AI The knock was soft, almost hesitant, which was why Rory didn’t immediately think of a food delivery or a courier. She was curled on Eva’s threadbare sofa, a heavy grimoire balanced on her knees, the scent of turmeric and cumin from the curry house below seeping through the floorboards. Ptolemy, the tabby, was a warm, rumbling weight on her feet. The knock came again, a little firmer.
Eva was out, chasing down a lead on some cursed Edwardian jewellery in Clerkenwell. Rory marked her page with a takeaway menu and padded to the door, her socks whispering on the worn laminate. She peered through the peephole, a habit ingrained from her old life, and her breath caught.
Lucien Moreau filled the distorted fisheye lens, impeccably framed in the narrow hall. He was looking not at the door but down at his own hands, turning his ivory-handled cane slowly . Even through the distortion, the sharp cut of his charcoal suit, the severe line of his slicked-back platinum hair, was unmistakable. The last time she’d seen him, the air between them had been thick with the unsaid, a charged silence after he’d pulled strings she hadn’t asked him to pull, getting Evan permanently and messily out of her life. She’d called it overreach. He’d called it necessity. They hadn’t spoken in six weeks.
Her fingers hovered over the three deadbolts. She could pretend she wasn’t here. Eva’s flat was a fortress of paper and secrets; it would be easy to sink back into the shadows and let him assume emptiness.
But he knocked a third time, his knuckles barely grazing the wood. “Aurora,” he said, his voice muffled but clear, the French accent softening the edges of her name. “I can hear you breathing.”
A flush of irritation, hot and familiar , washed through her. She slid the bolts back, the clicks loud in the quiet flat, and opened the door just enough to look at him. The hall’s single bulb lit him from above, deepening the shadows under his sharp cheekbones, making the heterochromatic eyes—one amber, one pitch black—seem even more unsettling. He looked tired.
“Eva’s not here,” Rory said, her voice cooler than she felt .
“I am aware. I came to see you.”
“Why?”
“May I come in? The hallway smells distinctly of lamb korma and mildew. It is… an assault.”
She didn’t move. “You didn’t answer.”
He sighed, a small, weary sound. “I require your particular talent for lateral thinking. And, if I am being honest, I wished to see you. The two are not mutually exclusive.”
The admission, so bluntly stated, disarmed her. She’d expected his usual circuitous, faintly mocking patter. This was direct. This was almost vulnerable. With a jerk of her chin, she stepped back, opening the door wider.
He entered, his presence immediately shrinking the cluttered space. He navigated the stacks of books and scrolls with an effortless grace, his cane barely touching the floor. His gaze swept the room—the teetering piles on the dining table, the maps pinned to the wall with coloured threads, the cat now watching him with slitted eyes from the sofa.
“Charming,” he remarked, though there was no mockery in it.
“It’s a research hub, not a show home. What do you want, Lucien?”
“Straight to business. Very well.” He turned to face her, leaning lightly on the cane. “A client of mine has come into possession of an item. A music box, late 18th century, French. It is… troubled. It plays a lullaby that induces not sleep, but a waking paralysis filled with intensely personalised nightmares. The client’s wife is currently in a private clinic, catatonic.”
Rory folded her arms. “And you’ve come to a Pre-Law dropout who delivers dumplings because…?”
“Because you see the angles others miss. Because you are not versed in conventional thaumaturgy, so your mind is not constrained by its rules. And because,” he paused, his amber eye catching the light, “when we last parted, you accused me of treating the world as a game of chess, with people as pieces. I am attempting to consult a piece who has her own mind.”
The old hurt, the argument that had driven the wedge between them, simmered in her chest. “You didn’t consult me. You acted. You made me a pawn in your game with Evan.”
“I removed a threat. Cleanly. Permanently.”
“Without my consent!”
“Your consent would have involved you walking into a police station with bruises and a story about a charismatic man who made you feel small. He would have been out on bail before the ink was dry. You know this.” His voice was low, intense. “I saw a problem and I solved it. It is what I do. My methods are not gentle, Aurora, but they are effective . I am sorry if the solution offended your sensibilities.”
She looked away, her eyes stinging. He was right, and that was the worst part. Evan was gone . The constant knot of fear in her stomach had slowly unravelled. But the cost had been the feeling of agency, and the complicated, frightening attraction she’d felt for the man who had taken that agency into his own hands.
“This music box,” she said, forcing her voice level. “Where is it?”
