Sifting through a room full of paperwork had been simpler in his head than in practice. He had prior experience after all. Looking into Petro, trying to learn the field of magic engineering, and dealing with the Spirit's document dump all required similar efforts.

  With those items on his resume, one might assume he'd gotten better at it.

  One would be right.

  The problem did not lie with him.

  "Who in the hells filed this?"

  Oh, sure, all the cabinets had pretty labels on them, but that facade crumbled after you started digging through one of their contents.

  "Mostly students," Mia informed. "Sometimes teachers."

  She'd perched herself on a set of cabinets, treating them as a personal throne while the menials toiled in the earth below her. Said menial, Cal, didn't know why she'd stuck around for the past three hours when there were much better places to be. Places that didn't have someone muttering angrily every few seconds.

  And while her presence had forced him to alter tactics, it did make his job easier in some respects.

  "I know standards are all over the place," he voiced from his place on the floor. Surrounding him were several stacks of paperwork, each growing as he rapidly sorted files. "But it's like they didn't even think before filing these."

  It had started well. Cal was now the proud owner of the Beast Husbandry Club's budget, membership roster, and infraction record. The last was disappointingly empty, but the budget included figures for the past three years, so he called that an overall win.

  Things began to go sideways when he started looking for files related to the faculty. For one, he couldn't approach it as directly as he liked. Well, he could, but then Mia might start wondering what he was really doing.

  In what seemed like a stroke of genius at the time, he'd turned a genuinely mislabeled file into an idea. He would use that file as an excuse to access other cabinets, and once inside, 'find' more mistakes that would inevitably lead him to those holding faculty or affinity information.

  Upon employing his strategy, he found it worked a little too well.

  "Would it kill them to keep employment records together?" he asked rhetorically, seeing another out-of-place document. "There's an entire cabinet for them. They didn't have to stuff them in with the personal files, expense reports, tenure records, or who knows where else."

  Someone had clearly gone through the trouble of labeling everything. A multitude of students and teachers had seen this and then elected to trample on that person's work by putting things wherever they damned pleased.

  Forget making up mistakes; he had volumes' worth of them. He ignored the vast majority of them, but he couldn't do the same to those he thought had the slightest chance of being relevant down the line. And so he condemned himself to a life of paper pushing.

  "Usually distracted," Mia offered, paying more attention to her book than him.

  Cal looked around, seeing nothing but cabinets and files. He had trouble fathoming what could be distracting them.

  "How much longer do you think we have before someone comes knocking?" he asked, taking a break from his sorting to lean back on his palms.

  On their arrival, he'd worked with frantic urgency. As the hours passed, he eased up. The pace wasn't sustainable. It was not a matter of physical fatigue, but mental. The more he processed, the more he found himself slipping. Words blurred together, and his ability to recall previous pages shrank.

  If he had been searching for a few keywords, that would have been doable, but his work here was far broader in scope. He had to, dead gods forbid, use his brain.

  "There's a schedule," she said, lackadaisically turning a page. "I didn't check it."

  There was a schedule for filing documents? Why?

  "Is this some sort of teacher's assistant thing?"

  It would explain her familiarity with the place.

  "Perk," she replied mirthfully, surprising Cal with her attitude.

  His pointed look was not completely disregarded, and she shifted on the cabinets. Her legs, formerly hanging off the side, now rested on top, bent in a way to support her book. He noted her back was to him now, making it harder to gauge future reactions.

  Cal turned his attention back to the documents he'd collected thus far. One stuck out, and he dragged it toward him. He'd noticed its oddness before, but couldn't say it was wrong with certainty.

  "Hey Mia," he said, receiving a hum of acknowledgment. "Do you do the budgets for our club?"

  Numbers were numbers, but to truly understand them, he needed a reference.

  "I sign them," she answered, managing to sound almost remorseful.

  Which meant Benny did the work, and then Mia added her name.

  To be fair, the culinary club was pretty much made for the boy. The rest of them were only there to pad out the roster.

  With that unhelpful response, he dusted his pants off and rose to his feet. He glanced around, searching for a suitable comparison. He spotted a good candidate and hopped a few rows over before trying to open the cabinet.

  Like the others he'd attempted, the drawer didn't budge.

  Each of these cabinets had wards on them, and while he could brute force it, there was a cleaner solution sitting behind him.

  "A little help here?" he requested, speaking over his shoulder. "Please?"

  Cal made way as Mia ambled over at her own pace. Stopping in front of him, she kept one hand holding her book while the other reached for the handle. Without any hint of magic on her part, the drawer slid open.

  He presumed she must have a key for them. Something like the cufflinks they used to pay for meals on campus.

