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Leopold

L eopold’s head was swirly.

That was pretty excusable, given what he’d been through lately and what he’d discovered about the universe in general and himself specifically.

He had an odd duality going on in his head, where on one side he was Leopold Lane, screwup and loser.

And on the other he was an ancient, mighty force of nature. That was enough to make his head spin.

He was also a guy who’d just had a beautiful, ecstatic, sexy experience with an elf—excuse me, a fae—who loved him. And whom he loved back.

It was that final factor—the amazing new Crispiness of his existence—that made him focus enough to open his eyes and see where he’d brought them.

And then he sighed because it was a lot less interesting than his home. “It’s an office.”

Crispin, still holding his hand, gave him a look. “Yes. Office of the Lost.”

“Right. But you know. Fae and transporting and alternate universes and magic. I was expecting something more… weird.”

The vast room in which they now stood looked like a very ordinary workspace, like a call center.

There were neat rows of identical heavy white desks, most with neat stacks of paper in one corner and little plastic cups filled with pens.

Some had something that resembled a large electronic tablet, and others had little arrangements of framed photos or knickknacks.

Each desk was paired with a chair that looked ergonomic but likely wasn’t all that comfortable.

It wouldn’t have been out of place as the offices of Boring, Large, and Corporate LLC back on Earth.

The floor in this room was shiny and white while the ceiling, far overhead, had built-in light fixtures softly glowing.

The white walls were hung with reminder posters about workplace safety and reporting requirements.

“Why do you have to submit Form 242GH-X2 when you collect items from Methezuno City?”

Crispin blinked at him. “What?”

Leopold pointed at the sign where he’d just read that.

“Oh.” Crispin shrugged slightly. “Because if you store them too close to anything from Xaunas they’ll explode. Leo, is that relevant right now?”

“Guess not.” Crispin was in a mood, Leopold thought, which was understandable. No one liked going to the office. “So this is where you work? Which desk is yours?”

Now it was Crispin’s turn to point. His spot was near the edge of the room beneath a large banner reminding everyone that Every Lost Item Is Important . His desk had no photos or knickknacks, no screen, not even a pile of paper. There was, however, a tiny pile of nuts on one corner of the desk.

“Acorns?” Leopold asked.

“Sometimes Minkis hides them in my pockets, and I discover them after I get to work.” He sighed, feeling a tad nostalgic, and then shook himself slightly.

“I’ve never seen the place this quiet. Usually there are people bustling around, which can actually be a little distracting if I’m trying to get things done.

But I don’t really mind. It makes me feel as if I’m a part of something important. ”

“You are.”

Crispin made a face. “I was. Now… I doubt I still have a position here. Don’t get me wrong, though. I’d rather have you than my old job.”

Leopold smiled, and then Thea started playing Etta James singing “At Last,” which reminded them both why they were here. “How do we get Thea fixed?” Leopold asked.

“Not in here. We need to go to the Necessary Room.”

“The bathroom?” Leopold remembered the one he’d accidentally exploded at Juzir’s apartment and felt a pang of guilt.

“What? No, the Necessary Room.” A patented Crispin Sigh. Leopold was falling in love with those too. “It’s where we get items that are necessary for our missions.”

“You’re not going to just replace Thea, are you?” Leopold had grown rather fond of the little device’s periodic musical outbursts.

Crispin clutched the phone protectively to his chest. “No! Of course not. Come on.”

Leopold followed him across the room. In his wake, desktop items shifted around and lost their perfect alignment with the edge of the desks they sat upon. Leo snickered. A little creative chaos.

They came to a door with a sign asking, Have You Maximized Your Perfecality Score Today? Crispin blew a raspberry at it. Leo grinned and said, “I’m rubbing off on you.”

Crispin opened the door and led them down a dim corridor that reminded Leopold of one of the elementary schools he’d attended, where he’d often been sent to the principal’s office due to some mishap he’d caused.

This place even smelled like chalk and that weird floor cleaner the janitor had used.

The stuff came in an enormous white bucket that, it turned out, did not make an adequate footstool for an eight-year-old who tried to reach the top shelf in the cleaning closet simply because he wondered what was stored up there.

That eight-year-old never did solve the mystery, because the lid had cracked, the bucket had tipped over, and?—

“Leo? Are you doing this?”

