Malachi liked mornings best.

Not for the sun—Ashgrave mornings were all fog and cart wheels, the stink of the Docklands rolling uphill—but for the quiet. The Tooth belonged to him in those hours, before the noise began. The wards hummed steady, the wood creaked in its bones, and Elara—stubborn, sharp Elara—went about her rituals as if her hands alone could keep the whole city from unraveling.

She was tired. He could see it in the way her shoulders slumped when she thought no one was looking, in the bruised shadows beneath her eyes. A mortal witch, running herself into the ground to hold the seams of a bar stitched together with spellwork and spit.

He leaned against the bar, sipping whiskey he didn't need, watching her tug at a sigil until it flared blue. She never asked him to help, which was why he always did.

"You'll grind yourself to dust before the week's out," he said lazily.

Her head snapped up, eyes flashing, and for a heartbeat he could almost taste the retort on her tongue. It always pleased him, that spark—anger, annoyance, anything, so long as it was aimed his way.

"Go bother someone else," she muttered, brushing chalk dust from her palms.

He grinned, showing just enough teeth. There it is.

She turned away, circling the room, and that was when her hand froze against the bar's edge. Malachi saw her expression shift—tiredness bleeding into stillness, then unease. She tugged something free from beneath the counter: a napkin, crumpled and smudged.

He pushed off the bar, sauntering closer. "Find something for me, witch?"

Malachi plucked the napkin from her hand before she could fold it away, smoothing the paper with one scarred thumb. Kohl pencil hearts, jagged and rushed, scrawled letters pressed deep like someone afraid they'd be forgotten. And on the back, that one line—sloppy, desperate.

Don't forget the vial.

His grin flickered, but he let it linger. Couldn't show her yet—not how the words set his teeth on edge. Not how he'd heard that phrasing whispered in the Docklands before, usually right before someone vanished or woke screaming.

"Elara," he drawled, lifting the napkin to the light as though it were nothing more than tavern gossip, "your little stray liked to doodle."

Her glare could have salted the earth. "Don't call her that."

He arched a brow, folding the napkin once, neat, then slid it into his vest pocket where she couldn't reach. "Fine. Iris doodled. She also dabbled. This—" he tapped his chest—"is Docklands code. Vials don't mean perfume. They mean powder. Tonic. Things that twist you inside out."

Elara's jaw tightened. He watched the pulse flicker in her throat, the denial she wanted to spit out and the weight that kept it tethered.

"She didn't..." Her voice faltered. "She wouldn't."

"Maybe not. Maybe she was clever enough to leave us a thread before someone yanked it tight." He leaned in, close enough for her to feel the heat off him, close enough for his words to graze her skin. "But this? You hand it to Casimir, to the Watch, to any hungry mouth, and it won't matter what Iris did. It'll only matter what they want her to be."

Her breath hitched, just faintly.

Malachi's grin softened, dangerous in a different way. "So we'll keep it. For now."

By nightfall the door swung often, letting in fog and laughter, whispers sharper than the whiskey Malachi poured. He leaned behind the bar, sleeves rolled and grin fixed, sliding glasses down polished wood with practiced ease. Patrons thought bartenders listened to their words. Malachi preferred their silences.

The Docklands boys smelled of salt and cheap tobacco, all nerves under their swagger. A pair of lantern girls glittered at the far table, paint smudged from last night's work, laughter pitched too high. A witch in blue silk hunched in the corner, tracing sigils on his glass as if the drink might scry back. Every one of them carried a secret, and Malachi collected them the way other men collected debts.

He watched Elara weave between tables, tray balanced steady on her hip, shoulders squared like she was carved of iron. She kept her chin high when whispers dipped at her name, when Iris Vey's shadow clung to the walls. Mortals cracked under weight like that. Elara didn't. She burned under it, stubborn flame that refused to go out.

It made something inside him snarl with pride he'd never admit aloud.

A drunk wolf slammed his fist on a table near the back, snarling about packs and bonds. Malachi's grin widened, lazy as a blade unsheathed. He slid a glass across the bar without looking, the sound sharp enough to cut through the noise.

"Settle it outside," Elara called, voice flat and cool as steel.

The room stilled. Then laughter, muttered curses, tension bleeding back into the haze of drink. Malachi watched her walk away, spine straight, and couldn't help the heat curling low in his gut. She didn't see how they looked at her—wolves, vamps, mortals alike. She only saw the work. That blindness made him ache.

He caught fragments of talk as he poured another round. Iris's name hissed through the air like smoke: who saw her last, who she was with, who might have wanted her gone. A man in the corner muttered about vials, and Malachi's grip on the bottle tightened before he forced himself to smile again.

Not yet.

The bar breathed around him, a beast of wood and magic and secrets, and Malachi fed it one drink at a time. Through it all, his gaze returned, again and again, to the witch threading the floor like she owned it.

Because she did. And one day soon, the city would realize it.

Last call came late, the way it always did on Saturdays. Malachi stacked glasses with a lazy rhythm, the clink of glass and wood filling the quiet left after the last patron stumbled into the fog. Elara moved like clockwork—chairs up, counters wiped, wards checked—her exhaustion worn deep in her bones.

