AI The door opened before she could get the chain off.
Lucien stood in the narrow hallway like he owned its shadow, a tailored charcoal suit clinging to him the way secrets clung to his jaw. One of his eyes caught the strip light and burned amber, the other swallowed it whole. He held his cane casually, ivory handle catching the light like a grin.
"You didn't knock," she said.
"That would have been rude," he answered, stepping inside as if the flat belonged to him. The smell that hit her was rain and tobacco and something sweeter, old library book and danger. "May I?"
She should have shut the door. She should have slammed it and buckled the chain and pretended she did not have a throat that tightened at the sight of him. Instead she let the door thud shut and leaned against it, fingers curled over the small crescent scar on her left wrist without thinking.
"Why are you here, Lucien?"
He folded his hands on the cane. The blade within it remained a secret for now. He looked at her the way a man might appraise a locked safe: measured , patient, certain he would find the weakness.
"I came because you looked very small on that last photograph I saw," he said.
She blinked. Her first instinct was to be amused; her second was to be furious. Both felt embarrassingly young.
"You had no right," she said.
"I had every right." He took another step toward the kitchen. Her life smelled of takeaway sauce and detergent, the bed still half-made, a delivery bag on the counter with chewed corners. He observed it all like a catalogue, and when he looked back at her his expression smoothed. "You left without a forwarding number."
"I left without you," she replied. "That number is one reason why I'm alive, Lucien."
He winced, just enough to prove he could still feel. "That was not a clean leave. I know. But you left with the wrong accusation pinned to my jacket. I had to—"
"You had to run off and leave me," she cut in, flat and neatly aimed. The flat seemed to shrink with every syllable. "You left me to deal with Evan. You told me you would handle him and you disappeared."
"You do not get to make the story so tidy," he said, and suddenly his voice carried a tiredness that belonged to someone who had been hauling a corpse up a hill for years. "You came to me with a knife and a bruise and the wrong name. I was compromised, Aurora. I could not afford to be seen with you."
"Compromised," she repeated. The word tasted like betrayal. "Or coward."
"Both," he admitted. "And I am sorry."
The apology sounded like an antique coin, polished and rare. She wanted to keep it in her pocket, examine it, decide if it was real. Her throat felt thick.
"Then apologise in a language I don't owe you," she said. "Stay five minutes. Take your hands off the cane for once. Or get out."
His smile was polite, not indulgent. He let the cane rest against the cabinet and walked toward the battered sofa as if remembering which sofa belonged to which memory .
"I did not come for an argument," he said. "I came because you are in trouble."
She laughed, a short, bitter sound.
"That's convenient."
"It is inconvenient for me too." He sat, and the chair sighed under him. His fingers, long and careful, drummed a rhythm on the ivory. "Someone has been asking questions about you."
She braced herself. She had gotten used to a life of small alarms: late rent notices, flatmates with noisier lives, an ex-boyfriend who should have been a cautionary tale and instead became a shadow that followed her into shops. This was a different bell. This bell was carved into bone.
"Who?" she asked.
Lucien's other eye darkened.
"Evan is not the one following. He was a nuisance. This is someone older. Someone efficient ."
"Define efficient ."
"Not sentimental." He let the syllable hang. "Not human, in the strictest sense."
The room tilted. She wanted to laugh again, to tell him she wasn't twelve anymore, that demon stories belonged in chapter books. Instead her heart took a small, stupid hop. She had let herself believe she was finally free of the mythic and the monstrous. She had stacks of research, yes, but also a job that required balancing damp boxes and three-hour shifts. She had learned to live with the world that did not consult legends before stepping on a foot.
"You're saying I'm being watched by something supernatural," she said.
"I am saying you should not be watched by anything, and yet someone is watching very carefully ." He leaned forward. "They asked after your contacts. They asked about Cardiff. They asked for 'the woman who knows how to break contracts.'"
She felt the scar on her wrist burn as if it wanted to tear the skin. The phrase rattled loose like a coin in a pocket. She had broken contracts, metaphorical and otherwise. Legal parlance clung to her even now, like oil you could not scrub out.
"What do they want?"
"Things you have, and things you do not know you have." He watched her face like a man watching a lock. "Information, names, a skill set. People like you are useful."
She did not answer. She could not tell whether the chill in her spine came from the implication , or from the memory of him leaving.
"You could have told me," she said finally, voice small .
"I told you the truth that I could tell," he said. "I could not tell you the rest without endangering you."
"Endangering me by leaving me here to be found," she shot back.
Lucien opened his mouth, then closed it. For the first time since he had arrived, he looked tired enough to be human.
"People were on my heels, Aurora. I left to draw them away. Did you think I wanted to leave you?" He stood, and when he moved close the flat seemed to rearrange itself to accommodate him. "Do you remember the night at the docks?"
A sound like hands on glass hissed at the memory. She remembered the river pressing its cold face against her teeth, the way the world smelled of diesel and old promises. He remembered everything, she realised. He always had a remarkable memory for the wrong nights.
"You left me with a cheque," she said. "You thought money would fix a bruise."
"It was never about money." He stepped a breath closer so that she could see the tiny scar just beneath his left ear, the one he did not try to hide. "I sent it because I was scared what would happen if I stayed. I sent it because I was trying to build an exit for you."
"An exit doesn't mean anything if it closes when you walk through it," she said.
