"If you like." He shrugged off his trench coat and hung it on a hook on the wall. "I'm going to clean up," he pointed to his forehead and ducked through the bathroom door.
Tanya shook her head and started filling the tea kettle with water. How the hell had she been so wrong? Clearly, this guy was not only not a vampire, he had to be the nicest human being alive. She set the kettle on the range and turned the dial to high. She chewed on her bottom lip, realizing she didn't know where he kept anything. Great.
She started peeking in cupboards, and managed to find an impressive collection of tins and strainers, but not one tea bag. She had no idea how to make loose-leaf tea. How much did you use? She took out one of the strainers and examined it, then put it back. At last, she chose a somewhat familiar tin with the title English Breakfast. She also found a cute teapot and discovered it had a little strainer built in.
Her task completed for the moment, Tanya’s curiosity got the better of her and she continued to snoop. In the fridge there was milk but not much else. He must always eat at the museum where he works, she realized. There had been a cafe in the basement, maybe he could call over and order food delivered while he worked. And here she had thought the lack of food in his trash had been a dead giveaway. What an idiot she had been.
She peeked in the freezer, too. Not much there, other than a half-eaten tub of high-end ice cream and a cold pack. Dr. Walker came back out of the bathroom at that moment, so she grabbed the cold pack and handed it to him.
"Thank you," he opened a drawer and pulled out a dish rag, wrapping the cold pack and placing it against the bandage he had applied to his forehead. His glasses were gone, and he looked much younger without them, probably only in his early thirties.
Good job, Tanya. You attacked an intelligent, polite, gorgeous human being. Congratulations. Nervous, she scrambled for some way to be useful.
"Do you have another pair of glasses, Dr. Walker?" she asked as he squinted at the tea she had picked.
"Please call me Seth," he said absently. "Yes. I think I left them under the lamp..." he gestured towards the bedside stand before sitting heavily in one of the chairs.
Tanya hurried over to grab them, and put them on his face so he wouldn't have to take off the ice pack. "There."
"Thank you," he blinked and gave her a funny look.
"What?" she asked.
"It's just... you look familiar is all," he said, mystified.
She blushed again, and sat in the other chair. "Um, yeah. You ran into me and my mom at the museum a couple weeks ago."
His face lit up. "Yes! I remember now. We spoke about Nephthys, just before my lecture."
"I hope we didn't make you late."
"No. I was happy to have the distraction. Nephthys is a favorite topic of mine, I wrote my dissertation on her." He turned around and plucked a book off a nearby shelf, before handing it to her.
She looked at the cover, which bore a painted image of an Egyptian girl with a funny hat, similar to the image on the museum wall that had sparked their brief and mildly terrifying conversation at the museum. However, this time she wore a very revealing sheer dress, and her hair was red and wavy instead of black. The Cult and Rituals of Nephthys, the 'Most Excellent' Goddess, the title read. "Cool," she murmured, and flipped through the pages.
"Forgive me for asking, but I simply must know who you thought I was," he said, clearly more amused than angry. "Do I have some doppelganger running around causing mischief?"
"Uh, no. I um..." She put down the book and chewed her bottom lip a little. It had been a very long time since she had tried to explain the existence of vampires to anyone, but she felt Dr. Walker deserved an explanation. "I want to tell you something, but you have to promise not to interrupt me, okay?"
"All right..." he agreed.
She took a deep breath. "My name is Tanya Cooper, and I have devoted my life to hunting vampires. I’m pretty damn good at it, too." He frowned and opened his mouth, but she held up her hand, reminding him not to interrupt. "I know what you're gonna say. 'Vampires aren't real! Go get your head checked, Tanya, there aren't any long-fanged night-walking, cross-and-garlic-hating bloodsuckers out to get us all!' And you know what? You're right.”
Tanya had meant to give him the short version, but it had been so long since she could really tell someone it all came rushing out. She didn’t even know why she was telling him, except that there was something so familiar and safe about him. She felt like she could tell him anything.
"You see, the problem is, they look just like us. No fangs, no deathly pale skin. Some of them even wear crosses. And the really powerful ones can go out in the daytime like anyone else. The only real difference is they look really pretty—Photoshop-and-botox pretty, like nobody has a right to." She paused in her rant, surprised by his laughter.
"And you thought I was a vampire?" he guessed.
It seemed so stupid now, here in his kitchen. "Well, yeah," she mumbled.
"Well I'm terribly flattered, then, even though I'm not what you thought I was," he told her. "But you don't need to convince me that they exist. I already knew that." He glanced away at the tea kettle, which was steaming gently. "Water's done," he pointed out.
Still stunned by his revelation, she turned to look. "I thought they whistled when they were done?" Her Nana's had, if she remembered right.
Dr. Walker smiled and stood to move the kettle himself, leaving the cold pack on the table. "Some tea kettles whistle when they boil, but by then the water is already too hot. It will make the tea bitter."
She frowned. Wasn't tea bitter by definition? "How do you know about vampires?" she asked instead.
He picked up the tea she had chosen and frowned a little. "Do you mind if I use something else? This has a little too much caffeine for this hour."
"Sure, if you answer my question," Tanya argued, irritated. Was he deliberately trying to be frustrating?
He chuckled and put the box back in the cabinet, instead selecting a glass container with what looked like short pine needles inside it. "Well, I don't actually know about vampires," he admitted. "I've been researching them for a long time, though." As he spoke his hands moved gracefully, almost like they were dancing as he went through the motions of making tea. A spoonful of leaves in the strainer, the strainer in the teapot. A drop of honey, and then the water. Close the teapot, wrap it in a towel. Set a small egg timer to four minutes. How many thousands of times must he have done that for it to be so effortless, she wondered? When he was done, he crossed his arms and leaned against the counter.
"That's what the book is about, actually," he nodded to the dissertation she had been flipping through. "My hypothesis was that the Egyptians were originally trying to discover the secret to eternal life. When they failed, they settled for the burial rituals we know now. At least that's what I published. They'd laugh me all the way back to England if I had written what I really think."
Tanya lifted her eyebrows. "And what is that, Dr. Walker?"
He laughed. "I must insist you call me Seth, please. Dr. Walker makes it sound like I’m at work."
"Okay, Seth, what do you
