AI Rory had one hand on the deadbolt and the other still buried in Ptolemy’s fur when the knock came again, sharper this time, impatient enough to rattle the cheap wood of the front door.
The tabby on her lap lifted his head, green eyes narrowing in offended judgment. Rory frowned at the clock over Eva’s cluttered kettle, then at the pile of notes spilling off the kitchen table, then at the door.
Nobody decent showed up on Brick Lane this late unless they wanted something.
The third deadbolt gave with a stubborn metallic clunk. She pulled the door inward, ready with a flat refusal and maybe the heel of her palm if the visitor was a salesman, a drunk, or one of the curry-house delivery boys with the wrong address.
Lucien Moreau stood on the other side.
For one ridiculous second, Rory’s mind went blank except for the shape of him: tall and precise in a charcoal suit that looked hand-stitched onto his body, pale hair slicked back from a face too beautiful to be trusted, one amber eye fixed on her and the other black as spilled ink. The ivory handle of his cane rested against his wrist like an expensive threat.
Her heart did something humiliating and quick.
Then the rest of him came into focus, and with it everything she’d spent weeks trying not to think about.
The last time she’d seen him, he’d left her with a look she couldn’t decode and a silence that had felt deliberate. He’d kissed her once—only once, enough to make her forget her own name and angry enough to make remembering it hurt. Then there had been a gap. A stupid, furious, aching gap in which she’d convinced herself she was done being pulled into whatever orbit he lived in.
Apparently not.
Lucien’s gaze dropped to the deadbolts, then back to her face. “You do not make a habit of welcoming guests, I see.”
Rory stared at him. “How did you get in?”
One corner of his mouth lifted. Not quite a smile. “You know London. Locks are a suggestion.”
“Not these locks.”
“No,” he said mildly . “These are three suggestions.”
Ptolemy chose that moment to jump from the chair and weave between Rory’s ankles, hissing at Lucien with the self-importance of a much larger animal. Lucien glanced down, then produced a faintly baffled expression, as if the cat had personally insulted his ancestry.
Rory should have slammed the door. She knew that. She could feel it, sensible and practical, the way a hand knows the shape of a bruise before it touches it.
Instead she said, “What do you want?”
Lucien’s expression changed by a degree, the humor thinning. He looked past her shoulder into the flat, taking in the stacks of books on the floor, the half-eaten toast on a plate, the scribbled notes pinned to the wall by old receipts and a bent pair of scissors. Eva’s place always looked like a storm had tried and failed to organize itself there. Rory had grown used to it, but under Lucien’s appraising gaze it felt suddenly intimate, exposed.
“I need to speak to you,” he said.
“That sounds ominous.”
“It is meant to.”
Rory folded her arms. “You can speak from the hallway.”
His brows lifted. “You would have me conduct our conversation beside a communal landing and a curry smell strong enough to peel paint?”
“It’s Brick Lane. Take it up with the architecture.”
His black eye flicked over her face, and for a moment she hated how well he read things she tried to keep still. Hated more that he seemed tired . Not physically—Lucien rarely looked anything less than composed—but something had gone out of his polish. The line of his mouth was tighter than she remembered. The air around him, already unnerving, felt sharpened.
A bad sign. Lucien did not look worn down for nothing.
Rory exhaled through her nose. “Fine. Five minutes.”
She stepped back, and he came in with the quiet authority of a man who had never once doubted his right to cross a threshold. The flat seemed to notice him. Even Ptolemy flattened his ears and retreated to the sofa, where he tucked himself into a wary loaf among Eva’s books.
Lucien removed his gloves slowly , as though time itself had manners for him. The cane stayed in his hand. Rory tracked it without meaning to. She knew better than to assume it was only for balance. A lot of things about Lucien came disguised.
The door shut behind him with a heavy finality that made Rory’s skin prickle.
Silence settled between them, interrupted only by the hiss of the radiator and the muffled clatter from the curry house downstairs.
He looked at the room again. “Your friend is still collecting occult detritus, I see.”
“Eva collects useful things,” Rory said. “The rest is her problem.”
“That is a remarkably generous policy for someone living in it.”
She almost laughed, and the near-miss made her angry in a way she couldn’t entirely explain. “Why are you here, Lucien?”
His gaze returned to her. “You remember how to use my name when you are cross. Good.”
“Answer the question.”
“I need your help.”
Rory blinked once. Of all the things she’d expected—an order, a warning, a lie—that had not been it. She looked at him more closely now, past the immaculate tailoring and the familiar , dangerous elegance. There was a faint shadow beneath his good eye. His cane was cleaner than usual, but the way his fingers held it suggested he’d been using it longer than he liked.
“You’re kidding,” she said.
“I rarely kid.”
