Jpov

Having merpeople in the library was always a bit chaotic, but today it seemed to be especially bad. Or maybe I was just far more tired than I'd remembered being in a while.

I watched as they splashed between the channels hopping from aisle to aisle, avoiding the eye of a particularly determined merwoman who seemed to be continually popping up in the same area as me no matter where I went to try and get rid of her.

Gods, I was too exhausted for this.

I considered trying to go to sleep again, certain Harper and Lucy could handle the Atlantian visitors on their own, but quickly dismissed the idea.

I'd only managed to get about an hour of sleep earlier before a nightmare had set in, and I found myself once again waking up shaking and sweating. It wasn't an experience I was eager to repeat.

Luckily, today's group didn't stay too long and after only a few hours, the library was back to it's usual state, stars scattered across the ceiling, whatever time zone we were brushing up against in the mortal realm clearly in the dead of night.

"Thank Olympus that is over." Harper said falling into her chair behind her desk and putting her head in her hands.

She, Lucy, and I were the only ones left in the library apart from Libby, who Harper had yet to send back to, well, I wasn't exactly sure where she'd be going.

We'd gathered around her desk as the lights along the aisles dimmed, and the last of the Atlantians had been sent through the doors.

I had to admit, it was strange having a visitor here after hours and I was a little uncomfortable with it. Even if Libby wasn't exactly a stranger and was one of Ashton's sisters.

Lucy didn't seem to mind though. She was already making plans to help Libby with reference titles and likely sections of the library to look through, apparently having decided that she and Libby were now the best of friends. Something Libby didn't seem to have an issue with.

"That's going to be a problem." Harper muttered quietly enough that the chatting and laughing pair didn't hear.

"You think?" I asked uncertainly.

"Libby's planning to spend the summer here at the very least." Harper said. "How long do you think it will take her to notice that Lucy never leaves?"

I hesitated.

I hadn't really thought this far ahead, but of course Harper had.

"What do you think we should do?" I asked and she shrugged.

"That's up to you, isn't it?" she asked raising an eyebrow before turning to Lucy. "Is there anything else on the agenda today Luce?"

"No." she said looking up from her conversation with Libby and shaking her head. "For once I think we actually accomplished our itinerary."

"We just have an entire upper floor that needs to be reorganized." I said and Harper winced.

"Don't remind me."

"I can help with that." Libby piped up to everyone's surprise and we all looked at her.

She looked a little awkward, and scratched the back of her head as she continued, clearly uncomfortable having the spotlight.

"I can't help but feel like what happened was partly my fault."

"It's nice of you to offer," said Harper sounding, if possible, even more uncomfortable than Libby. "But, no offense Libby, you're not exactly qualified to do that."

"Oh." she said looking a little hurt. "Ok yeah, sorry I-"

"What Harper means," I said cutting her apology short. "Is that on the upper levels, you might run into something dangerous if you don't know what you're looking at or how it needs to be handled. Not that you couldn't figure it out."

"Even I'm not allowed to work up there most the time." Lucy said giving her a sympathetic smile. "But if you really want to stick around and help, you can help me go through the first level returns."

"Uh, sure," Libby said clearly a little surprised by the offer, but not unwelcome to it. "Is there a lot?"

But Harper shook her head.

"Hold on." she objected, obviously having completed the mental math I'd been about to start. "Libby has to go home eventually. How long has she been here?"

"I dunno," Lucy shrugged and I felt my heart sink as she added. "Two? Three hours?"

It had been a lot more than that…

Libby shot her a puzzled look, clearly confused with Lucy's complete lack of awareness of time in the world outside the library.

"What time is it, in your timezone?" I said directing the question at Libby before she asked Lucy whatever she was about to.

"I dunno." Libby said pulling out her phone only to have a look of complete shock cross her features.

"It's nearly four AM." She said glancing up at us.

It was clear she'd expected us to be just as surprised, but she didn't get a response.

I had a feeling we'd become so accustom to organizing visitors from so many different parts of the world and so many dominions, I would never achieve something even remotely close to a normal sleep schedule ever again.

"Great." Lucy said brightly. "She can stay here for the night."

"No." Harper and I said in unison and I was surprised that for once, my tone was just as adamant as hers.

I wasn't a fan of anyone staying overnight in the library, even if it was just for research, mostly because we had to keep an eye on them. But it wasn't irritation or exhaustion that had me protesting to this suggestion. It took me a moment to realize the gnawing feeling in my stomach was concern.

Luckily, it was Harper who explained.

