “I’ll be damned.”

  He straightened and gave a short nod. “Then we owe you one too. Sorry for… y’know. Bein’ goblins about it.”

  The others nodded.

  “Name’s Greb,” he added. “Foreman pro tem.” He jerked a thumb toward the heavily burdened goblin. “That’s Clockett.”

  Clockett lifted a hand in greeting and nearly dropped a wrench.

  “And this here,” Greb said, nodding toward the quiet one, “is Grint.”

  Grint solemnly held out his cookie toward Olivia. It was visibly damp from being chewed on.

  Olivia smiled warmly. “That’s very kind of you, but I’m alright, thank you.”

  Grint accepted this without offense and took another bite.

  They talked briefly—about the access panel (“old wiring,” Greb explained, “gets cranky when the weather shifts”), about how long they’d been working on the floor, about how the building liked to test people.

  Then Olivia glanced down the hall.

  “Well,” she said, tucking the notepad back under her arm, “I should let you get back to it. I’ve got someone to consult.”

  Greb nodded. “Archive?”

  “Yes.”

  Clockett grinned. “Mind the vents.”

  Grint waved, cookie crumbs dusting his fingers.

  Olivia smiled back and continued on her way, footsteps soft against the floor.

  She hadn’t just avoided a problem.

  She’d set a tone.

  And deep in the Archive, something vast and ancient waited to be asked questions.

  The consultation with Bernard went… astonishingly well.

  Olivia had expected helpful. She had not expected encyclopedic.

  Bernard, it turned out, had very strong opinions about indexing.

  Not preferences—opinions.

  What followed was less a meeting and more an immersion. Bernard spoke through the vents at first, then the intercom, and finally from everywhere at once, his voice layering over itself as concepts branched and subdivided. Olivia filled page after page of her notepad, handwriting tightening as she struggled to keep up.

  Some records, Bernard explained, did not want to be stored chronologically. Others refused alphabetization outright. Certain items indexed themselves retroactively. A few could only be retrieved if cross-referenced against emotional context rather than names or dates. Mundane office software would choke on such things.

  “This is not a failure,” Bernard said calmly. “It is a design limitation.”

  They discussed hybrid systems. Physical originals preserved exactly where they were. Digital mirrors—plural—each designed for different kinds of access. Redundant storage that existed in more than one state at once. Indexing tags that could flex depending on who was asking the question.

  Hardware, too. Dedicated machines. Isolated systems. Nothing cloud-based. Local servers with… personality tolerance.

  Internet access would be necessary, Bernard agreed, but carefully gated. Ethernet cabling throughout the station would be ideal.

  “The maintenance crew will enjoy this,” Bernard added. “It is a challenge worthy of them.”

  Olivia smiled at that, scribbling CABLING – FULL RUN and underlining it twice.

  By the time Bernard finally wound down—apparently satisfied she had grasped the shape of the problem rather than merely its edges—Olivia’s notepad was full. Completely full. Margins, too.

  At 8:30 on the dot, she tucked the pen behind her ear, thanked Bernard sincerely, and made her way back upstairs.

  She felt… taller somehow. Not physically, but internally. Like someone who had been handed responsibility and found it fit.

  She reached the front desk just as the mail cart arrived.

  Right on schedule.

  It rolled in with its usual quiet determination, stacked with packages, padded envelopes, and letters of all shapes and ages. Olivia smiled and greeted it with a light pat on the side.

  “Morning,” she murmured.

  She unloaded the cargo efficiently, sorting it into neat stacks. When she was done, she reached into the candy bowl on the desk and selected a peppermint—unwrapped it carefully, and placed it into the little tray on the cart.

  The cart emitted a pleased little squeak.

  “Good job,” Olivia said warmly.

  The cart pivoted, wheels turning with purpose, and trundled back down the hall toward the mail room, clearly satisfied with the exchange.

  Olivia gathered her notepad, now heavy with plans and possibilities, and set it squarely on the desk.

  She was ready to hand it to Charles.

  Ready to begin.

  Minutes later, Charles appeared at the front desk, coat immaculate as ever, a faint breeze of somewhere-else trailing in with him. He paused as he always did, surveying the neat stacks of letters and parcels with quiet approval before gathering them into his arms.

  “Ah,” he said pleasantly. “The post has been generous today.”

  Olivia smiled—and then, before her nerves could catch up with her courage, she slid her notepad across the desk toward him.

  “I, um,” she said, then steadied herself. “I spoke with Bernard.”

  Charles’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. “Did you now?”

  “Yes. About the records. And… everything else.” She gestured vaguely. “I wrote it all down. What we’d need. Hardware, software, infrastructure. Bernard had some additional suggestions too.”

  Charles shifted the mail under one arm and picked up the notebook with the other. He flipped it open.

  Then—almost immediately—closed it again.

  “Approved.”

  Olivia blinked. “…Approved?”

  “Entirely,” Charles said cheerfully, tucking the notebook into his coat as if it weighed nothing at all. “Comprehensively. With enthusiasm.”

  She stared at him, momentarily at a loss for words. “You didn’t even—”

  “Oh, I glanced,” he assured her. “That was quite enough.” He smiled, eyes warm. “If Bernard signed off on it and you took the time to think it through this thoroughly, then I trust the result.”

  He adjusted the mail in his arms. “I’ll make a few calls. Order the equipment. Schedule the installation. The maintenance crew will be delighted, I’m sure. Ethernet cabling through a building that actively resists Euclidean assumptions? That’s a proper challenge.”

  Olivia felt something lift in her chest so suddenly she had to grip the edge of the desk.

  “Right away?” she asked.

  “Of course,” Charles said lightly. “No sense waiting when momentum presents itself.”

  And just like that, he turned and headed toward his office, already murmuring to himself about vendors, lead times, and whether certain components might need to be… encouraged to arrive sooner.

  Olivia stood there for a moment after he was gone, heart racing, a grin spreading across her face that she couldn’t suppress even if she tried.

  This—this—was something she hadn’t known she was missing.

  Not just the family she’d stumbled into. Not just the apartment that felt like it had been waiting for her. But this feeling: being trusted, being useful, being listened to. Having an idea and watching it become real without being dismissed or minimized or buried under doubt.

  She let out a soft, disbelieving laugh to herself.

  For the first time in her life, she didn’t just have a job.

  She had job satisfaction.

  And it felt incredible.