The evening had reached its nadir in the midst of a miserable slew of rain showers, and Hoffman had not stirred from the couch in more than two hours.

The puzzle box sat on the coffee table in front of him at an angle, catching the low light from the lamp in the corner, which illuminated just one face while leaving the other steeped in a near perfect quadrangle of shadow. It had been some time since he'd noticed that the thing cast no reflection whatsoever in the polished surface of the table, and it was this that had so far kept him from touching it again. Instead he sat with his thumbnail pinched between his teeth and studied it in complete silence.

Hoffman was still at a loss to explain to himself why he'd concealed evidence from a murder scene, but at the same time he had been unable to wipe the memory of that brutal flashback from his mind; an empty bottle at the far end of the couch bore witness to his attempts on this score, but he was not drunk, nor even close to it, and the images continued to dance, bone-white and naked, behind his eyes.

(...fucking reporters at her funeral don't they have anything better to do...)

(...son of a bitch isn't gonna walk if I have anything to do with it...)

(...I'll kill you you piece of shit I will end your fucking LIFE...)

Rigg had been there, he recalled, and had physically restrained him from further action, no mean feat when Hoffman had been fighting like a maddened bear to reach his intended prey from all the way across the courtroom. Whatever had brought these remembrances back to such gruesome prominence had something to do with the box, he was sure of it. The images had been forced upon him by the thing with such insistent clarity that he felt as if he were being reminded of them for a very specific reason. Quite without willing himself to do so, he sat forward and picked it up as his eyes glazed over a little.

The rain continued to beat against the window of his apartment as he ran cool fingertips over the surface of the box. Whoever had made it had certainly been an artist of some proficiency; the joints between the panels were invisible to all but the closest scrutiny. As he passed the barest touch over the top, however, he found his thumb resting on what felt like a button in the centre of the panel, standing ever so slightly proud of the surrounding brass fretwork. Tilting his head an inch to the side, he pressed down on it.

The box slid apart with no friction and only the subtlest scratch of gears, and though he had been expecting some reaction, Hoffman jerked and almost dropped it. Instead, he set it down again on the table in front of him, moving quickly, his hands shaking a little as the box completed its movement and then stopped with a soft click. He sucked in a sharp, ragged breath and watched it owlishly, but there were no further signs of activity. In some way, nevertheless – and Hoffman found himself disturbed at this thought – the thing seemed to be radiating potential.

He narrowed his gaze at it, bit his lip fractionally and then stretched out his hand once more, fingers extended, approaching the box as if it might rear up like a snake and strike at him.

Nothing. He ran his hand over it, examining the dull surface of unpolished wood that had been exposed by the movement of the mechanism, and finding it, just here, flawed and almost prosaic. There was even the slightest warp in the grain of the mahogany where the artisan's tools had been unable to reduce the surface to a perfect plane, and he circled this with his fingertip for a heartbeat before withdrawing once more and sitting back with an absorbed half-smile playing about his mouth, a smile that was part bewilderment and part embarrassment at his own apprehension.

"Just a fucking puzzle box," he said, and then paused. There had been something else, some soft harmonic to his voice as he spoke, a shadow of a breath behind those five words; and in contrast to his own rough tones, that dim echo upon the edge of hearing had been as smooth as satin. It had him turning over his shoulder for a second, but the apartment was empty and quite innocent of sound but for the mindless beat of the clock above the fireplace.

Now feeling even more ashamed of himself for jumping at spooks and shades, Hoffman turned back to see the box deliberately and quietly realigning itself. The section that had extruded itself was sliding back into place, the hidden machinery whispering and the tiny gears moving tooth by tooth until the fault line had been restored and all was, once more, whole.

The outgoing breath snagged in his throat, and when it emerged, it was as a hoarse, self-conscious laugh. This sound wrenched Hoffman out of his fugue, and he ran his palms down his face, sighing roughly, before climbing to his feet. He staggered a little as he did so – the effects of the whisky seemed to be coming into play at last – but then righted himself and headed for the door, shaking his head at his own folly.

It wasn't until he was halfway through the door, drawing up the hood of his coat, that he turned back and subjected the box to one last, calculated stare from across the room. It lay just where he'd left it, set at an angle on the glowing surface of the coffee table, and seemed somehow to reduce everything else in the apartment to background inconsequentia. The light in the room was warm and soft, but seemed to lose all its colour and spirit against the faces of the box itself.

