The next morning, I set a phial in front of L, and he looked at it, and looked at me. He was sitting up in bed, stripped to the waist and rolling his shoulders as he came awake. He raised his hand to rub his eye and I gently caught his wrist.

He patted the bed and I sat. He knew what I needed, and leaned his body into the light from his window.

"Look left," I said, producing a small polished mirror to focus the light with.

He looked. I turned his face with a finger on the side of his nose.

"Look a little harder, L."

He did.

"Now right," I said softly.

He did. His eyes were clouded with angry red, like cochineal dye dropped into clear water, darkly blood-bruised.

"Follow my finger. Don't move your head."

"Have you been to your secret little doorway, today?" He followed my index finger with eyes which were perfectly good, adapting well beyond being typically shot through with blood.

"Cover your right eye. Follow my finger."

"Can I go with you to your secret doorway?"

"Left eye." I produced a small, white card from my pocket and held it away. "Read."

"When she was good she was very good indeed."

I brought it closer.

"But when she was bad she was horrid," he whispered.

"Good nick."

He took the phial and put it back near my hand, raising my eyebrows.

"That's for you," I said.

"You are quite lovely to my eyes this morning. I don't trust it. You first," he said, in a lilting tone which hid his seriousness.

"No."

"Don't flirt. Have a drink."

I picked the phial up and unstopped it. Its etched glass surface was familiar in my hands. 175ml with a gold stopper.

There is not a word that Laurent has said against me that I have forgotten. But I know I have also given him reason to doubt me. I tipped it back and set it down, closing my eyes against the rush of blood to the head and the instant soreness of my throat. I swallowed hard on nothing, which made my larynx pop, and opened my mouth so that he could see it was gone.

"A lovely mouth," he said. "All beautiful with blood."

There was the usual distance between us, which I didn't know how to close. In passing, I have often wanted him. Perhaps because it was morning, he did not close it himself, instead coming closer only to lie back in my arms and gaze at me. I rested against his headboard, and he made no effort to smooth his hair or otherwise hide himself, eyes closed. When I touched his stomach, he pressed his head back against me briefly, stretching his body. I gently laid my hand over his forehead and drew it back through his hair. I could feel his lean muscles beneath his skin, and felt again that particular anxiety of loss, that he was wasting away, though I had no real proof.

"Tell me about your doorway."

"Has Nicky been talking to you?" I asked.

"Doesn't matter. I hadn't thought of it before."

"Did he follow me?"

"Do as you are told." Then, "Please."

I studied his features a little in the daylight, the narrow, high bridge of his nose, his unarched eyebrows, his slight, but strong jaw. While I looked at him, he licked his upper lip, and I knew that he was dehydrated and probably tense as a result. I resumed stroking his hair, pulling on it a little.

"I get off the train at Moorgate Station, and I walk from there five blocks, and then ten minutes after a left turn. At exactly ten, it is a right turn, and there are steps which lead to the basement level of a butcher's. In that place, there are several entrances, which come from all around, and it is quite dark."

"It's far," he said.

"Not to worry. Down a set of stairs, there is a series of black boxes, quite like those in which one may find a priest."

"You go in one side."

"But there is no panel between the doors."

"This seems quite elaborate," he purred, eyes closed.

"It is a matter of privacy, which cloaks frank matters with a sense of the illicit."

"How did you find it?" he asked, emphasizing slightly "you."

"The occult is of great interest to the right people in this city."

"Leave it at that. Do you bite them?"

I ran my thumb over his left eyebrow, pressing gently against the curve of his browbone.

"Tell me at least that you bite them."

"Are you making idle conversation or does it matter much?"

"The former," he said, quiet under my hand.

I dipped my chin low, knowing he wouldn't like an intimate gesture like that, resting my head on his head. And he didn't like it, swiftly taking my wrist and biting me hard on the back of the hand, without allowing me opportunity to anticipate it. He liked that it made me knock my head against the headboard. And when he pulled on the blood, I screamed.

Unbidden, a picture of Evan Wright came to my mind, of those eyes gazing on me with an expression of naked desire I knew I would never see in them again. I kept my head back, staring blankly at the ceiling. Each draw drew cursing and hissing from my lips, as being bitten on the wrist or hand is singularly unpleasant and painful, and because the way he had bitten me, I knew I would be deprived of use of that hand for some time. Thoughts of Evan's cadaver arm came as well, and how he had flayed it at the wrist, skillfully. I have no doubt his mind was sharp until the end, however unfocused it was. There are so many nerves in the wrist, but of course where there are nerves there is the steady flow of blood as well. I could still taste my own blood in my mouth from drinking the phial. He released my hand and turned in my arms, but I put my hands on his shoulders to hold him back.

To my surprise, he didn't fight. Without a word, he stumbled out of bed and into his slippers, taking a white button-up shirt from the back of the chair by the door. I didn't follow him at first. And when I finally stumbled after, a few moments late, I heard him say, from the kitchen, "You will take me to your butcher's door."

"I refuse."

"You will."

"It is you who warned me to be discreet in these final days," I said.

"I so want to be in the world."

I found him in the kitchen, washing his hands, and ignoring discretion, took him by the waist. He arched his back in my grasp. I could see his face in the window, an unreadable expression, washed out by the bright sunlight.

"Let me go," he said. "The light is hurting my eyes."

"You would not ask any other to let you go. Not after you know you've done an evil thing."

"Don't be so self-indulgent," he said, hands braced on the counter. "It doesn't become you."

I pressed my nose into his neck and kissed him, and he breathed out, becoming loose.

"Indulge you? Is that what you want?" he asked. He touched my stinging hand and looked at it, turning it over and back again. It had gone all red and purple under his lips. It hurt as if I had been burned, but would be soon forgotten. It didn't matter.

"Why can you never be easy with me?"

He didn't answer.

I think of those times now in context of what happened before and after, and because of that, those days are full in my memory, and occupy my thoughts. If it were so simple that I wanted him, there would be more clarity for me. As for him, I don't know his mind, but I wonder if he ever thought of our house in London, because it was not long after that he disappeared for a long decade. At the time, I thought that he had gone back to an old lover, who I could never hope of convincing to leave well enough alone. There is only one of us who Laurent has ever really wanted. It was natural for me to think they had gone away together.