AI The last deadbolt scraped back and the door swung in to a wash of turmeric and frying garlic from the curry house below. Warm air hit her face. Paper rustled in the draft, a scatter of photocopies skittering across the entry rug. Ptolemy shot out of the bedroom like a striped missile and inspected the world beyond the threshold with one paw over the line, as if the landing might bite.
Lucien filled the doorway.
Tailored charcoal, collar open, that ivory-handled cane caught in the crook of his palm. Platinum hair slicked to order, cheekbones carved from something that didn’t soften. One eye amber, the other a lacquered black that didn’t catch the light. He looked as if the air itself cleared a path for him and resented the dirt on its hem when it couldn’t.
Rory put her palm on the jamb. The scar on her wrist flashed pale against the wood.
"You’re not on the guest list."
"Your doorman was unhelpful."
His voice carried the same smooth edges as his suits and about as much warmth . He glanced at the three deadbolts with a tilt of mouth that wasn’t a smile.
"You didn’t ring last time either."
"Last time you were the one standing where I am."
Ptolemy twined himself around Lucien’s trouser leg with a motorboat purr, pure betrayal. Lucien glanced down. The cane lifted a fraction, then lowered again before the cat could head-butt ivory.
"If you’ve come to lecture my cat, he won’t listen either."
"I don’t lecture cats. They don’t need it."
She kept her hand on the frame, shoring the gap with her body. Eva’s books leaned from every shelf, wallpapered with notes written in ten different inks. A candle that had given up on being fragrant held down a stack of maps. The curry house clanged its frying pans, metal singing through the floor. Her own breath slowed until it felt like she borrowed air from the street and he took too much of it.
His gaze settled on her. It ran like a hand might, careful and with intent to find where the ribs were. It caught on the cut of her jaw, the blue of her eyes, the black of her hair. It paused at her wrist.
"Move, Luc."
"You won’t like the hall."
"Always hated the hall."
"I’m being followed."
She squinted, a reflex that had kept her alive more than once. A shadow moved down on the stairs, just a man in a football shirt with a plastic bag, who didn’t look up. She looked again anyway. Her knuckles had turned white on the jamb.
"You always are."
"I made an effort to lose them. I didn’t come to involve you."
"Then don’t."
He took a breath and winced. It was barely there, a flinch at the edge of posture. The cane shifted, slipped, and he caught it neat as a trick. Not enough for anyone else. She had spent months learning his tells because he had lied with grace and she had refused to be the punchline.
"Move, Rory."
She stepped aside, not for him, for Ptolemy, who decided at that moment that he had always fancied the curry house and tried to dart past. She swept the cat up with one arm, his claws snagging her jumper, and narrowed the gap with her hip. Lucien slid through, the line of his shoulder brushing her.
He smelled like cedar and something clean that money bought in glass bottles. The door thumped shut, bolts shot with a clack-clack-clack. Ptolemy wriggled free, offended, and stalked to the sofa to express that opinion on Eva’s pile of Spanish grimoires.
So it was the two of them in Eva’s cramped world of ink and dust and curry steam. The ceiling hummed with the building’s veins. Rory dragged a hand through her hair and faced him. He set the cane against the wall near the shoe rack and touched two fingers to the brim of nothing, as if he wore a hat of old courtesy.
"You picked a poor night for nostalgia."
"I didn’t come for that."
"You never did."
"You have my file on Ferris."
"You can’t barge in and—"
"It isn’t a request."
Her laugh came out thin. She knew where Eva kept the kettle, the tea, the cheap mugs stained by the last research sprint. Not one of those mugs had held anything he left behind. She moved anyway, because standing too close to him turned all her training to pulp.
"The box is under the bookshelf. Far right. Watch your shoes. There’s dust and worse."
He knelt and the suit stretched over his back. Not a wrinkle out of place. His hand, when he reached, was steadier than most surgeons. He slid the box free and paused. A dark patch stained the cuff of his white shirt where it met his jacket sleeve.
She watched him pretend it wasn’t there. He lifted the lid and plucked through clippings, photographs, Eva’s fevered handwriting. She put the kettle on, not for tea, for steam, something to do besides calculate the inches between them and what those inches had hidden before.
"You’re bleeding."
"It’s nothing."
"It’s on my rug."
"Blame your cat."
"Don’t bring him into this."
He didn’t look up.
"We’re not doing this. Not tonight."
