The first camera flash faded against the closed curtains of Vivienne's upstairs lounge, leaving the room in the low red light that ran along the wall panels and the warmer desk lamp she had dragged toward the blank section of wall. Noctis remained where she had placed him, standing in front of the cleared space in a fitted white T-shirt, jeans, and running shoes that had been armor less than ten minutes earlier. His silver hair stayed tied back, a few loose strands framing his face, while the earrings, necklace, layered bracelets, and the tiny weapon charms shaped after Nocturne and Ruin made the outfit look less like an attempt to disappear and more like a fashion choice made by someone who had never needed permission to stand out. Vivienne lowered the camera, checked the screen, and her expression tightened in a way that was not fear this time, but irritation at a problem she had not expected to have.
"This is not going to work," she said, tilting the camera so the two men near the table could see it. The smoking man leaned closer with his lighter still rolling between his fingers, and the other leader looked up from the laptop where the secure message thread with the document handler was open. The photo on the small screen showed Noctis with perfect posture, a neutral face, clean lighting, and a gaze too direct to look accidental. Vivienne rubbed her thumb along the camera edge and looked back at Noctis. "You look like someone staged this for a campaign poster."
Noctis glanced toward the camera. "You told me not to smile."
"I know," Vivienne said. "That is not the problem."
The smoking man squinted at the photo, then looked at Noctis and back again. "It looks fake."
Vivienne turned her head toward him. "That is the problem."
Noctis looked between them without moving from the wall. "The image is accurate."
"Passport photos are not supposed to be flattering," Vivienne said, adjusting the lamp with one hand until the light hit him flatter across the face. "They are supposed to be boring enough that no one thinks about them after scanning them. Yours looks like the person checking the passport would call someone else over just to look."
The second man gave a quiet laugh from the laptop. "That actually happens. Airport staff are human."
Vivienne shifted the lamp again and pointed toward the wall. "Stand the same way, but relax your shoulders a little."
Noctis looked at her. "I am relaxed."
"Then relax less perfectly."
The smoking man made the mistake of laughing, and Vivienne gave him a look that made him turn the laugh into a cough. Noctis adjusted because the matter was practical, not because the instruction made sense to him. He let his shoulders lower by a fraction, softened the focus of his eyes enough that he no longer looked as if he were measuring the room for weaknesses, and kept his mouth neutral. Vivienne studied him for a few seconds, then lifted the camera again while the lamp hummed quietly beside her and the closed curtains held back the morning beyond the lounge. The second flash crossed the room, reflected off the dark window glass behind the curtains, and disappeared into the red light.
Vivienne checked the photo and held it beside the first. "Better."
The smoking man leaned in again. "Still looks like he has a modeling contract."
"Better is all we need," Vivienne said, and she transferred the image to the laptop while the second man opened a secure upload window. The handler's message thread sat ready, filled with short updates from someone who clearly disliked being woken this early and disliked the name Volturi even more. Vivienne attached the photo, added a line telling him to build the identity for international movement, then sent it before leaning back far enough for the chair to creak. "He is going to complain."
The answer came faster than she expected. The laptop chimed softly, and the second man read the message with his brows rising. "He says the subject looks too distinctive."
Vivienne stared at the screen. "I know that."
The second man kept reading. "He wants a name, date of birth, nationality, cover occupation, residence, travel purpose, and a cleaner reason for Italy than 'urgent private business.'"
Noctis stepped away from the wall. "Give him what he needs."
Vivienne clicked into the blank identity fields and looked at the first one. "That starts with a name, and we are not putting Noctis on the passport."
Noctis looked at her. "Why not?"
"Because airport staff are still human," Vivienne said, pulling the chair closer to the table as the two men shifted around the laptop. "They remember strange names attached to strange faces, and Noctis is not a name people forget."
The smoking man leaned back in his chair and rubbed his thumb along the edge of his lighter. "Just give him something normal. Ethan Brooks."
