AI Three deadbolts. Eva had installed them herself, power drill screaming at two in the morning after her third paranormal stalker in as many months. Each one clicked open in sequence, and I pressed my shoulder against the door.
Ptolemy shot past my ankles before I could stop him, his tabby fur brushing against my jeans as he made a break for freedom. The landing was empty, fluorescent light buzzing overhead.
So why did the back of my neck prickle?
The staircase at the end of the corridor caught my attention. A shadow shifted at the bottom, too deliberate to be a trick of the light. Someone had been waiting.
"Your cat has no survival instincts."
The voice drifted up the stairwell. Accented. Cultured. Familiar in a way that made my stomach clench.
Ptolemy had frozen mid-step, tail puffed to twice its size. He arched his back at the figure emerging from the shadows, then bolted back through my legs and into the flat.
I didn't follow him. I kept my grip on the door frame.
Lucien Moreau climbed the stairs with measured grace, one hand resting on the ivory handle of his cane. The charcoal suit looked freshly pressed, not a wrinkle in sight despite the late hour. His platinum blond hair caught the harsh fluorescent glow as he approached, slicked back as always, not a strand out of place.
But his eyes, one amber and one black, held an edge that his smooth posture tried to mask.
"Rory."
"Don't call me that."
"You prefer Aurora? Or should I use the name your friends employ?" He stopped three steps below the landing. Close enough to speak without raising his voice. Far enough to maintain the illusion of politeness. "Rory suits you better. Less... theatrical."
"You're blocking my door."
"I am."
We stared at each other. The fluorescent light flickered, casting his face in alternating warmth and shadow. The black eye seemed to swallow the darkness. The amber one caught it.
"Three months." I crossed my arms . "Three months of nothing, and you show up at my flat at—" I glanced at my phone . "Half past midnight. What do you want, Lucien?"
"To talk."
"We talked. In Paris. You said everything you needed to say."
A muscle twitched in his jaw. "I said what I thought I needed to say. There's a difference."
"I'm not interested in semantic games."
"Everything with you is semantic games. You're a barrister's daughter who ran from the law because she couldn't stomach the lies. You understand the weight of words better than anyone."
I hated that he remembered. Hated that he'd catalogued the details of my life like evidence in a case file. Most of all, I hated that some small, treacherous part of me was glad to see him standing there, filling the dingy corridor with his expensive cologne and dangerous stillness.
"I'm not letting you in."
"I didn't ask."
"Then we're done here."
I stepped back, reaching for the door. His hand caught the edge before I could close it. Not forceful. Just present. An immovable object meeting a force that had run out of momentum.
"Someone's looking for you."
My hand stopped on the door. "I'm already found. You found me."
"Not me." His voice dropped, losing its polished veneer. "Evan's people. They've been asking questions in Cardiff. Your father's chambers. Your mother's school."
The temperature in the corridor seemed to drop. Evan. The name sat in the air between us, rotten and heavy. I'd left that life behind. Changed my number. Moved to a city where the supernatural population meant no one looked twice at a woman trying to disappear.
"How do you know?"
"Because I make it my business to know. Because the moment you walked into my life, every shadow in London became my concern." His jaw tightened . "Because I never stopped watching, even when you told me to leave."
"Stalking. We call that stalking in Welsh."
"Preparation. We call that preparation in French."
Ptolemy yowled from somewhere inside the flat. I should close the door. I should tell Lucien to go to hell, or back to Marseille, or anywhere that wasn't my doorstep with news about the man I'd fled halfway across a country to escape.
Instead, I opened the door wider.
"Five minutes."
"Generous of you."
The flat was cramped , every surface buried under Eva's research materials. Books on demonology. Scrolls in languages I couldn't identify. A half-eaten samosa on a plate that had been there long enough to fossilise. I cleared a stack of papers from the armchair, acutely aware of the chaos surrounding us.
Lucien surveyed the space without comment. His gaze lingered on the warding symbols painted above the windows, the iron horseshoe nailed above the bathroom door, the jar of salt that sat on the kitchen counter like a seasoning rather than a protective measure.
"You've been busy."
"Eva's paranoid."
"Eva's practical. There's a distinction."
He didn't sit. Instead, he moved to the window, adjusting the curtain with two fingers. Outside, Brick Lane's neon signs bled colour into the night. A group of tourists stumbled past, their laughter muffled by the glass.
"You could have called."
"You would have ignored it."
"You don't know that."
"I know you, Rory. Better than you'd like." He turned from the window. "I've had your number blocked for three months. The only reason I know you haven't changed it is because I pay someone to check."
"That's not romantic. That's concerning."
"I never claimed to be romantic."
No. He hadn't. That was part of the problem. Lucien Moreau dealt in facts, in arrangements, in transactions that left both parties satisfied but never whole. He'd made that clear in Paris, when he'd told me that whatever existed between us was a complication he couldn't afford.
And now he stood in my living room, bringing complications of his own.
"Why are you here, Lucien? Really."
"Evan Harcourt has hired a tracker. Half-troll, by the smell of him. Very good at finding people who don't want to be found. He arrived in London two days ago."
My chest constricted. "You're sure?"
