Run: 2026-10-13-01M4TBT5RSXD5H1XGM3MBS87QF

The third deadbolt scraped back and Rory opened Eva's front door with a tea towel over one shoulder and Ptolemy weaving round her ankles. Lucien stood on the landing in a charcoal suit dark with rain at the shoulders, his platinum hair slicked back, one hand clamped round the ivory handle of his cane and the other pressed to his ribs. Curry steam drifted up from the restaurant below and cut through the wet wool smell coming off him. His amber eye caught the hall light. The black one gave nothing back. Rory kept one foot against the door. "You have nerve." Ptolemy pushed his head past her shin and stared at Lucien. "Good evening to you too, Carter." "You know Eva has three deadbolts for a reason?" "She installed the third after I picked the first two." "That counts as a confession in most postcodes." Lucien shifted his weight and pain pulled his mouth flat. Blood darkened the cloth between his fingers. Rory looked at the stain, then at the empty stairwell behind him. "What happened to the great fixer?" "A negotiation lost its manners." "You lost a negotiation and came here?" "I came here because Eva lined this flat with wards that make demons queue at the door like pensioners at a post office." "You are half demon." "And the wards recognise the better half." Rory pushed Ptolemy back with her foot and held the door at six inches. "Call Silas." "Silas has a cellar full of men with knives asking for me by name." "Then call one of your four-language contacts." "Three owe me money. The fourth sold me the meeting." Rain struck the window at the end of the landing and ran down in crooked lines. Lucien took his hand from the cane and braced his palm against the door frame. A thin blade of sweat cut through the rain on his temple. "Five minutes, Rory." "You used five minutes last time and left me in Silas's bar with your coat, your bill, and a message passed through three people." Lucien dropped his gaze to her left wrist. The crescent scar showed white against her skin where she gripped the door edge. "I remember the message word for word." "Then repeat it." "Tell Carter the debt stands clear." Rory laughed once, without humour in the sound. "Poetry. You should sell cards." "It meant Avaros had wiped your name from the ledger." "It meant you picked a price and walked. Communication matters, Luc." His jaw worked. He lifted the cane and tapped the brass tip against the threshold. The wards in Eva's paintwork answered with a faint blue thread along the wood. "May I cross before the men from the cellar improve their cardio?" Rory stared at him for a count of three, then pulled the door wide and stepped back into a drift of books and scrolls. "Inside. Shoes off." Lucien crossed the threshold and shut the door with his shoulder. "You kept my coat." "It hangs in a charity shop in Bethnal Green." "You hate waste." "I made an exception for sentimental rubbish." He set the cane against Eva's bookshelf and worked the deadbolts home one-handed. The third lock stuck. Rory reached past him and drove it across with the heel of her hand. Her shoulder brushed his chest. Rainwater soaked through his shirt and dampened her sleeve. Lucien froze with his hand near her waist and no part of him touching her. "Still left-handed with locks." "Still standing too close." "You reached across me." "Because blood loss has ruined your career as a locksmith." She stepped clear and pointed at Eva's kitchen chair, the one with research notes stacked on the seat. "Move those and sit." Lucien lifted the notes in one neat pile and placed them on a tower of legal histories. "You filed Eva's chaos." "I alphabetised it. She cried." "From joy?" "From horror. Sit." He sat and peeled his hand from his ribs. His shirt clung to the cut. Blood had soaked the cloth from sternum to waistband in a dark, uneven map. Rory filled Eva's washing-up bowl at the sink and grabbed clean towels, a sewing kit from a biscuit tin, and the whisky Eva kept beside the cookbooks. "You brought your own anaesthetic out of habit?" "Eva keeps whisky for medicinal purposes and bad dates." "This qualifies on both counts." "Do not flirt with a needle in my hand." She put the bowl on the floor and knelt beside the chair. The cramped kitchen put her knee against his shoe and her shoulder near his thigh. She pushed his shirt up and exposed a cut that ran under his ribs in a clean, mean line. Rory poured whisky over the wound. Lucien hissed through