Noctis looked at him. "No."
The smoking man raised his brows. "You rejected that very fast."
"It does not fit."
"It does not have to fit," Vivienne said, glancing between the screen and Noctis. "It has to pass."
Noctis looked at the empty field on the laptop. "Pick another."
The second man scrolled through a list of inactive shell identities on his phone, each one attached to partial records, dormant addresses, or financial histories that could be revived if enough money moved through the right hands. "Ryan Hale?"
Vivienne made a face before Noctis answered. "That sounds like someone who sells houses in Connecticut."
The smoking man pointed at her with the lighter. "That is oddly specific."
"It is accurate," Vivienne said.
The second man continued scrolling. "Nathan Cole?"
"No," Noctis said.
Vivienne looked at him. "What is wrong with Nathan Cole?"
"It sounds temporary."
The smoking man leaned toward the laptop. "Most fake identities are temporary."
Noctis did not look at him. "Then choose one that sounds less temporary."
Vivienne typed nothing, and the cursor kept blinking in the name field as if it were also waiting for the room to become useful. "Lucas Bennett?"
Noctis looked at the screen. "No."
"Daniel Cross?"
"No."
"Evan Grant?"
"No."
"Aaron Blake?"
Noctis glanced at her. "You are making it worse."
The smoking man laughed under his breath and looked away when Vivienne turned toward him. The second man stopped scrolling through the shell list and placed his phone face down on the table because the names were starting to waste more time than they saved. Outside the curtained windows, the city continued into morning, and a truck reversed somewhere in the alley below with a faint beeping that reached them through brick and glass. Inside the lounge, the laptop waited with the identity field empty, and the document handler sent another message asking whether they were still alive.
Vivienne rubbed her forehead once. "Then choose one yourself."
Noctis looked at the cursor for several seconds. The name did not need to carry his actual history. It only needed to survive the systems of this world long enough to move him through them. A modern name had to fit the face in the photo, the passport record, the cover story, the hotel reservations, the bank profile, and the people who would glance at it once before sending him through a gate. He did not want something that sounded like a costume, and he did not want something so generic that the mismatch became noticeable.
"Ren Takahashi," he said.
Vivienne paused with her fingers above the keyboard. "That is not one of the names we gave you."
"It is the one I am using."
The smoking man leaned forward and studied Noctis's face, then the blank name field. "It fits better than Ethan Brooks."
Vivienne typed the name before the conversation could restart. "Ren Takahashi it is."
The second man entered the name into the handler's form, then opened a second page for the cover details. "Date of birth?"
Vivienne looked at Noctis, then at the photo, then back at the screen. "We are not making him too young. He looks young, but he does not act young. Late twenties?"
The smoking man nodded. "Old enough for money, young enough for the face."
Noctis watched them work without interrupting, because the identity they were building was a tool rather than a claim. Vivienne assigned a birth date that fit the appearance, chose a clean American residence tied to one of the den's shell properties, and directed the second man to attach a thin but believable travel record. The handler wanted a profession that could justify Italy without creating a trail too difficult to support, and when the second man suggested private security, Vivienne rejected it because security profiles attracted questions from the wrong systems. The smoking man suggested music management because the club could support it, but Vivienne rejected that too because music people were too public and too easy to search.
"Antiquities consultant," Vivienne said after a few seconds, and her eyes flicked toward Noctis because the answer fit more than she probably understood. "Old art, estate pieces, private collections, church objects, things rich people buy and pretend they understand. Italy makes sense for that, and nobody at an airport is going to ask you to explain a painting."
Noctis looked at the map of Italy still open on the second screen. "Use that."
The second man typed quickly. "Travel purpose?"
"Private acquisition consultation," Vivienne said. "Keep it boring."
The smoking man glanced at Noctis. "Good luck with that."
