Morningstar Manor

Even though it's nice weather outside, Urquhart was in the Lamb, drinking coffee and watching football on the big TV hanging in a corner. This place was pub-ish enough to show the right sort of sports.

Idly, he watched little red-and-black people play against little orange people.

Urquhart liked the game, but not enough to cheer or react much.-

It was a warm early spring day, and the Auberge had dared put out its tables for the Saturday shoppers, and there were quite a number sitting out there, old regulars as well as passing strangers. Nobody would notice a newcomer.

Not even the very tall and broad-shouldered man with the short silvery hair, somewhere in his fifties, who was stretching out long legs in scruffy hiking boots. He was drinking café au lait and eating pumpkin tart while lazily watching people passing by, with special interest in the female part of the crowd.

Under his table, there were several shopping bags from stores around Vine Square, and one from Michaels Brothers.

Just some passing stranger enjoying a sunny Saturday in the newly trendy part of town.

The Mocha was, as usual for a Saturday early morning, full of people either grabbing something caffeine-laden to-go on their way through, or lounging watching the harried folk.

Bethan was sitting at a table near the windows, half-reading her latest copy of Contemporary Pediatrics, and drinking a cup of karma chai. There was a muffin sitting on a plate next to her cup, white chocolate and cranberry, and she was trying to ignore it's siren call.

Cam had bagged himself a chair in a corner from which he could watch people come and go over the top of his black coffee, which he held before his nose, enjoying the armoa almost more than the taste. Not that is wasn't good - for all her attitude, Joy certainly made a good cup of coffee.

Jos and Toby were sharing a cafetiere and bickering good-naturedly over whose DS had flat batteries and whose was fully charged - they could never seem to convince anyone not to get them matching things - and here was the reason! How were they to know which belonged to which of them? The idea of stickers was obviously foreign to them.

Sasha was sitting on a coach, Morgan's car seat next to her. The baby was napping after a tiring shopping trip, and Sasha was taking the time to kick back and relax with hot chocolate before heading back up to the apartment.

Cambion was in the garden, sprawled on his back across a bench, with a bowl of chocolate pudding balanced on his chest. A large bowl. He had made packet pudding, and the entire thing was being slowly spooned into his mouth as he watched the clouds scudding across the sky. Pudding - it made everything better. Even when things were fin to begin with, after pudding, they were great.

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.

Jon didn't often walk the floors, he found the bright chirpiness of the breathers wearying, but today he was making a special effort.

Last night, when the silly partying had died down and the last of the trick or treaters who had braved his door [some mothers would take their children ANYWHERE for free candy] had been sent away laden with sugar and E numbers, he had gone down a level to see to the souls in his care. It had been as much a relief to shrug off the soft human shell and spread his wings and arch his spiked spine as it had been to accept the grovelling adoration of his subjects.

It always amused him to see their cringing desire to be noticed. Did they but know it they were all equals - equally damned, that is - and it struck him that even the damned sometimes needed a day off. No dammit, he grinned, why stop at a day. Let them have a whole week! Ruprecht in particular deserved some time to be himself. He was well aware of the stress his old friend must suffer having to pretend all the time.

So he had opened the ways and now was going from floor to floor, cigar between his teeth, wondering who, or what, would be brave enough to approach him. If anyone - the little humans tended to steer well clear.

Jane was in the library, tucked away in a corner with a sneaky bottle of water and a good book that she was enjoying a great deal. She didn't read crime thrillers too often, her feeling was that there was too much violence already in the world for her to need to read fictional accounts of it, but this one she could not put down. Yes, she'd discovered Jonathan Kellerman and the "Women's Murder Club" books.

If she wasn't careful, she'd be so engrossed that anyone coming up to say hi was bound to make her jump out of her skin...

Bethan could never quite decide which sort of Monday morning she hates the most - the ones where she has to get up early, or the ones when she's been on-call all night, and is coming back to bed at nine am. This particular morning was one of the latter, and she had stopped in the Mocha for a cup of caffeine-free tea before heading up to bed.

