AI The third deadbolt rattled in its brass housing before Rory could finish racking the slide of her Glock.
She kicked the safety off with her thumb, keeping the barrel levelled waist-high at the scarred pine door. Downstairs, the kitchen of the curry house vented fried cumin and scorching ghee straight up through the floorboards. On the sofa, Ptolemy hissed, his orange tail bristling into a bottlebrush.
"Step back, Carter. The wood splinters terribly when shot, and dry cleaning is extortionate in this borough."
The French lilt came through the keyhole, smooth and cool as cellar stone. Rory lowered the muzzle three inches, though she kept her finger indexed alongside the guard. She unhitched the heavy iron latch, twisted the final deadbolt, and jerked the door inward.
Lucien Moreau stood on the dingy landing. His tailored charcoal wool suit showed not a single crease from the narrow stairwell, and his silver signet ring caught the naked yellow bulb dangling overhead. Beneath the crisp cuff of his left sleeve, fingers rested over the curved head of an ivory cane. One eye burned amber under the dim hall light, the other pooled pitch-black.
"You smell of coriander and bad intentions," Rory said.
"And you look entirely ready to commit homicide." Lucien stepped over the threshold without waiting for an invitation. "Charming decor. Very bohemian scholar."
"Eva collects. I merely guard the hoard." Rory shut the door with her heel, throwing each deadbolt in sharp, rhythmic succession. Click. Clack. Thunk. "You have thirty seconds to explain why you are not bleeding in an alley in Whitechapel, Moreau. Word on the street was the cambions from the docks gutted you three nights ago."
"Exaggerations peddled by amateur cartels," he said. He tapped the ferrule of his cane against the scuffed linoleum, surveying the stacks of occult manuscripts and grimoires piled along the hallway. "They lacked finesse. I merely took a short holiday to mend a torn waistcoat."
"And to let the heat fall on me."
"You handled it with your customary Welsh stubbornness."
"I am half Irish, you patronising bastard."
"A pedigree that explains the temper, certainly."
Lucien halted by the kitchen table, where half a cold naan sat beside an open parchment scroll weighed down by two brass teapots. Ptolemy trotted over, sniffed the immaculate hem of Lucien's trousers, and gave an appreciative purr. The half-demon reached down, scratching the cat behind the ears with gloved fingers. The gesture held a strange, practiced grace that made the small crescent scar on Rory's wrist throb with phantom heat.
Six weeks since the vault beneath Blackfriars. Six weeks since he had pried the seal off an Avarosian casket, pocketed the onyx core, and vanished into the fog while three wardens tore her jacket to ribbons.
She set the Glock on the bookshelf beside a cracked ceramic vase, within arm's reach.
"Get to the point," she said. "Eva will be back from the Bodleian by midnight, and she has less patience for demons than I do."
"Half-demon, *chérie *. Do give credit to my mother's mortal sacrifices."
"Your mother gave birth to an unprincipled thief."
"She gave birth to a survivor." Lucien turned, his cane clicking against the floorboards. The amber eye held her gaze, warm and predatory, while the demon-black one reflected only the dark kitchen window. "You kept the sigil."
Rory folded her arms over her chest, resisting the impulse to tug her sleeve down over the faint silver tracing scorched near her collarbone.
"It refused to wash out," she said.
"It bonds to the blood. I told you that in the catacombs."
"You told me a great deal of nonsense while you were bleeding all over my boots."
"Yet you listened."
"I was naive."
"You were magnificent."
The word dropped between them, heavy and velvet . Rory felt the small hairs on her arms stand on end. The air grew suddenly thin, charged with the ozone scent that always clung to him when his demonic blood ran hot beneath the surface. He closed the distance between them with slow, deliberate steps, leaning lightly on the cane. His platinum hair, slicked back from his pale brow, gleamed under the strip lighting.
"Do not do that," she said, her voice dropping an octave.
"Do what?"
"The drawing-room charm . It failed to work in Cardiff, it failed in the vault, and it certainly will not work in a flat that smells of turmeric."
