Siena woke up to the sound of raindrops hitting the large window hidden behind the dark blue curtain. She climbed up from the bed, trying and failing not to cast a glance towards James' bedroom-- a near perfect darkness just like the one reigning around her spilled from behind his unclosed door into the sitting room which was already flooded with the weak light of the rainy morning.

She drew the curtains apart the moment she reached her window, feeling happy and disappointed at the same time. The rain wasn't surprising, it often rained in London at the end of the summer holidays and Siena loved rain, it never rained enough for her in Florence. But she hadn't met anyone who enjoyed it like she did, and she doubted that James would want to walk to the Society's Headquarters in the rain.

Well, they should decide upon their first quest before they spoke to any of the Bibliophiles anyway, and they should actually choose more than one book in case the one they picked had already been fixed... She wondered how it all worked while she dressed in a clean pair of jeans and a white t-shirt with printed, pastel coloured water lilies on her chest, pulling the necklace from beneath the fabric, and dropping the red jewel among the flowers. They needed to find out more about this, Siena was sure that they were only told the most simple parts yesterday.

There was also the question of time, the time they could spend within the books, the time they would spend away from this world. She didn't have to turn up at work before the fifteenth of September, which gave her a little more than two weeks of freedom. James, being a journalist, could most likely work long-distance, but he was bound to have some deadlines to meet. She didn't suppose that once the school started, she would get another holiday for a new quest before the Christmas break...

Siena laughed at herself, she hasn't even done the first quest, and she was already planning her free time for the second. Would this even work? Would she be capable of walking into a book world and make it a better place for an unfortunate character? She just needed to wait and see, she decided as she tiptoed into the bathroom not wanting to wake up James, ran a comb through her hair and restrained it into a long braid in front of a mirror taller than herself covering the wall opposite the shower and the bath.

It was her turn to cook; she would make James a breakfast, she resolved, exiting the bathroom, making her way into the kitchen.

The scent of fresh pastry, a mixture of butter, vanilla, and chocolate worthy of the breakfast room of the best Italian hotel he had ever stayed in, woke James up half an hour later.

Following it towards the source, he found Siena bent over the dining table which was already set for breakfast, filling a tray of still warm croissants with a chocolate spread and a thick, freshly made vanilla custard.

"I didn't make them from scratch," she said humbly, glancing at him briefly as she finished with the last croissant before she sprinkled them all generously with icing sugar. "I found a few packs of these in the freezer. I only made the custard. And the coffee and tea, I wasn't sure which you prefer."

"Thanks, Siena," he muttered, surprised by the gesture, forcing his eyes off the jewel shimmering upon her alluring, ample chest, among the artistically arranged pastel coloured water lilies, seemingly rippling into life with each breath she took.

She caught him nonetheless and blushed as she turned away quickly to carry the bowl with the leftover custard and the jar of Nutella to the counter behind her.

"That's Monet, isn't it?" James felt like he needed to explain and apologise for his lingering look. "Your t-shirt, I mean. He's my favourite painter."

He breathed out with relief as he walked towards the bathroom, wanting to wash the leftover sleep off his face before sitting at the breakfast table. His distraction worked; he was forgiven. Siena's words laced with joy and surprise followed him across the room, "Mine too, I love Monet!"

Gosh he looked good in that pyjama, Siena mused, watching him inconspicuously from above the rim of her cup as he sauntered back into the kitchen a few minutes later, the gray cotton pants hanging loosely from his hips and rippling around his legs, the black t-shirt clinging to the well defined muscles of his chest, his ginger curls still in wild disarray creating an artistic halo around his head.

She shook her head when he caught her staring and fought hard against another blush as he raised a questioning eyebrow at her.

"I like... the colour of your hair. It reminds me of my cat," she said quickly the first thing that could explain her interest in him. She would never tell him how attractive she found him.

"Your cat?" He chuckled before he took a bite of a custard filled croissant. It was delicious.

"My beautiful Dante. I had to leave him in my neighbour's care while I'm here." She smiled at him, choosing a pastry too.

"I don't have pets, but I'm determined to make friends with Nessie once I'll find her," he announced, making her laugh.

"Well, I hope you'll introduce us when that happens," she said, refilling his cup with tea.

"And I hope to meet Dante one day." He grinned. "I have never actually met a cat that looks like me."

She giggled. "Sorry about that. But enough of this, we have work to do. We should decide on a book and then call, or better see someone from the Society."

"True. All right. Let me get dressed, and then we can explore the house. If there are more books upstairs, they might just give us the idea about our first quest," he agreed, collecting their plates and mugs and carrying them towards the dishwasher while Siena covered the leftover croissants with a napkin and wiped the crumbs from the table.

"Shall I start the dishwasher?" James proposed, and she nodded.

"And if you give me your used clothes, I'll put the wash on too," she told him.

"Thanks, Siena," he muttered as he rushed towards his room, racking his brain about what was it that made this woman feel so different from the others, so close, so attractive, so special.

"All right, let's explore the floors above," James said after they started the tiny washing machine together, in a voice laced with mystery.

"Lead the way, Explorer James," Siena replied, giggling, making his heart leap in a perfectly unexpected and inappropriate way.

