AI The chain on the door clinked before she remembered only Eva used it. Her hand froze on empty wood. Habit.
She opened wider.
Lucien filled the doorway in charcoal wool and faint cologne, one shoulder braced against the frame as if he owned it. Platinum hair slicked back, eyes the same impossible mismatch she kept noticing in dreams she refused to think about—one amber, one black, both on her.
He tipped the ivory handle of his cane toward her wrist.
"You still wear it."
Her fingers curled on instinct, hiding the scar. The old crescent line burned as if his gaze touched it.
"You still lurk," she answered. "Life rich and full as ever, then."
The corner of his mouth tugged. Not a smile. Something knife-thin.
"Bonsoir to you too, ma chère."
Ptolemy wove between Rory's ankles, tail flicking her calf. The cat stared at Lucien with the flat, insulted focus he reserved for vacuum cleaners and unfamiliar men.
"Eva's not here," Rory said. "In case you had the wrong woman."
"I know where Eva is."
He stayed on the threshold. The hall's yellow light haloed his shoulders and cast his face in planes of dark and bone. Behind him Brick Lane muttered in distant traffic and the hiss of the curry house extractor fan.
"I didn't buzz you in," Rory said.
"Front door's ward is ornamental." His gaze slid past her to the scattering of books on the floor, the half-eaten takeaway on the coffee table. "Yours used to be better."
"Used to be," she echoed .
He pushed off the frame and stepped one polished shoe over the line, weight light, balanced, already inside before she thought to block him. His cane clicked on the worn hallway boards. Ptolemy bolted under the sofa, fur puffed.
"Come in, then," Rory muttered. "Make yourself unwelcome."
Lucien drifted into the cramped living room and stopped, taking it in with a sweep: the stacks of occult tomes, Eva's scrawled notes tacked to the wall, the chipped mug crammed with pens.
"Missing your bar," he said. "At least there the chairs match."
"I like knowing which one will try to kill me when I sit."
His attention returned to her. "I have noticed you prefer your dangers obvious."
He looked the same. That irritated her more than it should. Same dark stubble at his jaw, same immaculate knot in his tie, same unreadable expression that made everyone in the underworld pay too much for half-truths.
Only his eyes gave him away. A new tiredness at the edges of them, like smoke stains on glass.
"What do you want, Lucien."
He let the question hang, then touched the back of an armchair with two fingers, as if checking it wouldn't dissolve .
"Eva's late," he said. "By twelve hours. She was meant to meet me in Soho with something that belongs to a man who lacks patience and excesses imagination."
"I know. I'm covering her shift at the restaurant." Rory crossed her arms. "Try Yu-Fei's if you need a discount on dumplings."
"This is not about dumplings."
"Then maybe book an appointment like your other desperate clients. I'm off the clock."
"You came into this world without a clock."
Memory shoved between them: alleyway rain, sirens distant, his hand closing around hers, pulling her through a sigil line as the tarmac cracked and sulfur boiled up. His voice in her ear. Jump with me, Aurora.
She unhooked herself from it.
"I left this world," she said. "You might recall."
His jaw tightened.
"I recall you walking away while I bled on concrete," he answered, tone mild on the surface. "So yes. No clock. But an interesting sense of time."
"You sold me out."
One heartbeat of pure silence .
"Accusation without context loses flavour," he replied.
"You led Evan to that warehouse. You used me as bait. You could have warned me."
His eyes flickered . "And you would have run. Then we would still be playing house with your charming ex while he carved sigils into your bones for Avaros."
Heat pricked the back of her neck.
"You don't get to say his name in my house."
"This is Eva's house."
She took a step forward. So did he.
The distance between them shrank to the width of the low coffee table. Burnt naan and cold saag paneer scented the air between them.
"You didn't trust me enough to tell me," Rory said. "You made the choice for me."
"You were a law student who delivered noodles between lectures." He tipped his head . "You thought vampires sparkled."
"You're half demon."
"Exactly."
His voice softened on the word, rough around its edges. He hooked his cane on the back of the chair and unbuttoned his jacket with slow, neat movements, each one an act of control. The muscles in his forearm flexed under the shirt. An inked line curled from beneath his cuff, the edge of one of his sigils.
"Why are you really here." She aimed for flat. Hit something closer to raw.
"Because when Eva misses a meet with the man I mentioned, the street notices. And the street knows she shares this place with a Carter who offended several people I charge by the hour to avoid."
His gaze slid past her shoulder, to the triple locks on the door.
"You changed your name," he added. "Malphora had more charm ."
"Malphora got me near a summoning circle and nearly dead." Her throat felt tight. "Aurora pays council tax and works for Yu-Fei."
"And runs errands for Silas. And breaks into vaults you claim you stumbled into."
He reached toward the burglary kit half-hidden under the coffee table, the leather roll she had kicked there when someone buzzed earlier. His fingers brushed the coiled steel wire and picks.
She moved before he touched it, foot nudging the kit further under.
"Occupational hazard," she said.
"Of going straight?"
"Of eating."