Vivienne ignored him and sent the next packet to the handler. The response did not come immediately this time, and while they waited, she pulled up the travel options she had already started checking before Noctis returned from the coven. The commercial flight routes filled one window with airports, layovers, and airline codes. A second window showed a private charter contact tied to one of the den's laundering channels. A third had notes on vampire movement routes across the Atlantic, names written only in initials and old city references because nobody in their world put certain lines in clear text unless they wanted to be found.
"We already narrowed the travel down," Vivienne said, turning the laptop slightly so Noctis could see the windows. "Commercial is possible if the passport is strong enough, but airports mean cameras, staff, scanners, and a lot of witnesses. Vampire routes exist, but if we start asking about movement near Volterra, the wrong people may hear your name before you arrive."
"Private flight," Noctis said.
Vivienne nodded as if she had expected that answer. "That is the cleanest option if the passport is good. It costs more, and it still needs a passenger profile that does not fall apart when someone checks the manifest."
"Make it good."
"We are burning a serious contact for that."
"Burn another if needed."
The smoking man exhaled slowly but did not argue about the cost this time. After what he had seen in the previous hours, money had become less frightening than disappointing Noctis, and the club had enough illegal channels to survive one expensive passport if Vivienne decided survival required it. The second man messaged the handler again, marked the request for a private flight package, and attached the cover occupation details under Ren Takahashi. The handler sent back only three words: working on it.
Vivienne closed that window and picked up a black smartphone from the table. "While he works, you need this."
Noctis looked at the object in her hand. It was a black rectangle of glass and metal, smooth on every side, with no visible buttons except a small ridge along the edge. It reflected the red room light across its dark surface. Vivienne held it out as if it were obvious, but Noctis did not take it immediately because the word attached to it did not match the object in his memory.
"What is that?" he asked.
Vivienne blinked. "A phone."
Noctis took it and turned it once in his hand. The screen remained dark. "This is a phone?"
The smoking man looked at him over the table. "How long were you gone from civilization?"
Vivienne turned sharply. "Do not ask him that."
Noctis ignored the question and studied the device. A long-buried memory surfaced through layers of blood, war, Grid evolution, and worlds that had stopped caring about ordinary human technology. The phone he remembered had a cover. It opened with the thumb and clicked into place. There had been a small screen on the upper half, physical number keys below it, and calls were made by pressing digits until the device connected. Some had cameras, but poor ones. Some had games, but simple ones. They fit into pockets and did not pretend to be everything at once.
"The last phone I remember opened," Noctis said, running his thumb along the glass. "There was a cover. You flipped it up. The numbers were buttons."
Vivienne's face changed as she understood that he was not joking. "A flip phone?"
"That might have been the name."
The smoking man slowly lowered his lighter to the table. "That is old."
Vivienne sat beside Noctis on the edge of the couch and held out her hand without taking the phone from him. "Okay. Then we start from the beginning."
Noctis sat because the instruction would take less time if he let her explain it properly. The couch leather creaked under him, and Vivienne shifted close enough to point at the side button without touching his hand. She showed him how to wake the screen, how to swipe up, how the lock opened with a passcode, and how the icons represented separate tools instead of physical buttons. The screen lit across his face as he followed each step. He did not fumble, but he paused more often than he liked because every motion was based on conventions he had not learned. Tapping was different from pressing. Swiping was different from opening a cover. The absence of keys made the device feel unfinished even though Vivienne treated it as normal.
"This button wakes it," Vivienne said, pointing again. "This is the lock screen. Swipe up. Type the code. Do not forget the code."
Noctis entered the numbers she gave him. "I will remember."
"Everyone says that before they lock themselves out," the smoking man said.
Noctis looked at him.
The man looked back at the laptop. "You will probably remember."
Vivienne opened the contacts app and placed the phone in Noctis's hand again. "This is where numbers are saved. You do not have to dial every time unless you want to. I am putting mine in first."