Ridiculous. He shook his head again and turned away, finished closing the front door, double-locked it behind him and headed for the elevator at the far end of the passage.

Perhaps two minutes passed in stifling silence, but then the box moved once more. A second movement in its heart disturbed its equilibrium, suddenly and violently, and the thing teetered onto an edge before landing on a different face entirely. Several sharp cracks opened across the top and along its flanks, exposing yet more untouched black wood, and this section made one simple turn about its axis before sliding back into line.

The lights in the apartment dimmed, struggled, brightened once more and then faded as searing white sparks crawled from the box, drawing lines of freezing cold fire in their wake.

Hoffman's cell beeped just as he pushed through the door of the bar, but he fished it out of his pocket and turned it off without checking who'd sent the text. Probably Matthews anyway, he reasoned; he was not in regular contact with anyone else these days. If it was Matthews then it was police business, and Hoffman had no intention of letting work intrude on his new plan of getting so drunk that he couldn't see straight.

He hadn't been to the bar in several weeks, and this was not only because the manager had made veiled threats about a ban after Hoffman's last marathon drinking session in there. There was also the matter of residual shame over his burgeoning alcoholism – the detective wasn't that deep in self-denial that he refused to take ownership of the technical term for his habits of late – and there was another reason, a reason that he was currently struggling to recall as he propped his elbows on the bar and dropped his chin into one hand.

"What do you want?"

This smooth yet scathing tone cut through his reverie, and at the same time, provided a reminder of that last, formerly elusive reason. He dragged his gaze up and flinched briefly beneath the weight of a green-eyed, piercing glare.

"Scotch, please," he said, somewhat lamely, although he felt that any attempt he might make to apologise to Samantha for his past behaviour would only provoke her. In truth, he remembered well enough, he'd just been trying to avoid the memory. Last time he'd been here, she'd taken him home at the end of her shift and he'd made a valiant effort at trying to fuck her, to which she'd responded until it became clear that he was far too inebriated to rise to the challenge – at which point she had kicked him onto her couch with an aggrieved snort and then slammed the bedroom door behind her.

To her credit, Samantha returned with Hoffman's drink without comment, but merely smacked it down in front of him before retiring to the far end of the bar and forcing preoccupation on herself with a visible effort of will. It was late on a weekday evening and the place was virtually deserted, but it was apparent that she would rather walk over red hot iron nails than engage him in conversation any further. He shrugged, and closed his hand around the glass.

There was a whisper of chiffon beside him, and then a subtle creak as someone took the next bar-stool. Hoffman did not turn at once, but before he did, he caught a beguiling scent at the far edge of perception. Not perfume; it was both sweeter and subtler than any man-made fragrance, more like a distant field of flowers in early summer. He was still fighting to identify it as he lowered his glass once more and then redirected his attention, turning to his right.

The woman beside him was undeniably beautiful, but in a way that – somehow – didn't quite fit, almost as if she'd stepped out of another time, be it the past or the future. Her eyes were slanted, wide-set, and so dark that he found himself on the brink of losing his focus in them entirely. Those eyes were sheltered behind a soft fall of shining black hair, but her gaze was no less penetrating for this. Her lips were as scarlet as sin and she was dressed to match. Hoffman kept on staring in silence until she smiled slightly and leaned in a little to speak into his ear.

"You've been alone too long," she said, in the tiniest of accents, which Hoffman thought might be French, though he was mostly too busy wondering at this odd introduction. Before he could speak up himself, however, she'd sat back and, all seriousness now, offered him a slender white hand.

"Angelique," she said, and then said no more.

"Uh, listen..." he began, and then trailed off. Angelique was watching him with the smallest curve to her mouth, and it had drained his sense of propriety, such as it was. She was clearly hitting on him, and considering the way he must look, with both exhaustion and alcohol conspiring to line his eyes in pink and what felt like half the filth of the city under his skin, that was in itself a significant curiosity. He wondered if perhaps she was a hooker, but –

"I'm not selling anything, Detective," she purred, and now that knowing smile broadened a notch. Hoffman winced – had she read his mind?

"I didn't say you were," he said, and averted his gaze briefly. As soon as he had done so, however, he felt her fingers on his cheek, and Angelique turned his head back to her once more. Her touch was warm, and her nails scratched slightly but insistently at the soft skin below his eye, jarring his nerve endings as they did so. He reacted to this, reaching up to take her wrist and turn her hand aside.