"I spoke to him myself. A messy conversation. He was reluctant to share details, but he mentioned a woman matching your description. Dark hair. Blue eyes. A scar on her left wrist."
I rubbed the crescent mark without thinking. The wound was fifteen years old, earned when I'd fallen from the climbing frame at the park. Mam had been furious, convinced I needed stitches. Da had just laughed and said scars built character.
They didn't know about Evan. Didn't know why I'd really left Cardiff. By the time I was ready to tell them, I was already in London, already working for Yu-Fei, already building a life out of nothing.
"Does he know where I am?"
"Not yet. The tracker is methodical . He's working his way through delivery services first. Yu-Fei's establishment is on his list, but not at the top."
"How long?"
"A week. Maybe less."
I sank onto the sofa, scattering a pile of newspapers. The headlines blurred in front of me. *Mysterious Deaths in Camden.* *Police Baffled by Canal Discoveries.* Eva had been collecting them for her research, tracking patterns that the authorities couldn't see.
I'd thought Evan was done with me. Thought the distance, the silence , the new identity would be enough. But men like Evan didn't let go. They collected. Possessed. Destroyed when they couldn't keep.
"I can't go back."
"I'm not asking you to."
"Then what are you asking?"
Lucien crossed the room in three strides. He knelt in front of me, his cane balanced against the coffee table, his mismatched eyes level with mine. This close, I could see the faint lines at the corners of his mouth, the tension he carried in his shoulders.
"I'm offering you a choice. Stay here, hope the wards hold, and pray the tracker is less competent than I believe. Or let me handle this."
"Handle it how?"
"Does it matter?"
"It matters to me."
A pause. His hand moved to his cane, thumb tracing the ivory handle. "There are places in London where people disappear. Where trackers go when they ask the wrong questions about the wrong woman. I have connections in those places."
"You'd kill for me."
"I'd do worse than kill." The amber eye darkened. The black one remained unchanged, an abyss that promised nothing and everything. "I'd undo myself. For you."
The words hung between us, weighted with implication . This was the Lucien I'd tried to forget. The one who spoke in absolutes, who offered devotion without gentleness, protection without softness. The one who had looked at me in Paris and told me he couldn't be what I needed.
But he could be what I required.
"There's a price."
"There's always a price." He rose, straightening his suit jacket. "In this case, the price is your trust. For one week. Let me keep you safe. Let me handle Evan's hired help. And when it's over, if you want me gone, I'll walk away. No arguments. No contact. You'll never hear from me again."
"One week."
"One week."
I should have said no. Should have closed the door in his face the moment I'd seen him standing in the shadows. But Evan was coming . Evan, who had turned love into a prison, who had taught me that the person you trusted most could become the thing you feared. Evan, who wouldn't stop until he'd dragged me back to Cardiff and reminded me why I'd run in the first place.
"Fine."
Lucien's expression didn't change, but something in his posture relaxed. "Pack a bag. You're not staying here tonight."
"Where am I staying?"
"My hotel. Separate rooms. You have my word."
"Your word." I laughed, the sound brittle. "That means something, does it?"
"It means everything." He picked up his cane, fingers wrapping around the ivory handle. "I'm a half-breed demon, Rory. My kind don't give our word lightly . When we do, it's binding. In blood, if necessary."
"Let's hope it doesn't come to that."
"It won't." He moved to the door, pausing with his hand on the frame. "I'll wait in the corridor. Take what you need. We leave in five minutes."
I watched him go, the door closing softly behind him. Ptolemy emerged from beneath the sofa, meowing as he wound between my ankles.
"Stop judging me," I muttered, reaching for the duffel bag I kept under the bed. "I don't have a choice."
The cat blinked at me, unimpressed.
I grabbed clothes, phone charger, the emergency cash Eva had insisted I keep hidden in a hollowed-out book. My hands moved on autopilot while my mind raced ahead, calculating scenarios, mapping exits, planning contingencies.
Three deadbolts hadn't been enough. Three months of silence hadn't been enough. And now Lucien Moreau was back, offering safety with one hand and something far more dangerous with the other.
The duffel bag hit my shoulder as I opened the door. Lucien stood exactly where he'd promised, shadow swallowed by shadow, his face a study in controlled patience.
"Ready?"
"Question." I locked each deadbolt in turn. "What happens after the week is over? When you've dealt with the tracker, when Evan has no way to find me, what then?"
"Then you decide." He started down the stairs, his cane tapping a rhythm against the concrete. "I told you in Paris that I couldn't give you what you deserved. I haven't changed my mind."
"But you're here anyway."
"I'm here anyway."
The neon lights of Brick Lane spilled across the pavement as we stepped outside. The night air carried the scent of curry and exhaust, the sounds of a city that never truly slept. Somewhere in the darkness, a half-troll tracker was hunting . Somewhere in Cardiff, an ex-boyfriend was waiting .
And somewhere between then and now, I'd made a bargain with a half-demon who offered everything but promised nothing.
Lucien's hand brushed the small of my back as he guided me toward a black car waiting at the kerb. The touch was brief, professional, and utterly devastating.
One week. I could survive anything for one week.
The question was whether I'd survive what came after.