"You need to keep track of your time when you're in the Library." She said looking at Libby. "It can do weird stuff to your sense of time, being away from the outside world."

At this, I felt a surge of anxiety go through me when I saw Libby glance very briefly at Lucy. Lucy, of course, didn't notice.

"You should go home." Harper said firmly, drawing Libby's attention back to herself. "Reset your internal clock for when you're back next week."

"Alright." She said much to my relief. "Yeah, that's probably a good idea."

I couldn't help but notice Lucy looked pretty disappointed her new friend was leaving, but couldn't bring myself to regret it. Not when personally, I thought Harper had made the right call.

"I'll send you back." Harper said gesturing for Libby to follow her towards the doors of the main hall and, after just a slight pause, Libby followed.

I watched them go feeling mostly relieved and oddly... disappointed.

I didn't realize how long I'd been staring until Lucy turned to me and said.

"I like her."

I spared her a glance before leaning against Harper's desk, returning my gaze to the door, not entirely sure as to why.

"Yeah she's sweet." I said trying not to remember how obviously upset with me she'd been pretty much all day.

Something about my tone however, must have caught Lucy's attention because she narrowed her eyes at me and said.

"Oh my god."

"What?"

"You think she's cute."

"What?" I asked completely thrown by this and she was grinning now.

"You do." She accused excitedly.

"Luce…" I started, somehow even more exhausted than I'd felt just a few minutes ago, but she didn't let up.

"Oh my god." She said with a laugh. "You might be good at hiding it but you totally do. I haven't seen you look at someone like that since we ran into that actress when we ended up in Hollywood. What was her name again? On the sci-fi show you used to watch. With the black body suit and all the weapons?"

I simply looked at her, arms crossed over my chest waiting for her to get it all out as she continued to smirk.

"Deny it all you want," she said smugly.

"I haven't said anything."

"Because you know it's true." She said in a sing song voice.

"Make up whatever narrative you want in your head." I said shaking mine and getting to my feet. "I want no part of it. I'm going to bed."

"Riiiight." She said dragging out the word, clearly still enjoying herself and I resisted the temptation to roll my eyes, knowing there was no point arguing with Lucy.

She had a tendency to get ahead of herself when it came to things like this.

The truth was that yes, Libby was very pretty. She always had been. Long blonde hair, sky blue eyes and a smile so bright, it would have put her father to shame, but despite all that, it wasn't how she looked that was making me uncomfortable. It was her presence itself. Someone from my previous life interfering in my current one at the library, apart from Harper and Lucy. Seeing Ashton all the time was bad enough. Honestly, I wasn't exactly looking forward to dealing with his sister. Especially when it was pretty clear she was determined not to like me.

It was probably this uncertainty that Lucy was picking up on.

She wasn't the only one. I'd always had a pretty good poker face, but having spent so much time around the them, I was starting to think there wasn't anything I could hide from the girls, as the second Harper returned from the doors and into the main hall, she gave me a quizzical look.

"What's up with you?"

"He's in love." Lucy said with an overly dramatic sigh and Harper blinked, apparently caught a little off guard by this statement. Clearly, whatever she'd expected in response to her question, it hadn't been that.

"Uh, ok." She said sounding uncertain and Lucy looked incensed.

"God you guys are no fun." she pouted, looking between Harper and I incredulously before gesturing towards Harper. "Aren't you going to ask me what I mean?"

Harper didn't budge however.

"No." she answered resolutely. "That seems like it's his business."

"What good is it being friends with your brother's best friend if you don't get to interfere with his personal life!" Lucy said throwing her hands up in the air making her way towards the living quarters of the library, no doubt to shut herself up in her room for a bit. "Honestly, having crazy powers is wasted on you two, all you want to do is work and go to class and all this boring stuff. It's ridiculous."

I grinned as she shook her head, continuing to rant as she badged out of the main hall and Harper let out a sigh.

"This is going to be a long summer, isn't it?" she asked looking at me.

"Could be fun." I said with a shrug but I could tell by her expression that once again, she hadn't been fooled.

"Look." I said. "I cannot possibly be worse than that time that Artemis and Hecate got into it on the third floor, and we managed to get that sorted out."

"True." She said a little wearily, but she'd smiled at the memory. "Gods, when I used to think about this place. I never imagined how much work maintaining it would be, let alone how often we'd have to play baby sitter to the literal Gods."

"Is that what demigods have always done?" I asked grinning a little and she laughed.

"Good point."

Silence fell between us for a moment, until I eventually spoke.

