AI The knock rattled the frame like someone meant to take the whole door off.
Rory froze in the middle of the narrow living room, a half-emptied takeaway container in one hand and Ptolemy’s tail in the other. The cat yowled and bolted under the sagging sofa, fur on end.
Another knock. Harder. Too steady for drunken neighbours.
She set the carton on a stack of books that already leaned like a drunk and padded barefoot to the door. The smells from the curry house below soaked through the thin carpet—cumin, fried onions, cheap oil. Brick Lane hummed faint through the double glazing, traffic and voices, a bus braking somewhere.
Her fingers hovered over the top deadbolt. Eva had drilled it into her. All three, always.
“Hang on,” Rory called.
The lock metal felt cold. She slid the first bolt, then the second. The third stuck. It always stuck. She put her shoulder into it.
“Eva, if you forgot your keys again…” Her voice came out sharper than she meant.
The last bolt gave. She opened the door a crack.
A tailored shoulder filled the gap. Charcoal wool, rain-dark. An ivory cane rested beside a polished shoe. A hint of smoke and something older threaded through the damp air.
He looked down, eyes catching the weak hall light. One amber, one so black it swallowed it.
“Aurora.”
Her fingers tightened on the door edge. The crack widened before she thought about stopping it.
“Lucien.”
Rain clung to his blond hair in stray strands, no gel in sight, suit jacket unbuttoned, tie loose. A thin cut marked his jaw, fresh, not yet crusted. His mouth curved, not quite a smile.
“You’re a hard woman to find.”
“I wasn’t hiding.” She leaned into the frame, blocking him. “You’re in the wrong city.”
He angled his cane between the door and frame with an easy movement and braced it. The ivory handle dug into the wood.
“You opened all three locks.” His gaze flicked down, then up. “I doubt that was for a delivery boy.”
She felt heat crawl up her neck. “Eva’s neurotic. You know that.”
“I do. She’s also not here.”
“You spoke to her?”
His silence answered that. He just watched her, one eye warm gold, the other a flat well.
Ptolemy crept out from under the sofa and peered around her ankles, tail puffed. The cat’s pupils went wide at the sight of Lucien. A low growl vibrated through his small body.
“You’re scaring her cat.” Rory kept her tone dry.
“Her cat has taste.”
“Her cat hates everyone.”
Ptolemy padded forward anyway. The growl turned to a wary chirp. Lucien moved his cane back, eased a step into the gap. The cat sniffed his wet trouser leg, then brushed against him. Static jumped in the narrow space.
Traitor.
Rory folded her arms. “What do you want?”
His jaw shifted. The cut pulled, beaded red.
“To come in.”
“Not a chance.”
“Something followed me from Whitechapel.” His voice dropped . “You don’t have wards on the corridor.”
Her tongue pressed behind her teeth. She searched past him. The stairwell light flickered . The air out there felt thicker, like the night held its breath.
“You’re supposed to be the big bad half-demon.” Rory let the words hang. “Handle it.”
“I handled two.” His fingers flexed on the cane. “A third would have meant collateral. This building is full of humans who still think monsters live under beds, not upstairs.”
She stared at the damp outline of his shoulders. He looked larger than she remembered. Or the hall had shrunk. Or she had.
“You bring trouble to my doorstep, you expect me to be grateful you didn’t slaughter the neighbours.”
“Grateful is not the word I expect from you.”
“You’re right there.”
He held her gaze, waited. He had always been patient like that, as if time bent more for him than for anyone else.
“You have ten seconds,” she muttered. “If Eva finds demon ichor on her rug, you’re explaining it.”
She stepped back.
He slipped in with that unhurried grace that used to set something live and restless under her ribs. The cane tapped once on the worn floor as he cleared the threshold. She shut the door and drove each deadbolt home. The locks sounded louder this time.
The flat shrank around him at once. The single sagging sofa, the tower of books that blocked half the window, the narrow galley kitchen with its leaking tap. He surveyed it in a glance, jacket collar still wet, then turned his attention back to her like the rest of it meant nothing.
“You’re limping.”
Rory nodded at his leg to avoid his eyes.
“I’m bored of bullets.” He shifted weight off his right side. “Shotguns lack imagination.”
“So they hit you.”
“In a manner.”
Ptolemy hopped up onto the arm of the sofa, then onto it, then across the cluttered coffee table to him. The cat butted his head into Lucien’s thigh as if they were old friends. Lucien’s hand dropped to the fur without thought. His fingers sank in. The cat purred, loud and rough.
“You can’t stay.”
