The Living Statue

7.

My first assumption that a job of a private secretary - wait, Mr Miller is a private secretary and I am a personal assistant. Or was it the other way around? - is an easy, dull paperwork, turned out to be utterly inaccurate.

Apparently, my office was the one Mr Torres and I had our first encounter at. The one with three high but narrow windows that barely allowed any light, a desk and shelves with all kinds of documents I had a job of acquainting with. Of course Mr Torres' office had to be a spacious, comfortable chamber and my own had to resemble a rathole.

But in all honesty, the space I've been provided with was the least of my worries.

At first, everything went smoothly. I've reorganized the shelves, familiarizing with the documents along the way, written out all important contacts in my small, black scratch pad and responded to a few business mails in Mr Torres' name. All that wasn't exhausting at all and it didn't take any longer than an hour of my working time. Throughout the whole morning there haven't been a sign of Mr Pain-in-the-ass Torres, which made my work much more pleasant and efficient.

Unfortunately, the careless scribbling in my memo pad and responding to rather unimportant mails didn't last for too long. Somewhere around one o'clock in the afternoon quiet, faint knock on the door reverberated through my office.

I was certain it wasn't Mr Torres who had been knocking, simply due to the feeble, frail sound of it, and my assumption was clarified as soon as Mr Miller's narrow, flushed face popped behind the slightly open door.

"Miss Griffin," he started in his usual timid voice, "err...I am sorry to interrupt you but I have some informations Mr Torres' would like you to sort out."

I'm sure my colleague, being the decent, young fellow he is, decided to make our employer seem more nice by adding 'would like' to the original sentance. Him and I both knew Mr Torres would never say such thing. He would simply crush the poor fellow with his arctic gaze and demand him what to do - and by that I mean to convey another demand to me. Demand not request.

"Come on in," I gave him a small smile and motioned for him to place the documents onto my desk. It seemed as if my smile had defrosted the thin layer of ice around Mr Miller's stiffened body as a sigh of relief escaped his throat.

Cautiously, he advanced on me and put two sheets of paper on the desk. Both of my eyebrows arched up in unision.

That's it? Two sheets of paper?

In all honesty, I had expected this job to be at least a little more of a challenge. So far I could've managed to polish my nails, change the memory card in my camera and do the job altogether, and I would hardly even break the sweat to do it.

As soon as Mr Miller excused himself and shut the door behind him with a quiet, barely audible 'click' I grabbed the top sheet and examined the list written on it. In bold writing stood thirty words, one under another.

It seemed like a list of names. The first name read Adamantem. Obviously the origin of the word was Latin. Even I, who know nothing about dead languages, could figure out that much. But what does it mean?

I could check up the meaning of it on google translate. Then again, that source is not the most reliable one. My eyes fell on the book case to my left. Among all those books and documents, there must've been at least one Latin dictionary. I decided to search through it.

Except for the documents I've reorganized earlier, the case was full to the brim with all kinds of finance and business books. In the lowest, right corner I found five or six dictionaries, carefully lined up one next to another.