Page 9 of Marked by the Demigod

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* * *

And she's been having dreams.

She's not a person who sleeps well enough usually to dream . If she dreams at all it's glimpses of emotion; quickly forgotten and quickly fading. It feels too raw to talk about, but it adds to the feeling of off-ness, the deep pit in her stomach that won't stop falling.

Not that the dreams are bad, per say, but vivid. So vivid she wakes up with the sheets twisted around her legs and her core wet and aching.

Of course they were all about that hook-up. Jake.

They aren’t a rehashing of that night in the hotel - every night it’s a new sex dream. Every night it’s like he comes to her, in a new place and a new bed and a new room, and they fuck. Just...fuck.

She hasn't felt this well rested in years.

A small part of her hates that all it takes is a few nice wet dreams for her to feel better about her sleep schedule.

* * *

That Friday,Aimes has to drive all the way out to the Pasadena branch. Which is lovely, don’t get her wrong, but it’s a bit of a drive on a Friday afternoon. Everyone is fleeing Los Angeles, and all the freeways converge into one giant clusterfuck.

So by the time she pulls up to the old building, with its tall spires and way too small parking lot, she wishes she could just live closer.

And despite all its grandeur, even they have library technical issues with their software. Evan has been there all week since he’s gotten back from his trip, and he can’t make heads or tails of it, so they had to call in Aimes.

Not that she minds, a certain amount of job security is always nice.

She pushes open the hefty door to the library, and a blast of air condition and old book smell hits her, and it’s just the best. She waves at the security guard then climbs the four sets of stairs to the offices on the final floor.

Evan and the head librarian, Dave, hunch over one of the computers, frowns on their faces. Dave peers at the computer, the picture of a librarian. Hair gone gray, he’s thin and his face seems stretched out, like too little skin pulled over too long of bones.

Evan is a nice man, middle-aged, and in the least intimidating bracket of humanity.

Dave lifts a hand in greeting to her, not breaking eye contact with the computer. “It won’t input the correct Dewey system,” he says in lieu of hello.

Evan grimaces an apology to her for that.

“I thought your library isn’t even on Dewey anymore?” Aimes grabs a folding chair and drags it over.

“It’s not, but Pasadena High School is doing a project on it now and your program’s supposed to work in it --” He looks up, does a double take, and blinks.

By now it has been a week of random strangers doing the double take, so Aimes gives him a thin-lipped smile. “Did anyone go into the code?”

There’s a suspicious lack of answer, so Aimes twists and looks at Evan. “Did you check the base code?”

He shakes his head.

“So you were just fooling around in settings.”

“We’ve done all the toggle settings, so they should be working fine.”

“But if someone deleted that section of code to actually make it work, the toggle would still be there, just not work.” She risks a glance at Dave. He’s staring at her, wide eyed, as if seeing her for the first time.

Fuck that.

“This’ll take me about an hour, that okay for you Dave?” She turns back to the computer.

No answer.

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