She took the phone back before anyone could object and typed her name into the first contact field. She added her number, a secure messaging account, and a note that said Vivienne — club, because she seemed to think he might need the label. The smoking man leaned over the back of the couch and immediately complained that if Vivienne's number was first, his should be second in case Noctis needed logistics instead of diplomacy. Vivienne told him that if Noctis needed logistics, she would call him herself. The second man said that was inefficient and reached for the phone when she finished.
Within a few minutes, the phone held Vivienne's number, the smoking man's number, the second leader's number, the club's main line, the back entrance line, the temporary apartment address, the document handler under a false contact name, and a private driver who had already been warned not to ask questions. Vivienne showed Noctis how to answer a call, decline one, place a call, open messages, send a short text, open the map, search for an address, use the camera, and turn on location services only when needed. The explanations happened while the document handler's messages arrived and the men responded around them, so the lesson became part of the room's motion rather than a separate classroom.
Noctis watched the map open on the screen and saw the city compress into streets, labels, traffic colors, and moving location markers. "This replaces asking directions?"
"It helps," Vivienne said. "It does not replace knowing when not to walk into somewhere stupid."
The smoking man muttered from the table, "That should be the startup message."
Vivienne ignored him and opened the browser. "You can search from here, but assume anything you search can leave a trace. If you need something sensitive, ask us first."
Noctis looked at the screen. "And calls?"
She tapped the green icon. "Here. Contacts. Pick a name. Press call. If I call you, this screen appears. Slide to answer."
She called the phone from her own. The device vibrated in Noctis's hand and displayed her name. He looked at it for half a second, then slid his thumb across the answer prompt. Vivienne's voice echoed from the phone and from beside him at the same time when she said, "Good. You answered."
Noctis ended the call. "That is simple enough."
Vivienne looked at him doubtfully. "We tested it once."
"That was enough."
"It was not enough, but we are out of time."
The second man came over with a slim black wallet, a matte black card, a temporary keycard, and several stacks of cash bound in paper straps. He placed them on the low table in front of Noctis, careful not to crowd the phone lesson. "The card is tied to the shell account. It will not survive deep inspection yet, but it works for normal purchases. The apartment keycard is for a place in Midtown under one of our property layers. The cash is ten thousand dollars."
Noctis picked up the black card first, turning it between his fingers. It had Ren Takahashi printed on it already through one of their faster channels, although the embossing and account support were clearly temporary. He set it down and looked at the cash. The concept of money was not new. Currencies, trade markers, essence stones, enchanted gold, contribution points, and royal treasuries had all passed through his hands in different worlds and systems. What caught his attention was not the value. It was the object itself.
"Show me the currency," he said.
The second man tapped the stacks. "That is the currency."
"I know what it is worth," Noctis said. "I want to see the notes."
Vivienne leaned forward, understanding faster than the others. "All denominations?"
"Yes."
The smoking man opened one of the straps and sorted bills across the table. He laid out a one, five, ten, twenty, fifty, and hundred, smoothing each note with the side of his hand. Noctis picked them up one by one. He examined the texture first, then the printed portraits, seals, serial numbers, color differences, embedded fibers, raised surfaces, and the security details that changed depending on the denomination. The hundred-dollar bill held his attention longest because of the blue ribbon woven through the note and the way the image shifted when he tilted it.
"How is this made?" Noctis asked.
Vivienne looked at the men, then answered because she knew what he was really asking. "Not like normal paper. U.S. bills use a cotton-linen blend, so the feel is different. There are fibers inside the material, raised printing you can feel with your fingers, watermarks when you hold them to light, security threads, microprinting in places most people never check, and color-shifting ink on some parts. Newer hundreds have the 3D ribbon too. It is all there so normal printers cannot copy it well enough to pass."
The second man brought over a small UV light and a magnifier from a locked drawer near the bar. He showed Noctis the thread reaction, the watermark, the tiny print lines, the ribbon, and the parts that counterfeit checks usually tested. The explanation stayed practical rather than instructional, focused on how people verified the bill instead of how anyone would reproduce it. Noctis listened without asking twice. When he finished examining the real hundred, he placed it flat on the table and raised his other hand.
