Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQJJ3H8MTTKAZJMRPB036E

The three deadbolts clicked open in succession, a sound as familiar and unwelcome as a recurring nightmare. Rory pulled the door inward, the chain rattling against its track, and the scent of rain-soaked Brick Lane and expensive cologne hit her first. Then she saw him. Lucien Moreau, leaning against the opposite wall of the narrow hallway as if he owned the damp, peeling paint. He looked exactly as he had the last time she’d seen him: a portrait of infuriating, effortless elegance in a tailored charcoal suit that probably cost more than her entire annual salary. His platinum blond hair was slicked back from his high forehead, and in the dim light of the corridor, his mismatched eyes—one amber, one void-black—seemed to absorb what little there was. He held his ivory-handled cane loosely in one gloved hand. The sight of it sent a jolt through her, a tangled mess of memory and adrenaline. “Rory.” His voice was a low, cultured purr, the French accent a velvet rasp that had once been a source of intense, private pleasure. Now it just made her teeth ache. She said nothing, her grip tightening on the edge of the door. The small crescent scar on her left wrist tingled, a phantom echo of a past pain that felt suddenly, sharply present. She could feel Ptolemy, Eva’s tabby cat, winding himself around her ankles, purring a low, rumbling complaint at the draft. Lucien’s gaze swept past her, taking in the chaos of the flat behind her—the teetering stacks of books, the scrolls unfurled across the sofa, the faint scent of old paper and cardamom from the curry house below. A faint, unreadable smile touched his lips. “Still drowning in research, I see. Some things never change.” “Some things do,” she said, her voice flat and hard. She didn’t move to invite him in. The door was her shield, the chain her last line of defense. “What do you want, Lucien?” His smile faltered for a fraction of a second, a crack in the porcelain façade. The amber eye held a flicker of something she refused to name. Hurt? Annoyance? It was gone before she could be sure. “Is that any way to greet an old friend? Especially one who has traveled through a rather persistent downpour to see you?” “Friend is a strong word. And I didn’t ask you to come.” She could feel the old anger stirring, a cold serpent uncoiling in her gut. He had vanished. One day he was there, a constant, complicated presence in her life—a source of infuriating riddles, unexpected help, and a magnetic pull she’d been powerless to resist. The next, he was gone. No call, no note, no explanation. Just an empty space where a half-demon fixer used to be. It had been a clean break, the kind she usually appreciated, but this one had felt less like a cut and more like an amputation. “I know,” he said softly, his focus returning fully to her face. The intensity of it was a physical force. “And I am sorry for that. For the abruptness.” “Sorry doesn’t fix it.” She wanted to slam the door, to hear the satisfying thud of wood against the frame, to turn the three bolts and pretend he didn’t exist. But she couldn’t. A part of her, the part she hated, was still tethered to him by a thread of unanswered questions and a dangerous, lingering attraction. “No,” he agreed. “It doesn’t.” He shifted his weight, the tip of his cane making a soft click on the worn linoleum. “But I am here now. And I need your help.” Of course. It was always about a transaction with him. A piece of information for a favour, a problem solved for a price. The hope that he might have come for *her*—for something other than her usefulness—withered and died, leaving only the bitter taste of disappointment. “I’m not in the business anymore. My life is… normal now.” Lucien let out a short, humorless laugh. “You, normal? Laila, you were never built for normal. You can wrap yourself in delivery uniforms and hide in flats above curry houses, but that brilliant, reckless mind of yours will always draw trouble. It’s who you are.” The use of her old name, *Laila*, was a low blow. It was the name he’d given her, a secret shared between them when the world outside Eva’s research and London’s hidden corners felt too loud. It was a key to a lock she thought she’d thrown away. “Don’t call me that,” she snapped, her composure finally cracking. “You lost the right.” He didn’t flinch. He simply watched her, his expression unreadable. The silence stretched, thick with everything they hadn’t said. The attraction that had hummed between them like a