Morningstar Manor

Niles padded through his apartment, fresh from the shower and bare assed naked. It was going to be a good day, he decided. He had a date with Kara tonight and a maid was going to be coming soon to clean his apartment and sweep up all of Lola's hair.
He hadn't had a maid since...Well, before. But it would be different than before because this maid wouldn't live with him and he just had a silly apartment, not a mansion. He was just Niles now, not Master Devereux or Mr. Devereux, except for in the very special case of Ms. Elspeth Vale, but that was hardly the same thing, wasn't it?
The good news was that if the rest of the women in this place were anything to go on, the maid was bound to be one of the most gorgeous women he'd ever seen. They all were. Except for that hag Joy in the Mocha. His brow wrinkled as he padded over to the jeans he'd brought up from the laundry mat last night before going out and slid them over his naked hips. Man, he really didn't like that woman.
He meant to find a shirt, he really did, but Lola meowed from the living room, begging for attention and he walked over and scooped her out of her big kitty bed that he'd put her in before taking a shower. She was still too little to jump out of it on her own.
"Mornin' baby, " he muttered to the kitten as he settled down with her on the couch, stretching out and putting his arms above his head, laughing a little as Lola's paws tickled his ribs as she searched for a proper nook in which to doze.
He should go shave and find a shirt, he thought, just in case the maid was hot... But man, was he sleepy.

Niles got off the elevator at the lobby, determined to find someone to give him some directions. He had a date tonight and he wanted to make a good impression, so he needed to find himself a florist. Surely there had to be some sort of directory of the city, or a familiar face in this crowd of people that could help him out? He took a few steps into the lobby, looking around.

***********

Anastasia stared at herself in the mirror. Right there, where her neck connected to her shoulder, were teeth marks. They'd been there when she woke up Monday morning from her dream about Gavin.
They hadn't been there when she went to sleep Sunday night.
She stared. Trevor must have turned to her while they were both asleep, as he did sometimes. So that meant not only had she had a dream about her brother in law, she'd had the dream while it was her husband she was having sex with.
Stomach feeling hollow, she walked out of her bathroom into her bedroom and then down the hall.

There was a bored half-demon on the roof, in human form, chain-smoking his favoured Black Sobranie cigarettes and flicking them off the side of the building onto the people walking past below. He was sulking. Cambion in a sulk was quite a thing to see. And to feel - the air atop the building veritably crackled with that dry, electric feeling that comes just before a storm. He was pissed, and he didn't mind who knew it.

She'd just. . . gone! Poof, just like that, his sister had moved out of the Manor and left him. Fine, so she'd hardly been there in forever, and she'd actually been moving out over a few weeks, but she was finally gone, keys handed over, everything taken, never to return. Great. He knew he wasn't welcome to follow her - and it's not like he wanted to anyway! He was perfectly fine where he was, thanks very much. Fine. Completely.

He threw the latest cigarette off the roof and it descended to the ground in a lazy spiral. Going to light the next one, he found that the pack was empty - and that followed the butt, with a growled curse on the manufacturers of fine tobacco products. He plunged his fists deep into the pockets of his brown slacks, stuck out his lower lip, and glowered at the pedestrians below.

Niles had taken time on his appearance tonight, for Kara. Dressed to impress and with his hair somewhat in a mohawk, he knocked on the door of apartment 221 with a bouquet behind his back that the lady at the florist had told him were called "Irish eyes" bound in a green ribbon.

Exercise was important - doubly important now she was in a fairly sedentary occupation and evenings tended to be taken up with - nothing much in particular. So Andy had set herself the goal of fencing at least twice a week and filling in time between at the gym.

Uncle Gyorgy had shaken his head over the state of her knee and the time it took her to recover for a lunge, had consulted a friend in the physiotherapy department at the hospital and she had been given a series of exercises to do.

So she sat in the multigym and did them, gritting her teeth and looking longingly at the treadmill.

Bridget had two brothers, one older and one younger. The three of them all got along fairly well, but Bridget was undoubtedly closer to her older brother Neil. The two of them were more the thoughtful type while their younger brother Brad was more...not. So it stood to reason that Bridget turned to Neil during her current crisis. Thankfully he was around to take the time to do so.

She lucked out traffic-wise and ended up at Boston's Burgers early. It was a little restaurant a few blocks from the Square that the two of them had discovered when Bridget first moved to the City. There were TVs set up throughout the place usually set to whatever sports event was happening at the time. But the weather was pleasant and there was outdoor seating, so Bridget requested a table outside where the only entertainment was people-watching. She sat back in her seat and messed around with her cell phone as she waited for her brother to show up.