As you enter your room, you notice an unusual quality to the air. It isn't the stifling heat, which you've grown familiar with. It's the quiet, you realize after a while. Even when you fling open the windows to air out the musty room, there's little noise from the street below. When you close the window and turn to look around, the shadows in the corners of the room seem heavy.
There's a tapping at your door. That will be your landlord.
"Dear sir," you say disarmingly as he opens the door with a scowl. "I have returned, as promised, bearing next month's rent?"
"About time," he mutters. "You know, there are other people who'd pay good money for this room."
You refrain from asking him where they might be found. "So what have I missed?" you ask jauntily.
"More deaths. Odd ones. It seems that every accident that can happen, does. People have started looking askance at the very knives in their hands and the stones under their feet. And there seem to be packs of dogs everywhere you turn, all of them no color but gray. It isn't natural."
It's an unsettling way to be welcomed home. "All's well in this house, though, surely?"
"We've been spared so far," he mutters, in a way that suggests he doesn't expect that state of affairs to continue indefinitely.
Once he's gone, you prepare to head out again.
The Odeon seems reassuringly unchanged. The smell of oranges and roasting nuts fills the courtyard, and there's a charcoal stove set up to mull wine. Braziers are set around the courtyard, suggesting that the nights are starting to turn cooler. The smell of burnt charcoal suddenly seems to dominate all other scents, a dull warning note. You look up, half-expecting to see black smoke hanging over the rooftops.
You're recalled to yourself by a small child of uncertain gender who's clearly been waiting for you to notice them. "Matty'll want to see you," they say.