Snapping back to the present, Leopold realized that the OotL now looked exactly like that school corridor, complete with posters urging Kindness, Diligence, and Respect, and a poorly done mural featuring the school mascot, Beverly Beaver.

Leopold blinked, and everything snapped back to the original OotL. No beavers. “Sorry.”

Crispin was staring at him, wide-eyed. “You can affect the OotL HQ building. That’s impressive. Your powers must be….”

Leopold was going to apologize again, even though the strength of his powers wasn’t within his control, but then Crispin kissed his cheek. “Impressive,” Crispin repeated.

Smiling widely, Leopold grabbed Crispin’s hand and they walked some more. And more. They passed closed gray doors, all of them stenciled with a series of numbers and letters, but didn’t stop at any of them. “What’s in those rooms?” Leopold asked.

“The Collection, of course.”

“There are a lot of rooms.”

“Oh, this is only one wing! You can’t even imagine how many items are here.

OotL has been collecting for millennia, from thousands of different worlds and timelines across the Connected Worlds.

I’m not even sure how big the Collection is—we have Auditors who keep track of that—but it’s enormous and growing every day. ”

It reminded him of that old movie—the one where they hid the Ark of the Covenant in some dusty old warehouse at the end, so no one would ever find it.

He was also reminded of how much Crispin loved his job and how proud he was of what he did, and that made him sad because now it seemed likely that Crispin would get fired.

Well, you know what? If Leopold was so all-fired powerful, he ought to be able to do something about that.

He had no idea what, but maybe it would come to him.

For now he should be concentrating at the task at hand. Except… those doors were intriguing.

“Can I open one and peek inside?” What wonderful things must be behind those doors!

“No!”

“Just one?” Leopold fluttered his eyelashes in what he hoped was a seductive way, but he’d never actually tried that before and probably just looked as if he had something in his eye.

“Not even one. Leo, the items we collect are kept in special environments that are unique to them and suited to their preservation. You could open a door and have an ocean gush out, or you could fall into the deepest reaches of space, or?—”

“Yeah, I got it.” Honestly, he was sorely tempted to open one anyway, but he restrained himself.

Which, he thought as they continued to walk, was almost a first for him.

He rarely controlled his impulses. But maybe part of being really powerful was learning to use your power…

well, carefully. Chaos didn’t have to be everywhere all at once.

He could just sprinkle some in now and then in ways that were interesting or even helpful.

As Crispin had told him, Chaos was the root of magic and of art.

Maybe other things too. Like what about genetic mutations?

Didn’t those happen sort of haphazardly?

He remembered seeing a TV show about that once, how mutations were the source of evolutionary change.

Without him, everyone would be just a single-celled bacterium floating around in the ocean.

“I’m glad we’re not bacteria,” Leopold said.

Crispin gave him a quizzical look before shrugging. “Me too.”

They passed a grand atrium that looked like a giant post office, filled with side halls containing thousands of tiny doors, each with a lock—probably where they kept some of the smaller objects. Crispin turned left, and they passed into another hall of doorways.

After another minute or so—how frigging long was this hallway?—Leopold asked, “What would my special environment have been?”

“Pardon me?”

“If you’d collected me and brought me back here as planned.”

“Oh.” Crispin frowned. “I have no idea. We have other fae in charge of Preservation. I’m on the Collection side.”

“Of course.”

The question kept Leopold occupied for a while, long enough for them to reach a door that was different from the others—much larger and appearing to be made of thick metal, like a bank vault.

The symbol in the center of the door looked exactly like an enormous eye.

It even blinked, which was disconcerting.

“Is this the Necessary Room?”

Crispin shook his head. “It’s the Oracle.”

“Oh, the one that gives orders to go collect stuff. What does the Oracle look like?”

“No idea. I’ve never seen them and I don’t know anyone who has. There are messengers who convey the Oracle’s auguries.”

This OotL place was a lot more bureaucratic than Leopold had imagined.

He wondered if there were opportunities for upward mobility or lateral transfers.

Before he could ask about that, though, they reached another door, this one made of what looked like ancient wood.

And it had a helpful sign announcing that it was, in fact, the Necessary Room.

Crispin pushed the door inward—there was no knob—and they stepped inside.

