AI The knock was wrong.
It wasn’t Eva’s cheerful, syncopated tap, or the impatient thud of a takeaway delivery for the wrong address. This was three measured, deliberate raps against the wood of the door to Eva’s flat, a sound that carried a weight of intention. Rory lowered the scroll she’d been trying to decipher—a grimy piece of vellum that smelled of old cellars and claimed to detail the migratory patterns of spectral hounds—and listened. Ptolemy, the tabby, lifted his head from a nest of papers on the sofa, his ears swiveling forward.
Eva was out. She’d gone to the British Library, hunting down a reference for this very scroll. She wouldn’t be back for hours. Rory felt the familiar, cold trickle of caution start in her chest. Her eyes went to the three deadbolts on the door, all thrown. The flat on Brick Lane was a fortress of paper and paranoia, smelling perpetually of turmeric and old paper from the curry house below. No one who knew Eva would come without calling. No one who *didn’t * know her should have gotten past the building’s outer door.
The knock came again. Same rhythm. Unhurried. Expectant.
Rory set the scroll down carefully , her fingers brushing the small, crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, a childhood relic from a broken milk bottle. A habit, when she was thinking. Or nervous. She padded silently across the cluttered floor, weaving between stacks of books and around Eva’s alchemy set, which was currently bubbling with something that smelled suspiciously of licorice and regret. She didn’t call out. She moved to the door’s peephole, a fisheye lens that distorted the world of the narrow landing into a bulbous, surreal panorama.
And there he was.
The distortion couldn’t warp the clean, severe lines of him . Lucien Moreau stood perfectly still, one hand resting on the ivory handle of his cane, the other held loosely at his side. He was dressed in another of his impeccable charcoal suits, the fabric seeming to drink the weak light from the hall window. His platinum blond hair was slicked back from his forehead, not a strand out of place. But it was his face that held her, even through the warped glass. The heterochromatic eyes—one a warm, predatory amber, the other a void-like black—were fixed directly on the peephole, as if he knew she was there. A faint, unreadable smile touched his lips.
Rory’s breath hitched. The last time she’d seen him , it had been in the damp, echoing dark of a disused Tube tunnel. There had been blood on his knuckles, a rent in the shoulder of his jacket, and words between them that had been sharp enough to draw their own kind of blood. He’d offered her a partnership. She’d thrown his half-demon heritage in his face, a low blow born of fear and the fresh memory of Evan’s controlling rage. She’d told him she didn’t need another manipulative creature in her life. He’d merely inclined his head, his expression cooling to a polite mask, and said, “As you wish, Miss Carter.” Then he’d turned and walked away, the tap of his cane fading into the darkness. That had been six weeks ago.
And now he was here. At Eva’s door.
Her first impulse was to not move. To pretend no one was home. But he knew. He always knew. And Eva’s work, her safety, sometimes depended on the information Lucien dealt in. Rory swallowed, her cool-headedness feeling like a thin veneer over a churning mess of embarrassment, residual anger, and that stupid, undeniable thread of attraction she’d tried to bury. She was twenty-five, a runaway law student delivering dumplings and deciphering monster lore. He was a thirty-two-year-old supernatural fixer from Marseille who spoke four languages and probably knew how to kill a man with his tie pin.
With a sigh that felt like it came from her shoes, she began sliding the deadbolts back. The clicks were loud in the quiet flat. The final one thunked open, and she pulled the door inward, just wide enough to frame herself in the gap.
“Lucien.” Her voice was flat, carefully neutral.
“Aurora,” he said, her full name a soft, smooth syllable in his French-accented English. His gaze swept over her, taking in her old jeans, the faded Cardiff University hoodie, the ink smudge on her cheek from the scroll. That faint smile didn’t waver. “I apologize for the intrusion. Is Eva available?”
“She’s out.” Rory didn’t move to widen the door. “You could have called.”
“I could have,” he agreed, amiably . “But my business is somewhat urgent, and phones have a disagreeable habit of being listened to. May I come in? It is rather public on the landing.”
He had a point. The curry house smells wafted up the stairwell, and somewhere below, a radio was playing Bhangra music. He was a conspicuous figure, a splash of monochrome elegance in the grimy, vibrant chaos of Brick Lane. Reluctantly, Rory stepped back, opening the door fully. “Mind the alchemy. It’s volatile.”
Lucien stepped across the threshold with a practiced grace, his cane making a soft tap on the floorboards. He closed the door behind him with a quiet, definitive click, and for a moment, the two of them stood in the cramped space of the entryway, surrounded by towers of books. The air in the flat suddenly felt different—thicker, charged . He brought with him the scent of cold night air, expensive sandalwood soap, and something else, something metallic and ancient that was just *him *.
“To what do we owe the urgent business?” Rory asked, crossing her arms over her chest. A defensive posture. She knew it, and from the slight gleam in his amber eye, he knew it too.
He didn’t answer immediately. His mismatched eyes were doing a slow inventory of the chaotic flat, pausing on the bubbling alembic, the scattered scrolls, Ptolemy who was now watching him with slitted eyes. “I see Eva’s research into the Hound of the Baskervilles has taken a literal turn,” he remarked, nodding toward her discarded scroll.
