7. Business as Usual

There was a firm knock on the door and Kelly frowned, as she placed a marker on the tablet she was studying to indicate her place. Then she checked that she bookmarked the relevant page in the reference tome and finally turned her eyes to the door.
“Enter.”
A slightly disheveled older man let himself in.
“Good morning, Wolf,” she greeted, standing up.
“Yes, it is,” he responded with his usual peculiarity and smiled. “Although you can't see it too well here.”
“But you didn't come just to tell me that, did you?” she dismissed the remark and motioned him into one of the chairs. He took it, stretched his legs, his grey eyes studying her for a moment.
“How are you doing, Kelly?”
She shrugged as the words triggered the familiar paranoid feeling that he can see right through her.
Which is ridiculous. If this was an official assessment, it would have been Swan and not Wolf.
Still, she used the convenient excuse of pouring him some tea to break the eyecontact, before answering.
“I am fine. Busy,” she waved her hand in the direction of the desk. “In a day or so I should have that text cleared up. But you need to tell your primary assessment team to step their game up – just because something has a weak protective spell on it, doesn't make it an artifact. This, in fact, is nothing but an ancient recipe...”
Wolf quirked an eyebrow at her and shook his head, setting down his cup and lifting a folder he brought with him.
“You can tell them yourself… or better yet, show them how it's done. This is your new assignment.”
She frowned, but made no motion to take the folder he held out to her. He sighed.
“I have work to do here,” she said, almost defensively.
“This has higher priority,” he answered, finally giving up and lightly tossing the folder on the desk.
“This being...”
“...I'm sending you out on a mission.”
Her dark eyes darkened even further.
“You were the one who insisted I lie low and keep as far from… past… as possible.”
“You are not going anywhere near your… previous post,” Wolf clarified. “But this artifact can't be brought in and you're the best analyst I have. Besides, I think it's about time you stopped burying yourself alive down here.”
“So you will try to turn this lab rat back into a field mouse, do you?” she asked with a quirk of mouth that might have been a bitter half-smile.
“I just hope she remembers who she really is, that's all,” he answered and stood up. “You leave tomorrow. The rest is in the papers. Good day, Mouse.”
She didn't try to protest, as he left her little realm. Instead she stubbornly pushed the folder aside and went back to work. Low priority or not, she will finish what she was doing, before going away. Packing won't take her whole day.