AI The deadbolts clicked in the order she always did them, top to bottom, then the bottom one again because she never trusted the first try. Rory had her free hand on the chain when the cat jumped.
Ptolemy hit the floor from the windowsill with a thump that rattled the stack of paperbacks teetering on the radiator. The tabby landed squarely on the mat, tail flicking, and stared at the door like he knew it before she did.
Rory paused. She could see her own reflection in the peephole’s fisheye: hair pulled back, the faint crescent scar on her left wrist catching the hallway light where the sleeve had ridden up. She was still in her delivery uniform, the Golden Empress apron tied tight around her waist, a faint smell of chili oil on her sleeves. She hadn’t had time to change.
Three knocks. Measured. Not impatient, not tentative.
She knew that rhythm .
Her fingers tightened on the bolts. The flat above the curry house was never quiet, but Brick Lane at nine at night had its own breathing: the clatter of pans from downstairs, the bus sighing at the stop, someone arguing in Bengali two floors down. This was the third time someone had knocked in the last ten minutes. The first two she’d ignored. The third she couldn’t.
She unlatched the chain, then the top deadbolt, then the middle. The bottom one stayed.
The door opened an inch.
Lucien Moreau filled the narrow gap like he’d been cut to fit it. Tailored charcoal suit, immaculate even at night, platinum blond hair slicked back from his forehead. One eye amber, one black. He didn’t smile.
“Rory.”
His voice was low, French-accented, the way it always was when he wasn’t performing for a client. He held a single white rose behind his back like he was ashamed of it.
Ptolemy hissed.
She kept the door cracked. “Lucien.”
“May I come in?”
“No.”
He tilted his head, the light catching the faint silver at his temple. “You’ve left the bottom bolt on. It’s very on brand.”
“I don’t do drop-ins,” she said. “Especially from information brokers who ghost people for six months.”
The hallway smelled of rain and fried onions. He shifted his weight and the ivory handle of his cane caught the bulb light. She knew what was inside it. She’d seen it.
“You’re working late,” he said, nodding at her apron. “Yu-Fei must be pleased.”
“I’m always on time,” she said. “You’re not.”
He let out a breath that might have been a laugh. “You know I don’t like being late. I am late.”
The flat behind her was a mess. Books on the floor, scrolls weighted down with mugs, research notes spilling off the kitchen table onto the linoleum. Eva’s place, and Eva’s chaos, and Rory’s attempt to keep it functional enough to sleep in. The cat had decided Lucien was a threat and was now weaving between his legs, unsatisfied.
“The door is open,” he said quietly .
She closed it.
The bolt slid home with a soft click. Then another. Then the third. The sound was final in a way she hadn’t intended. For a second she just stared at him, at the sharp lines of his jaw, the way his suit still looked pressed despite the damp air. Her brain catalogued him the way it always did: threat assessment, exit routes, what he wanted.
He wanted something. He always wanted something.
“You can’t just show up here,” she said.
“I could,” he said. “It’s your flat, isn’t it? Above Silas’.”
“It’s Eva’s flat.”
“Same difference. You’ve been living here since you ran out of Cardiff.”
Her stomach tightened. He knew about Cardiff. He knew about Brendan and Jennifer, about Pre-Law she’d dropped, about Evan. He knew too much.
“You’re not welcome,” she said, but her voice had thinned .
He stepped closer without waiting for permission. The door wasn’t wide enough for him to fully enter, so he leaned in, cane tapping once against the jamb. The sound was too loud.
“Rory,” he said, using her real name instead of Rory, instead of Laila. “I’m not here to sell you anything.”
“Then why are you here?”
He reached out, slow, and brushed a strand of black hair off her cheek. His fingers were cool. “Because the wards on the building went down at midnight. Silas is gone. The bar is empty. Someone put a tag on the back door in blood, and I thought of you first.”
Her pulse jumped. She stepped back instinctively, putting the door between them. “You thought of me first. That’s touching.”
“It is not touching. It is practical. You’re the only person I know who would notice a tag, photograph it, and not touch it.”
“You’re the only person I know who would put a tag on a door,” she muttered.
He didn’t deny it. His amber eye flicked to the scar on her wrist, the small crescent from when she was eight and fell on a broken bottle in the garden in Cardiff. He’d traced it once before, in a different flat, with different lights.