"Forgive me," she said, withdrawing, although there was nothing but a token apology about her manner. "To touch another soul...it's been too long. Haven't you felt that, too?"

"How long?" he asked, or thought he did.

"Centuries..." she whispered, and now her long fingers were laced with his own and her nails were digging into the back of his hand, and this time, he didn't stop her.

Every single instinct in Hoffman's brain was screeching like a murder of crows, telling him to loose himself from that grip, get up, turn and leave at once. The woman in front of him was obviously either drunk, high or insane, any one of which was bad news, and yet he remained, mostly because there was nothing about her manner that suggested she was anything but rational to the bone. His eyes strayed from her own, tracing the line of her lips, the shadows beneath her chin and collarbones, and lingered on her cleavage.

The tight bodice of her dress pinned her breasts tight against her but failed to restrain them altogether, and over the edge of the crimson brocade and gold braid trim he could just about see the upper curves of her areolae, which were startlingly pink set against the smooth white flesh of her breasts. Hoffman drew a very deep, quiet breath and, with that, felt a telling twitch in his groin and shifted awkwardly on his seat.

"Don't fight it," Angelique was saying, from so very far away. He dragged his head up with great difficulty and focused on her eyes once more. They were solemn now, and much wider than before, and where she'd seemed opaque before, now he could feel the hunger radiating from her. Not just hunger for sex, he knew, but for his heart and soul, too.

"I don't think I can do this," he said, absently, still lost in that fixed stare.

"What frightens you so?" she asked him. Her grasp tightened to the point of pain, and he felt the skin on his knuckles break and bleed as she drove her nails into him. Still, he ignored it.

"I'm not afraid."

"Then speak your mind," she said, softly. "I can give you everything you've ever wanted. Don't think I can't see it all written in your eyes. You despise this world and you wish it was dead, but there are worse things than death, Detective, believe me. Flesh is the only thing that makes it worth enduring, and it's the only thing you truly desire. Flesh to be bound, and broken, and bled, just as you're bleeding now..."

She released his hand and sat back, then raised her fingers to her mouth and sucked his blood from them. "I see everything," she told him, "and I can show it all to you, if you wish." Still holding his gaze, Angelique slipped from her seat and stood, and before he could say anything more, she'd turned and left the bar, leaving the door to creak shut behind her.

Hoffman realised that his mouth was hanging open, and promptly closed it, and as he did so he tasted blood in his own mouth, too.

"Princess..."

Angelique heard that voice in her blood and her bones rather than in her ears, and she knew that she had no power to disobey the summons it contained. Clenching her fists in apprehension, she stepped into the foul gloom of the alley behind the bar to meet her maker.

"My Lord," she said, though she kept her chin raised, this being the smallest gesture of defiance she felt able to muster. He did not keep her in waiting, as was his habit at times, but melted out of the shadows at her side and stood over her with his head on one side.

"I did not request your attendance, Princess," he said, and though his voice was as hollow as ever, she heard a clear strand of chastisement in it.

"I go where my Lord goes," she said, without looking around.

"Oh?" he said, archly. "And did I also encourage your attempt to seduce my penitent? I don't think so. You display a regrettable appetite for the pleasures of the flesh, Princess, which puzzles me all the more for one who seems unaware of the many other purposes to which it can be put. I trust you have not forgotten that what form you claim is at my disposal?"

"I am not ungrateful to you, or to Leviathan," she said, and now she watched as he moved around her shoulder and into her sight. The moon had found a break in the clouds and now it cast a chilled glow over his face, darting from the myriad polished pins piercing his cheeks and scalp and silvering those empty black eyes for a moment.

"Come now. Gratitude does not become you, and neither does sincerity," he said, scornfully. "I watch you all the time, Princess; what could have had you believe I did not? You cannot be trusted."

"I don't ask for your trust," she snapped, determined to assert herself in however small a manner. "Only for the scraps from your table."

"This one is mine," he said, warning her.

"May we not both take our pleasure from him?"

He reached out now, closing dry, freezing fingers on Angelique's chin and leaning in close to her, so close that his shadow crossed her eyes and left her shivering in its depths.

"Very well," he said, after several seconds of this study. "But hear me now: stand in my way, challenge my claim on Mark Hoffman in the slightest and I will deprive you of form once more, and this time I'll cast you into the Schism for good measure, where you will find out that even the soulless can burn in agony. Do you understand me, child?"

"Yes," she said, and pulled herself free of both his hand and his gaze. "I understand."