“You’re Lucien Moreau. You don’t need help. You buy it, blackmail it, or seduce it into cooperating.”
“One can still need help while maintaining standards.”
Despite herself, Rory gave a short, disbelieving laugh. It died quickly . “No. No, I’m not doing this.”
His face remained composed, but something in his gaze tightened. “Rory—”
“No.” She pointed at the door . “You don’t get to show up here unannounced after vanishing on me and then stroll in like this is some kind of business arrangement.”
The room seemed to go very still.
Lucien’s expression did not change, but his eyes did. The amber one caught the weak yellow kitchen light and shone almost molten; the black one swallowed it whole. “Vanishing,” he repeated softly . “That is your interpretation.”
“It’s not an interpretation. It’s what happened.”
“I told you I would be unavailable.”
“You said that after you’d already started avoiding my calls.”
His jaw flexed once. “I did not avoid your calls.”
“You ignored them.”
“I was occupied.”
“With what?”
A pause. It was small, but Rory felt it like a hand at the back of her neck. Lucien was not a man who paused unless he intended to say something that would matter. She hated that, too. Hated that every instinct in her body leaned toward him when he got quiet like this, like all the air in the room had decided to gather around his silence .
“Things you would not enjoy hearing,” he said at last.
“Try me.”
He looked at her for a long beat. “No.”
Rory’s nails bit into her palms. She could still remember the last time he’d said her name in that low, careful voice, like he was measuring the shape of a wound. That memory flashed hot and treacherous through her chest.
He had kissed her as if he meant it. That was the insult of it. If it had been careless, she could have dismissed it. If it had been a game, she could have hated him cleanly. But Lucien had touched her as though he was asking permission from someone he believed he had no right to ask. Then he’d left her standing there with every nerve in her body lit up and no explanation to dam the flood.
“So,” Rory said, because if she didn’t keep talking she might do something stupid like step closer, “you turn up at my door after weeks of silence , refuse to explain yourself, and expect what exactly? A cup of tea?”
“That would be pleasant.”
She stared at him.
His mouth twitched faintly. “I am trying to be civil.”
“Why? Usually you prefer infuriating.”
“Usually you prefer pretending I do not affect you.”
The words struck with more force than they should have. Rory’s breath caught, small and involuntary. She hated that he saw it. Hated more that he was right.
The flat felt too small for the two of them and all the things they had not said. Eva’s notes stared down from every surface. Ptolemy gave a deep, suspicious trill from the sofa, as if weighing whether to intervene on Rory’s behalf .
Rory took a step toward the kitchen just to put motion between herself and the moment. “Say what you came to say, Lucien.”
He watched her move. She felt it in the prickling awareness along her spine, but when she turned, he was still in the doorway, one gloved hand loose at his side, the other on the cane.
“I need access to something,” he said.
“Of course you do.”
“That was not sarcasm.”
“It absolutely was.”
“Rory.”
The way he said it stopped her cold. Not a command. Worse. A quiet plea wrapped in familiarity, and she hated that her body understood the difference before her pride did.
She leaned back against the edge of the kitchen counter. “What kind of something?”
“A file Eva has been holding.”
Rory frowned. “Eva has a file from you?”
“Not from me. From a man who thought himself clever enough to keep records of debts he should have burned.”
That sounded like the kind of thing Eva would end up with by accident and keep for leverage, curiosity, or both. Rory narrowed her eyes. “And why are you asking me?”
“Because Eva is not here.”
“No, she isn’t.”
“And because you,” Lucien said, carefully , “are the only person she would leave alone with her mess.”
Rory let out a humorless breath. “That is not flattering.”
“It was not intended as flattery.”
“Good.”
He took a measured step farther into the room, enough that she caught the scent of him—expensive soap, rain on wool, and something darker beneath, clean and dry and almost mineral. It hit her with a force that made her stupidly aware of the heat under her skin, the way her pulse had begun to beat faster and faster as if her body had decided before her mind that he was still a problem worth reacting to.
Lucien’s gaze dropped, for the briefest instant, to her mouth.
Rory noticed. Of course she noticed.
The air between them changed, turning thin and dangerous.
His voice, when he spoke again, was lower. “I would not be here if it were not necessary.”
“You’re always saying that.”
“And usually it is true.”
“Usually,” Rory repeated. “That’s comforting .”
He set the cane more firmly on the floor, the soft tap oddly loud in the cramped room. “Someone is looking for that file. Someone who should not know it exists.”
Rory’s irritation shifted, sharpened by instinct. “Who?”
“If I knew that, I would not be standing in your friend’s flat asking for your assistance.”
“So you don’t know who’s after it.”
“I know enough to be concerned.”