"What are we going to do with so many pearls?" I asked and she shook her head.

"I have no idea." She said her eyes going a bit wider behind her glasses. "Know anyone in the market for a giant sack full of pearls?"

"No." I said amused. "But I'll keep an eye open."

"Maybe we can take a weekend and hit up some jewelry stores or something. Don't you have that friend in London that works in one? Tom right?"

"He's not really a friend." I said with a shrug, feeling a little uncomfortable. "But sure, I can see if he'd be interested."

Thomas had lived on the same street as me and Lucy in London for years. We'd known each other fairly well out of exposure, but I'd been gone for so long at this point, I wasn't sure any of the people from my life before finding the library could be considered friends.

I'd bumped into him a few times on the rare occasion I'd had to go back to London, and was frankly stunned to realize he'd recognized me at all.

He'd seem happy enough to chat, but I had to admit I'd been looking away out of the conversation from the moment it had started. He had mentioned to me, however, that he was working at a local jewelry store, learning the trade as he worked the counter of the shop. Reading between the lines of the conversation, it seemed as if the quality of the stuff made at the store was good, but the owner was known for not caring too much where materials or trade ins came from.

This was something Harper and I had taken advantage of many times when things like late fees or special requests were financed by odds things like pearls, or in the case of one particularly shady Satyr, a golden tooth.

"Super legitimate business we seemed to be running here." I said grinning. "Playing fast and loose with the payment models and running back and forth to pawn shops every few weeks."

"At least we got something out of him." Harper said sinking being her desk and putting her head in her hands. "You know Hera still hasn't returned that manuscript on titan genealogy?"

"Yes." I said grinning. "She tried to strangle you when you mentioned it in front of her guests during our latest trip to Olympus, and I had to doge about thirty Gods trying to get a hold of me after I put her in a head lock."

"I still can't believe you did that." She said looking up at me. "What on earth made you think that was a good idea?"

"I dunno." I said thoughtfully, leaning against her desk. "Maybe the fact that my boss requires oxygen to breathe, and she was trying to, you know, prevent that from happening."

Harper rolled her eyes.

"You didn't have to put her in head lock."

"What can I say." I grinned and shrugged. "I like my job, I can get a bit carried away."

She let out a snort that I could tell was half exasperated, half genuinely amused.

"Anything to get one up on the Olympians, eh?"

"It's good for them." I said easily. "They deserve a little taste of humiliation every once and a while. Reminds them they're not completely invulnerable."

There was a moment where neither of us spoke, but I could tell she was thinking about something.

"Speaking of invulnerable."

"I'm fine, Harper."

"Did you get any sleep?"

"What do you mean during the time you snuck off to the bottom of the ocean?"

"Yes, during that time."

"Yes." I said stubbornly and technically it wasn't a lie. I had gotten some sleep.

"You still look tired."

"I'm fine." I assured her shaking my head and crossing my arms over my chest. "In fact, I'm so fine. I'm going to go talk to Tom now."

Harper frowned, and glanced at her watch.

"I thought the shop didn't open until late on Saturdays." She said frowning and raising an eyebrow at me. "You've got like three hours…"

"Then I'll grab lunch beforehand."

"Alright if you insist." She said lightly, but I could tell she wasn't happy about it. "If you want to go I'll send you through."

"I do. Want to come with?"

She shook her head.

"I should probably start re-organizing upstairs."

"Alright. Try not to get blown up, ok?" I said thinking about the temper tantrum the spell book had thrown earlier and she gave me a shrewd look.

"Look who's talking."

I grinned but didn't respond, instead making my way to the vault and grabbing a few of the pearls before heading towards the doors.

Harper was already there, no doubt waiting to see me off even though she didn't need to be physically near them, to operate the gateways between the mortal and divine dominions.

"Don't do anything dumb while you're gone." She said crossing her arms over her chest and giving me a stern expression. "Like pick a fight with the hydra or something."

"Does that sound like something I'd do?" I said stretching a little and patting the sword strapped by my back.

"Yes." She said flatly and I grinned.

"Why must you take the fun out of everything?"

"Because at least one of us has to be an adult sometimes, otherwise this place would go to shit again."

"Well at least there's two of us so we can take turns." I said with mock resignation and she smirked.

"Yeah. Let me know when you finally decide to take a turn."

"Will do." I answered backing towards the door that would lead me to the mortal world.

"Now you're just showing off." She said rolling her eyes as behind me, a golden light was growing, reflecting in her eyes.

Years later, she still hadn't gotten the hang of Interrealm travel.

