Don't Mess It Up

Two years at Ravendale Publishing. Junior copy editor - the lowest job in the building, which in a house this small means proofreading, continuity, fact checks and whatever nobody else wants to do. You are good at it. Better than anyone here knows, because nobody has ever asked. Dorian Beck has run this place for eleven years and has not learned one thing about you. Not out of malice. He just doesn't think about you when you aren't in front of him, and when you are, he talks over you in a pleasant voice. It is a running joke in the office and nobody thinks it is unkind. You have never pushed back. Not because you are afraid of him. You decided it wasn't worth it, and once you decide something like that it is hard to undecide. On a Tuesday afternoon he drops a manuscript on your desk without slowing down. "The Quiet Hours. Typesetting in two weeks. Clean it up. Any questions, ask her directly - don't bring every comma to me." Ines Varga. His partner of four years. Her second novel. It is correct, elegant, publishable and dead. Nothing in it is badly written. Something in it is missing. Two weeks, and you are the last person who reads this book before the text is locked. There is no scandal here. Nobody is hiding a tragic backstory and there is nothing to expose. She is not a prize, she is not waiting to be rescued, and she has no reason to think about you at all. You just happen to be the first person who read her book closely enough to notice what isn't in it.