  "Thanks," he said as she returned the way she came.

  Thumbing through the files, he pulled the one he wanted. Flipping the coarse folder open, he spread out the pages.

  "There," he mumbled, pointing at a line. "Now let's see…"

  He walked back to where he'd been working. Picking up the page he left on the floor, he compared the forms. Both were budgets, one belonging to the Beast Husbandry Club and the other to a club he'd chosen at random.

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  With two examples, he could make better sense of things.

  "This is weird," he commented uncertainly.

  It was meant for himself, but Mia inclined her head towards him in question. He considered her for a moment before approaching, holding both pages out to her.

  "I thought the jump in this one was large, but the dining club has an even larger increase in expenses."

  One increased by fifty percent, and the other grew fivefold. Her eyes flicked from one page to another, and she gave an almost imperceptible shrug.

  "Purge tax," she said in a way that indicated it was something he was meant to be aware of.

  Eventually, he pieced together what she was referring to. The purge was the reason all the clubs went rabid earlier in the year. They fought over members to bolster the resources allocated to them, and any who failed to reach the minimum threshold were shuttered.

  "War spending?" he asked, receiving a nod. "The dining genre must have a lot of competition then."

  The more clubs that shared a theme, the larger the competition would be. Fortunately, more people liked eating than they did cooking.

  "Trades," Mia responded, pointing at a line item. "Clubs use them to keep costs down."

  Right, Anne mentioned something about that. If the newspaper club traded ad space, then it followed that the Beast Husbandry club would trade beasts. They were doing something similar with his situation.

  Reading down the lines, some entries indicated such arrangements. However, the various names of beasts made it difficult for him to track. As he scanned through them again, another entry caught his eye.

  Hadn't he…

  Cal paced back to the stacks he was sorting. Grabbing the expense reports, he rifled through them.

  Bingo.

  Pulling out the sheet, he compared the associated entries.

  "Do you file these for Wyatt?" he said, waving the expense report for a class that had been partially supplied by Romero's club.

  Mia looked at the file curiously.

  "They don't match," she stated with a definitiveness Cal hadn't expected. "Number of cores traded shouldn't be different."

  She was correct. The number of cores claimed to be provided by Romero's club was more than the class reported as received. Her confidence caught him by surprise, especially since he was no longer holding up the club's budget.

  Had she by chance memorized that single line in the brief span of time he showed it to her? Or had she committed the entire page to memory?

  "Check the others," she ordered somewhat sternly.

  That had been his plan, but her involvement gave him pause. This was edging closer to things he'd rather keep away from her. Then again, the ship had sailed on this particular issue, so he supposed the damage was already done.

  "If you say so," he said, pretending he was going along with her idea and not his own.

  Inspecting the pile of expense reports he'd collected, Cal realized his luck had run out. None of them had done any trades with the club. That said, he did have the names of clubs and classes they should have traded with.

  His head rotated slowly, examining the rest of the room.

  "This is going to suck."

  Cal allowed himself the single complaint and then began the process of towing Mia around the room. One after another, they opened up cabinets, pilfered their contents, and then moved to the next.

  After making the rounds, they convened where they started. Among the small towers of paper, both sat on the ground surrounded by spread-out budgets and reports.

  "Not a mistake," Mia added eagerly.

  A pattern had emerged. The club would report the transfer of cores to other groups, but the number the recipients recorded was consistently off. While it had been happening for at least three years, the amount misplaced had historically been low—a handful at most. That was until this year, when the number jumped, as if someone had been testing the waters before.

  "Most of their cores come from off campus," Cal said, pointing to the relevant import document. "That number matches the total of their reserves, trades, and consumption. If the trade number is the only one wrong, then it could be a few of them skimming off the top to pad their pockets."

  It was a reasonable assumption, and he couldn't decide whether he wanted her to believe it. The actual explanation he reached was that the missing cores were not beast cores, but demon ones being smuggled in.

  "Selling cores? Maybe. Selling corpses? Harder."

  Corpses?

  Her finger drifted toward a page, and it didn't take him long to pick out what she was talking about.

  Cal had been focused on the core numbers and not on the remains of beasts. Even so, he might not have caught it without her guidance. The core entries were relatively simple to read, but the remains of beasts could be categorized in many different ways.

  Feed, raw materials, pelts, and waste—those were just a few of the possibilities.

  That same quality made them commodities, but they couldn't exactly be sold out of a satchel.

  "You're pretty good at this," he said, unsure if it should be something he complimented. "It's not a skill I would have expected from you."

  She did show him all those stats about his score and placements. Were numbers her thing?

