Nothing disturbs him until lunchtime; at the Indian place, he does not have any sense of being watched. 

He should probably... attempt... to make small talk.

This is honestly a more terrifying prospect than being killed by an artifact. 

...He considers this, and then considers what he knows of Martin so far.

"We should probably make small talk," he says, "but honestly that is a more terrifying prospect than being killed by an artifact."

“Ohthankgod. I mean. Uh. I don’t— talking to you is great! You seem great! ...Just, not having to make small talk also sounds great. Sorry. Or, not sorry, because you suggested it? I’m just going to shut up now. Uh. Thank you, is what I meant.”

"I have spent my entire career as a grad student or an adjunct and am therefore entirely incompetent to talk about anything other than my dissertation, where to find free food or, for complicated reasons, whether the Youth American Grand Prix is causing young ballerinas to favor acrobatic tricks at the expense of their artistry."

“...I would maybe be interested in knowing about places to get free food.” Other than that, he’s going to take Lev up on his offer of no small talk and not ask about the rest of that list!

"Unfortunately I did adjuncting in an entirely different city so I cannot help."

Martin nods sadly and then is distracted by the food arriving! Indian food: delicious.

It is delicious!

He was vaguely hoping they could talk about non-small things but, unfortunately, he is really bad at conversations.

That makes two of them! Martin can manage “awkward small talk” but anything else is a bit above his conversational abilities. 

“That was... Really nice, actually,” he says once lunch is over. “Um. Thank you.”

Oh good he didn't fuck this social situation up totally.

"You're welcome."

When they return to the Archives, so does the feeling of being watched. Martin tucks himself in a corner and goes back to reading the book on qualitative research.

Does Lev do anything else that day?

He's going to take notes on the introduction to library science book for a while, and then he's going to say to Martin: "you know more about this than I do, is there any sign the paranormal interacts weirdly with electronics?"

“Oh! Uh, yeah, I think so? It’s a common theme in a lot of the things I’ve researched, anyway. It’s inconsistent, which makes it hard? Like, sometimes it seems like it only has... weird... interactions with computers, but other times it seems like it can’t even tolerate lightbulbs. And we don’t even know how much of it is real, which doesn’t exactly help. Probably someone’s done research on that with the artefacts in storage? I could check.”

"Don't bother."

He contemplates whether to trust Martin. 

Pro: he really, really needs someone to talk to; Martin is the only person so far who has actually shared useful information; he didn't get a weird feeling eating lunch with Martin; it is extremely difficult to imagine Martin being secretly possessed by a demon.

Con: wouldn't demons act like people it is extremely difficult to imagine being possessed by demon?

Martin doesn’t say anything more; Sasha and Tim don’t come out of their offices. The notes get longer, the clock ticks, and the everpresent feeling of being watched waxes and wanes. 

If Lev doesn’t say anything either, it will eventually be time for him to go home. 

...yeah probably the chance that he's going to die because Martin is a demon is outweighed by the chance that he is going to die because he has no idea what he's doing.

"I'm curious about how things interact with electronics," he says, "because I've been trying to take my own notes on paranormal things, especially my own experiences. Some of the statements won't digitize, and there are apparently some books you're not supposed to touch, and I'm sort of concerned my notes would... become... paranormal in some way? And therefore dangerous? But I don't know if taking the notes in Google Docs is safer." 

“I... also don’t know, honestly. I haven’t heard of anything digital becoming paranormal? And I think most of the artefacts... started that way? But it’s... I don’t know everything, I don’t know that much at all really.”

"Right, but even if you don't know anything you can make guesses. We know it would definitely be a bad idea for me to take my notes in a Leitner book. --What is a Leitner book anyway, all I've gathered is that you shouldn't touch them."

“Right, yeah. Uh, Jurgen Leitner was a very rich collector of rare books. He died in a fire that destroyed most of his library, but not all of it? And every book anyone’s heard of that has his name on it is, bad. Really bad. Sasha would probably know the details of the ones we have? But all I know is that they’re basically all, uh, on the Do Not Access list. Which, it takes a lot for artefacts to get put there? Means there’s no experiments anyone can do that don’t have a risk of dying or... or worse. So. I assume it’s bad.”

He has so many questions!

"........what is worse than dying."

“I... there are a lot of stories, I don’t know which are true, and it probably depends on... what things you think are bad? I mean.” He gestures around. “The statements would probably give you an idea? Not the fake ones, but.” He shrugs. 

"Yeah, yeah, I know, I should be actually doing my job and not going down rabbit holes. In my defense, if they wanted someone who would just do librarian-ing they should have really hired... a librarian."

Martin actually huffs a laugh at that. “Fair enough!”

"Elias wants me to digitize everything. Even the statements that won't digitize, he wants me to read them into a tape recorder, and not just file them and say 'if you want to look at a statement that can't be digitized look in that folder.'"

“Huh. Is that, like... normal?”