The pages in front of Aleksei were turning. It was funny how they did that. Oh, no -- no that was not funny at all. Funny was what had happened when he had wandered along that shelf of books, singeing the bottom edges of the volumes with the black flames that were his and his alone, and then complained to the... librarian or whatever the fuck she was that someone had been vandalising library property. Shock, horror, outrage; mumbled, angry words about teenagers that had disturbed more than one of the allegedly studious individuals... Aleksei mused to himself, in the privacy of his own head; irritation was something he could work with, and the phrase ‘Quiet in the Library’ was burned into his mind like, oh, he didn’t know -- a white-hot poker forced through the frontal lobe? Right or left, he couldn’t decide. It didn’t fucking matter anyway, he could already feel his influence spreading to those sat at the desks, trying to get work done. Didn’t you just hate it when some foreign bastard either stole the attention of the librarian when you needed a very specific book or just started making a whole lot of noise? On that note, he really couldn’t help hooking his heel around the nearest chair leg and pulling so it screeched across the floor... Before setting the books he apparently wanted to read on the desk with enough of a thud to get those Looks and then wandering off again.
Right on cue, catching him somewhere between the desks and the shelves, his cell phone rang. Well alright; his PA was good for one thing. Really getting on the nerves of people in a no cell phone zone. Spitting a curse-word in Russian, his grin in direct conflict with his tone, he told her fairly easily to ‘find a car and drive off a cliff in it’ then walked in whichever direction he seemed to be facing. Elsewhere in the library, he had placed unholy curses on a handful of books, lamenting-- Well, nothing, really. But it would have been entertaining to see what happened. For instance, he was fairly sure he had cursed a book on demonology. If that wasn’t a huge fucking pointer he really didn’t know what was, besides crucifying all the--Angelic-blooded. Yes, nailing all the angelic-blooded to a motherfucking cross (possibly the same one, for nothing if not comic value) sounded like an excellent idea to Aleksei just then, but that wasn’t what he wanted her for.
Her. The redhead. In the cooking section. If he had the time to untangle every circle of Hell from his mind, he was sure there was a kind of irony in there somewhere. For a moment he stood there, staring, every fibre of his very being itching to reach out and touch her; they was so very little sweeter than instilling Hate in the hearts of the angelic. Stepping forward with a deliberate silence, Aleksei was very careful to make sure he breached what most likely an established personal sphere. “For Dummies,” he read aloud, laying the accent on thick. “In Russia, I buy what you would call the English for Dummies.” A shrug that, as always, seemed to animate his whole body. “Not very helpful. -- Ah, I am in your way, my apologies. If I may just--” He reached up and around her to a thick volume on Eastern cuisine that he needed not at all. Now if she could stay still while he tore out her tongue...