Lucien studied her face. Whatever he looked for, it didn't ease him.
"You hid here," he said. "Brick Lane, above a curry house. Three deadbolts. A cat named after a Greek with a taste for catalogues."
Ptolemy hissed under the sofa, as if offended by the biography.
"You make that sound cowardly."
"I make that sound small."
She laughed once, harsh.
"Not everyone has their own realm to run back to, Lucien."
Something like pain, sharp and fast, crossed his features at the word realm. It vanished as quickly .
"Avaros is not home."
"You still vanish there when things get rough."
"And you vanish here. We choose our prisons."
He reached for the takeout container, peeled it open, picked up a piece of cold spinach between two fingers. He studied it as if it might answer a riddle, then set it down untouched.
"The man who waits for Eva's delivery," he went on, "will not enjoy disappointment. He started to ask questions this morning. Wrong ones. About her associates. About her tenants."
Her shoulders tensed.
"Let him ask."
"You are on his list."
"Of what, people to frown at?"
"People to hurt until they talk."
Her heartbeat climbed. She kept her face still.
"You can stop circling," she said. "Get to the favour."
Lucien considered her for a long moment, as if weighing whether to argue with that word . Then he reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded sheaf of paper.
He laid it on the coffee table between two water rings.
On the top page, a crude ink sketch: her face. The nose a little sharper, the mouth wrong, but the eyes very right. Bright blue, even in cheap black lines, because someone had pressed hard there, darkening the pupils.
A symbol sat beneath the sketch. An angular knot she half-recognised from Eva's books. It made the hairs on her arms stand.
She looked up.
"When did this start."
"Two days ago in Marseille. Last night in Soho. Tonight, here."
"You brought him to my street."
"He brought himself. I did what I could to slow him."
"And now you need me to help fix it."
"Now I need you where I can see you."
Her laugh came out sharp.
"You don't get to need that."
His nostrils flared.
"You think you are the only one who walked away."
"You stayed with the monsters."
"So did you." His gaze flicked to the burglary kit under the table, then to the faint ring of an old bruise at the base of her throat she had failed to cover with foundation. "You just call them by different names."
"He was human."
"So was I. Once."
The room seemed to shrink, walls pressed in by the weight of old fights they never had, words they never spat out in that alleyway three years ago when she turned her back on him.
Rain. Sirens. His blood on wet tarmac. Her hand falling from his.
"Do you regret it," he asked.
She blinked.
"What."
"Walking away."
She could have lied. She always thought she would, if asked.
"I regret not punching you first," she said.
His mouth twitched, almost a smile.
"Progress," he murmured.
Ptolemy crept out from under the sofa, belly low, whiskers forward. The cat hopped onto the armchair behind Lucien and studied him, tail curling around his paws. After a moment, Ptolemy stretched out, reached one tentative paw to tap Lucien's shoulder.
Lucien stilled. The cat batted his tie once, decided it wasn't prey, and settled in a ginger loaf, purring.
"Traitor," Rory muttered at the cat.
"I always win the animals," Lucien said. "They do not overthink."
"Because they don't talk."
"You talk enough for both of us."
He turned back to her, eyes different now, less shield, more bare calculation and something under it she refused to name.
"I want you to come with me," he said.
She braced a hand on the back of the sofa.
"To do what. Smile while you negotiate my ransom?"
"To find Eva. To hand over the book she took before someone carves that mark"—he tapped the symbol on the paper—"into your spine."
"And you couldn't do that alone because…?"
"Because she trusted you enough to leave this."
He nodded toward the far wall.
Rory followed his gaze.
The framed print above Eva's desk hung crooked. It always had. It showed a field in Donegal, stone wall, storm sky. Eva kept it because she liked the clouds.
There was nothing else there.
"You're reaching," Rory said.
Lucien walked over to the wall. He didn't touch the print. He laid his palm flat on the plaster to the right of the frame. His fingers spread, tracing a pattern she almost missed.
One of his sigils flared on his skin, dark lines waking. The air in the room thickened.
A seam of light split the wall. Just a crack at first, then wider, outlining a hidden compartment cut clean into the brickwork. The front swung out on silent hinges.
Inside, bound in cracked black leather, sat a book the size of an old family Bible. No title. No markings. Only a metal clasp shaped like the same symbol on the sketch beneath her face.
The hairs on Rory's arms rose higher. Something in her chest pulled toward it and flinched at the same time.
"Eva didn't tell me," she whispered.
"Of course not. You would have asked too many questions."
"Like what it is."
"Like why it sings when certain blood gets near."
He glanced at her wrist. At the small, pale crescent there.
Her stomach tightened.
"It reacts to me?"
"It reacts to anything marked by Avaros. You, me, the man who is looking. Eva stole it from him. With my help."
"So this is your mess again."
"Shared mess. She involved you when she made you her contingency plan."
"When did she do that."
Lucien's eyes returned to her face, tension back in his jaw.
"The night you left Silas' bar without telling me," he said. "She turned up at my door with this. And with your name."