“How did you…?” Rory began, then stopped. Of course he knew. It was his job to know. “What do you want, Lucien?”
Finally, he looked directly at her, and the full force of his attention was a physical weight . “There is a man. A collector of obscure antiquities. He has recently come into possession of an item I believe would be of great interest to Eva. A folio, reportedly from the library of John Dee himself. It contains, amongst other dubious things, a complete bestiary of entities native to the realm of Avaros.”
Rory went very still. Avaros. The demon realm. Lucien’s father’s domain. This wasn’t just a casual tip. This was personal.
“Why tell me?” she asked, her voice quieter . “Why not wait for Eva?”
“Because the collector is leaving London tonight. The window to acquire the folio is measured in hours, not days. And because,” he paused, his thumb stroking the ivory head of his cane, “the collector is your former associate, Evan.”
The name landed in the space between them like a shard of ice. Rory felt the blood drain from her face, a cold numbness spreading out from her core. Evan. Here. In London. Collecting things that belonged in a world he couldn’t possibly understand. Or could he? The thought was sickening .
“You’re lying,” she whispered, but there was no force behind it. Lucien had many faults, but casual cruelty wasn’t one of them. This was calculated .
“I do not lie about such things, *chérie *,” he said, and the endearment, though probably habitual, felt like a brand . “I have seen the acquisition logs. He is using an alias, but the signature… and the photograph. It is him .”
The flat seemed to shrink. The books felt like they were pressing in . Rory’s mind, usually so good at leaping to solutions, was a white noise of panic. Evan. Here. With something Lucien wanted. Something Eva needed. It was a trap. It had to be. But woven from what threads?
“Why are you really here?” she asked, forcing herself to meet his strange eyes. “You could get that folio yourself. You don’t need me. You don’t need to… to bring him into this .”
For the first time, his polished composure seemed to thin. A flicker of something raw and impatient crossed his features. “You think this is a game? A ploy to see you flinch?” He took a step closer. The scent of sandalwood and ozone intensified. “That folio names names. It details bloodlines, alliances, weaknesses. Mine included. If it falls into the wrong hands—hands already inclined towards possession and control—it becomes a weapon. And your Evan has a proclivity for weapons, does he not?”
The words *your Evan * stung. “He’s not *my * anything.”
“Then prove it,” Lucien said, his voice low and intense . “Help me retrieve it. You know his patterns, his ego. He will be at a private viewing at a gallery in Mayfair at eight o’clock. He will have the folio with him . He enjoys showing off his prizes.”
“And you just walk in and ask for it?” Rory said, a brittle laugh escaping her . “What’s the play, Lucien? Do you glamour him ? Threaten him ? Or does the cane have a new trick?”
He looked at her for a long moment, the silence stretching taut. The amber eye seemed to glow in the dim light of the flat. “The play, Aurora, requires a distraction. A familiar face from a painful past, appearing lost and vulnerable in a place he feels powerful. While he is… re-engaged… I will switch the folio for a convincing duplicate.”
The audacity of it, the cold precision, took her breath away. He was asking her to be bait. To walk back into the orbit of the man she’d fled Cardiff to escape. To use her own history as a tool.
“You’re unbelievable,” she breathed, anger finally breaking through the shock. “After everything I said… you come here and ask me to do *this *?”
“I am not asking you to rekindle an affection ,” he said sharply . “I am asking you to help me neutralize a threat. To protect your friend’s research, and yes, to protect me. My heritage is not a suit of armor, Rory. It is a ledger of vulnerabilities, and that book is a page from it.”
He’d never used her nickname before. It sounded strange in his mouth, intimate and rough. He’d also never admitted to a vulnerability, not so plainly.
They stood there, locked in a silent battle of wills amidst the chaos of Eva’s life’s work. The attraction was still there, a low current beneath the hurt and the anger. The memory of his hands, deft and sure, checking her for injuries in that dark tunnel. The sharp intelligence in his eyes that mirrored her own. The hurt was there too, from the things she’d said and the way he’d withdrawn, sealing himself away behind a wall of impeccable manners.
And now Evan. The past and the present colliding in the most dangerous way possible.
“If I do this ,” she said, the words tasting of ash, “we do it my way. I set the terms of the approach. I have a safe word, and if I use it, we’re done, folio or not. And you don’t… you don’t hurt him . However much he might deserve it.”
Lucien’s expression softened, almost imperceptibly. He gave a slow, graceful nod. “Your terms are acceptable. The objective is the folio, not vengeance.” He extended his hand, not to shake, but as a formal seal of the agreement . “Do we have a partnership, Miss Carter?”
Rory looked at his hand, then up into his mismatched eyes. The path ahead was dark, fraught with old ghosts and new dangers. But Eva was in this , and Silas, and the whole strange, hidden London she was learning to call home. And, reluctantly , so was he.
She took his hand. His grip was firm, cool, and electric .
“We have a partnership,” she said. “Now tell me about this gallery.”