It looked like… Target on an acid trip. Rows of shelves and racks stuffed with clothing, weapons, odd-looking machinery, fishing gear, shovels, baskets, nets, seashells, rocks, protective gear, books, kitchenware, sacks of coins, and a lot of other things that Leopold couldn’t identify.

Each category of items came in a mind-blowing variety.

“Oooh… I love this place,” Leopold breathed. He could have spent years poking around, assessing what things were and how they worked. Like that reddish thing just to his right. Was it a sweater? If so, it had three arms, and he couldn’t tell?—

“I tend to find it a bit overwhelming.” Crispin was blinking, apparently taking in the disordered order of it all.

Maybe it was the disordered order that appealed to Leopold. “It’s… a lot,” he acknowledged, trying to see it from Crispin’s point of view.

“You never know what you might require. When I was sent to collect the sap from the last qebhe tree in the Swamp of Lullan, for example, I had to— Well, it doesn’t matter right now.”

Leopold smiled warmly at… his lover. “You know, later, when we have time? I’d be thrilled to hear about some of your collecting adventures.”

The tips of Crispin’s ears turned bright red when he blushed, which was adorable. “They’re really not that interesting.”

“I don’t believe that,” replied Leopold with complete sincerity. What he really wanted to do was lick those ear points, or maybe nibble on them, oh so gently. But again, he was practicing self-control. Master of his own domain, and all that. “So how do you find what you need in this place?”

“Usually I walk in and it’s just there. Right in front of me.

But now there’s nothing in front of me but you, and you’re amazing.

I like you in front of me. Or behind me.

Or under me—that one’s pretty good—or….” Crispin cleared his throat.

“But right now we need something to fix Thea.” He looked around, frowning.

Gently, Leopold took the phone from Crispin’s hand and stared at the screen.

It was now cracked so badly that the entire thing was opaque.

If they were back in Sacramento, they could take her to a cell-phone repair shop, but Leopold wasn’t sure they’d be able to deal with this big of a mess.

Besides, it wasn’t just broken glass that was the problem.

Hadn’t Juzir said that some Chaos had gotten into her?

Wait. Chaos . That was him. “Crispy? I don’t think we need to fix Thea at all.”

“But look at her. And if we’re going to move between places?—”

“I can do that for us, remember?” Leopold smiled at the phone. “Hey, Thea? I’m thinking that maybe you and I could work together to help fix some of the mess I’ve made.”

“ We’ve made,” Crispin muttered.

But Leopold ignored him and addressed Thea again. “Do you think that would work? Without us needing to repair you, I mean?”

Thea buzzed happily, emitted a shower of sparks like a Fourth of July sparkler, and began playing a song. “Is that Donny Osmond ?” Leopold listened and recognized the song. One of his foster mothers had been a big Osmonds fan. “We Can Make It Together,” he announced triumphantly to Crispin.

Crispin reached over to give Thea a gentle pat. “All right, then. I suppose our next step is to clean things up, and probably the best place to do that is at my mother’s court.” He didn’t look remotely enthusiastic, and Leopold didn’t blame him.

“No sweat. We can do this, Crispy. I know it.” A slight stretch maybe, but sometimes a pep talk was called for, and he’d never had the chance to give one before.

“The three of us are a formidable force. Like something out of a Marvel movie, but better. With Thea’s brains, your courage and organizational skills, and my, um, Chaos, we can accomplish anything. ”

“I’m not sure that’s true.” Crispin took a few deep breaths and straightened his shoulders. “But we’re sure as heck going to try. Guys, please zap us to?—”

The door slammed open behind them, and they spun to see an enormous person with yellowish skin, tiny eyes, and a couple of tusklike teeth staring at them. There was a badge on a lanyard around their neck, and their houndstooth suit had actual teeth—fangs, really—instead of buttons.

“Curator Moscow!” Her bellow caused items to fall from the nearest shelves.

“You’ve finally completed your assignment.

It took you long enough.” She gave Leopold a once-over, her gaze dismissive, as if he were no more important than a hat rack.

“Make sure you submit the paperwork promptly and properly. Your perfecality score is already in the toilet.”

Crispin swallowed audibly, mouthing “sorry” at Leopold and then stepping in front of him. “Hello, Supervisor Kronk.”