Page 62 of Cookbooks and Demons

Though would it have really been so bad to let him see me naked?She had seen him in such a vulnerable state. Despite her newfound freedom, she felt cold all the way down to her bones and dressed herself in her warmest, fuzziest pajamas complete with socks. Then she buried herself under her comforter and only then did it occur to her that she needed to call in sickat work.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit,” she muttered before she realized that her choice of words were the wrong ones. If Rafferty could still hear her from the depths of hell because of the circle, then she needed to only send him good, comforting words. “Bless it,” she amended, then wondered if actually, because of his circumstances, that would just hurt him in reverse. Bless a demon, cursean angel?

It was too much logic for her brain at that moment, and she just forged on, navigating her phone to call her least favorite person.

“Hi, Yosef,” she said when her nemesis answered.Good,she thought.I sound as croaky as I feel.

“Hi, what’s up?” he asked, already sounding like he had run laps around the city before breakfast.

“Well, as you might be able to hear, I am sick as a dog this morning, so I think I should not come into the office,” Helena said, adding a sniff to the end to emphasize her point.

“You’re not coming in!” Yosef practically shouted into the phone. Helena didn’t realize she had a low level headache until he did that, but he made it ring now. “We have less than a month until the Winter Rose Ball, and you haven’t even picked a caterer yet!”

“I know, I know. I’ll be working from home,” she said.After I get a few hours of sleep,shethought.

“Oh, you’re going to work from home,” he said sarcastically.

“Well, I could come in, but I don’t know what I have and…” Helena had to think fast. “And I’m concerned about giving it to the rest of the office. Especially with Scarlet and everything.”

“Oh,” Yosef said, his ire cooling quickly. “Yeah… yeah, that’s a good point. Okay, okay.” She could practically hear him physically reset himself. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for my overreaction. What you’re saying is sensible. Okay, how about… you make a list of the things you need from the office, and I’ll have a messenger bring them to you?”

“Um okay, I’ll do that, but I’m going to try to get some sleep here so let the messenger know that if I don’t answer the doorbell right away, they should call my phone,” she said, putting Yosef on speaker so she could look at the clock on it.

“How about I schedule to have them delivered at 1pm. Will that give you enough time to get some sleep?”

“Yes, actually that would be great,” Helena said, relieved. “I just feel if I got a few more hours, I might be okay,you know.”

“Don’t push it,” he said, though it sounded absent-mindedly distracted, like he was reading something. Probably hiring a courier via an app?

She waited until he came back.

“Okay, we’ll get this sorted. Feel better,” he said and then he was gone before she could say anything more. Whichwas fine.

She let her phone drop onto the bed beside her, then rolled over, not caring if she tossed it off the bed or not. Laying there, her thoughts still buzzing, she thought she would never fall asleep.

Butshe did.

The next couple weeks went by in a blur for Helena.

Even though she spent a couple days at home, to cover for her “being sick” excuse, she worked just as hard as if she had been in the office. In some ways, she was more productive, having the extra 45 minutes she would have taken otherwise for her commute. There were so many things to plan, from seating to flowers to entertainment to etc. etc. And it all had to be done now or yesterday. But item by item, she got things sorted out and untangled, and she could start to see how this Winter Rose Ball was going to cometogether.

She would need to present everything to Scarlet soon for her final approval, which dragged her back into the office. Everything needed to be perfect, and if it meant she clocked in double the hours at the office,so be it.

“Get out,” Yosef said near the end of the second week.

“What?” Helena exclaimed, lifting her head up from where she had buried it among the guest list seating arrangement plans. She had been moving and shuffling cards around for hours, trying to accommodate as many requests as she could when Yosef had made his strange pronouncement.

“You’re going crazy. You’ve started talking to yourself,” he said, plucking the cards from her hands. Helena felt her cheeks flush. She hadn’t been talking to herself. She had been talking to Rafferty. But Yosef couldn’t know that.

“When’s the last time you ate? Or even went to the bathroom?” Yosef asked, gently pushing her back from her desk to look under it for her purse.

“Um. I don’t know…I guess…”

He found it and pressed it at her. “Exactly, you need to get out of here for a bit. Go get something to eat and some fresh air,” he said as he marched her over to the coat rack bythe door.

“He’s right, you know,” Scarlet called from her own desk where she had been working on making personal phone calls to specific donors to guarantee that they RSVP’d. It was one of the few things she couldn’t farm out. “This job is about pacing, my child.”

“But I am almost finished. I just need to—” she tried to say, but Yosef started putting her coat on for her like she was a kindergartener.

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