"We never do it. That’s the problem."
He held still. The amber eye flicked to her, then away, like he had learned her face and knew the safe parts to land on. She pulled a first-aid tin from under the sink, the one Eva kept for papercuts and ink-stained disasters. It had been a biscuit tin in another life and smelled of sugar when you opened it.
"Take off the jacket."
"I’m not here to—"
"Ferris can wait a minute while you remove an expensive layer and let me see what mess you’ve wandered through."
"Rory."
She stepped to him, fingers at his lapels. He didn’t stop her. The fabric gave with a whisper and slid off his shoulders. He caught the weight and folded it without creasing, even as his jaw set. The cuff stain had crept darker. She took his wrist. His skin ran hotter than it should have and the pulse beneath it beat like a held note.
She led him to the cramped sofa where Ptolemy sprawled and tapped the cat’s arse. The cat pretended to consider biting and then allowed it. Lucien eased down. She pulled the cuff back and revealed a shallow slice along his forearm, long and clean, edges neat. Not a brawl. A knife done right.
"Who did you annoy."
"Pick a name from a hat."
"You keep the hat full."
"I don’t conduct my business in hats."
"You conduct it in alleys with knives, then."
"Tonight I conducted it in a stairwell."
"The one you ‘didn’t want to involve me’ with."
"You’d have hated that stairwell."
"You don’t know what I’d have hated."
"I do."
She dipped a clean cloth in water, wrung it across her palm. The scar on her wrist caught the light, a crescent pale among tendon and vein. He caught it with his gaze. She refused to tuck her hand away. She pressed the cloth to his arm. He didn’t flinch.
"You stood me up at Silas’s."
"I didn’t stand you up, I was dragged into—"
"You stood me up."
"That wasn’t—"
"You sent a text. ‘Later.’"
"It was either that or lead them to you."
"You think that buys anything."
"It buys you not being a smoking hole in the street."
"Don’t be poetic. It doesn’t suit you."
"You’ve told me that before."
She cleaned the blood until his skin turned pink. He watched her as if she were an animal in the zoo, captive and not dangerous until it bit. The house vibrated when someone below laughed too loud. The kettle clicked off, forgotten.
"You kissed me and then you went. That’s the order that doesn’t leave my head."
"You kissed me."
"You let me."
"I’m not arguing that."
"Good."
He lifted his other hand, hesitated, then placed two fingers on her knee. The heat of it worked through denim and into the soft of her leg like a question. She looked down at his hand, palm scarred at the base of the thumb by something with teeth. He removed it.
"Ptolemy is judging you."
"He judges everyone."
"Not Eva."
"Eva feeds him sardines in oil."
"Then he’s a mercenary."
"Like you."
He almost smiled and then didn’t. The half-formed shape of it looked like pain .
"You left Cardiff in a rush."
"My mother doesn’t let me pack slow."
"Your mother keeps strange hours."
"She’s a teacher. She has to."
He glanced at the book stacks and their spiky notes.
"She’d hate this mess."
"I’ve seen worse. Your desk."
"My desk is organised by function."
"It looks like a crime scene."
"My desk is often a crime scene."
"Not the best thing to say to a woman you’re trying to win back."
"Is that your request."
"It’s a warning."
He breathed through his nose, shoulders lifting, dropping. The white of his shirt, the line of his throat above the open collar, the faint bruising at the edge of his jaw where someone’s ring had kissed him. She dabbed the slice clean and reached for tape. The tin clinked as she fished.
"Hold it."
His hand closed around her wrist, just above the scar. Not tight, a ring of warmth that asked and didn’t press. She paused, tape hovering, her face near his enough to count the shards of gold in the amber eye.
"You left me with your father’s mess on my floor, Luc."
"I left you because my father’s mess would have spread to your bones if I didn’t."
"You think that makes you noble."
"I think it makes me a coward on the right night."
"Different as day to the morning after."
"I earned that."
"You did."
He released her wrist. She wound the tape and smoothed it down. His skin twitched. The bandage looked clean and bright against his tan. When she picked up the tin, his cane thumped once against the wall and slid, saved only by his foot flick. Reflex. Always in balance.
"That blade in your cane still sharp."
"Sharp enough."
"You planning on using it in my sitting room."
"Only if invited."
"You’re not."
"Noted."
The kettle loomed , a fat chrome toad waiting for attention. She poured water over teabags without asking and set a mug near him. He didn’t touch it. Steam rose and carried the curry house’s ghosts with it.
