AI The door swings open an inch, the brass chain catching with a high, sharp clink, and I freeze mid-twist of the third deadbolt. I’d slammed all three home ten minutes ago, after Eva left for her parent-teacher conferences, after Ptolemy knocked over a bowl of her research notes and I’d spent an hour chasing him around the sofa. Garam masala drifts up through the floorboards, thick and spiced with garlic, the scent of the curry house below clinging to the frayed edge of the doormat. Behind me, the tabby cat’s claws skitter across the velvet sofa, knocking over a half-empty mug of tea. I don’t look away from the man on my doorstep, not even to shush him.
He’s wearing a tailored charcoal suit, the fabric pressed so sharp it could cut paper, his slicked-back platinum blond hair glinting under the streetlight seeping through the frosted glass panel beside the door. The ivory tip of his cane taps the scuffed wood floor, a steady, rhythmic tap-tap-tap that matches the hammering of my pulse at my throat, the metallic tang of adrenaline pricking the back of my tongue. His eyes catch the light, and I have to look away for half a second—one amber, one black, the heterochromatic pair I’d spent an hour begging him to explain, the pair he’d lied about by saying he wore tinted contacts for work.
That’s how it started, the lie that broke us. I thought he was just a smooth-talking human fixer, the guy I hired to scare off Evan when my abusive ex tracked me from Cardiff to London. I thought he dealt with lost packages and missing pets, not the supernatural underworld of incantations and demon realms. Then I walked in on him without his contacts, saw the truth, and he didn’t bother to cover it up. He just shrugged and said it was none of my business. I grabbed my bag and left, didn’t look back, didn’t answer his calls or his texts for three months.
Now he’s standing on my doorstep, his cane still tapping out that steady rhythm, and his face is tight, like he’s been holding his breath for a long time.
“I didn’t think you’d still be in Brick Lane,” he says, his voice soft with the faint Marseiliais lilt he’d hidden at first, the lilt that used to make me forget how angry Evan made me.
I twist my left wrist, the thin crescent scar peeking out from the rolled cuff of my jumper, the same scar I got when I fell on a metal fence at seven years old, the same scar Evan grabbed last month when he cornered me outside the tube station. I slide the deadbolt home, yanking the chain fully loose so I can push the door shut, but he’s faster. He presses the ivory tip of his cane under the edge of the door, holding it open, his fingers tightening around the carved handle until his knuckles bleach white.
“Get off my doorstep, Lucien,” I say, my voice sharper than I intend it to be. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
He shifts his weight, and the suit’s shoulder pads shift under the fabric, a small, familiar detail that makes my chest ache despite myself. “I need your help,” he says. “Evan tracked you here.”
That stops me cold. I’d thought I’d hidden this flat well, told no one except Eva, the friend who’d picked me up when I fled Cardiff, who’d let me crash on her sofa until I could afford the room above Silas’ bar. I’d moved from that flat two months ago, told no one where I was going except Eva, who lives here, in this cramped one-bedroom flat above the curry house, every surface covered with her research notes on ancient folklore.
“How did you find me?” I ask, my voice quieter now, the anger flicking out like a match in a strong wind.
“Went to your flat above the bar,” he says, and the words hang in the air between us, thick and heavy. “Silas said you’d moved on. Said you left a forwarding address with the post office. I checked.”
I’d given the post office a fake address, a box at the corner shop down Brick Lane. I’d thought he’d give up after a week, after he realized I didn’t want to talk to him. Now I know he’s been looking for me for three months, that he’s tracked my movements from the restaurant where I work, that he knows where Eva lives. My blood runs cold.
“Who else knows?” I ask, my hand drifting to the pepper spray tucked in the pocket of my jeans, the can of OC spray I keep for late-night delivery runs.
“Just me,” he says, and his eyes flick to the crescent scar on my wrist, like he’s remembering the night Evan grabbed me, like he’s remembering the way I cried in his car after Evan left me with bruises up my arm. I pull my wrist away, tucking it under my arm, and his face falls, just a little. “I’m not here to fight, Rory. I’m here to warn you. Evan found out about the other side. About Avaros. About my father. He stole a binding charm from a collector I work with, a charm that can trap me in my human form, strip away the part of me that’s not human.”
My throat tightens. I’d forgotten about the supernatural parts of that night, forgotten the way Lucien’s eyes had shifted when he was angry , the way his voice had dropped to a rumble that made the windows rattle. I’d tried to push it all away, to pretend that I’d just met a guy with a strange eye condition, that the weird symbols on his office walls were just modern art. But Evan isn’t the type to let go of a grudge. He’d found out about Lucien, and he’d use that to hurt me, to hurt anyone who’d tried to help me.
“What does he want?” I ask, and the words hang in the air, the garam masala scent making my stomach twist.
“He wants me to bring him to you,” Lucien says, and the cane taps once, loud in the quiet of the flat. “He wants to finish what he started in Cardiff. He wants to make you pay for leaving him. And he’s going to use the binding charm to make sure I can’t stop him.”
I glance over my shoulder, at the research notes scattered across Eva’s kitchen table, at the open scrolls covered in ink and charcoal, at Ptolemy curled up on the windowsill, his tail flicking at the streetlight outside. Eva’s working late tonight, covering for a colleague who’s sick, so she won’t be home for another two hours. I’m alone here, with a man I hate and a secret I can’t outrun.
“You lied to me,” I say, my voice breaking a little, despite my best efforts to keep it steady. “You lied to me about everything. About who you are, what you do, all of it.”
He nods, his jaw tight, and I can see the way his hands are shaking, the way he’s gripping his cane so tight his fingers are white. “I was afraid,” he says, and the words are quiet, almost lost in the sound of a delivery bike clattering past the curry house entrance. “I was afraid you’d leave me. I’d never met anyone who didn’t run when they found out about my father, about what I am. You were the first person who made me feel normal, even when you were angry at me. I didn’t know how to tell you. I was scared .”
I want to laugh at that, at the idea that he was scared , when I’d been terrified of Evan for years, when I’d fled my home and my career and everything I knew to get away from him. But I don’t laugh. I just stare at him, at the man who’d held me when I cried after Evan cornered me, who’d paid for my taxi home when I couldn’t walk straight from the shock, who’d lied to me about the most important thing in his life.
“You should have told me,” I say, and the words are softer now, the anger fading into something sharper, something like hurt . “You should have trusted me enough to tell me.”
He nods, and this time, his eyes glisten, the amber and black irises shifting in the streetlight. “I know ,” he says. “I know I was an idiot. I’m sorry, Rory. More than anything.”
A loud, coarse laugh drifts up from the street below, and my blood runs cold. I recognise that laugh anywhere. It’s Evan’s.
I turn to look through the frosted glass panel beside the door, and I see him, leaning against the brick wall of the curry house, a scowl on his face, a small silver charm dangling from his fingers. He looks up, and our eyes meet through the glass, and he grins, wide and cruel.
Then he pushes off the wall and starts walking up the stairs to the flat.