Unexpected guest

:)

All he had wanted was a nice cup of tea, a chance to possibly thumb through one of the books he had been gifted recently in exchange for asking a cluster of kobolds to stop messing with the colours of a forgetful old man's curtains, possibly even have one of the cookies that had been baked as a bribe to keep him out of the kitchen. Jackaby would like to think that was not all that catastrophically large of an ask, all things considered. But, of course, he should have known that things were never going to be kind enough to him to actually give him the chance for a rest that he had already earned more times over than most people had the patience or time to even attempt to count.

As time always did seem determined to do, the seconds ticked by and, unsurprisingly, with each tick of the clock the silence grew more and more awkward.

"I was going to make tea," Jackaby began, but before this had the opportunity to sound too much like a criticism, he added, "Would you like tea? Or coffee? Or would milk and honey be more appropriate?" A beat. "Because those are drinks that we have and I am offering you a drink, not because you're, you know-" This statement was completely with a vague wave of his hand to address his unexpected guest.

Well, the term 'guest' was being used very loosely but he was not presently being attacked so it seemed the most appropriate at the time.

"Milk and honey would be fine," came the exceedingly dry reply, "Because it was offered, not because I'm, you know." Even through the perpetual deadpan of this, it was all too clear that this was intended to be mockery. Mockery being something that one typically should avoid when possible if they were to find themselves in somebody else's house. But if the sliding scale went from light mockery to murder then it was a little more tolerable in light of the circumstances.

"Right," the former Seer returned, "Well, come along then."

"Why? Are you so incapable of making a simple drink on your own?"

"No," he returned, not jumping to the bait, "I would simply rather not leave you to your own devices here when I cannot see you."
This was accompanied by a pointed glance towards a piece of taxidermy that had been twitching a little more than anything long dead had any right to be. This did not prompt it to fall still, however, but instead caused the deceased creature to open its mouth in a silent scandalised gasp.

Now, in Jackaby's defence he had every right to be wary. The last time he had been so close to the necromancer Tilde, he was far too busy being impaled by a member of the crowd that the fairy had whipped into a frenzy. Just because it has not been Tilde himself throwing weapons about with an alarming accuracy for a creature of chaos, he was still the one to have worn his blood and so still had some fault resting upon his slender shoulders all the same.

The detective had more than his fair share of instances of beverage preparation, including but not exclusive to a very high stakes game of cards, over-brewed tea and an impractical amount of arsenic, and so he would have had a rather unique scale to compare them. That said, trying to brew miscellaneous warm beverages with the necromancer Tilde watching impassively the entire time certainly found a place relatively high up this particularly bizarre scale. But when the alternative was to leave him to his own devices in the house, he was sure he made the right decision with being watched rather than not being able to watch right back.
One thing he did miss having lost the Sight was that he needed to actually be close by to keep an eye on others rather than just having them be vaguely around so they were close enough to detect them.

Now, lightly uncomfortable tea making experiences aside, there were other more pressing uncomfortable experiences that he had to, well, experience to let himself get too caught up in pondering more than the barest minimum of ponders over it