***

Cambion doesn't hate Mondays any more or less than any other day, as Mondays are no different to someone who doesn't work for a living. Indolent bastard that he is. Still, he does get up reasonably early, and usually finds himself people-watching in the Mocha around the sort of time that most people are heading for work. He was there today, drinking hot chocolate and eating a piece of fudge cake. Who said breakfast had to be healthy?

***

Sasha had decided that it was time that little Morgan was introduced to some of the tenants, so she and the baby were tucked away on a sofa at the back of the Mocha. Morgan was snuggled up in a white crocheted blanket, only the top of her fluffy dark head showing, and occasionally one waving fist.

The light green collared shirt did not have one stain on it even though Emily had practically prepared the whole lunch without an apron. Her hair was on a loose braid and she was wearing a pair of tight-fitting black trousers with the shirt tucked in.

The round dining table was already set with two plates, forks, knifes and dessert spoons, wine and water glasses, folded napkins and a colorful bunch of flowers in a glass vase. Wayne was sitting on the kitchen floor staring at the flowers hungrily, but Emily had shooed him away from the table enough times to make him not jump on it while she was around.

The dessert was ready in the fridge, and the lunch itself was coming up right on time. The smells of duck breast in the oven and the peach sauce in the pan were strong and delicious, and she glanced at the clock hoping that Cam would be on time.

The treadmill was not a choice for Emily when the weather was warm and sunny - one of the small pleasures of her life was taking a long jog outside listening to good, rhythmic songs. As she was approaching the Manor after a good hour of jogging and stretching in a park, the tune in her ears changed to KT Tunstall's Hold On. She changed her pace to match the rhythm and for the last block before the Manor she jogged with a smile on her face and her pony tail swinging behind her.

Emily in black shorts and a tight green sports top arrived in the Manor lobby a bit out of breath, slightly sweaty, but smiling as she took the mp3 player's plugs out of her ears. No better way to start a day.

Erin had planned to spend today lazily soaking up some sun by the pool. Which was exactly where she was, laying on a lounger in her bikini. Next to her chair sat her cell phone, her keys, her flip flops and a bottle of Hawaiian Tropic oil. If nobody came along to interrupt the silence, she could very well find herself slipping off to dreamland.

Emily lounged on her yellow sofa in her apartment late at night. The living room was lit with candles and she had had a glass of wine while watching the Pride and Prejudice film. Wayne was curled up on the sofa beside her, sleeping peacefully. He was finally getting used to his new home, and Emily watched him sleep with a smile on her face. The movie was terrible, anyways, so she rather watched the feline than the rape of the Jane Austen novel.

After a while she turned to look at Keira Knightley purse her lips on the TV screen, and she reached for the remote control.

"Why did I even bother..." she muttered and pressed stop. The screen went black and the room became even dimmer, even though a bright halogen light shone from the kitchen.

The darkhaired woman had been sitting in the garden area of the Mocha for well over an hour already. In that time she had aten half of a donught (the other half was sitting on its plate, forgotten), had drank two thirds of a cappuccino (the rest was now cold, obviously), and had almost finished writing her column for the July issue of the Gourmet magazine. Emily was now proof reading what she had written with a concentrated pout.

Cambion and Manny had been needling each other for. . . well. It felt like weeks and it probably had.

There was the first time they'd really spoken, of course, when Manny had cast aspersions on Cambion's relationship with his father, and been generally an ass - and Cambion had been rude back. Then a few days later Cambion had 'accidentally' knocked into Manny's table in the Mocha and spilled his coffee over his magazine.( And things escalated from there. . . )

It wasn't that Cambion was lazy, so much as that. . . okay, he was lazy. he had nothing to occupy himself with, but that didn't really excuse the fact that the half-demon was, by his very nature, and indolent, self-indulgent, spoiled brat. This afternoon, he was indulging himself in a large cup of coffee, from the Mocha, and sitting on one of the excessively squashy couches in the Lobby, watching the other tenants go about their business. he felt, perhaps, a little smug that he had no such business to go about.

Cambion could probably live in Morningstar manor for another twenty years without getting bored of the view over the city from the roof. Her certainly hasn't tired of it yet - which is why he was to be found perched on a parapet, smoking his uaul pretentious cigarettes, and drumming his fingers idly on a nearby pipe.