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The corridor was unassumingly bland, red industrial brick and worn wooden doors with paint that had once been beige or off-white but now was a dirty tan where it hadn’t been scuffed and scratched down to bare wood. Each one was fitted with a window frame that sported a removable panel of slats instead of glass, and hand-lettered signs were mounted to the side of each door. All but two were blank, and those two bore only a geographic location.
The door marked Rio de Janeiro, Brazil opened.
Two women stepped through, one in her mid-thirties and clearly multiracial, dressed in casual, everyday clothes, her long hair pulled back in a loose braid, a duffle bag slung over one shoulder. The other looked to be a white girl of a youthful twenty-five, with auburn hair that just brushed her shoulders and a decidedly punk-goth flavor to her outfit.
“Down this way,” said the younger woman as she closed the door, gesturing towards the nearer end of the hallway.
The other woman peered curiously around as she followed, vision blocked by seemingly endless shelves crammed with objects of all shapes and sizes. She had to be beckoned up the twisting iron stairs and onto the balcony that ran along the edge of an office that perched like Baba Yaga’s house above the shelf-filled floor.
“Welcome,” Claudia said smugly, “to Warehouse Thirteen.”
The older woman stared out at the acres and acres of shelves and crossed herself. Twice.
“We used to call it America’s Attic, but we’re starting to open branches all over the world so I’m really pushing for Artifact Roadshow, although Pete makes a pretty good argument for The Land of Endless Wonder and Sometimes Death.” She glanced at her companion. “You doing okay, Carla?”
“It’s…a lot to take in,” Carla replied shakily.
“Yeah, well, I think the Warehouse is actually bigger than the nearest town, so being overwhelmed is just a little understandable, especially for someone as in tune with things as you are.”
“Where will I be…?”
“I’ll take you down there in a few minutes. You’ll like it, it’s very quiet and peaceful.” Claudia paused, then added dryly, “And you’re going to be worshipped like a goddess because we haven’t had anyone that can really cook in a while.”
That made Carla laugh. “You didn’t offer me this position because I can cook.”
“No, but it really doesn’t hurt. Come on inside; Pete and Myka are at the B and B, but Steve and Artie should be here.” She paused. “Yeah, they’re here.”
Carla followed the younger woman into a comfortably cluttered office that doubled as a living space. In one corner, a whipcord-thin man with pale skin and a fuzz of light-brown hair was playing chess against a statuesque woman of indeterminate age, her complexion a glowing bronze, her head crowned with hundreds of tiny braids held back by golden clips. Instead of anything resembling the normal aura every person had, however, hers looked…
…well, the only thing Carla had ever seen that came remotely close was the enormous warehouse just outside the brick walls, but even that wasn’t so…condensed.
“Who,” she said quietly, as if the black-haired woman were a predator she did not want to startle, “is that?”
“Oh, that’s Steve. Hey Jinksy! Come meet Carla. She’s going to take over Leena’s.”
Both chess players looked up. The man smiled and stood.
“Agent Steve Jinks,” he said warmly as he approached, offering his hand. She shook it. “Really looking forward to having you on board.”
“Please don’t be offended,” Carla practically whispered, “but who were you playing chess with?”
Agent Jinks glanced over his shoulder; Claudia was hugging the unnamed woman warmly. “Oh, her? Uh…I’ll let Claudia introduce you. Claud?”
Claudia wasn’t listening. “Where’s your husband hiding?” she teased.
“Very funny.” The voice belonged to a pudgy man, curly hair going gray, who descended the spiral stairs in the corner of the office. “And should you even be saying that in front of her?” He gestured, not to the mysterious woman, but to Carla.
Claudia shrugged. “My Warehouse, my rules. Besides, Artie, it’s not like I can hide it from her. Carla sees auras. I’m pretty sure she’s going to notice that your architectural life partner doesn’t have one.”
“That’s not true.” When everyone turned to look at her, she realized she’d said it aloud. Well, this is what she was hired for, right? “She has an aura, but it’s…confused. Like the pendant you said was an artifact, only multiplied. Like tiny pieces of hundreds of auras.”
Claudia looked expectantly at the older man. “Not a word,” he growled.
“Chill, Artimus Maximus. Anyway, this is Carla, she’s going to be taking over Leena’s now that the Regents are satisfied we’re all mentally stable. And did I mention she cooks?”
He grumbled, but didn’t say anything else as he hurried over to a cluttered workstation and sat, followed by the woman Carla was starting to have some serious suspicions about, who casually draped herself over the back of his chair as if she really were his wife.
Claudia didn’t seem very bothered. “He’ll warm up to you,” she said confidently. “As for her…well…she just needs to get used to you. The longer someone or something has been in the Warehouse, the more fond she’ll be. She doesn’t dislike you, she just doesn’t know you at all yet.”
“You’ll know you’ve been adopted,” Steve said lightly, “when she pats you on the head and coos good artifact at you.”
Carla glanced back and forth between him and Claudia, who had her eyes shut in good-natured embarrassment but wasn’t denying it.
“I’d make an Alice in Wonderland joke, but that hasn’t been something to joke about around here since the time Alice got out of the mirror and nearly killed Artie.”
“You weren’t joking.” It was starting to sink in exactly how strange her life had gotten.
“Endless Wonder and Sometimes Death,” Claudia said with a wry grin. “When phrases like ‘hand-eating cookie jar’ and ‘the painting blew him out a window’ no longer make you wonder if you heard that right, you’ll know you’re settled in.”
“Oh, don’t forget about almost killed by the tattoo,” Steve added. “And fix the fish. That one had me confused for the longest time.”
Despite, or perhaps because of, all the bizarreness, Carla found herself laughing. “You’ll have to tell me all the stories sometime.”
“Yeah, and in the meantime, let’s go introduce you to the rest of the team.” Claudia glanced at Agent Jinks. “I’m driving, she gets shotgun.”
The thin man pouted. “But it’s my car!”
“Too bad. Artie, you sure you don’t want to come?”
“I’ve got work to do,” he snapped, not so much as turning his head.
“Your loss,” the young woman shrugged.
As they drove away from the building, Carla glanced at her new employer. “Are you sure he’s okay?”
“Artie’s been through a lot,” Claudia answered solemnly. “He’s afraid to open up, especially after what happened to Leena, but he needs people more than he’ll admit. If he weren’t okay, the Warehouse would tell me.”
“So that really is…”
“Another long story, but yeah, that was the Warehouse’s avatar Steve was playing chess with.”
“I wasn’t really playing against her,” he protested from the back seat. “We were randomizing the pieces to keep them happy.”
Carla opened her mouth to question that, then remembered how nearly every object inside the enormous building had its own aura. “I’ll believe that,” she said instead.
The younger woman grinned at her. “See? You’re already settling in. You’ll do fine.”