Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT0REEMJRQNF4YMGP9E0ZMX

Rory yanked the door open with one hand and a tea towel clenched in the other, ready to snap at whichever delivery driver had rung the wrong bell again. Rainlight pooled in the narrow hallway. It caught on an ivory handle, on slicked-back blond hair, on one amber eye and one black. For a breath, nothing in her moved. Lucien leaned on his cane as if the world had bored him on the way up the stairs. Dark suit pressed despite the damp, tie neat, no coat. Rain spotted his shoulders, beaded at the line of his throat. He smelled of wet pavement and something sharper under it, expensive and dangerous. “Aurora.” Her fingers tightened around the tea towel. The cotton bit into her palm. “You’re at the wrong door.” His gaze flicked past her shoulder, over the paper drifts and hanging herbs and the long shape of Ptolemy the cat sprawled across Eva’s sofa. Then he looked back, slower this time, weighing. “I seem to remember three deadbolts,” his mouth shaped around the memory, “and the worst curry in London downstairs. I doubt I am lost.” He hadn’t aged. That irritated her more than his presence. Same unruffled lines, same lazy posture that hid the fact he could move faster than most vampires she’d seen. Only his eyes carried something new, a faint fray at the edges. Rory pushed the door, aiming for his face. The cane met the wood with a crack, wedged in the frame. His grip on the ivory handle didn’t shift. “Move it, Lucien.” “You left one bolt on.” His tone dropped, lighter, almost conversational. “Sloppy. Eva would disapprove.” “You don’t know what Eva would do.” He studied her, eyes changing focus like a lens. Soaked hallway. Her bare feet on scuffed floorboards. Oversized University of Cardiff sweatshirt, black shorts, damp ends of her hair from the shower, the crescent scar on her wrist white against the tea towel. “You’re not supposed to be here,” she added. “Neither are you.” Ptolemy chose that moment to saunter to the doorway. The cat pressed between her ankles, tail flicking Lucien’s trouser leg. Lucien’s fingers lowered, almost reflex, brushed tabby fur. The cat purred like he’d found an old friend. “Traitor,” Rory muttered at the cat. Lucien pushed the door with the cane. She could have fought it. She didn’t. The wood gave. Damp night air slid into the flat. “I’m working,” she stepped back, kept the towel in front of her like it might count as armour. “Whatever you want, the answer’s no.” “What you consider work,” he glanced at the stacks of notes and open books on the low table, “other people call madness.” He stepped over the threshold. Water darkened the mat under his shoes. The hallway light behind him carved a halo around his frame, then the door closed on it with a dull thud as she kicked it shut. The flat pressed in around them, shelves and strings of dried herbs and notes pinned to every bit of wall that would hold a thumbtack. Incense from earlier clung to the air, fighting curry smells from the restaurant below. Lucien’s gaze roamed, cataloguing. The same way he once looked across a crime scene, or a demon market, or her. “Eva’s not here,” Rory moved past him, the tea towel now useless, thrown onto the back of a chair. “So unless you’re here to order takeaway, you can leave.” He set the cane against the wall, careful, as if it mattered more than the plaster. His jacket pulled across his shoulders as he straightened. “What gave you the idea I came for Eva.” “You only ever come for something you want.” One brow lifted. “Then you assume I do not want to see you.” She picked up a book just to have something in her hands. Demon Contracts in Early Modern Britain. Wrong book. She put it down again. “The last time you were anywhere near me,” her voice came out tight, “Silas had to drag you out before I broke your nose with a barstool.” “I remember the barstool. Vividly.” “The part where you fed me to a pack of blood-drunk fae must have slipped your mind.” “I did not feed you to them.” “You led me there. You stood back and watched.” He shifted, shoulders losing a fraction of their straight line. “I watched you take care of yourself. Which you did.” “You didn’t know that’s how it’d end.” “I knew exactly how it would end.” She opened her mouth, closed it. Ptolemy leaped onto the table and then onto the pile of notes she’d spent two hours organising. Paper fanned across the floor. “Fantastic.” Lucien moved first, kneeling, gathering pages with long fingers. His cuff slid up. A sliver of sigil inked along his wrist caught her eye. Old. She’d never seen that one. He noticed her noticing and tugged the sleeve back down. “New party trick?” she busied herself with scooping papers away from the cat. “Insurance.” “Against what.” “Cutthroat solicitors. Rogue demonologists. Welsh girls with barstools.” Her mouth twitched. She didn’t let it grow. They knelt facing each other across a scatter of Eva’s notes. His tie hung loose now. A drop of rain slid from his hair and hit the paper between them, warping ink. “You’re dripping on the research,” she said. “Then perhaps you’ll let me remove my jacket.” “You can remove yourself.” His eyes flicked over her face, lingered. “I cannot speak here in the hallway like a door-to-door preacher.” “Why can’t you.” “Because I came about Eva.” Her hands stilled. “What about her.” “Stand up, Aurora. Your