AI The third deadbolt gave a solid, reluctant clunk. Rory stood in the dim hallway, one hand still on the cold brass, the other holding a half-eaten slice of cold pizza. Ptolemy the tabby wove between her ankles, his purr a rusty engine of expectation.
The man on the other side of the threshold was a study in charcoal and platinum. Lucien Moreau. The sight of him was a physical punch, low in her gut, stealing her breath. He filled the space, his presence somehow making the narrow hallway of Eva’s Brick Lane flat feel both claustrophobic and vast. He leaned lightly on his ivory-handled cane, his heterochromatic eyes—one amber like aged whiskey, one black as a starless void—taking her in with an unnerving, practiced slowness. He looked exactly the same. Impeccable. A tailored charcoal suit that probably cost more than her entire wardrobe, the platinum blond hair slicked back from a sharp, handsome face. He smelled of cold night air, expensive sandalwood, and something faintly metallic, like ozone after a storm.
“Rory,” he said. His voice was a low baritone, smooth as poured velvet , with that faint, untraceable accent that was neither fully French nor entirely of this world.
She didn’t move. The pizza crust was going limp in her hand. “You’re supposed to be in Marseille.” The words came out flat, a statement, not a question. She’d made it her business to know. After everything, she’d needed to know where he was, so she could be anywhere else.
“Plans change.” A ghost of a smile touched his lips, not quite reaching his eyes . “Aren’t you going to invite me in? It’s drafty out here, and I believe your feline overlord wishes to make an escape.” He glanced down at Ptolemy, who was now sniffing the polished toe of his Oxford shoe with intense suspicion.
Rory’s mind raced, cool-headedness warring with a surge of old, hot feeling. Attraction, yes, a humiliating, instant pull she thought she’d buried. Hurt, sharper and more familiar , a clean, surgical slice. And anger, simmering beneath it all. He had no right. He’d forfeited any right to stand in her doorway, looking at her like that, nine months ago.
“Eva’s not here,” she said, instead of answering . She made no move to widen the door.
“I’m aware. I’m not here for Eva.” His amber eye seemed to catch the weak hall light, glinting . The black one remained depthless, absorbing it. “I’m here for you .”
The simplicity of it, the arrogance, made her jaw tighten. She thought of the three deadbolts behind her, of Evan, of the careful, quiet life she’d been stitching together in London. Delivery shifts for Yu-Fei, the quiet flat above Silas’s bar, the blessed, supernatural-free normalcy she’d craved. Lucien was a walking, talking breach of that peace. He was the embodiment of the world she’d asked him to help her leave behind.
“We said everything that needed saying,” she said, her voice tighter now. “On the phone. From a safe, continent-wide distance.”
“Did we?” He shifted his weight onto the cane, a minute gesture, but she caught it. The old injury, a souvenir from a demon’s talon in Prague, still bothered him in the damp. The observation was an unwelcome intimacy, a piece of knowledge she’d retained against her will. “I recall a great deal of shouting. Mostly from you . And then a dial tone. That is not saying everything, *ma chère *. That is saying nothing, very loudly.”
A flush crept up her neck. She remembered the shouting. The cold, detached calm on his face as she’d laid out her reasons, her fear, her need for a clean break from the shadows. He’d offered her a job. A partnership. She’d called him monstrous. The word had hung between them, toxic and final.
“What do you want, Lucien?” The question was a surrender. She couldn’t stand here in the doorway forever, holding pizza, with Ptolemy now attempting to climb his tailored trouser leg.
“To talk. Inside. Five minutes.” He held up a hand, gloveless, long-fingered. “You have my word, no business, no underworld intrigues. Just… talk.”
His word. Once, that had been a currency she trusted implicitly. Now it felt like a counterfeit note. But the alternative—slamming the door in his face—felt childish, and Rory Carter was not childish. She was cool-headed. Intelligent. She could handle five minutes with a ghost.
With a sigh that felt dredged from her bones, she stepped back, pulling the door wide. “Five minutes. And if Ptolemy ruins your suit, that’s your problem.”
He stepped over the threshold, and the flat seemed to shrink. He brought with him the scent of the outside, the aura of power and otherness that clung to him like a second skin. He closed the door behind him with a soft, definitive click, engaging the deadbolts with practiced ease . The sound was unnervingly final.
Rory retreated into the main room, a chaotic nest of books and paper. She dumped her pizza on a crowded side table, next to a precarious stack of Eva’s medieval bestiaries. She didn’t offer him a seat; every surface was occupied. She crossed her arms over her chest, a defensive gesture she immediately regretted.
Lucien took in the room, his gaze lingering on the scrolls, the coded notes, the map of London dotted with Eva’s pins. “She’s researching the Thames ley-line confluence,” he observed.
“You didn’t come here to discuss Eva’s thesis.”