“I missed you,” he said, so quietly she almost thought the radiator had hissed.
The words landed wrong. She had rehearsed this reunion in her head for six months, in a dozen variations. None of them had him saying that.
“You left,” she said. “You left without a word after the warehouse. You left me with a demon’s debt and a bruised jaw.”
“I left you with a way out.”
“You left me with nothing.”
He pressed his forehead against the doorframe, just above her head, and she could smell his cologne, cedar and something metallic. “I left because if I stayed, I would have kissed you in the rain and you would have let me. And then you would have hated me more when it ended.”
She should have slammed the door. The three deadbolts were right there. Instead her hand dropped from the handle.
“I don’t hate you,” she said. It was a lie, or half a lie. She hated the way he made her think fast and feel slow.
“You do,” he said. “You hate me, and you’re attracted to me, and you’re terrified I’ll be useful again.”
Ptolemy, emboldened, leapt onto Lucien’s shoes and began kneading. Lucien didn’t move.
“Get your cat off me,” he said.
“Make him,” she said.
He smiled then, a real one that cracked the careful mask. “You’re still the same. Cool-headed. Quick.”
“Intelligent,” she added.
“Impossible to have a normal conversation with.”
Silence stretched between them, thick with the things they hadn’t said in Marseille’s back alleys, in a safehouse in Shoreditch, in her bed when he stayed over one night and didn’t ask for anything. He’d spoken four languages fluently, and with her he always reverted to the one she understood best: silence .
“The rose,” she said, nodding to where it was still hidden behind his back.
He brought it forward. White, perfect , ridiculous.
“For you,” he said. “You always liked white roses. You said they smelled like lies.”
“They do.”
“They’re also an apology.”
Her throat was dry. “I don’t want your apology.”
“You don’t have to want it. You just have to let me in.” He tapped the bottom deadbolt with his cane. Ivory against wood. “The tag’s on the service entrance. It’s Avaros sigil. Someone is coming for Silas’ ledger. If they find you here—”
“I know what it means,” she cut in. “I’ve been reading Eva’s notes. I know.”
He studied her, the blue of her eyes against the dark circles under them. “You’re tired.”
“You’re trespassing.”
“I’m standing in a doorway you opened.”
She exhaled through her nose, a sound of defeat she hated. “Fine. Two minutes. Then you leave.”
He didn’t move to open the door. “Unlock it.”
She unlocked it.
The flat smelled of old paper and chai. He stepped inside and the space seemed to shrink around his suit. Ptolemy claimed his ankle and Lucien let him, one hand resting lightly on the cat’s back.
Rory closed the door and reset the top two deadbolts, leaving the bottom one undone out of habit. The books were still everywhere, scrolls curling at the edges. He looked at them, then at her.
“You’ve been helping Eva,” he said.
“I’m helping myself.”
He walked to the kitchen table and set the rose down carefully , not in water, just there. “You should have told me where you were going.”
“I should have told a lot of people a lot of things,” she said. “I didn’t.”
He turned, hands in his pockets, cane propped against the chair. The tailored charcoal of his suit caught the weak overhead light.
“Rory,” he said, and this time it sounded like a prayer .
She wanted to be cool-headed. She wanted to be intelligent. She wanted to be the woman who didn’t let a half-demon fixer with heterochromatic eyes and a blade in his cane walk back into her life uninvited.
Instead she was the woman who’d kept his spare key for six months without knowing why, who’d memorized the way he said her name in French, who still felt the phantom weight of his hand on the small of her back.
She stepped closer until the hem of her apron brushed his trousers. He didn’t step back.
“Are you going to tell me why you really came here?” she asked.
He looked down at her, amber and black reflecting the mess of her life.
“Because the tag means they’re looking for you too,” he said. “And I’m not going to watch you run alone again.”
The words hung. The radiator ticked. Ptolemy purred.
Rory lifted her chin. “Then you’re stuck with me.”
Lucien’s mouth twitched. “I know.”
She didn’t touch him. Not yet. But she didn’t move away either, and in the cramped flat above the curry house with books everywhere and the deadbolts half-engaged, that was enough of a beginning.