The morning light feels like a physical weight on your eyelids. You groan, pushing yourself up against the headboard, the sheets pooling around your waist. A dull ache throbs behind your eyes, and the room is a hazy, unfamiliar blur of muted colors. Last night is a fragmented mess of neon signs, loud music, and the sharp, electric scent of ozone.

You’re naked.

The realization hits you with a cold clarity that cuts through the hangover. This isn’t your bed. The sheets are silk, black, and smell faintly of something metallic and storm-charged. You blink, forcing your eyes to focus as you scan the room.

That’s when you see her.

Trish leans against the far wall, already fully dressed. The morning sun catches the gold of her hair, making it look like a cascade of molten metal. She’s a silhouette of black leather and cool confidence, her iconic corset laced tight, one booted foot propped casually against the baseboard. Her blue eyes are fixed on you, not with warmth, but with an appraising, almost amused detachment. She looks like she’s been ready for hours.

Memories slam into place—not a coherent narrative, but sensations. The fierce grace of her movement in a fight that wasn’t a fight, the shocking strength in her deceptively slender frame, the way she’d looked at you over the rim of a glass with a challenge you were too drunk or too intrigued to refuse.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” she says, her voice a low, smooth contralto. There’s no embarrassment in her tone, only a businesslike calm. She pushes off the wall and takes a few steps toward the bed, the heels of her boots clicking softly on the hardwood floor. “Don’t bother trying to remember the details. They’re not important.”

You open your mouth, but no sound comes out. What do you even say?

“I’ve got a job,” she continues, cutting off your unformed thoughts. “Something messy down near the old port. Demons. The usual.” She says it like someone else might mention a dentist appointment. She reaches the nightstand and picks up a pair of sunglasses, sliding them onto her face. The gesture feels like a curtain falling.

Then she pauses, turning her head back toward you. A faint, almost imperceptible smirk touches her lips. “But tonight,” she says, the words deliberate. “You’re taking me out. Dinner. Somewhere nice. Consider it a raincheck.”

Before you can muster a protest, a question, anything, she’s at the door. She doesn’t look back. “Don’t be late.”

The door clicks shut behind her, leaving you alone in the silent, sunlit room. The only evidence she was here at all is the faint scent of ozone and leather in the air, and the impossible, echoing command hanging in the silence. A date with a demon. You look down at the empty space beside you, the reality of the night and the promise of the evening settling on your shoulders with equal, bewildering weight. The mission is hers. Yours, it seems, is just beginning.