Run: 2026-07-01-01KWEA0NTV8H1CNPA96X3TYDTF

The three deadbolts stuck like they always did, and Rory had to jiggle the key twice before the last one gave. She yanked the door open with a curse already forming on her lips for Eva, who never remembered to oil the damn things. Lucien stood on the landing instead, cane hooked over one forearm, looking like he'd stepped out of a magazine nobody in Brick Lane could afford to read. "You didn't call," she said. "I did. Four times. You didn't answer." "That's usually a hint." He smiled at that, the kind of smile that didn't reach the black eye, only warmed the amber one. Rory hated how her stomach still dropped at the lopsided asymmetry of it, two years on. "May I come in, or are we conducting this in the stairwell? Your neighbour's already got his ear pressed to the wall." "Mr. Okafor's deaf as a post." "Then he's reading lips remarkably well." She stepped back before she'd decided to, and he crossed the threshold like the flat belonged to him, like every room he entered simply rearranged itself around his presence. Ptolemy took one look at him from atop a stack of Eva's research and fled under the sofa. "Even the cat remembers," Rory said. "Cats have excellent judgement. It's people who complicate things." "You're one to talk about complicating things." Lucien set his cane against the bookshelf, careful, deliberate, the way he did everything. "I need your help. Or rather, Malphora's help. There's a difference, I know, but the two of you share a body and I'm not particular about which version answers the door." "Funny. I thought the demon-possessed assassin version of me was the one you actually wanted." "That's not fair." "Isn't it?" She crossed her arms, feeling the old scar on her wrist itch the way it did when her pulse climbed. "You spent three months teaching me how to fight, how to survive, and the second Malphora came out to play, you looked at me like I'd turned into something you needed a report filed on." "I looked at you like a man who watched someone he cared about get possessed by an ancient entity with a body count. Forgive me the moment of hesitation." "Moment. Right." She turned away from him, busied her hands with the kettle because if she looked at him a second longer she was going to say something she couldn't take back, or worse, something true. "You disappeared for six weeks, Lucien. Six weeks of nothing, and then you turn up here unannounced expecting me to just—what, forget it? Make you tea?" "I wasn't hiding from you." "Weren't you?" "I was finding out what she is. What's inside you." His voice dropped the polished edges, went rougher, more Marseille than mayfair. "Do you have any idea what I found in the old texts? What Malphora did to the last three people who hosted her?" Rory's hand stilled on the kettle. "No. Because you didn't tell me. You just vanished." "I was protecting you from information that would've kept you up at night." "That's not your call to make." "No," he admitted, and something in his shoulders dropped, some careful architecture giving way. "It wasn't. I know that now." The kettle clicked off. She poured two cups anyway, old habit, muscle memory from months of him turning up at odd hours with information and that damned cane and eyes that looked at her like she was a puzzle worth solving rather than a problem to be managed. She set his cup on the table without looking at him. "Why are you actually here, Lucien? And don't say Malphora. You could've sent a note for that." He was quiet long enough that she finally turned to look at him. He was studying the rim of the teacup like it held the answer. "Yu-Fei's restaurant," he said. "Someone's been asking after you. Not about deliveries. About the girl who works there with the very particular scar on her wrist and a habit of disappearing when the moon does something unusual." "Charming. Who?" "I don't know yet. That's the honest truth, and I came to tell you in person because you deserve to hear it from me and not from some panicked message passed through three different informants." He set the cup down, untouched. "And because I wanted to see you. Both reasons are true. I don't expect you to forgive the six weeks because of it." "Good. Because I haven't." "I wouldn't ask you to lie." Rory leaned against the counter, arms still crossed, though the anger had gone thin and papery, harder to hold onto now that he was looking at her like that, like the amber eye held something soft and stubborn that refused to quit no matter how many doors got shut on it. "You could've led with the threat," she said. "Instead of standing in my doorway being unbearable." "I find the two aren't mutually exclusive where you're concerned." "That's not a compliment." "It's the closest thing I've got tonight." He picked the tea back up, finally, held it like it was something to steady his hands rather than warm them. "Someone's watching you, Rory. I intend to find out who before they get any closer than asking questions in a takeaway." "And after that? After you've solved the puzzle and filed your report?" The question hung there, sharper than she meant it, more honest than she'd planned on being tonight. Lucien didn't look away from it. "After that," he said, "I suppose I'll still be standing in your doorway, being unbearable. If you'll let me." Ptolemy chose that moment to reappear, stalking out from under the sofa to wind himself around Lucien's ankles, traitor that he was. Rory watched it happen, watched the corner of Lucien's mouth twitch at the absurdity of it, and felt the last of her anger curdle into something else entirely, something she didn't have a tidy name for yet. "Drink your tea," she said. "Then you're telling me everything you know. All of it, this time." "All of it," he agreed, and for once, she believed him.