Elias palmed his keys, paused, then stared up at the apartment building. He was counting floors, although he didn't need to repeat the exercise again to find the row of windows he was looking for. 10 floors up. Wincing, he shook his head, then headed up toward the entryway. It was still early. He had enough time to collect a few key items and then head out for the evening. When 8 p.m. came, tonight, he had no intention of being anywhere close to this building -- or to floor ten.
Monumental. Failure.
Those were the two words that kept returning to his mind. Regardless of his utter defeat at the hands of Ms. St. Giles, however, he still felt terribly compelled toward her. He'd been having odd ... visions... in the evenings, visions that left his head splitting, and visions that he couldn't say for sure were real or imagined. What he did know is that he perversely didn't want them to stop -- and he couldn't endure being in this apartment building tonight at all.
He caught the two figures ahead but paid very little attention to them -- until he heard Charlie's last name spoken from the one he didn't recognize at all.
Elias slowed, then stopped a respectful distance from the two. He wouldn't deliberately intrude, but he was waiting -- clearly waiting -- until it was reasonable for him to ask just how he knew Charlie in the first place.