live wire. The arguments that had left them both breathless. The night on the roof of this very building, rain plastering his hair to his skull, his black eye seeming to suck in all the starlight as he’d told her a fragmented story about his demon father. The night he’d kissed her, a desperate, consuming kiss that had tasted of secrets and regret. And the next morning, he was gone. “Please, Rory,” he said, the words barely audible. The plea in his voice was so foreign, so out of place, that it disarmed her completely. It wasn’t a tactic. It wasn’t a ploy. It was raw. It was the crack in the porcelain widening, revealing something fractured and vulnerable beneath. She hesitated, her hand still on the door. Ptolemy meowed and butted his head against her shin, as if urging her to make a decision. She looked at Lucien—really looked at him. Beyond the suit and the cane and the unnerving eyes, she saw a tension in his shoulders, a slight pallor to his skin that hadn’t been there before. He wasn’t just here for a favour. He was in trouble. With a sigh that felt like it came from the soles of her feet, she unlatched the chain and pulled the door open wider. “You have five minutes.” He stepped inside, bringing the scent of the storm with him. The small flat felt even smaller, his presence overwhelming the cluttered space. He moved with a fluid grace that was at odds with the rigid set of his jaw. He didn’t sit, just stood in the middle of the room, his cane resting against his leg. “Eva’s not here,” Rory said, stating the obvious as she closed the door and turned the first bolt. The sound was loud in the sudden quiet. “I know. I came to see you.” He watched her as she secured the second and third bolts, his gaze heavy. She could feel it on the back of her neck, on the small, exposed patch of skin between her collar and her hairline. She turned to face him, crossing her arms over her chest. “The clock is ticking, Lucien.” He nodded, his gaze drifting to the stack of books on the coffee table. He reached out with his free hand, his gloved fingers tracing the embossed spine of a leather-bound grimoire. “Do you remember what you told me? About resonance? That objects and places hold echoes of the people who’ve touched them?” Rory’s heart gave a painful thud. She remembered. It was a late-night theory, born from too much coffee and Eva’s esoteric texts. The idea that powerful emotions could leave a psychic imprint, a sort of supernatural stain. “Vaguely.” “It’s true,” he said, his voice dropping lower. “More true than you know. And I need you to read one for me.” “I’m not a psychic.” “You don’t have to be. You have a… sensitivity. An intuition. You see connections no one else does.” He finally looked at her again, and the raw vulnerability was back, stark and unguarded. “There’s a place. A house in Highgate. Something happened there. Something that involves me. The… other side of my family. I need to know what it is before they do.” The implications settled over her, cold and heavy. This wasn’t about a missing person or a cursed artefact. This was about his heritage, about the demon blood that ran in his veins. The part of him he was most guarded about. “Why me?” she asked, her voice softer than she intended. “You have contacts. Mystics, seers, people who do this for a living.” “They would see a half-demon and tell me only what they think I want to hear, or what they think they can sell to my enemies.” He took a step closer, the space between them shrinking to a few feet. “You… you see *me*. Or you did. You don’t see the demon or the fixer. You just see Lucien. The man who left without saying goodbye.” The accusation hung in the air, but it wasn’t laced with anger. It was a simple, painful fact. He was offering her the truth, not as a weapon, but as a peace offering. Her arms fell to her sides. The anger was still there, a low-burning ember, but it was being smothered by a wave of something else. Pity? No. Empathy. The dangerous, stupid empathy that had gotten her into trouble with him in the first place. She looked into his mismatched eyes, the amber warm and human, the black a terrifying, beautiful void. She saw the man who had shared secrets with her on a rooftop, the man who had kissed her like she was the only thing anchoring him to the world. “You’re a bastard,” she whispered. A genuine, if weary, smile touched his lips. “I know.” She took a deep breath, the scent of him—rain, cologne, and something faintly metallic and otherworldly—filling her lungs. “Tell me about the house in Highgate.”