Chapter 11: New Routine, Old Ghosts

But hope or not, I still had to save James Donovan. That was why the system brought me back, and the only way I could keep living.

But before I could save him, I had to solve my own survival problems first.

I managed to get a job as a night-shift librarian at the bookstore downstairs from James’s office building. My shift ended at midnight.

The place smelled like old paper and burnt coffee, the kind of shop where the cash register still had sticky notes from a decade ago.

The lights in the building across the street were still on. I sat on the bookstore steps, opening a boxed meal that had already gone cold.

At 12:07, James’s black Cadillac drove past.

The tinted windows blocked my view, but I knew he was inside—because the live-chat was noisily discussing it, as if they had X-ray vision, making jokes at my expense.

[The system’s given up, and so has she...]

[Other strategists try everything to get close to the villain as soon as they arrive, desperate to make themselves known.]

[But her? She just found a job and started living her own life.]

[Did the bodyguards scare her off the first time?]

[So are we just going to watch her shelve books every day?]

[She’s hopeless. She shouldn’t have agreed to the mission in the first place...]

[This is about to go full Jerry Springer.]

I ignored the agitated comments, only then noticing a stray dog wagging its tail at me, eyes full of longing.

I gave it the only two pieces of meat in my meal box, sharing my dinner with it under the streetlight.

The dog’s tail thumped against my shoe, and for the first time since waking up, I felt less like a ghost.