his teeth and gripped the chair arms. "Warn a man." "You sold worse surprises dressed as favours." "A knife did that. Not claws, not teeth." "You find that reassuring?" "I find it useful. Knives have owners." She pressed a towel to the cut and watched blood bloom through the cotton. "Who owns this one?" "A collector from Avaros. He keeps names in a book bound with minister skins." "Human ministers or church ministers?" "He refuses to clarify. It upsets dinner guests." Rory lifted the towel. The bleeding had slowed to a seep. "Your father works for him?" "My father sold him a page from the ledger three months ago." Her hand stopped above his ribs. "The page with my name." Lucien watched her face and kept his hands on the chair. "Yes." "And you bought it back." "I traded for it." "With what?" "Ten years of service, payable on demand." The needle case on the table held six needles in a row of black felt. Rory selected the curved one and threaded it with Eva's dental floss because Eva bought supplies during a paranoid phase and trusted nothing with a label. "You traded ten years for a page." "I traded ten years for the removal of your name before the collector learned you lived in London." "You could have put that in the message." "The bargain sealed my mouth on the terms. Each attempt cost a memory." Rory held the thread up to the light. "What did you lose?" "The sound of my mother's piano. The platform at Marseille station the day I left. Your voice the first time you used my name." Ptolemy jumped onto the table and sat on the sewing kit lid. His tail knocked a scroll against the whisky bottle. Rory pushed the scroll clear and set her left hand against Lucien's side to steady the skin. His muscles jumped under her palm. "Cold hands." "Nerves of a burglar." "I never burgled you." "You entered my flat through the bathroom window in March." "Silas locked the bar door." "You climbed two floors in a suit." "The suit survived. My dignity took the fall." She pinched the edges of the cut together. Lucien breathed out and held the breath in his chest. "Why come back now?" "The collector tore the page from my father's hands and brought it to London." "So my name has legs again." "Your name has a bounty. He offers a clean soul for the girl called Malphora." Rory drove the needle through skin. Lucien swore in French and gripped her wrist. His fingers closed round the crescent scar and stopped at once. He loosened his hold and laid his thumb beside the scar without covering it. "Sorry." "For the grip or the bounty?" "For the grip. The bounty has paperwork behind it, so you can punch the correct department." "You have the page?" "Half of it." He reached into his inside pocket with his free hand and drew out a folded sheet the colour of old teeth. Black script crawled across the surface and changed shape when the kitchen light hit it. The script formed a crescent, broke apart, and formed Rory's handwriting. Rory kept the needle in place and stared at the page. "That is my writing." "He copied it from the contract you signed at sixteen." "I signed a school trip form at sixteen." "You signed a summoning circle in a Cardiff leisure centre and called it a school trip because your mother packed sandwiches." Colour climbed Rory's face. She pulled the thread through and tied the first stitch with a hard tug. Lucien winced. "Careful." "You kept that story for a crisis?" "I keep every story about you for a crisis. You become reckless when embarrassed and honest ten seconds later." "Shut up and hold the towel." He took the towel and pressed it below the stitch line. Their hands met over the cloth. Blood warmed the cotton between their fingers. Rory kept her hand there a second past need. "You wrote letters from Marseille." Lucien went still on the chair. "Eva has a mouth like an open window." "Eva has a desk drawer with no lock and a cat with criminal habits. Ptolemy dragged one under the sofa." "Which one?" "The one with three starts and no end." "I write drafts when the final version risks the truth." "What truth cost you three starts?" He turned his hand under hers and let the towel take his weight. "That I chose the trade and I would choose it again. That I hated you for making the maths so simple. That London without you had excellent restaurants and no one worth calling at two in the morning." Rory pulled her hand back and picked up the needle. "Breathe in." "Rory." "Breathe in, Lucien. You can ruin your own apology with a faint."