"There was more," he said. "I had to talk to people you do not want in your life. I had to make promises I cannot break. It was ugly. I thought I could keep you clean."
"Keep me clean from you," she countered.
He smiled at that, not unkindly. "I am not clean."
"You're a fixer," she said. "You're a broker. You deal in dirt."
"I also keep patients alive," he said. "And once, I wanted to keep you alive more than anything."
That line made the room blur. She had imagined him wanting many things: power, coin, information. Desire had not always been one of them. When it was, it hurt, because it reminded her she had felt the same.
"Why now?" she whispered. "Why not when you left? Why not when I needed you?"
"Because I could not find you, and then I saw a photograph and realised I had failed." He held up the cane, a small, elegant punctuation. "Because I prefer to correct my mistakes."
Her anger wavered . It was not pity; she had promised herself never to offer that. It was curiosity, thin and sharp.
"Who is looking?" she asked again.
He hesitated, and for one awful second his composure cracked.
"The Marquis," he said finally.
Aurora's laugh died before it reached the ceiling.
"You're joking."
"I do not joke," he replied. "He keeps records like a museum. He collects contracts and pieces of lives. He will bind anything to himself if it proves useful. He has been patient."
The name had gravity. She had read the sort of things that made men like Lucien hold their breath: half-legendary figures who trafficked in oaths and blood. The Marquis sounded absurdly theatrical and exactly the sort of thing that would not be frivolous.
"Why me?" she asked. "I'm not anyone's prize."
"You are clever with contracts," Lucien said. "You understand bindings. You know loopholes. You will not sign away what you do not understand."
Her mouth twisted. "You mean I'm valuable."
"Yes," he said simply. "Valuable enough to spend time looking for."
The flat felt suspended like a drowning house in a boat. Her pulse hammered against her teeth. She thought of Evan, of cold hands on her arm, of the nights she had stayed awake thinking about what could happen if someone pulled a thread she did not know to tie.
"Then take me somewhere safe," she said. "Or tell me how to make myself blind."
"I cannot make you blind to everything," he said. "But I can offer you an umbrella under which to stand. For now."
She wanted to say no. She wanted to refuse him everything. Instead she surprised herself by walking to the small collection of jars on the windowsill, jars of receipts and rosary beads and a ticket stub to a museum she never visited. She picked up a matchbox, fingers steady.
"If I go with you," she said, "we do it my way."
He inclined his head, a fox listening. "When have I ever had the patience for another way?"
She struck a match and the flame flared, numbers and shadows suddenly warm. For a heartbeat he watched the light, and she understood with a jolt that this was the dangerous Lucien: the man who watched, the man who kept promises by breaking them.
"Fine," she said. "But we leave in ten minutes. I grab my coat, whatever cash I have in my shoe, and my files."
"And the files?"
She thumped the top drawer where she kept research notes. "I decide what's important."
"And Evan?"
She hesitated. She had hoped he would answer for her, like he always had. He did not.
"You will deal with him," she said, voice hard . "If he's a problem, you fix it properly."
He smiled then, small and wolfish. "I said I would."
The kettle on the hob began to scream. A rhythm of footsteps padded across the stair well outside her front door, the sound of boots that did not belong to anyone who had ever been invited in. The flat's lights flickered , briefly, as if someone had breathed on the wiring.
Lucien's eyes narrowed . He moved without grace, with purpose, hand closing on the cane.
"They are not patient tonight," he said.
There was a sound at the door, a scraping like a fingernail over old wood. Then the chain rattled as if the lock were being tested .
She reached for the crescent scar on her wrist, fingers clutching it like a compass. Lucien's other hand brushed her knuckles, warm and certain.
"Stay behind me," he said.
She wanted to refuse. She wanted to push past him, shout, slam the door, run. Instead she stepped back, letting him fall into the space between threshold and kettle steam. He planted his cane, smiled a small, terrible smile, and the blade within it whispered.
The handle caught the light, sharp and certain. The chain shook again, harder, like someone impatient with polite refusals. Voices—three of them—seeped under the door, low and threaded with something metallic that made the hairs at the base of her neck stand up.
"Lucien Moreau?" asked the nearest voice, male, the accent neat, practiced. "We know he's in there. Open up, monsieur, and we will be gentlemen."
"Tell them I'm not a gentleman," Lucien said softly .
The lock surrendered with a click.
The door flew inward on a shoulder she did not know, and cold air rolled into the flat carrying a scent like iron and orchard rot. Two men filled the doorway, their jackets cut from the same dark cloth, faces obscured by scarves. Between them, in the corridor like a black stain, something moved that did not belong to human geometry.
Aurora's laugh caught in her throat. The room contracted; Ten minutes disappeared into the floorboards. Lucien stepped forward, cane raised, blade gleaming in the flat light like a small, promise-turned-weapon.
"Stay back," he ordered, voice even, carrying the same weight as judgement.
"Lucien Moreau," the second man said, voice like gravel. "You owe a favour."
He did not answer. He had never been a man who did favours cheaply.
The dark thing in the corridor shifted, and where its shadow touched the floor the wood seemed to wrinkle. The air tasted of pennies. Vera's kettle shrieked a long high note. Pigeons somewhere collided with brick. Time gathered itself behind the two of them like a waiting audience.
Lucien put himself between Aurora and the doorway, and the blade in his cane slid free with a sound like silk tearing.
The man at the door smiled in a way that did not involve his eyes.
"We will be gentle," he said, and then he pushed forward.