Trapezoid (The Base)

Chapter 21

Having a brief morning tour of the mansion before setting off to start her duties put a bit of glitter into the day she felt would be more than dull. The kitchen, the huge living room with a cavernous fireplace, and the Victorian furniture in each room made her a bit content to be stuck here for a while. Thomas, who was clearly in a better mood than the day before, gave her a brief tour of the second floor. She glanced through the crack of the door of one of the enormous bedrooms. It was clear no human had set foot in it in months. The drawn dark curtains deprived the place of light. Chris could barely make out anything in the place.

"That was Richie's room before his wings grew bigger."

"Oh," Chris said nonchalantly—even though everything in her was tingling for having already found a scrape of some probably valuable information. As she followed the lanky guy through the rest of the tour of the top floor, her mind was busy brewing. There was probably nothing of serious value to this case in that room, but maybe it contained scraps that could help give an in-depth picture of the guy.

Thomas turned to face her as he glanced at his watch. "Well, I guess we're done, but it's still about fifteen minutes before you're expected to start your duties around here."

Chris tried making disappointment take her expressions over. All she really felt was that there was so much more to this house she didn't know. "Already?"

He shrugged indifferently. "Yeah, we've taken almost two hours."

"Maybe, but most of that time was spent taking a quick walk in the orchard and the grounds around the house. I felt like I visited the garden at the old age home!"

"My aching feet can object to that. Besides, this isn't your morning exercises; this is something granted to you so you can just familiarize yourself with the place," he stated with his head held high, awkwardly toying with a button of his black suit jacket.

She nodded, head down, as if accepting the disappointment. "Then I guess I can take an early start and spruce that ol' dusty library up!" she said, taking care to hold on to her British accent and sound cheery.

She enjoyed the feeling of the smooth mahogany balustrade and the tapping of her black low-heeled pumps on the polished wooden steps that echoed off the portrait-filled walls. She held the skirt down of her crisp white maid's dress as she spiraled down, aware of the heavier steps behind her. She made the jovial decision to hop down the three remaining steps to the ground.

"I haven't done this in ages."

Chris turned just in time to witness the lanky guy leaping from the fifth step. Her hand instinctively flew to her mouth, amazed that he made it to the floor in one piece. She giggled as she saw the self-conscious smile that spread across his once-dull features as he straightened, pulling dreads out of his face.

She ceased the opportunity. "My, how childish!"

He eye-rolled the reprimand away. "Come, I'll show you to the basement," he said with a grin—the longest one she'd ever seen on him.

She gave a light chuckle, but internally snickered sinisterly. One of her students had been the borderline of a clown—and had more friends than enemies. Lightening up was hopefully cracking the ice here. She needed no enemies—especially here. Maybe for more than just CIA reasons. "There's a basement?"

"Yeah," he replied simply, leading her into the kitchen. The cook, Louis, gave her the strangest look, shooting Thomas a sharp glance. Chris followed him into the food pantry as if it was the norm for the basement's entrance to be in the kitchen. Chris smiled at how even the pantry had managed not to move with the times. Thomas unhooked a set of keys from a nail on the stone wall, unlocking the wooden door.