Blood gathered at the center of his palm.
It formed in a small, controlled pool first, dark red and glossy under the desk lamp, then flattened into a thin rectangle. The surface lightened in sections as the liquid changed texture, and the edges sharpened until the shape resembled a blank note. Lines appeared across it with unnerving precision. The portrait formed. The seals formed. The serial numbers formed. The blue ribbon appeared as a raised structure within the surface, and the paper took on the muted color and slight stiffness of the original bill. When Noctis finished, a second hundred-dollar bill rested on his palm.
No one touched it at first.
The smoking man leaned closer, then stopped with his hand halfway over the table. "That is not funny."
Noctis handed the bill to Vivienne. "Check it."
Vivienne took it carefully, her fingers moving over the surface. The paper bent correctly. The raised printing pressed against her thumb where it should. She held it toward the lamp and checked the watermark, then passed it to the second man, who used the magnifier and UV light with a growing stillness that made the room feel smaller. The smoking man watched every step, his earlier humor gone because the bill did not look like a trick. It looked like money.
The second man looked up slowly. "This would pass most quick checks."
Vivienne turned the bill again, then set it on the table in front of Noctis. "Is it stable?"
"No," Noctis said. "It is blood shaped into paper. It will hold while it remains within my control. If it leaves my range, it turns back into blood."
The smoking man stared at the bill, then pushed it back toward him with one finger. "That would be a very bad surprise at a bank."
"Yes."
Vivienne looked from the blood-made bill to the real cash and then back to Noctis. "So this is useful for understanding what you can copy, not for spending."
"Correct."
The smoking man's eyes lingered on the bill for half a second too long, and Noctis looked at him without changing expression. "Do not get any ideas."
The man immediately lifted one hand. "I am not touching that problem."
Noctis took the bill back. Its printed face softened, collapsed into a thin red sheet, and sank into his palm until nothing remained. The room stayed quiet for another moment while the men reassessed the cash on the table as something much less impressive than it had been a minute earlier. Vivienne recovered first, gathered the real money back into a stack, and placed it beside the black card and keycard.
A new message appeared from the handler, and the second man read it aloud. "He says the photo is usable. He still hates how memorable the subject is, but he can build around it if the travel route stays private."
"Good," Vivienne said. "Send him the occupation and the apartment address. Keep the public records thin, but not empty."
While he typed, the smoking man opened a social media feed on his phone and turned it toward Vivienne with a grimace. "We have another problem."
Vivienne took the phone. "How bad?"
"Blurry, but not great."
She watched the clip, then handed it to Noctis. The video showed a section of morning sidewalk near the subway police line. The image shook as the person filming zoomed too far, but Noctis's red coat, armor, silver hair, and impossible stillness were visible for three seconds before a delivery truck blocked the view. A caption joked about a vampire cosplay guy near the subway chaos. Another clip showed the alley district near the club, but that one was too distant to matter. A third, posted by someone on the opposite side of the street, had caught Liz shouting his name before he disappeared behind the delivery truck.
Vivienne watched Noctis's face as he viewed the clip. "That woman was with you last night."
"Yes."
"She is human?"
"Yes."
The smoking man's posture changed slightly, not aggressive yet, but practical in the way criminals became practical when witnesses existed. "If she talks to police, she could connect you to the subway."
Noctis handed the phone back to Vivienne. "Do not touch her."
Vivienne answered immediately. "Understood."
"No threats. No glamour. No cleanup."
"I said understood," Vivienne said, and her voice stayed careful because she heard the line he had drawn. "No one from this den touches her."
The smoking man nodded as well. "Fine. The human is off-limits."
Noctis looked at him until the man added, "Completely off-limits."
