AI The third deadbolt stuck, like it always did.
Rory had to jiggle it with her left hand while her right held a chipped mug of tea gone cold, and the effort pulled her sleeve back enough to show the small crescent-shaped scar on her wrist, pale against her skin. From below, the curry house on Brick Lane was venting its whole Friday night menu up through the floorboards — cumin and fried onions and heat — and somewhere behind her Ptolemy was making his displeased trilling noise because she had dared to sit in what he considered his chair.
"Hang on," she called, because the knock had come again, sharp and impatient. "Eva's not —"
She got the bolt free and opened the door.
Lucien Moreau stood in the hall.
For a second her brain refused to process it as real. He was too crisp for the narrow, peeling hallway, too complete. Tailored charcoal suit that had to have been pressed that afternoon, platinum blond hair slicked back without a strand out of place, his ivory-handled cane planted neat against the worn linoleum. His eyes found hers immediately, one amber, one black, and both doing that unnervingly still assessment they always did.
"Rory," he said.
She didn't move. The steam from her mug had stopped a long time ago but she could still feel the heat of it against her palm, anchoring her. Her hair had fallen forward — straight, black, cut blunt at her shoulders — and she had to resist the urge to push it behind her ears. Her bright blue eyes were wide and she knew it.
"You've got to be kidding me," she said.
His mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. "May I come in? The hallway smells of vindaloo and poor decisions."
"No. You may not. You may absolutely not."
Ptolemy chose that moment to appear, winding his tabby bulk between her ankles and then pausing to stare up at Lucien with flat, judgmental eyes. Lucien looked down at the cat, then back at her.
"You changed the locks," he said.
"Eva changed the locks. Three deadbolts now. She read an article."
"And still you opened the door for me."
"I opened the door for anyone who knocked like they owned the building," she said, but she hadn't shut it either, and they both knew it. Her pulse was loud in her ears. Four months. Four months since she'd left his office after that job with the Kessler ledger, after he'd told her she was being reckless and she'd told him he was being a cold bastard and they'd both said things that hadn't been about the ledger at all.
He hadn't called. She hadn't called. That had been the complicated part — that either of them could have, and neither had.
"Rory." His voice dropped, and he said it softer, with the faint Marseille accent that got stronger when he was tired. She wondered if he was tired. He looked it, in a way that his perfect suit couldn't hide. A tightness at the corner of his eyes. "I wouldn't be here if it wasn't important."
"That's what you said last time."
"The last time it was important."
She exhaled a short, sharp laugh and finally stepped back, not because she wanted to let him in but because standing in the doorway breathing each other's air was worse. "Five minutes. And you wipe your feet. Eva will kill me if you track crap over her notes."
He stepped inside and the flat seemed to shrink around him. It was cramped at the best of times — Eva's one-bedroom above the curry house was every surface covered in books and scrolls and research notes in precarious piles — but with Lucien in it, with his height and his cane and the clean line of his shoulders, there was hardly room to breathe. He had to angle his cane to avoid knocking over a stack of Byzantine demonology texts teetering beside the kettle.
He took in the place with one sweep. Then his eyes came back to her.
"You are staying here," he said. It wasn't a question.
"I'm catsitting. Eva's at a conference in Edinburgh." She set her mug down on the only clear corner of the counter with a little more force than necessary. Tea sloshed. "Ptolemy is a demanding landlord. And Silas is having the bar fumigated. So yes. Temporarily. Not that it's any of your business where I live. You made that very clear."
"I made it clear that you shouldn't be running parcels for Yu-Fei through contested territory without backup," he said, his tone even. "You made it clear that you didn't need me to tell you how to do your job."
"You said I was playing at being clever."
"I said you were being clever in a way that was going to get you killed. There is a difference."
"Oh, is there? My mistake. My Pre-Law degree didn't cover nuanced insults from half-demons in expensive suits."
That got him. A flicker in the amber eye. He leaned his weight a little more heavily on the cane — the ivory handle gleamed under the bare bulb — and she knew without seeing it that the thin blade was still housed inside, that he still carried that particular insurance policy everywhere.
"You left," he said quietly. "You walked out before I could explain."
"You explained fine." Her voice was tight now. She crossed her arms, and then uncrossed them because it felt defensive. "You explained that I was a liability. That I was — what was it — an intelligent girl who thinks quick thinking will save her when it won't. Thanks for that, by the way. Really did wonders for my confidence."
"I said quick, out-of-the-box thinking is why I trust you," he said. "And that it terrifies me, because people I trust have a way of not coming home."
The words landed heavier than she expected. The flat was too small to not look at him. The smell of curry was suddenly too strong, and underneath it she could smell his cologne, something clean and cedar-sharp that didn't belong among Eva's dusty scrolls.