There was no way these... things she was making him feel could lead to anything. They were colleagues of sorts, full stop. Who knew when he would get to see her again after this quest?
Peeling his eyes from hers when he realised that he was staring at her again, noticing with satisfaction, for the first time, that his look seemed to take her breath away, that his closeness had an effect on her as hers had on him, the knowledge only adding to his confusion, he nodded, not trusting his voice, and led the way out of the room filled with awkward silence.

They left the door of the garden flat open behind them, crossed the entry hall flooded with weak, wet, colour infused light streaming in through the stained glass window set in the front door, then climbed up the first flight of white, wooden stairs. It took them to a landing lined with three white closed doors and another flight of stairs starting opposite the one they had just climbed, following the clockwise sense in which the first flight of stairs and the landing were built.

"Shall we see what's inside the rooms?" James asked, and Siena nodded, already reaching for the door handle closest to them.

The room they found beyond the first door was large, bright thanks to the french window set in the wall opposite the door, and full of books stored in shelves covering the two remaining walls. That was that, the window, the books, and a red, comfortable looking loveseat in the middle of the room, between the two book lined walls.

Siena gasped, tempted to walk inside and see the books close up, but James took her hand in his almost unconsciously and suggested they see the rest of the house first. A strange sense of elation spread through him when she simply nodded, and not trying to remove her hand from his, allowed him to tug her from the room into the next and the one after, and the three more, identically furnished rooms above, the only thing changing slightly among them being the size of the windows and the colour of the loveseat occupying the prominent spot of each library. And, as they noticed upon reaching the last one and finally pulled a few random volumes from their shelves, the genre of the books.

"It's all horror in this room," James announced, looking at the third Stephen King book he pulled out from the book shelf.

"Horror, thriller, paranormal and gothic, I think," Siena said, holding four volumes in her hands, the front pages facing him. He recognised Le Fanu's The House by the Churchyard and Maurier's Rebecca which she held in one hand, and even the Wuthering Heights, but he had not read the Hush, Hush, which she waved in front of his nose before stuffing it back in its tight space on the crowded shelf. The number of books in the house was staggering.

He smiled in agreement. "So this is our topmost library, horror, thriller, paranormal, and gothic. Let's see the others."

He reached out towards her, heart pounding with anticipation, leaving his hand floating in the book scented air filling the room around them, for her to take it or ignore it.

With a shaky breath and a little hesitation, she slipped her hand into his, making his lips curl into a surprised but content smile as he led her towards the next room.

The adjoining room was filled with action and adventure books, the one after with fantasy and all its subgenres. There were all kinds of science fiction and mystery books filling the shelves of the first room they entered on the floor underneath, historical fiction in the next, and anything with a great romance in the plot in the very first room, which they entered at last.

"Well, wow," James said finally, letting himself fall into the loveseat of the Romance Library.

"Wow indeed," Siena echoed, smiling, looking down at him from one of the shelves. "So... what do we do now?"

"We choose a book and walk to the Headquarters after lunch, how about that?"

"Don't you mind the rain, though?" she asked, waking towards the french window. The rain seemed stronger than before, so strong that it blurred the view of the garden the library offered, making the river look like a long smudge of dark silver on smoky greys and hazy greens.

"I don't. Do you?" he whispered from so close behind her that she could feel his heat penetrating her thin t-shirt. As it enveloped her from behind while the coldness of rain seeping through the glass coiled in front of her, caressing her exposed skin, the contrast made her shiver pleasantly and it took all her will to suppress her urge to lean into him. His closeness was fogging up her mind as easily as her breath misted the window panes.

She wrapped her arms around her body and, clearing her voice, afraid that he would hear the emotions his presence was causing her to feel, she replied, "I'm a pluviophile, James. But should we not choose more than one book? In case the one we picked has already been fixed?"

It took him a while to collect his thoughts scattered by her nearness, her scent, the obvious response of her body to his, and she turned to him and looked in his eyes before he finally replied. 

"I don't see how that should influence anything. I feel like... having fixed one plot would only cause it to... branch off into a new world, leaving the original one untouched, even if the newly created world might start drifting away from our world like Alicia said... But I'm not sure, of course, I suppose we need to talk to that Einstein of theirs, rather than Alicia or Christopher. Let's choose two books, just in case, and then talk to them before we decide."

"All right." She beamed at him, feeling reassured and strangely proud of his knowledge and understanding of those theories which she could not grasp.

"So... what do you choose?" He muttered, mesmerised by her eyes watching him with an admiration he did not feel he deserved, burnt umber seeping into the darkest honey.

"The Little Prince," she said, her voice almost a whisper, feeling the floor melt under her feel as she got lost in the profound blueness of his irises, fathomless like the ocean.

"That's a perfect choice," he said approvingly. "The booklet only features a few characters who might complicate our mission, and there are hardly ever more than two of them on page at the same time..."

"Your choice?" she prompted.

"The Little Mermaid." He watched her nod thoughtfully before he added, "They both take us back to the Fantasy Room."

It was Siena who took his hand in hers this time, leading him back up the stairs to the topmost floor of the house.