“In a vault. But its influence is… leaking. The nightmares are beginning to affect the household staff, even through shielding. The lullaby is becoming audible in adjacent rooms, though the box remains closed.”
Rory walked to the table, pushing aside a pile of notes to clear a space. Her mind, ever practical, latched onto the puzzle. “A binding, then. But one that’s deteriorating. What’s the box made of?”
“Rosewood . Inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The key is silver, shaped like a sleeping fox.”
“Silver conducts. Could be a focus. The lullaby—do you have the melody?”
Lucien produced his phone, tapped the screen, and a few tinny, haunting notes played—a simple, repetitive melody. It made the hairs on Rory’s arms stand up. Ptolemy hissed and vanished under the sofa.
“It’s not the melody itself,” Rory said, thinking aloud. “It’s a carrier. Like a frequency. The box isn’t creating the nightmares; it’s resonating with something already in the listener’s head. Amplifying their own fears, regrets, shames.” She looked at him. “Your client. His wife. What aren’t you telling me?”
A faint, approving smile touched his lips. “The client acquired the box from an auction of items belonging to the wife’s first husband, who died in a sailing accident she survived. There was… speculation. Never proven.”
“Guilt,” Rory whispered. “Or fear of discovery. The box keys into that. It’s a psychic echo chamber.” She rubbed the small crescent scar on her wrist, a nervous habit. “You can’t destroy the box without potentially releasing the binding entirely. You need to break the resonance . Change the frequency.”
“How?”
“You need to play something else through it. Something stronger. Not to drown it out, but to… retune it . A countersong.”
Lucien was watching her, his expression unreadable . “And what song would you suggest?”
“I don’t know. Something that embodies peace, finality. Not a lullaby. A requiem. But it would have to be played on the same mechanism, with the same key.”
“A musical exorcism.” He nodded slowly . “It is elegantly unorthodox. It might work.”
The business was concluded , but he made no move to leave. The silence stretched, filled with the ghosts of their last conversation and the hum of the city outside.
“You said you wanted to see me,” Rory said, not looking at him .
“I did.”
“Why?”
He took a step closer. The subtle scent of his cologne, sandalwood and something cold like ozone, cut through the spice in the air. “Because these past weeks have been irritatingly quiet. Because no one else tells me I am a high-handed, manipulative bastard to my face. And because I miss the way your mind works.”
She finally met his gaze, the mismatched eyes holding hers. “It’s not just my mind you miss, is it?”
He didn’t flinch. “No. It is not.”
The admission hung between them, fragile and dangerous. She remembered the brush of his hand against hers in a darkened bar, the way he’d leaned in to hear her over the music, the electric , unacted-upon tension that had existed before the fallout over Evan.
“You hurt me,” she said, the words simple and raw.
“I know. And for that, I have no adequate apology. I would do it again to ensure your safety, but I regret the pain it caused you. The distance it created.” He lifted a hand, as if to touch her face, then let it fall. “I am not a good man, Aurora. My world is not one of gentle choices. But my regard for you is… singular.”
She saw it then, the weariness wasn’t just from lack of sleep. It was the weight of his nature, the constant negotiation between his human and demonic halves. He was a fixer, a broker, a creature of deals and damning solutions. And he was here, in a messy flat, admitting a weakness.
Rory uncrossed her arms. The anger was still there, but it was thawing , turning into something else—a resigned, aching understanding. “The next time you have a problem that involves me,” she said quietly, “you talk to me first. We consult. No more unilateral moves.”
A real smile, small and genuine, softened his austere features. “That sounds suspiciously like a partnership.”
“It sounds like common decency.”
“A concept I am still learning, *ma chère *.” He reached into his inner pocket and drew out a simple, unmarked card. An address was written in elegant script. “The vault. Tomorrow, at ten. Will you come? To perform this… countersong.”
She took the card. Their fingers brushed. The contact sent a jolt through her, a reminder of the attraction that all the hurt couldn’t quite erase . “I’ll bring the requiem,” she said.
He held her gaze for a moment longer, then gave a slight, formal bow of his head. “Until tomorrow, then.”
He turned and let himself out, the door closing with a soft, final click. Rory stood in the sudden quiet, the card warm in her hand. Ptolemy emerged from his hiding place and wound around her ankles. Below, the curry house clattered with dinner service. Up here, the air still vibrated with the things they had finally said, and the much larger things they had not.
She looked at the address, then at the grimoire on the sofa. She had research to do. A song to find. And a dangerous, complicated man to see in the morning.