The matter settled there. Vivienne deleted nothing from the feed because trying to erase public posts too aggressively would draw more attention, but she told the second man to have someone bury the clips under noise, jokes, fake comments, and other footage from unrelated parts of the city. The goal was not to prove anything false. It was to make the truth look like one more strange post among thousands. Noctis let them handle it because they understood this layer of the world better than he did, and because the casual clothes now mattered more than before. The red armored version of him was already on phones. Ren Takahashi needed to look different enough that most people would not connect the two unless they stood close and paid attention.
Vivienne placed the black card, the cash, the keycard, and a folded note with the temporary apartment address and shell identity details on the table. Noctis touched the items one by one, and each sank into a thin red ripple above his palm before disappearing into blood storage. The stacks of real cash went last, swallowed by the controlled blood surface without bending or tearing. The men stared despite having already seen the false bill form and dissolve. The card and key vanished just as cleanly, leaving the table empty except for the phone.
Vivienne picked up the phone and held it out separately. "Not this one."
Noctis looked at it.
"Keep it on you," she said. "In your hand, your pocket, wherever. Just do not put it wherever the rest went. You need practice, and I need you to answer when I call."
Noctis took the phone. "I know how to answer now."
Vivienne gave him a doubtful look. "You answered once while I was sitting beside you."
"That was enough."
"No, it was not," she said, standing and smoothing her jacket. "But it is what we have."
The handler sent another message before Noctis left, confirming that the rush package had begun under the Ren Takahashi profile and that the private flight contact would need several hours before anything could move safely. Vivienne relayed it without dressing it up. The passport would not be ready immediately. The phone, cash, card, apartment, and cover details were enough to move around the city while the identity formed. Noctis accepted that because forcing the process faster could damage the usefulness of the document, and the old church lead still remained inside the city.
He left the upstairs lounge with the phone visible in his hand and crossed the club's upper walkway while the staff below continued cleaning the aftermath of the previous night. The building stayed sealed against sunlight, its front dark and its back entrance guarded. Vampires moved out of his path without needing orders, and the two guards at the private stairs watched him descend in casual clothes with the same unease they had shown when he wore armor. The outfit had changed the surface, not the pressure around him.
The back door opened before he reached it, and the shaded alley received him with the smell of damp pavement, old trash, and morning exhaust drifting between brick walls. He stepped outside and let the door close behind him. The city had grown louder since he entered the club. More delivery trucks occupied the street, the breakfast cart on the corner had a line, and the sunlight had climbed higher along the windows above the alley mouth. Noctis walked toward the main street with the phone in his right hand, turning it once as he remembered the path Vivienne had shown him to unlock the screen.
He reached the sidewalk and stopped when he saw Liz across the street.
She stood outside the deli with a coffee cup in one hand and a paper bag tucked beneath her arm. Her hair was tied back messily, and her jacket hung open as if she had dressed without caring how the morning saw her. She looked tired enough that sleep had either not come or had done nothing useful when it did. Her eyes passed over the sidewalk, reached Noctis, and stopped. She did not know what he was. She did not have words like progenitor, Blood Grid, fallen clergy, or demonic trial. What she had was the memory of a man in a red coat and strange armor catching a bullet, putting her into a car, vanishing near a subway full of monsters, and then appearing again in daylight wearing a white T-shirt and jeans as if he had simply changed plans.
She crossed when the traffic broke, holding the coffee too tightly while a cab rolled past behind her. "You have got to be kidding me," she said when she stopped a few feet away. Her eyes moved from his face to the clothes and back again. "You disappeared after the subway, and now you look like you walked out of a modeling ad."
Noctis glanced down at the shirt and jeans only briefly. "I changed."
"I can see that," Liz said, and the laugh that left her had no real humor in it. "That is not the part I am stuck on."
He looked past her toward the street leading away from the club, noticing the cameras above the deli, the people moving close enough to listen, and the police lights still visible several blocks away near the subway entrance. Liz stepped half a pace into his line of sight when she saw his attention drifting, and her voice dropped enough that the nearest pedestrians would not catch every word. "No. Do not do that quiet staring thing. You caught a bullet in front of me, put me in a car, vanished, ignored me when I called your name, and now you are standing here like this is a normal morning."
