Indexing by Seanan McGuire Page A

ring. He dug it out of his pocket, answering as we
walked. “Hello?”
    “Did
I do all right?” asked Demi, shooting me an anxious glance.
    I
nodded. “For your first time in the field, you did incredibly. Most of the
mistakes were mine. We’ll review them when we get back to the office and finish
dealing with our Goldilocks.”
    “I’m
surprised you still make mistakes,” she said. Her tone was hesitant, like she
expected a reprimand for even saying something.
    “The
only people who don’t make mistakes are the dead ones,” I said, and paused,
frowning. “Where’s Jeff?” We both stopped walking and turned to look behind us.
He was standing in the middle of the walkway, the phone still pressed against
his ear. All the blood had drained from his face, until he was almost as pale
as I was. It wasn’t a good look for him.
    “Jeff?”
I said.
    He
raised a finger, signaling for me to be quiet. I stopped talking. Demi,
standing beside me with a puzzled expression on her face, did the same. Seconds
ticked by, until finally Jeff said, “Yes, I see. Yes, we’re on our way.” He
lowered his phone and started power-walking toward the van.
    “Jeff?”
    He
didn’t stop. As he blew past us, he called, “There’s trouble at the office! We
have to move!”
    “What
kind of trouble?” I demanded, turning around and running after him with Demi at
my heels like a large, confused puppy in sensible shoes.
    “Bears!”
    Well.
That explained a few things, even as it created a whole new category of
problems. “I’ll drive,” I said.
#
    By
putting on the siren and breaking every traffic law I came into contact with, I
estimated that we would arrive at headquarters in approximately thirty minutes.
As I drove, Jeff sat in the back of the van with the Index open on his lap and
shouted his findings toward the front: “I have a few variations recorded where
Goldilocks didn’t initially break into the home of the three bears—they came in her home and took it over. Then, when
she tried to chase them out, the normal ‘larcenous little girl’ narrative
started to unfold. We’re probably looking at one of these home-invasion
scenarios.”
    “But
she doesn’t live where we work!” protested Demi.
    “That’s
irrelevant,” I said, taking a sharp turn without slowing down. It felt like one
of the van’s wheels lifted off the ground. That probably meant that I should
take my foot off the gas, at least a little. I didn’t. “The narrative doesn’t
give a crap about whether it makes sense. The narrative just wants to happen . The memetic incursion that’s starting
around Jennifer Lockwood calls for bears. Apparently, since our office is now
where Jennifer is located, that makes it her home, and that’s good enough to
qualify for bears.”
    “But
that doesn’t even make any sense !”
    In
the rearview mirror, I saw Jeff lean over the seat to put a hand on her
shoulder. “It does make sense, I promise you, but it’s hard to understand at
first. You’ll get there. What matters right now is that Henry is going to kill
us all trying to get back to the office before those bears eat Andy and
Jennifer and everyone else in the building.”
    “What
about Sloane?” asked Demi, almost reluctantly.
    I
snorted. “Do you really think a bear can take her out? They should be worried about being locked in with her.
They’re not used to a story that comes with an actual villain.” There was a
stop sign up ahead. I tore through it without slowing down, leaving blaring
horns in our wake. “Jeff, do you have your gun?”
    “Yes,
but—”
    “Good.
Find some bear-fighting music for Demi, something that calms them down without
distracting the rest of us. We’ll be in the parking lot in five minutes.”
    “Bear-fighting
music—on it,” said Jeff, and disappeared from the mirror as he retreated to
resume his perusal of the Index.
    “I
don’t like this,” said Demi.
    “Welcome
to the club,” I said, and sped up.
#
    From
the