He was saying it with a light-hearted tone, like he was joking, but she could feel the helpless grief in him. She took his hand again. The static electricity of their touching had been replaced by a pleasant, warm thrum, like the echo of a bell. She very much doubted that Leonard deserved the curse that had been leveled on him, for his empathy alone. But she supposed that was the point of the curse, to teach the O’Donnell line a little compassion for people who were struggling. The curse had done its work. She only wished the original cursing fairy had added a loophole to let more deserving generations out of it.

Suddenly, the echo of the bell wasn’t just a feeling throughout her body, but a noise coming from her purse. Her phone was chiming. She shot him an apologetic look, but then his phone buzzed as well. He took the phone out of his pocket while she reached for her bag. Her screen showed an email from the League office stating that the department head meeting scheduled for the next day had been moved to that afternoon–in fact, it was scheduled to start in twenty minutes.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he grumbled.

“Watch your language in my restaurant, young man!” Bathtilda warned him sharply.

“What is happening?” Charlotte asked.

“Jessica, my archnemesis, has moved the department head meeting.”

Charlotte snickered. “You have an archnemesis?”

“Yeah, I know that sounds weird,” he said, pulling a few bills out of his wallet and tucking it under the napkin dispenser.

“No, not really. I mean, I think most people have an archnemesis, real or imagined. They just don’t come out and admit it,” Charlotte said.

“Well, I do, and she just moved the department head meeting up twenty-four hours, which means she’s up to something,” he grumbled. “Either she’s counting on me not having the necessary paperwork and agendas prepped so she can embarrass me or she’s planning to have prepped everything herself so she can come out looking like a hero; which is unlikely, because I password protected all of the agendas on the shared server. And she doesn’t have the information necessary to create her own. And she doesn’t know that I prepped and printed everything yesterday and locked the copies in my desk drawer.”

Leonard shrugged. She noted that he sprang to his feet, offering his hand, without moving in his usual, stiff manner. Charlotte lifted a brow as he went to the counter to tell Siobhan that the meeting had been moved and they would need “the usual order” that afternoon instead. Siobhan only gave him a befuddled look as he dashed out of the shop.

“I think he’s confused,” Siobhan told Charlotte.

Charlotte dropped some bills in the tip jar, smiling apologetically. “Administrative work involves more espionage activities than I expected.”

4

Leonard

Sometimes, it paid to be highly organized.