Most of East End is no place for a woman walking alone at night, much less a lady in fine clothes. Stephen had felt her before he'd seen anything, an inexplicably violent roil in the ether like a heavy shape passing through the fog, or the whirlpools and eddies left in the wake of a deep water monster. His hands ache with it. He has been told that he has this sort of effect on others when caught in the grip of fury, or in the line of duty when he'd been forced to pull in all his considerable power to strike down an enemy, but he's so rarely felt it himself. The sense of something stronger. Something old.

Profiling is not his forte. He stops short, cradling his arm and eyeing her warily, noting the fabric she's wearing and the cut of her dress. No woman of her social class would speak to a man like him under ordinary circumstances. No woman of her social class would be here in the first place, and he looks hard at her, trying to see past the woman, but his best work is done with his hands. He'd have to touch her bare skin to get anything useful.

"I might ask you the same question, my lady. Are you lost?"