That was as close to alarm as Lucien ever got, and Rory knew it. She could read the warning in the set of his shoulders, in the way his attention kept moving to the window and back to the hall. He expected trouble. No—he expected violence, and was trying not to let it show.
“You should have said that first,” she muttered.
“I know.”
For a beat, neither of them moved. The radiator rattled. Somewhere below, somebody laughed too loudly over a plate of food. Ptolemy curled tighter into himself, the tufted end of his tail twitching.
Rory looked at Lucien and felt the old, useless frustration rise alongside something warmer and much more dangerous. He was here because he needed her. That should have satisfied something vindictive in her. Instead it made her chest ache.
“You disappeared,” she said, quieter now. “You didn’t even send a message.”
His face changed again, just enough to tell her she’d landed somewhere tender. “I was trying to keep distance.”
“From me?”
A beat.
“Yes,” he said.
The honesty of it hit like cold water.
Rory laughed once, sharply . “Fantastic. That’s great. Very helpful.”
“It was not intended to wound you.”
“Yet here we are.”
His gaze did not waver. “I know.”
Something in her gave a hard, painful little twist. She wanted to stay angry, to stay armored, but Lucien had always been infuriating in the same way a locked door is infuriating when you can see the room beyond it. He was not casual with her. That was the problem. He never had been. Every look, every touch, every silken half-truth had felt weighted with intention, and that made the distance between them feel less like rejection and more like a choice.
A terrible, honorable choice.
Or a cowardly one. She couldn’t decide which was worse.
Rory pushed off the counter. “What exactly do you think I can do?”
Lucien’s shoulders eased by the smallest amount. Not relief, exactly. More like he’d been bracing for a blow and was willing to accept this one. “Eva trusts you.”
“I’m aware.”
“You are also intelligent, persistent, and less likely than she is to set the building on fire.”
“That depends on the day.”
A brief glimmer touched his face, gone almost immediately. “Find the file. Let me take it before anyone else does. Afterward, I will explain everything.”
Rory crossed her arms again, but the motion lacked conviction now. “You expect me to just believe you’ll explain.”
“I expect,” he said, “that you are too curious not to want the truth.”
He was right, and he knew it. He knew her too well for comfort, for pride, for the amount of time they had actually spent apart. That should have angered her more than it did. Instead it made her feel seen in a way that was equal parts intimate and irritating.
She looked at him for a long moment, then at the stack of Eva’s notes, then back at him. “You’re unbearable.”
“Yes.”
“And possibly dangerous.”
“Also yes.”
“And you still expect me to help.”
He tilted his head. “Not help. Trust me.”
Rory gave him a flat look. “You’ve set a very high bar.”
For the first time since he arrived, something honest and raw slipped across his face. Not quite regret. Not quite pain. Enough to make her throat tighten.
“Rory,” he said again, and this time it sounded like he meant to say more .
She held his gaze and waited. The flat seemed to shrink around the moment, around the unspoken thing gathering between them like weather. He was close enough now that she could see the fine detail of his lashes, the way the amber eye caught light and held it. Close enough to touch if she reached out.
She did not.
Instead she said, “If I help you, you tell me everything. No evasions. No half-truths. No disappearing acts.”
His mouth tightened, but he nodded once. “Agreed.”
“And if this is some ridiculous supernatural power play, I will personally hand you over to Eva and let her interrogate you with three dozen sticky notes and a kettle.”
A beat, then his expression shifted into something almost amused. “I am afraid of your friend.”
“You should be.”
“I am beginning to understand that.”
Rory let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding . She was still angry. Still hurt. Still absurdly aware of the man standing in the center of Eva’s cluttered flat as if he belonged there and nowhere else. But the immediate choice had narrowed now. There was danger in his arrival, and there was the old, infuriating fact of him, handsome and controlled and looking at her as if she were a problem he’d rather solve than leave unsolved.
She hated how much she wanted that.
“All right,” she said at last. “Sit down before you start looking tragic.”
Lucien’s brows rose. “I am not tragic.”
“You turned up at midnight looking like a gothic tax accountant with a death wish. Sit.”
To her surprise, his mouth curved properly this time, brief and genuine enough to make her pulse stutter. He moved toward the sofa, cane tapping softly against the floor, and Ptolemy immediately retreated to the far armrest with the offended dignity of a king forced to share a throne.
Lucien settled carefully , as if he were still deciding whether the furniture might bite. Rory watched him, arms still folded, heart making a nuisance of itself in her chest.
This was a terrible idea. She knew it. She knew it with the clean certainty of someone who had learned the shape of danger by living through it.
And still, when Lucien looked up at her from beneath those pale lashes, all controlled patience and concealed damage, Rory felt the first crack in her resolve widen.
He had come to her because he needed something.
She had answered because despite everything, she still wanted to know why he’d left.