The thief grinned, rolling the Gem of Harduul across his fingers tauntingly.
"My employer will pay me a great price for this prize, Greenthorne!"

Galatea Greenthorne kept her crossbow steadily trained on the theif. "Don't be
a fool! What good will money be once that foul demon obtains all the power
contained in that gem? You must return it to the Karlathian Priests, where it
belongs!"

"And what will you do to stop me?"

"Do you mind if I use the tv? Bec?

"Do you mind?"

Rebecca looked up from her book hazily. "What?"

"I rented Jimmy Joe Goes Home and I want to watch it now. Is that OK? It won't
bother you while you're reading, will it?"

Rebecca shook her head. "That's OK, I'll just go into my room anyway." As well
as she could filter out external noise, she didn't want the taint of Jimmy Joe
subliminally influencing her brain.

She got up off the couch and followed the unadorned walls of the hallway to her
room. A small futon with the sheets awry sat in one corner, one flattened
pillow in its blue pillowcase on the floor. An unremarkable computer desk sat
cat-a-corner from it, her beige computer humming quietly upon it, the monitor
turned off. Where there was space along the walls, bookshelves stood crammed
with novels in no particular order. The window looked out on the grim asphalt
of the apartment block's parking lot.

She shoved the rumbled sheets back from the bed and tucked the pillow behind
her, slumping against the wall. She fingered the dogeared cover of her
paperback novel. On the front was an illustration of a lovely woman with long
hair swinging a sword double-handed at a dark figure that reminded Bec of
Anubis. Gothic lettering spelled out The Gem of Harduul -- not one of her
favorites, but she'd read all the others in the series four times and the new
one wasn't due to be released for another three months (and eight days-- this
time she was getting a hardback copy and taking it to the book signing which
was marked on a calendar over the computer desk).

Bec had to admit that Galatea Greenthorne wasn't all that dissimilar from
Hollywood comedy's current golden child Jimmy Joe. They were both two
dimensional personalities, frivolous pursuits, fun, easy escapism. "But at
least my escapist fantasies have some imagination," Bec muttered to herself.
How she could be related to someone who thought lowbrow comedian Jim
Sadowski's brain child was actually entertaining, she didn't know.

Being thirty and still living with your younger sister didn't have many perks.
In fact, Bec could only really think of one perk -- it was affordable. But she
didn't want to think about work. She delved back into the story.