Over the Music Shop: Daniel W/Newt P
The lamps are lit over the music shop the whole night, and there's no difficulty getting in through the unlocked (but abandoned, dusty) lower floor entrance. The door to the flat at the top of the stairs is also open, and first arrivals can easily imagine why a "housekeeper" was needed, as general destruction reigned. Some time in the last few hours Daniel lost his temper, and there's broken crockery littered all over the kitchen area, former teacups and saucers and even glass bottles stained with rapidly curdling milk. The place smells like a fine Bordeaux recently spilt, and many of the books in easy reach are off their shelves and in heaps on the floor, spines spread, down and up, like so many abandoned soldiers left on the field. The back corner of the large room, boasting the four-poster bed, is mostly in shadow as the lamp that used to stand sentry over the pair of armchairs in the in-between sitting area is on its side in a pool of glistening multicolor glass. The sheets, bedclothes and pillows are on the floor, ripped off as if the bed could be slit open like a throat. Issues of the local newspaper and more books are in disturbed heaps that hint at neglect interrupted by disorder, and some of the cooking equipment managed to make a spill across most of the kitchen area and into the far side of the room under the window. The large crates, wooden things with shipping tags from Europe, are the only things left entirely untouched, too large and unsatisfying to break into and destroy.
There's a moment in which the place seems empty, but Daniel uncoils from one of the armchairs facing away from the door. There's a stemless wineglass in his right palm, and his clothes are loose and splashed with recent stains. Glassy dark eyes stared a challenge at the door, and there is certainly a prickling second when he thinks about trying to kill whoever is there, but he remembers the recruitment perhaps five seconds later, and he turns his head to look at the flat as if seeing it for the first time. His closed mouth moves, running his tongue over teeth hidden behind thin lips, and then he takes another drink from the glass, which, as it rotates, reveals that it probably didn't start out life as stemless.
He turns without saying anything and sits back down, this time on a chair that faces the door to see what the new arrival does.