Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTY0EV5SCZWT00BP81B290V

The knock came at half past midnight. Eva didn't answer to midnight visitors, not since she'd moved into the flat above the curry house five years ago. She sat at her desk, surrounded by open books and scattered pages, her fingers still hovering over the passage she'd been translating when the sound cut through the flat. Ptolemy's ears perked up from his usual spot on the armchair. The knock came again. Insistent. Not the sort of knock that belonged to someone selling religion or asking for spare change. Eva pushed her reading glasses up into her hair and moved through the cramped space, sidestepping stacks of books that had accumulated like geological layers. She undid the first deadbolt, then the second, then the third. The chain stayed locked. Through the gap, she caught the profile of a man in a charcoal suit, one hand gripping the ivory handle of a cane. Even in the hallway's weak lighting, his platinum hair gleamed like something that didn't belong in the real world. "Lucien." She didn't pose it as a question. He turned at the sound of his name, and she saw the heterochromatic eyes—amber and black—settle on the narrow opening of the door. For a moment, neither of them moved. The chain between them felt less like security and more like a barrier against something inevitable. "Eva. You're still awake." His accent curved the edges of his words, French vowels bleeding through the English. She'd spent enough time around him to know that when he spoke like that, he was either nervous or calculating. Possibly both. "People tend to be awake at midnight when someone's at their door." "Not just anyone." She undid the chain and pulled the door open wider. Lucien stood in the hallway in full evening dress—tailored suit, crisp shirt, pocket square. The cane wasn't affectation; it was performance. Everything about him was performance, though she'd spent the better part of three months learning which parts were true. "It's been six weeks," she said. "Seven." He stepped inside without waiting for an invitation. The flat seemed to shrink around him, his presence consuming the available air. Ptolemy lifted his head, studying the newcomer with the indifference only cats could manage. "I counted." Lucien moved deeper into the space, and she caught the smell of him—expensive cologne and something underneath it, something darker and older that she'd never been able to place. "Every day." "That's not romantic, Lucien. That's just sad." She shut the door and redid all three deadbolts. When she turned around, he was examining her research—a manuscript page from the fifteenth century spread across her desk, notes in her cramped handwriting crowding the margins. "Still chasing ghosts?" "Still running from them?" He smiled at that, the expression too quick to be genuine. "I came because there's something you need to know. Something that—" "No." She moved to the kitchenette, a narrow corridor of counter space barely wide enough to turn around in. Her hands needed something to do besides think about the last time she'd seen him. The last time his hands had been on her. The last time they'd both said things designed to cut as precisely as his blade. "You don't know what I was going to say." "I know that you showing up at midnight with that expression means you're about to ask for something. And I'm not interested." The kettle went on. She stared at it as though it might reveal secrets, as though boiling water could transform this moment into something manageable. "There's a case," Lucien said behind her. "A missing woman. Disappeared three weeks ago from Hackney. The authorities have nothing. The family contacted someone who contacted me, and I mentioned your name." "You shouldn't have." "The woman's younger sister is being threatened. There's an artifact involved. Possibly sixteenth-century Moroccan. Something written in a dialect that requires expertise in—" "Lucien." She turned to face him. "I told you. When we ended things. I told you that I couldn't do this anymore. That every time you walked out that door, I didn't know if I'd see you again. That the work you do, the world you move through—it terrifies me." He set his cane against the desk with careful precision, as though the act required concentration. When he raised his eyes to meet hers, the heterochromatic gaze was steady. Unsettling. "I know what you said." "And you're here anyway." "I'm here because you're the only person in London who can do what needs to be done. And because a girl who's seventeen years old is receiving threats written in blood on her bedroom wall. And because I made you a promise when I left last time." Eva's throat tightened. He had made her a promise. On that last night, his head against her chest in the dark, his fingers tracing the spine of a book on her nightstand, he'd whispered words in French that he'd refused to translate. She'd thought they were goodbye. Apparently, she'd been wrong. "That doesn't change anything." "It changes whether you ignore this or whether you help me." Ptolemy jumped down from the armchair and twined around Lucien's ankles, purring. The traitor cat had apparently decided sides. "You're using a child to manipulate me." "I'm using a child to appeal to the part of you that can't say no to people who need help." He bent down, running a hand along Ptolemy's spine. The cat practically vibrated with pleasure. "The part of you that left Cardiff and all your family's expectations behind because staying was suffocating. The part of you that answers my calls at three in the morning even though you know it's a terrible idea." "That's not fair." "Nothing about this is fair. If it were, we wouldn't be standing in this flat pretending we don't recognize each other as dangerous. Pretending that seven weeks of not speaking changed anything." The kettle clicked off. The silence it left behind seemed to echo. She moved to the desk and pushed aside the manuscript pages, clearing a small space. Her hands shook slightly as she sat. "Tell me about the girl. The threats. Everything." Lucien straightened, and something shifted in his expression—relief, perhaps, or satisfaction. He pulled a chair close to hers, not touching, but near enough that she could feel the disturbance in the air around him. "Her name is Margot Leclerc. Her sister, Sophie, disappeared after a museum opening at the V&A three weeks ago. The police have treated it as a simple missing person case, but the family received a message three days ago. An artifact has been taken. If they report it to the authorities or pay any ransom, Margot receives punishment." "What artifact?" He produced a photograph from his jacket pocket—a small, ancient thing, cloth-wrapped and barely identifiable from the image. But the symbols burned into the corner of the wrapping were unmistakable. Old. Not just old. Ancient. The kind of old that belonged in a locked case in a private collection, not lost in a family jewel box. "A binding stone," Eva whispered. "From the Moroccan grimoires." "I thought you'd recognize it." He set the photo on the desk between them. "Which means you know what it's used for." She did. She knew exactly what it was used for, and why someone would risk everything to possess it. The implications spread through her mind like poison in water. "Lucien, if someone has that and they know how to use it—" "Then we need to find Sophie before they do." He was still watching her, and she could read the calculation in those mismatched eyes. He'd known she wouldn't be able to walk away. Worse, he'd known she'd understand the stakes instantly. Which meant he'd also known exactly how to corner her into saying yes. "If I do this," she said slowly, "I want terms. Real terms. No disappearing acts. No lies about where you're going or what you're doing. You tell me everything, or I'm done before we start." "Done with the case or done with me?" She didn't answer him. They both knew the question was unanswerable right now, hanging in the suspended moment between them like a blade waiting to fall.