  "I read things," she supplied cryptically.

  Cal's fingers drummed along the ground, observing the other piles. He'd come up empty affinity-wise but held out hope for dirt on the faculty.

  "Do these go through an approval process?"

  Mia's head rocked back and forth, and her brow furrowed slightly.

  "Maybe?" she said, her voice filled with doubt.

  Wonderful insight.

  "Well," he continued leadingly, "has anyone ever questioned what you submitted?"

  Her face turned blank, and she stared at him hard, as if that were answer enough. Cal quirked an eyebrow, waiting for an actual response.

  None came.

  "Alright, then who could I ask?"

  He could have a more animated conversation partner by talking to one of the walls. Had he exceeded his allotment of Mia words today? He shifted to face her fully.

  "Come on, Mia," he implored. "Work with me here."

  The girl shut her eyes, brow creasing. He watched as her face twisted in odd ways before an eye peeked open.

  "Headmaster?"

  He returned her previously blank expression, and the eye shut again. A few more faces were made before the other eye opened.

  "Deputy Headmistress?"

  That made two strikes, and Cal waited to see whether the third proposal would be the charm. It didn't take long before a sheepish expression overtook her.

  "Wyatt?"

  Some people saved the best for last. Mia was not some people.

  If she was a dead end, then he could go back to digging through cabinets. One of them had to contain something useful. His head turned lazily, examining the rest. It was doable, but not in one sitting. Should he just drop it and focus on what he had? That might be more productive, but he really didn't want to miss out on anything, even if that meant turning his brain into a slushie.

  The decision was taken from him as a muffled thud entered his ear. More followed, some louder than others. He couldn't peg exactly what it was, but something was definitely on its way here. His eyes darted to the door before returning to the mess he made. He wouldn't be able to clean it up in time.

  "Time to make ourselves scarce," he said, rising to his feet. He offered a hand to Mia, preparing to escape with her. "Mia?"

  The girl had pulled her knees to her chest, as if to rise as well, but then froze. She remained on the floor, her face turning an alarming shade of red.

  Cal did not know what was wrong with her, and neither did he have time to figure it out. Unceremoniously, he scooped her up, one arm around her back and the other under her knees. His timing was impeccable because as soon as he accomplished that, the door burst open.

  Magic coursed through his limbs, ready to propel him past whoever was coming. All they'd be able to report was a blur being seen. Admittedly not the stealthiest of approaches, but it would work in a pinch.

  Or that had been the plan before he noticed the intruding pair stuck in the doorway. It wasn't a too?big?to?fit stuck; it was a too?preoccupied?to?know?how?to?use?a?door stuck.

  Their uniforms marked them both as students, and by how aggressively they pawed at each other, they looked close to rectifying that. In their hands, one carried a metal ring with medallions attached, resembling a key chain, while the other had a pair of files. It was clear to Cal that their focus was not on ensuring the integrity of the Academy's record system.

  A pair of eyes caught his, and he mentally swore when he saw them go wide. Heated whispers were exchanged as the pair partially untangled themselves and turned to face them, the boy still holding the girl from behind.

  Neither looked particularly pleased at their presence.

  "Ugh," the girl scoffed, sneering at them. "Doesn't anyone respect the schedul—" She cut her tirade short, narrowing her eyes at them. "Hold on. Aren't you… and she's…she's… I recognize her from somewhere…"

  The boy had a similar reaction, leaning down to whisper in his partner's ear. A very unsettling smile built on the stranger's face, and Cal spotted one of them reaching for their pocket.

  "Take a picture, and I'll break your face," Cal promised, seeing the opportunity for stealth slip through his fingers. "And use the library like everyone else."

  If there was ever a reason to start huffing demon cores, Cal could almost understand if it was in reaction to having to deal with this bullshit every day.

  A fist hit his chest. It only had marginally more force than a tap, and he looked down at the culprit. Mia was pouting at him, likely because he just told those two to use the library for non-reading purposes. Her ire was soon redirected to the pair, and she regarded them with naked contempt.

  "Scram."

  The pair jolted, scrambling out of the room posthaste. He could hear their laughter echo through the hallway.

  Left alone, there was really only one thing he could say.

  "Mia," he said in a dead voice. "This is a hookup spot, isn't it?"

  She raised her book to her face, hiding behind it the best she could. He sighed, trying his best not to become frustrated at her.

  "And is there a reason you didn't hide us with your hair clip?"

  Cal could feel her squirm under his scrutiny and only now caught the title of the book she was reading. It was on healthy family dynamics.

  He might need to borrow that later.

  "Forgot."

  Of course she did.