Run: 2026-09-02-01M1H9Y4XFGBSYAS5EYHZ8W0XB

The last deadbolt clunked free. Aurora Carter pulled the door open and found Lucien Moreau standing in the narrow stairwell with rain dripping from his platinum hair onto the curry house's peeling paint. "Rory." Her fingers tightened on the door. "No." He did not move back. His charcoal suit had gone dark at the shoulders, and the ivory handle of his cane gleamed wet under his palm. One eye caught the landing bulb in amber; the other swallowed it. The same bulb caught the bright blue of her eyes as she blocked his path. "You changed the locks." "These belong to Eva." She kept her body in the gap. "And Eva gave me the keys. You remember Eva. The one you sent a moth postcard when you should have sent a name." "I sent a warning." "You sent stationery." Ptolemy wound between her ankles, sniffing the damp air with deep suspicion. The cat's tail hooked once, then stilled. Lucien looked down at him. "Bonjour." Ptolemy flattened an ear. Rory pushed the door shut. Lucien shifted his weight, and the cane's tip slid into the threshold. Not force. A request dressed as a line. "Five minutes." "You had six months." "Three minutes." "Whatever you want, Lucien, it costs more now." His gaze dropped to the crescent scar on her left wrist where her sleeve had ridden up. He looked away before she could enjoy the small hit of it. "I need Eva's notes." "She's in Krakow." "Then I need you." The words took up too much room in the hallway. Rory lifted her chin. "For what?" He opened his mouth. A thin line of red seeped between his fingers where his left hand rested against his side. The black fabric had hidden it until he moved. "That." "A scratch." "You're bleeding on her research." "A minor complication." "Outside." "Rory." "Outside, Luc." His mouth thinned at the shortened name. He did not step back. Behind them, the stairwell smelled of wet wool, fried cumin, and the sharp mineral edge of blood. Rory looked at the blood. Then at the stack of scrolls on the hall table. Then at the rain stitching the window on the turn. She stepped aside. "Kitchen chair. Nothing else." He passed over the threshold with careful economy, as if the flat might reject him. The room beyond gave him little choice. Books rose in leaning towers from the rug to the windowsill. Scrolls spilled from a bread bin. Eva's research notes papered the kitchen table, pinned under teacups, jars, and a broken stapler. Ptolemy leapt onto a stack of folklore pamphlets and watched Lucien with the full contempt of a tabby who had opinions. Rory shut the door and threw the deadbolts one by one. Habit. Annoyance. The small satisfaction of metal biting wood. "Coat off." "I am fine." "You are dripping on a first edition of something Eva will murder me for." He unbuttoned the jacket with his good hand and held it over his arm. She took it from him, hung it on the back of the nearest chair, and saw the dark smear his fingers left on the fabric. "Sit." He sat. The kitchen chair creaked under him. He set the cane against the table, where it began to slide. His hand shot out and caught it before it hit the floor. "You still keep your knives in a biscuit tin." "Eva keeps them in a drawer. I borrowed the tin." "For weapons?" "For digestives." "You use the tin as a weapon." "Only when the biscuits are stale." She pulled the first-aid box from under a heap of photocopies and set it on the table between them. Ptolemy batted at a cotton reel. Rory slapped his paw away. "Shirt." Lucien's brows rose a fraction. "We have history, Rory, not a rehearsal." "Left cuff. You're favouring it." He undid the button. His fingers fumbled on the second one, and she leaned in before she could decide not to. The heat of his skin touched her knuckles. She stilled. "Allow me." "I was about to manage." "You were about to faint." "I never faint. I retire gracefully." "Into other people's furniture." His wrist turned under her grip. The pulse there beat strong and fast. Rory kept her eyes on the cuff, not his mouth. The fabric came free, revealing a shallow cut along his forearm and, around it, a web of dark veins that did not belong to ordinary injury. She lifted his arm closer to the lamp. "That's not a scratch." "No." "What touched you?" "Something from Avaros with poor manners." "You mean a demon." "I mean a contractor." "Human enough to bleed, then." "Less human than he preferred." She soaked a gauze pad in antiseptic. He did not flinch when she pressed it to the wound, but the tendons in his forearm tightened. "You could have gone to a hospital." "Hospitals ask questions." "So do I." "You ask better ones." "Stop flattering me. It's transparent." "It worked in Cardiff." "We don't talk about Cardiff." "You ran to London from Cardiff." "And you followed me because you thought I owed you a favour." "I followed