He was on his bed; it wasn’t anything specific that triggered it, as far as he can tell. 

It’s back now, though. It doesn’t feel quite as sinister as it did before. Almost... pleased.

The next day at work, Martin asks him how he takes his tea. 

(That goes in the spreadsheet too, along with plenty of ????????? and AAAAAAAAAAAAA. He is pretty sure he cannot change his fundamental personality though.)

"Enough milk and sugar that I can't taste the tea."

Martin smiles. “Consider it done! How was your first day?”

"Well, I learned the paranormal actually exists, which was a surprise."

“Oh! Oh, yeah, I. Forgot you didn’t work at the Institute before now. I’ll, uh, get you that cup of tea?”

He’s back in a minute with two steaming mugs of tea; he places one in front of Lev and starts sipping at his own. Lev’s is, as promised, filled with enough milk and sugar that you can’t really taste the tea. “That, uh. Must have been a shock. Better at least to learn that in here than in Artefact Storage, I suppose?”

"You really need to improve your onboarding procedures."

“It’s... maybe not the greatest first impression a job has made on me? It pays well, though.”

Oh good there's someone in this job who's a sane person.

"What did you do before?"

“The Magnus Institute was my first job out of school, actually! I’ve worked here a few years now? Well, at the Institute, not the Archives, I mean. I just got transferred here from Research, uh, yesterday.”

"...that's weird, I wonder why they're transferring a bunch of people here all of a sudden."

“I heard that the previous archivist, uh... died?” His voice goes quiet and a bit high-pitched at the end of the sentence. “Left... a bit of a paperwork mess. She didn’t have anyone working with her, they didn’t have anyone else qualified to replace her... So I think everyone here is pretty much new. Well. New to the Archives, at least. I think I’ve seen Tim around in Research? Never really talked to him though. Guess we’ll just all have to get to know each other.”

"Huh. It's strange that they didn't just hire one person, if it was a one-person job before."

Martin shrugs. “Yeah, I guess? Not like I’m going to argue with Elias about it, though, so... I’m sure he has his reasons?”

"...you worked in Research, I was wondering if you could explain to me... anything... about how the paranormal actually works. Dragging any of it out of Elias is like pulling teeth."

“We... don’t know as much as you might be thinking, really. Most of our work is figuring out what has... any... plausibility... whatsoever? There’s a lot of false information out there, probably more false than real. And even the stuff that might be real, it’s usually hard to prove? So most of my work was actually, uh, reading old books and discrediting them. Pretty standard fare, really. Aleister Crowley was wrong about a lot of things, what else is new.” A nervous laugh.

"...how do you do that? It seems dangerous to try the rituals and see what happens."

“Researching people who have tried them, historically or modern, doing interviews, reading various accounts... there are a lot of people out there doing dangerous things. We do a lot of interviews in general, really—that’s what my job is in the Archives, too, is interviewing people who claim to have experienced something supernatural, see if the details match up, see if there’s any corroborating witnesses... Most of the time it’s drugs, honestly. Or someone playing a prank. But then there are people where the research just makes things more confusing, and I figure those are probably real.”

"...did the previous Archivist do all the interviews and all the archiving? No wonder everything's such a mess."

“No idea what she did, to be honest. This place was a mess when I first saw it—papers all over the floor, files in random boxes... I don’t even know if she did do any follow-up research.”

".............this place does not seem terribly well-run."

Another helpless shrug. “Not.... really? I guess I don’t know the standard for institutes that investigate things that most people don’t believe are even real. And, like I said, it pays the bills.”

He doesn't know if he thinks they're hiding something or just that incompetent. 

"Um, I'm sorry if this is a rude question, but do you actually know anything about how to do interviews?"

“Y......es? I mean, I... ask questions?”

"........................................................no."

“................................oh. I... kind of figured that someone would, uh, tell me if I was doing it wrong?”