His hand stilled on the cat. “I wasn’t aware I’d asked.”
“You turned up bleeding on my carpet. That usually implies something.”
“Concern.”
“Wrong woman.”
One corner of his mouth lifted. “You always do that.”
“What.”
“Throw a knife into a moment and walk away from the body.”
She wanted to laugh. Or scream. Instead she moved past him, brushing his sleeve, and went to the kitchenette.
“You’re staining the floor. Sit.”
He leaned the cane against the wall, lowered himself to the sofa with care. The effort cost him. Once, she wouldn’t have noticed a change in his breathing. She noticed now. The line of his shoulders tightened. His jaw, already cut, clenched.
Rory dug the chipped first aid tin from the cabinet under the sink. Eva’s spare mugs clinked around it. She grabbed an old hand towel and crossed back. The room fit three strides. Her pulse counted each.
“Where.”
He loosened his jacket, shrugged it off with a grimace, and rolled his shirt sleeve to the elbow. White linen, stained near the bicep. Her stomach turned as crimson spread through the fabric.
“That’s not your leg.”
“The leg is less dramatic.”
“You always did favour an entrance.”
“Entrance, exit. I remember you had opinions about my exits.”
Her fingers paused on the second button of his shirt. Their last night flared in sharp fragments. A Soho alley, his mouth against her ear, his breath hot with whiskey and iron. Her palm on his throat. The text she woke to instead of him. Job went bad. Stay out. His number dead by noon.
She focused on the button. It slid free. His chest rose under her hands. Smooth skin over hard muscle, a smattering of pale scars. Old patterns.
“You left,” she said.
“Not now.”
“You picked the time.”
“I picked the place. Not the time.”
She peeled the shirt away from his arm. The wound cut across his bicep, shallow but long, like something clawed him while he moved fast. Dark residue clung to the edges, smoke black against his skin.
“Was that from your friends outside.”
“Associate. We disagreed on terms.”
“Business dispute. How tragic.”
“Tragic would be you insisting on salt and lemon again.”
“Salt sterilises.”
“Salt stings.”
“Good.”
She poured vodka from the half-empty bottle on the table onto the towel. The smell punched the air.
“Ready.”
“You enjoy this.”
She pressed the soaked fabric to his arm.
His breath caught. His fingers dug into the sofa cushion.
“Fuck, Rory.”
“You’re not dead. Congratulations.”
Her hand shook, just once. His skin felt hot under her grip, heat that came from more than blood loss. She hadn’t touched him in a year. Her thumb brushed the firm line of his tricep as she held the towel. He noticed. She could tell by the way his gaze dropped to her hand and stayed there too long.
“You changed your hair.”
“It’s the same length as the last time you didn’t call.”
“You wear it different.”
“You notice now.”
He watched her face. “I notice always.”
She reached for gauze, found only strips of an old T-shirt Eva had stuffed in. She wrapped the white cotton around his arm, close enough that her knuckles brushed his ribs. He smelled of rain and something charred, a scent that sat under his cologne.
“You look tired,” he murmured.
She kept her eyes on the knot she tied. “And you look like trouble.”
“Consistent, then.”
His thigh pressed against her knee where she perched on the coffee table. The contact hummed up her leg.
“They still have you jumping across rooftops for pocket change,” he went on.
“How would you know.”
“I track people. Occupational hazard.”
“You stopped tracking me.” The words slipped out, soft, honest, exposed.
He studied her, expression less guarded now. “You wanted me out of your life.”
“I wanted you to tell me the truth when I asked.”
“That I was half of a thing that would kill you if you stood close for too long.”
“You let me stand close.”
“You climbed.”
She tied the last knot with more force than needed.
“There.” She dropped her hands. “Try not to bleed on anything important. Eva has a crush on that manuscript.”
Lucien glanced at the leaning stack of parchment on the side table. “On demon jurisprudence from Avaros.” He frowned. “She shouldn’t.”
“You’re the reason she has half of this.”
“I’m the reason she’s not dead for it.”
“So noble.”
He shifted back, winced, and pulled his shirt together. “You had a choice. Cardiff with your nice degree. Or this.”
“Don’t pretend you gave me this.”
“You took it. I opened a door.”
“And then slammed it in my face.”
Something battered the glass of the window. Not a hand. Not quite. The pane rattled in its frame. Ptolemy shot off the sofa, fur raised, a hiss tearing from his throat.
Rory’s head snapped round.
A smear of darkness clung to the outside of the glass, like smoke pressed flat. It pulsed , tendrils spreading, then receding. An eye shape bulged, lidless and wrong, then thinned back into shadow.