"See ya boss lady." I said with a salute and jumping back through the portal.

The last thing I saw before the current of the Interrealm took hold, was Harper rolling her eyes at the term, before I was shot into the mortal world

I caught my bearings pretty easily as I arrived, but was a little confused when I found myself not where I expected to be.

I had expected Harper to dump me outside the jewelry store, but had to hold back a laugh when I realized Harper, no doubt keeping my comment about getting lunch in mind, had dropped me in the middle of a busy kitchen, several cooks staring at me open mouthed, clearly wondering how a customer had managed to get in their back room without anyone noticing.

"Morning." I said cheerfully making my way to what I assumed the exit was and reaching my pocket to pull out my phone.

I hit my most recent calls list, ignoring the mortal servers that were staring at me, as I realized I recognized this place. A local mom and pop not far from the jewelers. It was a place Lucy and I used to go to often when we were kids, and I'd shown Harper the few times she'd actually come to London on one of these trips.

I glanced at the calls, almost all of them Harper, and selected her name, not at all surprised when it immediately connected.

"Something wrong?" Harper asked innocently.

"You think you're funny, don't you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure you don't."

"Have fuuuun." She said dragging out the word in an uncharacteristically playful tone that told me she indeed did find herself amusing, then hung up.

I shook my head a little exasperated, but also somewhat relieved.

She might have been joking about needing to be an adult, but I was actually sort of glad to see that Harper still had a little mischief in her. Even at camp, she'd never exactly been what you would call 'light hearted'. She had so many things on her plate these days, really important things, that it was good to know that at least a part of her remembered she was still pretty young. Still in college for Olympus's sake.

Part of me wondered with that and keeping an eye on Lucy and everything that running the library entailed, if maybe she, both of us really, had taken on too much.

It seemed like there was never a point in time for either of us where we didn't have at least a thousand things to do.

Lucy helped where she could of course, and it wasn't like she wasn't busy either, but there was only so much she as a mortal could do. While continually running errands was fine for me, I had nothing else to do after all, Harper had a life. She had school, family, friends, a boyfriend. The only thing she didn't have was time, and her last semester it had really shown.

Sometimes I thought we needed more help. But you couldn't exactly put up a job listing in the local paper for a mythological library of immense power, and we'd already decided that we didn't want random teenagers coming and going from the camp when Chiron suggested some sort of internship program.

The last thing we needed was to find an eleven-year-old kid neck deep in ancient magic in the curse section. We didn't need another kid like me…

"James?"

'Oh gods.' I thought a mild sense of horror washing over me. I knew that voice...

I turned to see a stunned, slightly familiar figure quickly stand from the booth she was sitting in, laughing as she pulled me into a tight hug.

"Melanie." I said trying to sound even the slightest bit excited to see her as she relaxed her grip and beamed at me.

"I can't believe this." She said staring at me, as if she really couldn't believe what she was seeing. "When Tom said he'd run into you, I almost didn't believe him. How come you didn't tell us you were back?"

She looked exactly as I remembered, long dark brown hair and pale blue eyes framed by long lashes and a pretty face.

"I'm not." I said realizing she hadn't let me go, and debating on if I was rude enough to take a step back.

I wanted to, but found I didn't quite have it in me.

"Back that is, I'm only here for the day. For work."

I hadn't always minded being touched, especially if it was a hug from a pretty girl, but over the last few years I'd found I really couldn't stand it. Not after everything that had happened.

Like Tom, I'd known Mel since childhood. She hadn't lived as close as he had but we'd gone to the same school, even ended up in some of the same classes and if I was being totally honest, might have fancied her for a while. But that had been years ago, and she hadn't had a lot of time for me back then…

"Yeah he told me you had a crazy cool job traveling all over the world, for some private collector." She continued looking at me with interest.

"Well that's not exac-" I started awkwardly.

I'd kept the details of what I got up to intentionally vague when talking to Tom and it sounded as if he'd taken what bits and pieces I had told him, and made up an explanation around them to try and make it fit.

She ended up cutting me off.

"Bloody hell you look so different now." She said glancing at me up and down, and this time, I did manage to step away when I found her hand was resting on my bicep. "I thought he was exaggerating when he said you looked like one of those comic book super heroes, but I guess not."

I had no idea how to respond to this, but it turned out I hadn't needed to.

"I told you."

I glanced at the voice to see that Melanie hadn't been sitting alone. At her table was Tom, who'd obviously been the one who'd just spoken, as well as another pretty girl with blonde hair and dark eyes that I didn't recognize, but was looking at me curiously.

