Gooseberry Bluff Community College of Magic: The Thirteenth Rib (Kindle Serial) Read Online Free

Wilkins—”
    “Joy.”
    “Joy. I thought we could have that little meeting about your needs.” He hesitated. “I mean your work-related needs, in case that wasn’t clear.”
    Joy laughed. “Sure. I have office hours starting at ten, but we should have enough time for that.”
    Andy was careful to tuck the dress under him as he sat down. During Joy’s orientation, Andy had shaken her hand and said: “Hi, I’m Andy. I’m genderqueer and I often wear women’s clothes here in the office. I hope that won’t make you uncomfortable.” Joy wasn’t sure what genderqueer meant--she'd since learned that it was an umbrella term for persons who identified outside of the male-female gender binary--but she had assured Andy that she had no problem with it. She admired Andy's forthrightness and the way that he carried himself. He walked better in heels than she did.
    Andy cleared his throat. “So you already know that the history department here was basically just Professor Drake, so the alchemy department shared me with her. Technically I’m their secretary, and I do things like coordinate with the chair on creating the schedules, help with the budget, do a little bit of crowd control with the students. You shouldn’t have to worry about any of those things, at least for now.
    “You’re in charge of your own schedule,” he continued, “but I can help you with small-scale copy jobs, except for exams — the work-study kids do the actual copying, and we can’t be tempting them with anything that important. PoofPost goes through me; the college has an account with them. If you’re out of the office, the calls get routed to my desk. That’s not a problem as long as you don’t get a lot of personal calls.
    “I also want you to think of me as a resource. If you have questions about anything that falls outside of the scope of course content, ask me. What I don’t know, I’ll find out. How are you doing with the computer system?”
    “Fine. I thought it was kicking me off last night, but then the site went down, so it must have been a system problem.”
    Andy pressed his lips together and nodded. “Honestly, the servers here are ancient. Sometimes I wish that even half the resources that go into magical research went into computers.”
    Joy smiled. “That seems unlikely.”
    “I know. So. Questions? Fire away.”
    Joy didn’t think she had any questions until she started talking, and then she remembered how much she had yet to learn. Andy’s energy was such that she didn’t feel hesitant about admitting when she didn’t understand something, and after a half hour with him she felt anxieties that she hadn’t realized she was carrying slide off her back.
    As Andy stood to leave, Joy stopped him. “Andy, I have one more question. I was looking for a list of approved paper topics in Professor Drake’s materials, but I haven’t found anything. Do you think I could get access to the rest of what was left in her office?”
    Andy crossed his arms. “I don’t know. I’m not even sure where it all ended up. President Fitzgerald went through the course materials himself; he wouldn’t even let me touch anything he hadn’t looked over first. He took the rest of it and locked it away somewhere, I think.”
    “Ah. I’ve been trying to get in to see the president, but I can’t get past his secretary.”
    “Edith. Yes. She’s actually wonderful, but she’s also a hard-ass.”
    “Maybe you can get me past her,” Joy said. “It’s not just the list. I have some other things I need to talk to the president about.”
    “I could try.”
    Joy smiled. “I can’t ask any more than that.”
    Joy spent the next two hours running through a computer tutorial on grading. No students showed up, which didn’t surprise her, since they’d only had one class. At noon she packed up her things and locked the office.
    She stopped to say good-bye to Andy, but before she even opened her mouth the outer door opened and one of the