"You look tired."
"Don’t."
"I mean it. Your eyes. That black one," her mouth curved, "even more bottomless than usual."
"It isn’t a mood ring."
"Shame. Could save me the guesswork."
"You never guessed. You knew too much to pretend."
"That didn’t help me."
"No."
"Why Ferris."
"He owes me. And he ran. I could pretend it’s only business, but those lies don’t last with you."
"You want Eva’s notes to find him."
"I want them to find him before someone else does."
"You care."
"About debts."
"About me."
Silence spread, warm as the lamp in the corner when it had burned too long. He didn’t shift. He didn’t reach. The whole flat balanced on the tip of the question and refused to fall.
"I care that you weren’t in that stairwell."
"I would have been. You knew that."
"That’s why I sent ‘later.’"
She took a mouthful of tea and burned her tongue because she had needed an excuse to stop speaking. She swallowed, blinked the heat from her eyes, and put the mug down boyishly hard. A ring bloomed on the table and would annoy Eva when she saw it.
"You don’t get to waltz back in and order my files like you order your suits."
"I didn’t waltz."
"No, you limped. Different step. Same arrogance."
"You called me, that night. After Silas closed."
"I hung up when I heard your breath."
"I know."
"You still called."
"I wanted to hear that you were angry and alive."
"There are better reasons."
"They were what I had left."
She shifted, the cushion dipped, a small tectonic tilt that made his knee press to her thigh. Heat ran along that press like a line drawn with a hot knife. He had fresh bruises on his knuckles too, shadowed arcs. She traced the air above one, not touching.
"You let me see you hurt. That’s new."
"I didn’t let. I miscalculated."
"Liar."
"Yes."
He ran a palm over his face and stopped at his mouth, thumb pressed to his lower lip like he checked its integrity. The cat leapt up between them without a look and installed himself, front paws on Lucien’s thigh, hind paws stabbing Rory’s. Ptolemy’s tail slapped Lucien’s shirt.
"Traitor."
"He smells fish and blood. Two of his favourite things."
"You included."
"Occasionally."
"You think this is funny."
"I think we ran out of righteous lines to throw."
"I have a few left."
"I’m sure."
She touched the edge of her scar. It itched in storm weather and in rooms with him in them. He looked at her hand, not the mark.
"I’m not here at midnight with blood on your rug because I like drama."
"You love drama."
"I tolerate it when it buys information."
"And tonight?"
He leaned back while the cat climbed his lap and made biscuits out of expensive fabric, claws kneading into his thigh until he sucked a breath through his teeth. He didn’t move the animal. He barely blinked.
"Tonight I came because there are people who think hurting you prompts me to speak. They’re not wrong."
"You should work on your poker face."
"I never played it with you."
"Play it now."
"I don't want to."
"Neither do I."
The tea cooled. Steam thinned. The window over the sink rattled when a bus lumbered past on Brick Lane, its sigh rolling through the glass. A smell of fresh naan surged up the stairwell and made Ptolemy lift his nose like a snob at a wine tasting.
"You can sleep on the floor if you have to," she said, eyes on the bandage she’d set, fingers restless against her knee.
"I don’t sleep."
"You will on that floor."
"I don’t want your pity."
"You don’t have it. You have my floor."
"And your files."
"And my floor."
He looked like he wanted to argue and found nothing to hang the words on. He set the box of Ferris’s sins on the table. The photographs on top showed a man in a blue suit outside a betting shop with a girl hanging off his arm who looked bored and sixteen. Lucien’s gaze went flat in a way she knew, the way it did when he turned all his cleverness into a weapon.
"You’ll read them in here," she said. "Not in the hall. And not on the roof."
"I like the roof."
"You like danger."
"I like fresh air."
"You can open a window. Carefully. The latch sticks and Eva will blame me if it breaks."
"I wouldn’t dream of incurring Eva’s wrath."
"Smart."
They ran out of rhythm then. The room held them like a hand closing around two stones, keeping them from rolling away and clacking against separate sides. He drew a breath. She reached for her tea and didn’t lift it. His eyes traced the route of her hand and stopped on the scar again as if he could write a map from it.
"You can call me Rory," she said, voice steady now, a decision made and shoved across a table to him to see what he did with it.
His mouth loosened.
"I know."
"Don’t make me regret that."
"I won’t."