The Doktor's Spyglass

Chapter 10.2

The door opened before his knuckles hit wood.

"Well," said Dalia. "Look at you."

Her face, narrow and full-lipped, looked out at him like an apparition hiding beneath a cloak of ebony hair. Even narrowed, her eyes hit him like winter pools, icy cold yet somehow inviting.

"I..." His voice cracked. She raised an eyebrow and turned away, leaving the door open behind her. Thijis swallowed and followed her inside.

Dalia's small, tidy house enveloped him. The essence of the place, that ineffable Dalianess that did not exist anywhere else in this world, hung like a scent in the warm air. And there was a scent: a pleasant mingling of lavender and bread and tea, with a hint of something sharp and herbal in the background. It floated in the beams of sunslight coming through the mullioned windows into the sitting room near the door, making the few scant motes of dust dance above the armchairs and their neatly stitched throw pillows. He saw it gleaming in the polished wood of the bookcases and in the worn, clean floors; he felt it in the way the front hall managed to say welcome while also seeming like an intensely private place. The totality of it set off warning bells in his brain that, in turn, inflated a lump in his throat and set his hands shaking nervously.

This was the reason he rarely came here. He doffed his hat belatedly and stood, clutching it, trying to control his breathing. It was a long moment before he realized she had called to him from another room.

"What?" he called back, taking a few steps down the hall.

"I said, would you like tea?"

He heard the soft clatter of porcelain, then a match as she lit the stove. Willing his traitorous hands to stillness, he swallowed again and walked back to the small kitchen, leaving his hat on the bench just outside it.

"You can take off that coat, while you're at it," said Dalia. "It barely fits in here."

Thijis took his coat off with half a mind, draping it on the bench near his hat. After a moment he picked it up again and folded it more neatly, giving it a small pat before stepping into the kitchen.

His eyes sucked in the room as if he were examining a crime scene, one corner of his mind digesting each detail with a fervor that embarrassed the rest of him. The old iron kettle, sitting atop the grate of a gas burner; the pretty blue curtains framing the small window that looked out onto Dalia's small kitchen garden. The room wasn't small, in truth, only smaller than a family might need: a corner room at the back of the house where a back door led out into the back and side yards. A small circular table sat in the corner, with four simple chairs around it. Clay pots lined the bench beneath the window sill, each with a label pasted to the front of it, each label neatly written in Dalia's curling hand.

On the short counter top the copper sink was beaded with water from when she'd filled the kettle.

"You've gotten a gas stove," he said, watching her take down tea cups and a pot from the cupboard.

"Two years gone," she said, looking at him sidelong. "You've been here since."

"Ah," he said. "Must have slipped my mind." In truth he'd forgotten, the addition of the stove a fresh revelation to his overworked, Dalia-addled brain. Each time he came here it was the same: the focus on detail, the surprise at rediscovering something he should have already known. He supposed it was because the Dalia that lived in his head was the one who'd lived with him—and loved him; she loved him still, he hoped—in Ebsea and before, when he'd been a scantily paid Prosecutor who could afford no more than a one-room flat in one of the less murderous parts of the Warrens.