"Cardiff was a business dinner."
"You stole my client's ledger from under my napkin."
"He was laundering souls through offshore accounts in Guernsey," Lucien said mildly, stopping barely a foot away. "I did the universe a civic service."
"You made fifty grand on the exchange."
"A gentleman must maintain his wardrobe."
Rory looked up into his face. At five foot eleven, he had enough height to force her chin up, but she refused to yield an inch of ground. Close up, she could see the pale, faint silver stitching along his jawline, evidence that the cambions had struck closer than he cared to admit. A dark bruise shadowed the hollow beneath his collarbone, visible where his charcoal tie sat slightly loosened.
She reached out before she could stop herself. Her index finger brushed the fabric of his lapel, sliding over the wool until it pressed lightly against the bruised hollow.
Lucien inhaled sharply , the amber eye flaring with sudden, golden heat.
"Holiday, was it?" Rory asked softly .
"A minor disagreement regarding transit fees."
"They used cold iron on you."
"They attempted to."
"You smell of burnt sulfur and damp wool, Luc." Her Welsh cadence crept into the edges of her words, the familiar rhythm she used only when the veneer cracked. "You ran out of allies."
"I came to you."
"I am not an ally. I am the delivery girl you left behind to face the magistrates."
"I left you because they could not convict a human with no contraband on her person," he countered, his voice dropping to a low purr. His free hand rose, leather-clad and unhurried, until his knuckles lightly brushed the side of her neck. The leather felt cool, but the skin beneath it radiated intense, furnace-like heat. "I kept the core. I drew the hounds. You walked free."
"You broke my front door."
"A lock is easily replaced."
"My trust is not."
Lucien smiled, a sharp, white flash of teeth that held just a hint of demon fang.
"You never trusted me, Aurora. That was always the sweetest part of our arrangement. You checked the exits, you counted the silver, and you watched my hands."
"I should have shot you through the peephole."
"A terrible waste of ammunition," he whispered.
His hand slid behind her nape, fingers tangling in the straight black strands of her hair. He pulled her forward, not with brute force, but with a steady, unyielding pressure that demanded either compliance or open war. Rory stiffened, her hands planting flat against the stiff canvas of his waistcoat. His heart pounded beneath the ribs, double-time, the bizarre cadence of an Avarosian hybrid.
She meant to shove him backward into Eva's bookshelf. Instead, her fingers curled into the fabric, anchoring herself to the heat rolling off him.
"You owe me thirty thousand pounds," she murmured against his mouth .
"I have something considerably more valuable," Lucien murmured back, his lips grazing the curve of her jaw, right where her pulse thrashed.
"I want the cash, Moreau."
"Liar."
He kissed her then, fierce and possessive, tasting of mint, iron, and ancient dust. Rory met the intrusion with sharp teeth, biting his lower lip until copper broke on her tongue. Lucien let out a guttural sound in the back of his throat, his cane clattering uselessly against the lino as both arms banded around her waist, lifting her until her toes barely brushed the floor.
The memory of the vault surged back, fire and sulfur and the wild, terrifying rush of surviving together on the brink of ruin. She pulled his head down, her nails digging through the expensive cloth of his shoulders, matching his hunger with a savage anger born of six weeks of silence .
The floorboards groaned beneath them. Ptolemy darted into the bedroom, low to the ground.
Lucien broke the kiss, his breath ragged, his forehead resting against hers. His amber eye flickered like an open flame.
"We have roughly four minutes," he said, chest heaving .
Rory blinked, her mind clearing of the sudden rush of heat. "Four minutes until what?"
"Until the hunters realize I took the back stairs."
A heavy crash shook the landing outside, followed by the wet crunch of fracturing timber. The top hinge of the flat's outer door screamed, torn violently from the brickwork, and a stench like rotting pond water seeped through the cracks around the frame.
Lucien reached down, retrieved his cane from the floor, and twisted the ivory pommel with a metallic click. Six inches of silver-tipped steel hissed free.
"Grab the gun, Carter," he said smoothly. "Our guests have arrived."