"My friend Abby just got engaged." Melanie explained. "But she needs to get the ring resized. Tom said he could get us a deal at his shop. Have you eaten? Why don't you come sit with us?"

I hesitated for a moment, realizing the only available spot would have been next to Melanie, and not quite sure why, but not wanting to encourage the hand that had once again found itself resting on my arm.

Was there a way out of this without looking like a total prat?

"I told you Mel." Tom said with a smirk, though his tone was good natured. "James is too important for us now.

"No." I said flatly.

"He's busy with his glamorous job, and his glamorous girlfriend."

"Girlfriend?" I asked raising an eyebrow, but not unhappy at the fact that Melanie's hand quickly removed itself at this.

At this point however, I seemed to be engaged in the conversation and seeing as how I was supposed to be meeting with Tom any way, I reluctantly slid into the both Mel not far behind me.

"Yeah," he said. "The American bird. Gorgeous but a little…" he hesitated, clearly refraining from the word he was thinking so as not to insult the imaginary relationship he thought I had with Harper. "Aloof."

"That is my boss." I said knowing it was basically true, but still finding it a weird term for Harper and my relationship.

"Really?" Tom said sounding a little surprised and I nodded.

"And she has a boyfriend by the way, which isn't me. And don't take it personally," I said noticing Melanie's gaze on me again, her expression thoughtful. "I know how she can come across, but she's actually pretty cool. Just has a lot to keep track of and gets lost in thought."

"So is that where you ended up after all this time? Over in America?" Melanie asked.

"For a bit." I said evasively thinking of the brief few months I was at camp. "I move around a lot these days."

"See, I told you." Tom said giving Mel a knowing expression and grinning back at me. "Glamorous."

I thought about the previous night, where I'd done nothing but scan through boring old manuscripts and earlier today when I was being tackled by an ancient spell book. Or the hours upon hours of shelving returns.

"Yeah." I said sarcastically. "That's me."

"So." Mel said smiling at me. "If you're so busy running around all over the place, what brings you back home?"

At this I felt a little awkward, not really wanting to talk to anyone about why I was here but with Tom, but everyone was looking at me and figuring it couldn't do too much harm I said.

"Actually, I came here to talk to you."

"Oh." Mel said looking a little surprised at this.

"What's up?" Tom asked curiously then smirked. "Got more gold teeth to sell?"

Both Abby and Melanie's eyebrows shot up at this.

"What is it that you said he did again?" Abby asked Tom a little nervously, but, used to hearing far worse questions about myself from people who actually did know my job, it was pretty easy to brush off.

I took the pearls I'd grabbed from vault from my jacket pocket and put them on the table where they looked extremely strange in the sandwhich bag I'd placed them in before meeting Harper at the doors.

"You got any use for these?"

"Are those real?" Melanie asked her eyes going wide.

I knew pearls weren't the rarest luxury item in the world, but I also knew that depending on the quality and size they could be pretty expensive. And I'd picked several of the ones that, to my very untrained eye, looked like they would be a lot.

It looked as if my instincts weren't wrong.

"Seriously." Abby said looking more fascinated than alarmed at this point. "What do you do?"

We both ignored her and Melanie as he picked up the bag and looked at them thoughtfully.

"It depends." He said scratching. "Is this all you have?"

"Not by a long shot" I said shaking my head and he looked interested.

"How many have you got?"

"Too many." I said shaking my head. "And more are probably coming. We're looking to get rid of them."

He seemed to consider this for a moment and said.

"Alright come with me to the shop once it opens. I'll talk to the old man for you, but on one condition."

"What is it?" I asked warily.

I'd seen the smile he was giving me before and I didn't like it at all. I knew there was nothing he, or anyone here really, could have done to hurt me but still, my suspicion was up and I got a feeling of dread which only increased as he said.

"Come round my place next Friday around seven or whenever you get off," he grabbed a napkin from the dispenser on the table and after pulling a pen from his pocket, scribbled a phone number and an address on it. "Mel and I and some of the old crew usually get together every week or so at pub or one of our flats. You should come."

"Why?" I asked a little suspiciously.

After everything that had happened at camp, I wasn't exactly used to people I knew from my previous lives asking me to come by for a chat.

"Because this." He said gesturing to the bag of pearls. "Doesn't seem like the typical day to day of a guy with a regular 9 to 5. And don't bother lying about it"

He grinned.

"You never were one to sit still mate, even when we were at school. Whatever you're up to these days, I'm guessing it's given you a lot of stories. I want to hear them."