circulation can’t enjoy that position.” “Lucien.” He rose, slow, the way you lift something armed. She followed, knees protesting. He looked taller in the cramped room. Less like some polished underworld functionary and more like what he was under it. The demon half clung to him when you saw him indoors: the stillness, the sense that he used the space as cover, not comfort. He shrugged out of the jacket without ceremony. The fabric whispered. Her gaze dropped against orders from her brain. Crisp white shirt, damp at the collar. Narrow waist. Holster strap peeking where the shirt pulled, not for a gun. His cane handled blades and hidden edges; he didn’t need firearms. She turned away, grabbed the kettle. “You’re not getting whiskey,” she said as she filled it. “Eva rationed the good stuff.” “The fact you assume my first thought involved alcohol worries me.” “You’re in a flat with books and floor space. You get twitchy without a drink in hand.” “I am perfectly capable of twitching without props.” He moved past her into the tiny kitchen alcove. The space forced his shoulder close enough that his sleeve brushed her bare arm. Her skin lit up like someone switched a current on. Rory busied herself with cups. Mismatched mugs, chipped. She picked one with a fading TARDIS for him, shoved it into his hand. “Tea,” she said. “Then you leave.” “I did mention Eva.” “You also mentioned my posture and my door bolts. Guess which one gets priority.” He watched the kettle, not her. “She’s missing.” The hum of the cheap appliance grew louder in the silence that followed. Rory placed her own mug down harder than necessary. “No,” she managed. “She has not returned my calls. Nor responded to others’. Her wards at the house in Camden flickered three nights ago. Brick Lane’s stayed intact because you’re in it. The resonance changed, that’s how I found you.” “You stalked her flat like some arcane Google Maps.” “I used my resources.” “Yeah, those never come with strings.” His jaw tensed. “You think I came for fun. To hear your charming abuse in person.” “You came for something. You always do.” “Eva asked me, three months ago, to keep an eye on you.” Her laugh came out wrong. “She doesn’t get to do that.” “Apparently she believed she did,” his gaze met hers. “You vanished from the bar, you refused my calls, you refused everyone’s calls, you moved across the city without telling anyone. She worried.” “So she sent the Frenchman.” “The Frenchman happened already to watch you burn bridges with an efficiency I almost admired.” The kettle clicked off with a faint pop. Steam curled between them. Rory poured. Her hand shook enough that a line of boiling water splashed her wrist. She hissed, jerked back. Lucien’s hand caught her forearm. His grip wrapped around the damp skin, thumb over the crescent scar. “You always move before thinking,” he murmured. “Don’t touch me.” She yanked free, but not before that old heat crawled up her arm and settled under her ribs. It had no right to feel familiar. “I told Eva I don’t want your help,” she leaned on the counter, put the wood between them. “She knows why.” “You told Eva I used you.” “You did.” His gaze stayed steady. “I hired you. You accepted. I underestimated the scale of—” “You lied about the job. You put me in the middle of a favour war between your father’s people and that nest in Soho and called it courier work.” “You delivered the item. You walked out alive.” “Because I cut a deal with a fae house I still have nightmares about.” Something flickered behind his eyes, quick, gone. “I took the blame for you,” he said. “With my father. With the nest. You never asked what that cost.” “Oh, poor you.” “Do not twist this into martyrdom,” his voice sharpened. “You’re alive. You were paid. You gained introductions you would have begged for a year before.” “I didn’t want any of it by then.” He leaned across the counter, hand flat on the laminate, close enough that she caught the faint trace of his cologne under wet wool. Amber and something like burned sugar. “You wanted me.” Her breath stalled. “You really think you’re that central.” “You made it clear.” “You made it transactional.” She found her footing again, clung to it. “Business and pleasure. Favour and debt. You kept score of everything but what mattered.” He looked down at his hand on the counter. Pulled it back. “I am not here to re-litigate my romantic failings.” “You’d need a whole legal team.” “I am here because Eva might be in trouble, and because you are the only one who can track her through that” his chin dipped toward the wall of notes and red string “beautiful, deranged archive.” “You have people.” “You understood Eva’s methods. You understand her mind. She trusted you with this chaos. My people would set fire to it.” “Tempting.” Ptolemy jumped onto the counter between them, tail swishing, face pushing under Rory’s wrist. She scratched his head out of habit. Lucien’s hand lifted to do the same, then stopped halfway, hovering near hers. Close enough she felt his warmth. “You remember the first time I came here,” he asked Ptolemy instead. Rory rolled her eyes. “You told her the feng shui offended every demon you knew.” “I stand by that judgment. Bookshelves facing the door? A curse.” He looked around the cramped room now, softer. “She rigged a circle on that floor to trap me if our meeting went poorly.” “I helped with that chalk line,” Rory muttered. “You mis-measured on purpose. I stepped across with my right foot so your trap never sprung.