He leaned on the bar, watching her fuss with the lanterns. "You'll wear yourself hollow if you keep at it like this."

She shot him a look, sharp but dulled by fatigue. "And if I stop, who keeps the Tooth standing?"

His grin tugged wider, soft as it ever got. "You've got me, witch. Isn't that enough?"

Her scoff was faint, but she didn't argue. She just blew out the last lantern, shadows stretching long across the wood. The wards thrummed steady under her hand, but her shoulders sagged as if the sound carried weight instead of safety.

Malachi circled the bar, slow, deliberate, until he was beside her. Not too close—but close enough. "Come on," he murmured. "Upstairs."

It was their ritual, walking the narrow stair side by side. Elara always insisted she didn't need escorting. Malachi always ignored her. Tonight, she didn't even try.

At the landing she fumbled with the latch, hands trembling just enough for him to notice. He covered her hand with his own, steadying the key. Heat flared where skin brushed skin—familiar now, though it still jolted him deep as fire.

For a heartbeat, she didn't pull away.

His thumb lingered, slow, deliberate, as if tracing a sigil into her knuckles. Her breath hitched—soft, sharp—and then she jerked the key, door swinging wide.

"Elara," he said low, voice rougher than he meant.

But she was already moving, shoulders squared, stepping into the dark flat without looking back.

Malachi's grin curved, sharp and aching. One day, witch. You'll stop running. And I'll be right here when you do...

The flat went quiet once Elara's door shut. Malachi stood in the hall a moment longer, listening. Her steps, soft across the floorboards. The sigh of her bed creaking. The silence after.

Only then did he turn back down the stairs.

The Tooth was dark but not empty—never empty. Shadows clung thicker after closing, curling at the corners where his presence bled through the wards. He poured himself another drink, amber liquid catching the lantern-glow, and let the mask slip.

His grin thinned, teeth sharper in the dark.

They would blame him. Of course they would. A devil behind the bar, last seen with a girl who ended up cold in the gutter? Too neat to resist. The Cabal would whisper it, the Watch would nod along, the wolves would bare their teeth and call it justice.

But Malachi had seen worse than any devil's appetite. He'd served drinks to men who cut throats for debt money, women who poisoned rivals with sweet smiles, wolves who broke their own kin under pack law. Iris's pimp—vile little bastard—wasn't the first of his kind and wouldn't be the last. Mortals made cruelty an art, and they didn't even need contracts to do it.

He downed the whiskey in one swallow, glass slamming against wood.

"Iris," he muttered into the silence, the name tasting bitter. She'd laughed at his worst jokes, tugged Elara's braid like a sister, cried once in his back room after some john roughed her up. She hadn't deserved to die like that—not her.

The wards hummed faint, restless. Malachi stretched his senses, feeling the city's pulse through their tether. Somewhere out there, a killer walked free, while he sat waiting to be their scapegoat.

His grin curved again, slow and sharp.

Let them come. Let the Cabal, the Pack, the Watch even, point their neat little fingers. He'd peel back their secrets, one by one, until the truth bled out like smoke. And when he found the bastard who put Iris in the ground, devil or not, they'd learn there were worse things than Ashgrave's shadows.

The Tooth's wards purred under his hands as he pressed them closed. Elara was asleep upstairs, her breathing even and soft—he would know, even through the walls. He'd told her once, flat, that he never left the bar. Not a lie, not exactly. But the truth was slipperier.

Devils thrived on loopholes after all.

Malachi stood in the threshold, fingers brushing the iron latch. The wards recognized him, hesitated. Then they let him through with a sigh like smoke.

Ashgrave's night air hit sharp—damp cobbles, the stink of fish and lantern oil, voices carried thin in the fog. The moment he stepped past them, the weight hit—like chains tightening, like every ounce of him was dragged toward the cobbles. Ashgrave's air cut sharp into his lungs, the city itself pressing against his bones.

That was the cost.

But Iris was dead. And if the city thought to hang her ghost on his shoulders, he wanted to know who else deserved the rope.

He slipped through alleys, more shadow than man, coat blending with fog. Mortals never saw him unless he wanted them to. Witches flinched at his scent, wolves bristled if he passed too close. Tonight, none stopped him.

The Lantern Walk was restless, laughter brittle where it should've been bawdy. A girl in glitter boots hissed to her friend about Iris's pimp losing his temper. Docklands men muttered about "bad powder" changing hands. Malachi leaned in doorframes, listened, filed names away like debts.

He could feel the edge of it—something moving under Ashgrave's skin. Not just a killing. A hunger.

By the time he circled back to the Tooth, the wards thrummed tight, as though scolding him. He smoothed a hand over the door, amber eyes burning hotter in the dark.

"Easy, love," he murmured to the wood. "I'm home."

He slipped back inside, locking the city out again. Upstairs, Elara still slept, unknowing.

And Malachi smiled, sharp and cold, because he carried Ashgrave's whispers now, and he knew one thing for certain: devils might be easy to blame. But devils weren't the only monsters in this city.