Who: Giles and TBD (open!) What: Taking care of odds and ends Where: the empty office next to the library. When: Thursday midday-ish. Status: Closed
Transoceanic calls were the bane of his existence. Most of the idiotic operators couldn't understand his accent unless he was blessed enough to find one who actually sounded as if they comprehended the Queen's English.
At the very moment he was on the line with several of his coven mates, and he was pinching the bridge of his nose. They were doing him quite a large favor and keeping a kind of psychic net thrown around the Watchers' backup buildings, and even now he was getting a list of those who had survived the Bringers' attacks. Fewer than he'd hoped, but more than he'd expected. Richard Ainsley was among the survivors, and personally Giles thought it because he was rather like a cockroach in that it would take nothing short of a nuclear holocaust to destroy the man.
"Fair warning, Rupert, that man has a stick up his arse the size of a Palace Guard's hat," Olivia warned him gently. "And I don't think he likes you very much."
"Oh, I know he doesn't like me, and the feeling is decidedly mutual. I suppose it would be against all good sense to turn the man into a goldfish?" Giles asked. "I'm sure he'd find it much more difficult to try and make trouble if he's in a glass jar with some rocks and a little plastic treasure chest."
The woman on the other end of the phone laughed. "Be good, Rupert," she chided. "We've still no idea how many more are coming in, but there's more every day. Do you need an exact list?"
"No, no, don't worry yourself about it; I'm sure that Richard will bring one with him, the git." A sigh. "Thank you for acting as go-between; the coven's got it's hands quite full at the moment and can't be answering my every question."
"After the things I've seen? I'm glad to help out in any way I can." A quiet pause. "You take care of yourself, right?"
"Always. You too, eh? I do eventually intend to make it back across the pond, and I'd like to see you in one piece when I get there."
Olivia laughed again. "Same goes for you, old man. Delegate the work and leave the world-saving to those youngsters. Reap the benefits of being the brain and flex the muscles. I'll talk to you later, love."
"I'll keep it in mind. Ta." Giles hung up with a smile on his face, and sighed. There was a stack of expense vouchers on his desk a mile high, and he was in the process of sorting them by individual. It was getting harder and harder to do, and he really needed to speak with someone about establishing a defraying fund to help pay the costs of the many Slayers answering the mysterious missives.
He was also working on said missives, hoping to figure out who had actually sent the damn things out in the first place. Talk to Angel about hiring an administrator, he doodled on his notepad. Order expense ledgers. Next item. Establish a checking fund for all operational costs. That was going to be a fun one. "How in the bloody hell do you get someone who can't be photographed a photo ID?" he growled to himself. Not to mention the lack of a last name. Perhaps Angel could be persuaded to sign up for a driver's license as William Angelus, which would at least provide a name that could go on a checkbook. After those, he added, re-check building security after the new systems are installed.
At the very top of the list, he wrote, Find a new name for this building. They couldn't keep calling it "the old Wolfram & Hart building" forever, although that's exactly what it was. They needed a new name for it, something nice and catchy. "Slayers Inc.," he laughed to himself. Sliding off the corner of the desk, Giles went to the record player set in one of the wall niches, and turned it on. Lifting the needle out of the way, he took the vinyl disc off the player, put it in his sleeve, and flipped through his collection. He finally settled on Cream, and sighed happily as the music soothed him. Usually just the sight and the smell of his musty old books soothed him, but until the remodeling crew came in and knocked a door in the wall shared by the library and the office, Cream would have to do.
Once the music was on, he settled back behind his desk, digging into the paperwork and pulling out a stack of various folders in which the expense vouchers got filed. "God, I hate paperwork," he said aloud.