Ptolemy jumped up onto the radiator and stared.
Rory swallowed. "So. Important thing. Say it in your five minutes and go."
Lucien reached inside his suit jacket — she tensed before she could stop herself — and withdrew not a weapon but a folded piece of paper, creased as if it had been carried for a while. He held it out.
She didn't take it right away. The scar on her wrist caught the light.
"It's for Yu-Fei," he said. "But it's about you. There's a marker out. On the last delivery you made for the Golden Empress. The Kessler crew thinks you saw more than you did."
Cold slipped down her back. "I didn't see anything. I dropped noodles. I literally dropped chow mein and left."
"I know." His heterochromatic eyes never left her face. "But Kessler doesn't. And he put money on it. Enough money that professionals will come looking. Professionals who won't ask politely."
She stared at the paper. Her mind, the cool-headed part of her that her friends always commented on, was already moving , flipping through options, discarding them. Eva's flat had three deadbolts and a fire escape that stuck. Silas's bar was empty for fumigation. Yu-Fei would tell her to go to ground. The police were useless for this kind of thing.
"You came to warn me," she said, and it came out smaller than she intended.
"I came to get you," he corrected. "My place is warded. You can stay until it blows over. A day. Three, at most. I have people who can make this go away."
"Your place," she repeated. She could feel the heat coming back into her face, and it wasn't from the tea. "Lucien, we don't — we can't do that. You and me in your flat for three days after —"
"After what?" He stepped closer. Not crowding her, he was too precise for that, but close enough that she had to tip her chin up to meet his eyes. Five-eleven to her five-six had never felt like a difference until now . "After you kissed me and then told me you couldn't do this? Or after I let you leave because I thought giving you space was the decent thing to do?"
Her breath caught. She remembered it with vicious clarity — his office, rain on the windows, the way his hand had hovered at her waist like he wasn't sure he was allowed to touch her, the way she had pulled away first because wanting him felt like another way to get hurt, like Evan all over again but different and therefore more dangerous.
"I didn't know what you wanted from me," she whispered.
"I wanted you to stay," he said. Simple, blunt, in that way he had of speaking four languages fluently and still choosing the most direct words in English. "I want you to stay now."
Ptolemy made a soft thump as he jumped down and stalked away, offended by the tension . One of the scrolls on the table rustled as the draft from the hallway moved it.
Rory looked at the paper still held out between them, at his hand — long fingers, clean nails, a faint silvery sheen to the skin that caught the light wrong because his father had been from Avaros — and then at his face. That impossible, handsome, half-demonic face that had been in her head for months whether she wanted it there or not.
She reached out, not for the paper but for the lapel of his charcoal suit, bunching the fabric in her fist. It was as well-made as it looked. Expensive. Real.
"You show up unannounced after four months, tell me someone wants me dead, and offer me your couch," she said, and her voice shook even as she tried to make it wry. "This is a terrible seduction technique, Moreau."
His hand came up, careful, and covered hers where it gripped his jacket. Warm. Solid. "Is it not working?"
She let out a laugh that was half exhale, bright blue eyes suddenly too bright. "You are such a bastard."
"Only on weekdays," he murmured. And then, quieter, "Rory. Please."
There were a hundred reasons to say no. She lived above Silas's bar for a reason, she worked for Yu-Fei because she could handle herself, she had fled Cardiff and Brendan and Jennifer Carter's expectations and Evan's hands to be someone who didn't need to be rescued.
But cool-headed didn't mean stupid, and quick thinking meant knowing when the smart move was to take the hand being offered .
She let go of his lapel and took the paper instead, her fingers brushing his. The touch lingered.
"Three days," she said. "And you tell Eva herself why I moved her books. I'm not getting blamed for your cane knocking over her research."
Relief broke across his face like sunrise, open and unguarded in a way she rarely got to see. He inclined his head, the platinum hair catching the light.
"I will tell Eva in French, English, Italian, or Arabic, as she prefers," he said.
"You speak four languages fluently, I know, you love to remind me."
"I only remind you when you look at me like that," he said.
"Like what?"
"Like you might forgive me."
She felt her cheeks go hot. She didn't step back though. If anything she leaned in, just a fraction, enough that the cramped flat with its deadbolts and its books and its judgmental cat felt suddenly , entirely too warm.
"Don't get ahead of yourself, Frenchman," she said, but she was smiling now, despite herself, despite everything left unsaid still humming between them like a live wire. "You still have to get me out of here without Ptolemy following us. He likes you. It's disturbing."
Lucien glanced down at the tabby, who had returned and was now rubbing his head against the ivory handle of the cane.
"I have that effect," Lucien said solemnly, and Rory laughed for real this time, a bright sound that surprised even her, and for the first time that night the flat didn't feel cramped at all.