He wouldn't have looked twice except for the way she lifts her arm to catch hold of the overhead bar, swaying with the train's motion as though she is rehearsing for something. Thin-boned hands and a few fair curls escaping from the muffling bulk of her hat; one of the city's hundred of ballerinas, Lucifer has no doubt, and she lifts her eyes as she becomes aware of his assessing gaze -- looks away instantly -- looks back, and colour starts to appear in her cheeks. Lucifer's coat is expensive and cut to perfection and the cold has brightened his too-bright eyes, but the hunger that is in her face is not the normal physical hunger but rather that profoundly Russian lower-class hunger for a domestic blaze, for the touch of fur-warmed hands, for oil lamps and warm soups and anything that holds the wind at bay.

Because she has seen the fire in him, he asks her name, and her mouth tucks into a smile that only strengthens her resemblance to another small blonde dancer that Lucifer has known.

"Aleksandra Viktorovna Korovina."

And this is the problem with this country. No power on earth, or above, or below, could entice Lucifer -- who speaks in titles because they often hold more meaning than names themselves -- to use a patronymic. To define himself in such a manner.

So he says, "Sasha. A pretty name," in a voice like strong coffee, and watches the way she moves through affront at the familiarity, and then uncertainty, and finally settles into a curiosity that goes well with the flush of her cheeks and the way her hair is caught in her eyelashes.

"And what should I call you?" she asks.

Lucifer smiles and says, "Kolya," because he has been Nikolay in this city for long enough to know what its diminutive sounds like when hissed through the lips of someone whose soul he holds in the palm of his gloved hand.