because you left your phone in my coat." "You kept it for three weeks." "I returned it." "After three weeks." Ptolemy headbutted Rory's elbow. She shifted, and her straight black hair fell across her face. Lucien lifted his free hand as if to push it back, then curled his fingers around the edge of the table instead. "The ledger." "What ledger?" "The one with your alias. Laila." The name sat between them, old and sharp. Rory unscrewed the antiseptic bottle with too much force. The cap squealed. "You knew about that." "I found out after Marseille." "After you left me with two men who called themselves brokers and had no faces." "I left you with a barrister who could get you on the train." "You vanished." "I bought time." "With my name?" "With mine." He pulled his arm from her hand, then stopped when the gauze stuck. She held it steady. He lowered his voice. "I gave them Lucien Moreau, half-demon, son of Avaros, bad debt, worse temper. I did not give them Rory." She looked at the dark veins. They pulsed once under the lamplight. "You should have told me." "You would have argued." "I argue with everyone. That is not the same as consent." "No." "You don't get to decide what I can survive." "I know." The flat filled with the sound of rain against the glass and the low murmur of the curry house below. Rory taped the gauze in place. Her fingers lingered over the bandage long enough for both of them to notice. Lucien turned his hand over. His thumb brushed the scar on her wrist. "This healed." "Most things do." "Not everything." "No. Some things form habits." He released her. She stepped back and knocked a book off the table. It landed open at a page of protective sigils. Lucien bent, retrieved it, and set it aside with too much care. "Eva's wards are good." "They should be. She pays rent in research." "Three deadbolts. Salt under the sill. A cat who hates me." "He has taste." "The ward at the window is cracked." "Because I leaned out to smoke a cigarette I don't even like." "You should not lean out." "I should do a lot of things." Ptolemy jumped onto the table and put one paw on Lucien's cane. Lucien tapped the cat's toes away. "The ledger is moving tonight." "Then move with it." "It includes your address above Silas' bar." Rory's hand went to the back of the chair. "How?" "Golden Empress receipts. Delivery routes. Someone stitched them together." "Eva told me to stop taking those routes after dark." "She was right." "That does not mean you get to stand in her kitchen and prove it." "I am not here to prove anything. I am here because the man carrying the ledger will pass Brick Lane before dawn." "Then stop him on Brick Lane." "He will use the flat as leverage if he finds it empty." "If he finds me here, he'll use me as leverage." Lucien went still. The black eye seemed deeper in the lamplight. "He will not reach the door." "You made that promise in Marseille." "Marseille had a harbour." "And this place has a curry house and a cat." "Ptolemy can be vicious." "Only to men who bleed on manuscripts." Lucien glanced at the bloodied cuff in the sink. Then at her. "I can lock the stairwell for an hour." "With what?" "A word in French, a word in older tongues, and four languages' worth of poor judgement." "Your speciality." "You will let me?" "I will let you sit there and not touch anything. The stairwell stays as it is." "The ward at the window—" "Will remain cracked because I am not letting you rewrite Eva's flat." He considered that. Ptolemy yawned, showing every tooth. "I did not come only for the ledger." Rory's hand rested on the cupboard door. "What else?" "The chance to stand in the same room as you without someone shooting at us." "That happened once." "Once is enough." "Then we wait." "We wait." Rory moved to the cupboard and pushed aside jars of turmeric and old takeaway sachets. Behind them, Eva kept a bottle of gin labelled in red marker: FOR MEDICINAL AND/OR EMERGENCY USE. Rory set two mismatched glasses on the counter. "You have no ice." "You have no invitation." "I am sitting." "A fact." She poured. The gin smelled of juniper and something herbal Eva had grown on the fire escape. One glass she placed in front of him. The other she kept. "To complicated terms." "Don't toast." "Then I will drink in silence." "You never knew how." He lifted the glass with his uninjured hand. She did not drink. He waited. After a moment, she touched her glass to his, a brief click of glass that made Ptolemy's ears swivel. "Once. Until the rain stops." "And after?" Rory looked at the door with its three deadbolts, at the scroll piles, at the bandage on his arm and the cane that hid a blade. She took a sip. The gin burned clean down her throat. "After that, you tell me everything you left out." She pulled a second chair from beneath a stack of books and sat across from him.