“No.” He turned that dual-colored gaze back to her. It was deeply unsettling, being seen by two such different eyes. One human, warm, assessing. The other ancient, hungry, knowing. “I came because I heard about Evan.”
The air left the room. All the careful composure she’d built, the cool-headed facade , cracked. Her left wrist, where the small crescent scar lay, gave a phantom throb . “How?” The word was a whisper .
“I make it my business to know things about people who matter.” He said it quietly, no trace of smugness. “I know he was released from prison three weeks ago. I know he’s been asking questions in Cardiff. I know he has friends in London with poor taste and flexible morals.”
The flat, which had felt like a sanctuary, now felt like a paper fortress. The three deadbolts seemed laughable. She’d known Evan was out. Her father, the barrister, had sent a terse, worried email. But she’d told herself London was big, she was anonymous, she was safe. Hearing the facts laid out in Lucien’s calm, precise tone made it all terrifyingly real.
“So what?” she challenged, anger flaring to cover the fear. “You’re here to… what? Protect me? Offer your services as a supernatural bodyguard? I left that world, Lucien. I left *you *. I don’t want your kind of help.”
“What is my kind of help, Rory?” he asked, taking a single step closer. The space between them crackled. “Efficient? Permanent?”
“Illegal. Brutal. Demon-adjacent.” She threw the words at him like stones.
He flinched, just a tiny tightening at the corner of his mouth. The cane tapped once on the floorboards. “I see the word still comes easily to you .”
“You called me a coward,” she shot back, the old wound raw . “For wanting out. For being scared.”
“I called you pragmatic,” he corrected, his voice dropping . “I was angry. You were leaving. I said things to push you away, to make it easier for you to go. It was… poorly done.”
The admission stunned her into silence . Lucien Moreau did not apologize. He negotiated, he manipulated, he orchestrated outcomes. He did not admit to being ‘poorly done’.
“Why are you really here?” she asked again, the fight draining out of her, leaving exhaustion and a confusing ache.
“Because when I heard about Evan,” he said, his gaze dropping for a moment to her crossed arms, as if he could see the old scar through her sweater, “my first thought was not of business, or debts, or the delicate balance of power in Southwark.” He looked up, and the amber eye was fierce, the black one unreadable . “My first thought was that if he laid a finger on you , I would unmake him. Slowly. And that this impulse was… inconvenient. And entirely personal.”
The confession hung in the book-heavy air. It was the most honest, most vulnerable thing he’d ever said to her. It acknowledged everything they’d never said: the attraction that had sparked between them during that fraught week in Paris, the late-night conversations over bad brandy, the way his hand had once, just once, brushed the small of her back to guide her through a crowd, and she’d felt it like a brand. It acknowledged the hurt of her leaving, and the unsaid thing that had been growing between them before she’d severed it.
“Inconvenient,” she repeated, her voice barely audible .
“Profoundly.” He took another step. He was close enough now that she could see the faint lines at the corners of his eyes, the precise cut of his collar, the pulse in his throat. “I told myself you made your choice. You wanted normal. A human life. I am… not that. I cannot be that. So I stayed away. But this threat… it is human. Brutishly, stupidly human. And it is a threat to you . So here I am, being inconvenient.”
Rory uncrossed her arms. Her hands felt useless. She wanted to touch the smooth ivory of his cane, to feel the wool of his suit, to see if his skin was as warm as it looked. She wanted to push him back out into the night.
“What are you proposing?” she asked, her practical mind grasping for a framework , a deal, something to structure this dizzying freefall.
“Nothing,” he said. “I am not proposing. I am informing. I have people watching your usual routes—the restaurant, Silas’s bar, this flat. Discreetly. They will report any sign of him or his associates. You will not see them. You will go about your life.”
“And in return?” There was always a return with Lucien.
He smiled then, a real one, small and bittersweet, that softened the severe line of his mouth. “In return, you tolerate my presence for five minutes, which…” he glanced at a slim, antique watch on his wrist, “…have now elapsed. And you consider, perhaps, that not all monsters are what they seem. Some just have… inconvenient timing, and worse manners.”
He gave a slight, formal nod and turned to go, his cane tapping softly towards the door.
“Lucien.”
He stopped, hand on the deadbolt, but didn’t turn.
“Thank you ,” she said. It was inadequate, a tiny bridge over a canyon of unsaid things.
He looked over his shoulder, the amber eye catching hers. “*Je t'en prie *, Rory.” *You’re welcome *. The French was soft, intimate. Then he was gone, the door closing with a whisper , the deadbolts sliding home from the outside.
Rory stood in the sudden, immense silence of the flat. Ptolemy meowed plaintively. The scent of sandalwood and ozone lingered in the air, a ghost in the room. She looked at her left wrist, at the pale crescent scar. For the first time since she’d seen Evan’s release notice , the fear was edged with something else. Not safety. Something more dangerous. A faint, treacherous warmth . The memory of a black and amber gaze, and the word ‘inconvenient’, spoken like a confession.