"You almost got killed," Noctis said. "I got you out. That was the important part."
Liz's expression shifted because the answer was honest and still not enough. She looked toward the deli window for a second, then back at him, her grip tightening around the coffee cup until the lid bent slightly. "I am not saying I am not grateful. I am saying you do not get to drop me into the weirdest night of my life and then act like I am supposed to just go home and forget it."
"I did not want you following me."
"Because it was dangerous?" Liz asked, and when he did not answer immediately, she shook her head and took a frustrated sip of coffee. "Yeah, I figured that part out when the monsters showed up underground."
Noctis did not correct the word monsters. Explaining vampires, Lycans, Death Dealers, covens, and ancient rulers in the middle of the sidewalk would only give her more pieces than she could safely hold. He looked at the paper bag beneath her arm, then at the coffee, then back to her face. She had not gone home. Whether she had stayed because of fear, curiosity, stubbornness, or the inability to accept what she had seen, she was still here, and St. Aurelia's was still her lead.
"I need a favor," he said.
Liz stared at him. "Of course you do."
"I need to go to St. Aurelia's. You said you knew where it was."
"The church?" she asked.
"Yes."
She noticed the phone in his hand and pointed at it with the coffee cup. "You have a phone now. Use maps."
Noctis looked down at the black screen. He remembered Vivienne showing him how to wake it, swipe up, and open the icon with the map, but knowing the sequence once in a quiet room and navigating a city under pressure were not the same thing. He pressed the side button, watched the screen light up, and then let it dim again while Liz watched his thumb hover without confidence.
"I barely know how to use it," he said.
Liz's anger paused. "Wait. Seriously?"
"Yes."
"You can stop bullets, but you cannot use Google Maps?"
"Apparently."
Liz stared at him for several seconds, then covered part of her face with the hand holding the paper bag. "I hate that I believe you."
Noctis waited while traffic moved behind her and office workers crossed between the two sidewalks. Liz lowered her hand, took another drink of coffee, and looked down the street as if measuring the distance between common sense and whatever choice she was about to make. She looked exhausted, but the fear from the subway no longer had her frozen. It had turned into irritation, and irritation made her move.
"Fine," she said. "St. Aurelia's is not far, but we are not taking the subway. I am not going back underground today."
"That works."
"And you are not disappearing on me again," Liz said, already turning toward the corner but watching him from the side as she did.
Noctis walked beside her, matching her pace through the morning crowd. "I will not unless I have to."
Liz stopped just long enough to look at him. "That is a terrible promise."
"It is the honest one."
She sighed, reached for the phone, and held out her hand. "Give me that before you somehow call the police, a vampire, or whoever Vivienne is."
Noctis handed it to her.
Liz woke the screen, saw the lock prompt, and looked at him. "Code?"
He gave it to her. She entered it, opened the contacts, and stopped walking for half a second when she saw Vivienne's name at the top. Her eyebrows lifted, and she looked at him with the kind of expression that had too many questions behind it to choose one.
"Of course her number is first," Liz said.
"She taught me how to use it."
"I am not asking," Liz said, though her tone made it clear she absolutely wanted to. She added her own number under Liz, saved it, then opened the map and searched St. Aurelia's with quick, practiced movements. "There. We are walking part of the way, then taking a cab once we are away from the subway mess."
Noctis took the phone when she handed it back, and the blue route line remained on the screen between their current location and the old church. Liz adjusted the paper bag under her arm and started toward the corner, slipping back into the movement of the city with the tired confidence of someone who knew its streets better than he did. Noctis walked beside her in the morning light, the phone in his hand, the name Ren Takahashi forming behind him through criminal channels, and St. Aurelia's waiting ahead somewhere beyond the traffic.