The guard frowned for a moment, then turned and typed something in his computer. His moustache twitched as he studied the screen. “Juliana Norris, yeah, got it right here. I’ll get the key from the super.”
She nodded and leaned on the edge of the desk while they waited for him to return.
“Why didn’t he just give you a key?” Jeremiah asked.
She wiggled her fingers. “Don’t need one, remember? Figured we better keep this all above board as possible.”
The scuff of a shoe sounded behind her and she looked over her shoulder. The guard was back, key in hand. They followed him around the corner to the elevator. Juliana would have preferred to take the stairs, but wasn’t sure their escort could make it without needing to stop every flight. When the doors opened, they stepped inside. The scent of old urine enveloped them, causing her to eye a stain in the corner suspiciously. Classy place Nathaniel lived in. She didn’t remember it being this bad last time she was there.
She stood in the corner opposite the stain as they rode up the six floors in silence. When the elevator arrived at their destination, they went down the hall to their left. The guard stopped at Nathaniel’s apartment and unlocked it. Juliana stopped him before he opened the door. “Thank you. We’ll let you know if we need anything else.”
He looked between the two of them for a moment then shrugged and pocketed the key. She watched him amble back down the hall.
Jeremiah drew his gun and she followed suit. Pain twitched in her palm, complaining at the grip on the weapon. The gun jerked. She shifted it to her left hand and cradled her throbbing right arm against her chest.
Jeremiah frowned but turned the knob and pushed the door open when she nodded. Warm light spilled into the hall. At least they didn’t have to worry about anything jumping out of the dark at them. They stepped into the apartment and she froze. There was no sign of any altercation, nothing out of place. The giddy sense of anticipation that had been with her since she stepped through the portal vanished faster than an imp in a rainstorm.
Despite her certainty they wouldn’t find anything, they still had to search the apartment. She fired up her gift and pain lanced from ear to ear. She shoved the discomfort aside and got to work. The kitchen was right inside the door to the left and the living room opened before them. A short hallway with three doors ran off to the left.
The first door they came to led into the bathroom. A quick inspection behind the shower curtain and in the linen closet revealed the room to be empty. She exited and nodded at Jeremiah. He opened the door directly across the hall. Nathaniel’s office. Jeremiah stepped inside and she headed to the bedroom at the end of the hall. She checked under the bed and in the closet. She put her gun away and turned off her gift. Nathaniel wasn’t here, and neither was anything else.
“Have you seen this?” Jeremiah’s voice drifted down the hall.
Juliana wandered out and found him still in the office. His weapon holstered, he stood with his hands on his hips gaping at one of several floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Nathaniel was a book freak. His entire office, including the closet, overflowed with them. Every available area was crammed full of volumes of various sizes, formats and subjects. About the only thing they had in common was they all bore heavily creased spines. He not only read them, he read them and reread them, over and over again. He said the magic was all in the way the words flowed across the page, the dance they made to tell the story. Knowing the ending didn’t ruin that. Seeing his treasures, her heart ached. She had to get him back.
She inhaled deeply. A blend of sandalwood and cedar invaded her nostrils. Nathaniel’s favorite scent. No acrid aroma of cinder and ashes tainted it. The demon hadn’t been here.
She clenched her jaw and swallowed the tears she felt building. Nathaniel would be pissed if she cried for him. Instead, she leaned against the doorframe. “Totally blows the image you had of Nathaniel out of your mind, doesn’t it?”
Jeremiah nodded but kept his eyes on the collection before him. “Shakespeare, Austen, the original Grimm’s, Verne... the boy’s got some of the greatest works of literature here and they’ve all been read. Every one of them.”
Nathaniel had an inane theory that women didn’t like well-read men. Juliana thought only stupid women didn’t like well-read men, but he’d never asked her opinion so she hadn’t given it. Nathaniel would think what he wanted so very few people saw this side of him. In fact, he kept no books in the living room or in the main part of his bedroom. It was silly, but she understood the level of trust he had in her that he’d shared his secret. She’d revealed it to no one until now.
“You can’t tell anyone,” she said. “He’d be heartbroken if his image was ruined.”
Jeremiah shook his head and faced her.
“What about the stuff on his desk? Was he working on anything?” she asked, stepping over to the desk. Other than the laptop, it was bare. She pressed a couple of buttons but the monitor stayed dark. She shoved down her disappointment, uncertain of what she’d been expecting. It wasn’t like she was going to find a document titled How I Became Demon-ridden by Nathaniel West. It would have been nice to get some sort of clue, though.
She headed back to the living room. All the electronics were off. A foray into the kitchen revealed a plate with a few crumbs in the sink. A glass with milk residue sat beside it.
Juliana scanned the room looking for anything out of place, anything that caught her attention. Her arm still throbbed, but she did her best to ignore it. She gestured with her good hand to the tennis shoes on the mat by the door. “His shoes are still here. His boots are in the closet, too.”
He only owned the two pairs of shoes that she knew of, so wherever he’d gone, it was somewhere close. Most likely in the building. Her brow furrowed in thought. There was only one place she could think of.
She’d kept him company while he washed his clothes more than once. She went back down the hall to the bedroom. His hamper and detergent were gone from the closet. Jeremiah waited for her in the living room and she gestured for him to follow as she left the apartment. She shut the door and ran her fingers over the lock. She wasn’t leaving Nathaniel’s apartment open for whoever just happened to wander by. It wouldn’t take anything much for her to open it again if she needed to anyway.
They got on the elevator and Juliana pressed the button for the basement. The apartment had a hookup for a washer and dryer, but Nathaniel had never bothered to get them. He said he just hadn’t found a set he liked. More likely, he didn’t want to take the space away from the books.
“Not that I wouldn’t follow wherever you chose to lead, but where are we going?” Jeremiah finally asked, pulling her from her thoughts.
The corner of her mouth curled in a smile. “Sorry. Laundry room.”
The elevator dinged and they stepped off into a well-lit basement corridor. The laundry room stood in front of them. Juliana walked through the door and the aromas of fabric softener and mold immediately assailed her. Chairs ran back-to-back down the center of the room. Washers and dryers alternated the length of the two side walls. A bottle of detergent sat on top of one of the machines. Directly across from it a book lay open on a chair, the pages face down. She picked it up.
“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” She turned the cover so Jeremiah could see the illustration. “Why does that seem particularly fitting right now?”
He leaned against the doorframe, his dark eyes watching her.
She ran her hand over the cover. “This is Nathaniel’s favorite book. He says there’s been a whole study of whether Stevenson was a shifter. A lot of people think he wrote the book about himself.”