Jacob's on his way to shelve some of the books he'd taken down to reference in a paper when he finds Cassandra sitting at a table with thick, heavy books stacked up all around her. He recognises them as Charlene's ledgers, and he wanders closer, curious. "Hey, Cass, what you up to?" he wonders, glancing at the notebook she has next to her and is busily scribbling in.
"Managing the accounts," she replies cheerily. "Since Eve doesn't even do her own taxes and Ezekiel doesn't pay taxes, I figured I'll go ahead and handle it."
He frowns a little as he glances from the ledgers to her notebook and what she's written in so far. "Uhm…I don't know what you're doing here, Cassie, but it ain't the accounts."
She frowns slightly and looks down at her notes. "What? Yes, I am. See?" She slides her notebook closer to him, pointing.
He shakes his head quickly. "Oh, no. No, no. That's…that's not how accounts—okay, move over. Scoot," Jacob orders, waving a hand at her.
"Jacob, I know what I'm doing," she protests even as she drags her chair sideways, giving him room to pull up another and sit down.
He pulls the ledgers over to him with a shake of his head. "I get that you're good at math, but honey, accounting is not just numbers." Jacob squints at Charlene's handwriting for a moment, then reaches in his jacket and finds his glasses case and put them on. Charlene had some funky-ass handwriting for sure. He wondered if it was because she'd lived through different styles of writing. "Huh. See, this, this here isn't right, and this…uh-uh."
Cassandra frowns as he takes her notebook and pen and starts crossing out her work and rewriting them. "Hey!"
Jacob looks at her over the frames of his glasses. "I know what I'm doing, Cass. I ran the books back home since I was seventeen. I got this. And no offence, but you do not. Not even a little bit. This is…all wrong."
The redhead sits and sulks, watching him as he works, sometimes opening her mouth to protest at some of the numbers he wrote. She closes it again when he gives her a look over his frames again. Finally, Jacob puts down the pen and turns to face her. "Y'know, Cass, if I'm doing this, that means that you now have more time to work in the lab with Mr. Jenkins," he points out with a knowing arch of his eyebrows; she flushes slightly and squirms in her seat. "So I think that the more appropriate song to be singing is, 'Thank you, Jacob, for taking over this extremely boring task and giving me more time to spend with my boyfriend.'"
She flushes darker and stands up, biting her lips together on a grin. "Shut up, Jacob. And thank you. And he's not my boyfriend," she adds, swatting his shoulder as she practically skips out. She stops and turns at the door to give him a sly smile. "He's very much a man, thank you."
Jacob rolls his eyes and waves her off, her merry laughter echoing down the corridor. He looks back at the thick, heavy ledgers and lets out a heavy sigh. "Hoo-boy. Just like being home again," he mutters.
He keeps going through the accounts, mumbling to himself as he scribbles in Cassandra's notebook, and he makes a mental note to get his legal pad and pen when he gets up again, because he's not sure how he feels about filing the Library's finances in purple glitter pen. He doesn't even hear the door open and nearly knocks a ledger off the table when a hand touches his shoulder. "Jesus!"
"Ah, forgive me, Mr. Stone," Jenkins apologises. "I thought you heard me come in."
Jacob sets down his pen and rubs at his eyes under his glasses. "Guess I didn't. What's up, Jenkins?" he asks.
"Nothing is up, exactly. But Ms. Cillian's just told me that you have taken over the accounting from her. Are you entirely certain that's wise? She is the mathematical prodigy," he observes.
"Well, it's just like I told her, accounting isn't just numbers. There's more to it than that, and unfortunately, Cassandra does not get that." Jacob massages the writer's cramp that's starting to form in his hand, flexing his fingers.
Jenkins glances over at the thick, heavy ledgers, some of them stacked five high, and the open one in front of Jacob, the pages filled with Charlene's curious, eye-aching handwriting. "You can actually make sense of all this mess?" he muses. "I'm afraid that I don't have much experience in matters of accounting. I never did get around to studying modern finances."
Jacob chortles. "Mess? Oh, man, this…this is not a mess. All things considered, it is a very impressive system. This is like a Botticelli in numbered form. Charlene knew her stuff, I'll tell you that. And that woman kept her some receipts, too."
"Ah, yes, she was…always very passionate about that." Jenkins glances over the table and nods. "Well, Mr. Stone, I wish you all the luck in the world."
"Thanks, Mr. J."
"Might I suggest…moving this to her office?"
The historian looks up in surprise. "Charlene's office? Oh, I couldn't…"
Jenkins waves a hand lightly. "It's perfectly alright, I assure you. I'm not quite so delicate as that, Mr. Stone. She refused to do her work anywhere but in that room. Said it helped her focus somehow. Perhaps it'll help you. Come, I'll help you move these."
The two of them carry all the ledgers and files into the office that'd been Charlene's and set them up on the enormous, solid mahogany desk that had enough surface space to hold them all easily. "Well, there you are, Mr. Stone. I wish you all the luck in the world. Just don't ask me for help," Jenkins remarks with wry smile.
"You got it. Thanks, Jenkins." Once the knight leaves, Jacob sits down in the desk chair and looks around the office. The room's cool and quiet, and even though the lamps give plenty of light to see by, it seems dark, but not in a bad way, either. More like the dark of reading a book by lamp before bed. It's nice. It's relaxing. He can see why Charlene would want to stay here when she was working on the books. He picks up his pen—he'd remembered to grab his own stuff on the way in—and gets to work.
