A picture of Levi illuminated the phone screen, and Ella’s heart jumped with a curious twist that had her at once aching in her chest and temples. He was such a cock! Jack had been almost okay, but Levi just had to prod. He always had to prod, and now he was shameless enough to call her back after it. How could he think she’d answer?

Ella hissed between her teeth, staring at the phone screen. Blue light scratched across the ceiling, throwing ghastly shadows around the room. Fingers, they looked like, crawling off the hundreds of tiny keepsakes around her room and crawling up the wall. Vibrate off, it was nothing but a insidious, pulsing light invading her room.

The moment it went dim, it lit up again. Levi – purple leather and a leopard print shirt, and he looked straight out of an editorial, the sharpness in his eyes as he peered over the rim of his sunglasses enough to put a flutter between Ella’s legs.

She could see him like that. He’d been wearing the same thing tonight, and she could see it, the way he’d tease his tongue around a cigarette, the phone to his ear and the idle taps of his shoe in the air. Static would crack around his fingertips, and each ring, the tap would get sharper. Impatient. Violent.

Ella’s fingers trembled as she scratched Jack’s hair. The top of her arms throbbed with a memory.

The second time it rung out, her breath came in short, sharp gasps. Her heartbeat rocked the silence, thumping against her ears, and in the empty space between, the phone screen lit up again.

“I hate you, Six.” Her whisper slid through the dark in a susurrus promise. “Just leave me alone.”

It rang out. Ella counted the seconds under her breath as the screen stayed dim, scratching her fingers in the damp strands of Jack’s hair. It wound around her fingers like streaks of moonlight feeding through the night. Each second, a little more tension eased from her shoulders and at twenty, Ella let out a shuddering breath and curled around Jack. Peace.

The moment she pressed her lips to his head, the darkness fractured into a curdling blue refraction.

Ella reached for the phone. Jack didn’t stir as she answered the call and held the camera so it framed her face in a halcyon glow.

City lights streaked around Levi’s head, loose locks of his dark hair hanging around his cheeks and headlights flashing across his pale eyes. He held a can of beer against his cheek, the camera close and sharp and rich enough to catch the condensation rolling over the tin and the darkening of a bruise in its shadow.

“I thought you weren’t going to answer, mi vida.” Levi grinned, the camera shifting a little as he slipped through a crowd. Blood slipped between the gaps in his teeth, and Ella shivered, drawing her arms in closer to her bare chest like it might chase out his chill. “I don’t think I got to say goodbye.”

“Why did you have to do that to Jack?” The hitch of tears bit Ella’s voice, and no matter how much she tried to push it out, she could see their stain in the flash of Levi’s tongue over his lips. “You could be nice for once in your life.”

Levi shrugged. “I don’t know how. You know that, chica.” A lorry rumbled past, the groan of weight distorting through the speaker, but Levi’s voice came crisp and clear regardless. Curling, salacious. Ella frowned at the headlights streaming past the window while he kept talking. “If you were so worried, you would’ve hung up the second I got on the phone instead of melting.”

“I was not—”

“I’ve watched you melt so many times, I can tell just by the way your silence sounds. You’re wrapped at the tip of my tongue, mi vida. Stuck to the sole of my shoe and nestled between my lungs. I own you, and if you ever make me ring more than once again...”

A chill shuddered down Ella’s spine as the shot of Levi’s face widened. People packed the street he walked, a humdrum thrum of humanity that made nothing but the rumbling backdrop to the artwork of his face. Satin dresses and gold chains caught beneath flickering streetlights the way tears gleamed on Jack’s cheeks. Smoke curled outside a hundred different bars, and red lights studded the sides of buildings, beacons in the night. From a window, two women in a flirt of silk robes over bare skin shouted down to someone on the street.

Levi’s fingers tapped against the can, one after another, lifting and falling in purposeful motions, and at the tail end of each rap, echoing thunder rolled through the sky. Almost as one beast, the crowds behind him flinched, twisting their heads back to ogle the sky.

She knew it was thunder. The same rolling crack came a heartbeat later outside her window, growling on its prowl across the sky. Ella’s breath came shallow, harsh, her heartbeat climbing up her throat, and she squirmed out from underneath Jack to scamper on light feet to the window. All the while, Levi kept tapping his fingers against the can and the thunder kept shaking the sky.

Ella pulled back the curtain, her knees shaking and the material of the curtain trembling in her grip. Stroke after stroke, lightning writhed across the heavens, illuminating the clear expanse in Byzantium rage.

Levi’s voice slipped through the speaker clear as if he murmured it against her throat. “Don’t make me call more than once again. Now don’t wait up, mi vida. I’m in the mood to pay Cain a visit.”