Her breath halted. “Lucien.”
“It can’t enter.”
“You sound sure.”
“The wards on this place would make a priest weep. Eva paid for them with half her savings and my last favour.” He watched the shifting smear, his shoulders easing a fraction. “It can sniff. It can sulk.”
“Like you.”
“You think I sulk.”
“You brood in better suits.”
He laughed once, low. The sound ran through her.
The darkness outside dragged itself along the window, searching for a gap. Finding none, it recoiled and seeped away, back into the night. The pane stilled. Traffic noises crept in again, a siren down the road, someone shouting under the glow of street lamps.
Ptolemy slunk back, eyes still wide. He jumped onto Rory’s lap without ceremony and turned twice before settling. His small weight grounded her.
Lucien watched cat and woman. His gaze softened, lines at the corners deepening.
“You can’t go out,” he said.
“I gathered.”
“I can’t either. It will wait on the stairs. They learn.”
“So we’re stuck.”
“For a few hours.”
Rory stroked Ptolemy between the ears. Her palm still carried the feel of Lucien’s skin, the tension in his arm when the vodka hit.
“You planned this,” she muttered.
“If I had planned this, I would have brought a decent bottle.”
“You’d have turned on that charm that makes bartenders forget to charge you.”
“They never forget. They forgive.”
Her mouth twitched.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. The unbuttoned shirt gaped, showing the slow rise of his chest, the faint pulse at his throat. The bandage bright against his skin.
“I came because you’re in danger,” he said.
“Original.”
“This is not some petty runner from the docks. This is contract work from Avaros. They have your name.”
She snapped her gaze to his. “You dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night once to tell me not to use microwaves because you read a blog post, and I believed you more than I believe you now.”
“This is why you haven’t died from cheap noodles.”
“I haven’t died because I avoid men with inferiority complexes and infernal fathers.”
He flinched at that, slight, then met her stare head-on. “You think I didn’t call because of my pride.”
“You didn’t call because you had better things to do.”
“You were a breath away from meeting something you couldn’t talk your way past. I cut you out to cut the trail.”
“You cut me out because you were scared.” Her voice dropped. “Not for me. Of me.”
His eye, the black one, glinted. “What do you think I’m scared you’ll do, Rory.”
“Look at you and not look away.”
Silence took the room. The fridge hummed in the tiny kitchen. Somewhere downstairs, metal clattered on pans and someone cursed in Bengali.
Lucien’s throat worked. His fingers flexed on his knees.
“You didn’t look away that night,” he said.
“You didn’t stay.”
“I wanted to.”
“You always want things. Doesn’t mean you earn them.”
He leaned back, spine touching the sofa, eyes never leaving hers. “So earn you, is that it.”
“I’m not a debt to collect.”
“No. You are the one thing in this city I haven’t been able to buy, threaten, or seduce into my pocket.” The corner of his mouth lifted again, without humour. “You think that didn’t keep me up.”
“You sleep just fine.”
“Not when you haunt the ceiling.”
Her chest tightened. Old anger, old ache, both moved.
“You saved your own neck tonight,” she said. “Don’t dress it up as something else.”
“I saved mine by coming to you. There’s a difference.”
“You think flattery works.”
“It’s not flattery if it insults me.”
Ptolemy’s purr filled the gap.
Rory shifted him off her lap and stood. Her legs felt stiff. She crossed to the cramped kitchen and opened a cupboard, more for the movement than the contents. Two chipped mugs stared back.
“You want tea or whisky.”
“Tea would be dangerous.”
“How.”
“It would suggest we could manage something domestic.”
“We can’t.”
“Whisky, then.”
She poured two fingers into each mug. The bottle clinked against ceramic. Her hands steadied with the task. She carried one to him, careful not to brush his bandaged arm.
Their fingers touched around the mug handle anyway.
His skin burned. He didn’t pull away. Neither did she.
He looked up at her, half under his lashes, half unguarded. “Thank you. For the bandage.”
“You’d have done it yourself.”
“I prefer your hands.”
She swallowed, throat thick. “Drink.”
He obeyed, the muscles in his neck shifting as amber slid past his lips.
Rory lowered herself back onto the coffee table, closer than before. The small flat left little choice. Her knees brushed his again. The heat between them rose with the cheap whisky.
Outside, a bus whooshed past. Somewhere further, sirens wailed.
Inside, the world narrowed to the crack in his voice when he spoke her name, the way her wrist scar tingled where it rested near his knee, and the space between them that refused to stay empty.