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “I took that as a good sign.” “For what.” “For your opinion of me.” “You thought me incompetent.” “I thought you conflicted.” Heat pricked the base of her neck. She stepped away from the cat, from his hand, from memories of that same half-smile in candlelight and library dust. “If Eva’s missing, we call the police,” she reached for her phone. “We give them what we know.” “And tell them what, exactly,” Lucien’s tone cooled. “That a known consultant in occult matters vanished after her wards spiked. That her flat contains three illegal grimoires and a binding circle in the wardrobe. That her closest friend and sometime assistant used to run favours for half the demon families south of the river.” She lowered the phone. “They’ll ask where you got your information,” he went on, gentler. “Then they will look at me. And I would rather avoid Met scrutiny at this moment.” “Because of your father.” “Because of my everything.” She swallowed. Her pulse pressed at her throat. “You came here instead,” she said. “In person. Not through a runner. Not through Silas.” “I suspected if I gave you warning, you would flee out the fire escape.” “Not wrong.” “And,” his gaze held hers, something raw under the polish, “I… owed you the apology in person.” Silence stretched. The fan over the cooker whined, old grease rattling in the vent. “That’s new,” she said at last. “You learning the word.” “That I owed you one. Not the word.” Her fingers fiddled with the edge of the worktop. “Go on then.” “I misrepresented the risks of that job.” The words came careful, as if they cut on the way out. “I treated you as an asset, not as a… person I valued.” The pause landed heavier than “person” ever could. “I assumed you would adapt, because you always do. I assumed you understood my world the way I did. That was arrogant. And when you walked away, I let you. That was worse.” “Why.” “Because it spared me the effort of explaining myself.” “And instead of calling that what it is, you hid behind work.” He gave a small, bleak smile. “You are infuriatingly perceptive.” “You’re infuriatingly late.” He slid his hands into his pockets, shoulders losing that razor edge. “I am here now. Asking. Help me find her.” Her heart climbed into a space it hadn’t occupied in months. A place where it wanted to say yes before her brain. “You think walking in with a half-arsed apology and wet hair gets you that.” “There is also this.” He pulled a folded paper from his inner pocket, laid it on the counter between them. Eva’s spiky handwriting stared up at her. Rory’s name sat in the first line. She recognised the phrasing. Binding language, but informal. A request, not a contract. “If I go missing or stop answering, get Rory,” it read. “She’ll be angry. Get over it. She’s the only one I trust to clean up my mess without dying. – E.” Rory traced the loop of the capital R with her thumb. “You could have forged that,” she muttered, though the ink blot at the end of the line where Eva always left the pen too long sank into her bones. Lucien tipped his head. “By all means, test it. The charm on the paper will sting anyone but you.” She picked it up. Warmth prickled against her skin, then settled. Recognised. “You still should have called.” “I wanted to see if you would slam the door in my face.” “You bet on your jawline.” “I bet on your curiosity.” Their eyes met over the slip of paper. She drew a breath in, slow. The anger hadn’t gone. It sat there, solid, earned. Next to it now, something else twisted. Worry. For Eva. For herself, maybe. “You stay out of my head,” she said. “You don’t pull those little manipulator tricks. You don’t keep me in the dark this time.” “I can offer information, connections, and the ability to walk through some doors,” he answered. “I cannot offer purity. It is not in my nature.” “Honesty, then.” “As much as a Moreau can manage.” She weighed him. The tilt of his shoulders. The set of his mouth. The fact he hadn’t moved closer, though the room made it easy. He waited. That, more than any speech, nudged something loose. “You take the chair by the window,” she jerked her chin at the single armchair buried under maps. “Move anything you like, but if you bend a page, I break your fingers.” He exhaled, a sound almost like relief. “I’ll call Silas,” he said. “He hears more on a Tuesday than—” “You don’t get to run this,” she cut across. “You came to me.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “Of course.” He picked up his jacket from the back of the chair, shook out the rain, draped it neatly over a different one to dry. His sleeves stayed rolled up, forearms bare, ink hidden now under fabric. Rory watched him navigate around Ptolemy and stacks of books to the armchair. He brushed dust from the arm, lowered himself with that same infuriating grace. She snatched a notebook, a pen, dropped onto the floor opposite him, cross-legged amidst the mess. Their knees nearly touched. Almost. The space between them charged the air. “Start from the beginning,” she said, uncapping the pen. Lucien leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, eyes fixed on her, rain still clinging to his lashes. “For you,” his voice lost its armour, “I can manage that.”