Fairytale Leak Case File #4

Associated story: THE NAPKIN CONTRACT

In the FAIRYTALE LEAKS bundle

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[REGISTRY COMMON ROOM BOARD — PINNED ARTEFACT]

Pinned by Senior Director Rosalind at 14:42 GMT. Withdrawn at 14:48 GMT. 312 colleagues viewed before withdrawal. Caption at time of pinning: "This is what happens when I do not check my email."

The pinned artefact is, in full, a printed email. The email was sent to a personal address belonging to the Senior Director — an address which had not, until this afternoon, been logged with the Registry IT department. Cashmere's name is in the From field.

💗

From: Cashmere — First Elite Class, Department of Match Integrity 

To: Rosalind — [redacted]@[redacted].co 

Subject: Yes. THAT email address. Open this. Time: 12:01 GMT

Dear Rosalind,

I am writing to your other address. Yes. That one. The one you think nobody knows about. I know about it because I sat on your laptop while you logged in, twice, in 2019. You assumed I was sleeping. I was not sleeping. I was reading your URL bar.

I have used this address three times before. You were furious all three times. You were also, all three times, wrong — in the sense that I was right to use it. Today is the fourth time. I am advising you in advance that I will be right today as well, and that the appropriate emotion to direct at me is gratitude.

I will get to the gratitude.

First — Borage. You are not going to like the next part of this email. Brace.

Eleven minutes ago, Apprentice Archivist Borage — Records & Standing Magic Audit Desk, you don't know her, she is small and pedantic and very good — filed a Priority 1 flag. She tried to reach you. You are, per your assistant's auto-reply, currently being audited by the House of Gods quarterly review. The House of Gods quarterly review. The one we have been pretending isn't this week. So I assume you are in that meeting with your magical correspondence muted, which is a thing you can do, which is a thing I am suggesting you stop doing.

Borage, unable to reach you, escalated to me. Borage and I have not previously been on speaking terms. Borage is now on speaking terms with me. Borage is, I will tell you now, on the promotion list.

Here is her flag, in full. Read it before you start typing your reply, please. I will know if you don't.

From: Apprentice Archivist Borage Subject: ITEM 4007-V — DECAY COUNTDOWN ACTIVE

Senior Director,

I have been running the back-catalogue audit for ninety years. I have never filed a Priority 1. I am filing this one now.

Item 4007-V — not that 4007; the velvet sub-numbering, the curtain-pull system, I know, I know — has, this morning, registered a decay countdown. The item is the spell colloquially recorded as the one we do not discuss. The locker description reads, in your handwriting: DO NOT TOUCH — TOP-LEVEL SEAL — ASK ROSALIND ONLY.

I am not authorised to know what it does. I am, however, authorised to read decay countdowns. The countdown is at 3:46:18 and dropping.

I do not believe you have been monitoring this countdown.

— Borage

Rosalind. Look at me through the screen. You and I both know what Item 4007-V is.

It is the Shrieker.

I know we agreed never to call it that. We are alone. The cleaning fairy is out. I have checked. The Shrieker. Say it with me. The Shrieker.

To jolt your memory — although I know you remember every second of this incident — I will refresh for the record, since the record is currently sitting in your inbox.

Cinderella's ball. Lord Pertinax Greaves, Master of the Ball, attacked at the bakery on his way to market. Shapeshifter assumes his form. This happened because Apprentice Marl, stationed as Royal Household Liaison, had her eyes on the dance floor and not on the actual staff making the ball happen.

The shapeshifter — wearing Greaves — was going to derail the entire evening. Cinderella would not have met the prince. The Soulmate Registry could not, under any circumstance, allow this.

Marl panicked. Marl called you.

Five of you in a linen cupboard. Yes — I have heard about the linen cupboard. I have heard about it at three holiday parties. I will be mentioning it — with pressure — at every holiday party in the next decade.

You improvised the Cordial Identification Provision. Cordial. You called it cordial. You ripped a man's real body out of his stolen one and you called the spell cordial. This is, by the way, why I love you.

It worked. The shapeshifter — name Slork, bog-water-bodied, smelled distinctly of low-tide marsh — manifested in his own form in the centre of the ballroom and screamed for what I understand to have been approximately four minutes. The nobles assumed it was Renaissance perfume and an interpretive dance number. The orchestra kept playing. Lord Greaves was retrieved from the hedge. The ball proceeded. Cinderella met the prince.

You did not file the spell. You did not want the House of Gods to have an opinion. Today's House of Gods auditor — currently sitting in your office, Rosalind, currently in your office — would be especially keen.

You hid the spell in a book. A Comprehensive Index of Ferrule Standards in Soft-Furnishing Tassels (Velvet Subseries, Volume IV), Reginald Quibblestock, 1611. Borrow rate: 0.00% over four hundred and fifteen years. In 1822 a man broke into the library to be alone with his thoughts and still chose a different book.

The seal is perfect. The seal is not the problem.

The spell is the problem.

The spell, being wartime-adjacent and only nominally consensual to its own restraint, has elected to self-expose. The countdown is now at three hours, twenty-nine minutes and dropping as I type this.

If the spell exposes inside a public lending library, Rosalind, the book will be discovered. The book will be read. The book will be read by Sir Nugget — MBA, allegedly — currently on the 9:47 from Moreton-in-Marsh, currently drinking a lavender hot toddy in the dining car, currently bound for the Velvet Subseries shelf at the Greater Cotswolds Lending Library, currently working on a second MBA because nobody can verify the first.

He will write a thesis.

Shifters are voracious readers, Rosalind. I will not have to remind you of this. They have book clubs. They subscribe to academic journals. They cite each other in footnotes. By Christmas, the entire eastern seaboard will know we have a spell that yanks them out of their disguises by the throat. They will know we used it. They will know it works. The House of Gods will know it works. There will be a tribunal. I do not want to live in that timeline.

So. In the last eleven minutes I have, in order:

1. Extricated myself from a destination wedding in Tuscany, where I was — for unrelated operational reasons — embedded as the bridesmaid's emotional support cat. I was promised salmon. That promise is now sitting on the ledger, against your good name.

2. Borrowed a courier vehicle. The driver did not consent. I will reimburse him with a fish supper at a location of his choosing. I am currently in Bristol. ETA Greater Cotswolds Lending Library: forty-seven minutes.

3. Acquired twelve premium oat packs to bribe the guinea pig. Expenses logged against your account. The wedding favours were lavender oat satchels — on-brand for 2026 — so I did not have to go shopping. I took twelve. I would have taken more but the bridesmaid's mother was watching.

The mission is to stop Sir Nugget reading the book — or, failing that, which it will not, but failing that, to stop him understanding what he has read.

Rosalind. By the time you read this — and I am operating on the assumption you check this address within nine minutes of any new arrival, which is the historical average — I will be inside the library. I will have used credentials I do not technically possess. I will have done things I technically should not. I am requesting your authorisation in advance, pre-dated and re-timed to cover the prior eleven minutes, exonerating me of all rules I will be violating in the next four hours — including late returns.

Please send the formal authorisation when you have a moment. I am acting in the meantime.

Be furious later. Be grateful first. They are not mutually exclusive. I have done this both ways before.

Yours, regardless of whether you are pleased,

— Cashmere (your humble right-hand man cat, still, despite everything, and especially today)

P.S. Borage's surname is Threadgill. You will want it for the promotion paperwork. I make a point of remembering surnames. It is one of the things I do.

Going.

 Cashmere.

This week's Story: The Napkin Contract.

Enjoy!

 D.N. Leo

Happy Novels — every story has a happy ending. I will never break your heart, my love. But I will put you through a lot before I fix it.