Chapter 13 · Untitled Chapter

He had not moved from the door since it shut.

I heard it settle—not the lock first, but the latch—and then the lock, a moment later, turned from the corridor by hands that were not his. That is how this house does a thing. Someone else turns the key, and afterward everyone agrees it was simply the door.

Saud Al-Dosari stood with his back against the dark wood and looked at me the way a man looks at a column of figures he has already added twice.

"You are still dressed," he said.

"You are still standing in front of the door."

"I am standing where the door is. That is not the same thing."

The Mabkhara in the corner had gone cold. The Oud had thinned down to its last dry thread, and the wall lamp was turned low enough that the carpet kept its pattern only where I already knew it by memory.

"Say what you came to say," I told him. "I have until dawn. I would rather not spend it watching a man decide."

"You think I am deciding."

"I think you waited for a lock and then stood in front of it.