He's not sure how long he worked at the numbers, fixing what Cassandra had messed up, but when he leans back to stretch out, his spine popping back into alignment, he figures it's been quite a while. "Oh, this is a comfy chair," he groans, sinking back into the seat.
"I know, that's why I got it," Charlene's voice replies from just behind him, and he nearly capsizes the chair.
"God Almighty!" he sputters as he rights himself, turning around to face the full-length mirror that's propped at an unobtrusive angle in the corner behind the desk. Charlene stood in the mirror's reflection, looking at him curiously. "You're gonna give me a damn coronary doing that," Jacob sighs, one hand pressed to his chest.
"Are you doing the accounts?" Charlene asks. "Those are my ledgers."
"Yes, Ms. Charlene. I, uh, I saw Cassandra doing them, and…"
She shakes her head. "Oh, that girl. She's very sweet, and she's good with numbers, but—"
"Accounting's more than numbers," Jacob finishes for her, and she gives him an impressed look. "I did the books for my pops back home; the only thing he knew how to do with money was drink it and gamble it. I kept our heads above water for twenty years, I figure I can handle this."
Charlene nods approvingly and glances past him towards the ledgers. "Well, if you need any assistance, you can always ask me."
"Actually, I have a question or two for you. I love your system, but there's a few things here that I'm not so sure I understand," Jacob replies, turning to pick up the ledger and rolling the chair closer to the mirror.
"Show me."
It becomes a routine. Once a week, Jacob collects all their receipts from their missions—he keeps a Ziploc bag in his pocket to hold them all so they wouldn't get wet or lost—and goes to Charlene's old office to put it all into the ledgers and check their expenses against the budget.
Cassandra pouts for a day or two about having the task stolen from her, but she gets over it very fast once she gets to spend the extra time with Jenkins in the lab. Jacob comes into find a plate of red velvet cupcakes with buttercream frosting waiting for him, along with a note written in purple glitter pen: Thanks for trading jobs! XOXO. Charlene scolds him about getting frosting on the ledger.
It's almost like being home again, but it's easier than trying to keep the company's finances because the Library isn't owned by an old drunk who keeps gambling them into the red. The only major roadblock he runs into—Flynn.
Charlene's right about him. He never keeps his receipts, and trying to figure out his expenditures without them gives Jacob a regular headache. So, the next time he hears the senior Librarian's loud voice echoing through the Annex, he bolts out of his office and makes a beeline for the other man. He grabs Flynn by the ascot and drags him back to the office like a naughty puppy, ignoring the other man's sputtering protests and halfhearted struggles.
"You better start keeping your goddamn receipts, Carsen. Have you ever tried to do the books before? Huh? Have you? Well, I'll tell you something, I ran the finances of a damn pipeline company for years, and that didn't give me as much of a headache as you do," Jacob scolds, jabbing a finger at the blank spaces in the ledger. "So if you don't start bringing me your receipts, I'm gonna tell Eve. And once she hears that you keep making my job harder for me by being a forgetful ass, how warm of a welcome do you think you're gonna get at home, huh?" He gives Flynn a little shake for emphasis when the Librarian blanches at the thought of Eve giving him the cold shoulder. "Next week, I wanna see some paperwork on my damn desk." He turns Flynn towards the door and gives him a push out into the hallway. "Keep your fucking receipts, Carsen," he shouts at Flynn's rapidly retreating back, then steps back and kicks the door shut.
Charlene appears in the mirror as he walks back to the desk. "I haven't been able to get him to turn in his receipts for ten years, Jacob," she says with a shake of her head; they've been on a first name basis ever since he finagled a 15% budget increase.
He flings himself back into the chair, propping his heels up on the edge of the desk. "No offence, Charlene, but you're not Eve Baird."
Charlene almost breaks down in tears when Flynn comes sulking into the office next week and holds out a creased, rumpled Ziploc bag full of receipts. "You dear, sweet boy," she says in a choked voice as Jacob starts sorting them by date and putting the numbers into the ledgers.
Someone knocks on the door of his office. "Come in," Jacob calls.
The door opens, and Jenkins steps in, carrying a tea tray, though instead of tea and biscuits, he has a plate of jerky courtesy of the Chupacabra and two beers, which was Jacob's drink limit. Nobody wanted him to get too much of a buzz on and start putting numbers in the wrong place. "I come bearing refreshments. You've been in here for a few hours."
He grins and moves aside a stack of files to make a space. "Thanks, Mr. J."
"I must say, Mr. Stone, you are doing a most admirable job of managing the Library's accounts," Jenkins remarks as he sets down the tray on the clear desk space. "And the extra time with Ms. Cillian has, ah…not gone amiss, either."
Jacob sets his glasses atop his head and rubs at his eyes, chuckling. "Yeah, well. Just like being home again," he replies, leaning back in his chair and chewing on a piece of jerky.
"I heard you even got Mr. Carsen to bring in his receipts," Jenkins notes, sounding truly impressed, and he hands Jacob a beer, still cold. "Surely that must make things easier."
The historian smirks as he twists the cap off. "Yeah, well, the easiest one to manage is Ezekiel," he replies; Jenkins gives him a surprised look. He takes a pull from the bottle and grins up at the knight. "The only thing he pays for is pizza."