Vander’s wagonette came up rue Lagrange. The abbey’s twin bell towers stood like stone exclamation points at the far end of the street.
“I think you’re overreacting,” Ingrid said, not for the first time since leaving Clos du Vie.
Vander sat beside her at the reins, straining for control over his temper. He’d lost it when Monsieur Constantine had asked them to enter the Paris sewers to search for the missing Duster, Léon. He had grabbed hold of Ingrid’s arm and all but dragged her from the orangery. Since leaving the chateau, Vander hadn’t said more than three words: In when they had reached his carriage, and Hold on as he’d slapped the reins and torn down Clos du Vie’s long, winding drive.
He’d breathed loudly, inhaling and exhaling with little growls when Ingrid had asked why he’d reacted so badly. Finally, as the abbey and rectory loomed on the horizon, he spoke.
“Do you have any idea how dangerous the sewers are, Ingrid?” he asked. “Constantine does. He knows how many demons, and how many fissures between our world and the Underneath, are down there. And he still played on your sympathy to force you to risk yourself for a boy who murdered his entire family.”
The sewers did seem like the perfect place for demons to lurk. Vander’s assessment of the dangers didn’t surprise her. But something else did.
“He’s a Duster,” Ingrid said. “Like us, Vander, but alone. We have each other. He has no one.”
Like them, Léon would have somewhere on his skin the two strawberry ovals that could easily pass as birthmarks. Ingrid and Grayson had always thought the matching marks on their calves were just that. But then she’d seen the same marks on Vander’s neck, and Axia herself had explained to Ingrid what they really were: the brand of a Duster.
Vander took another long breath. This time, he chased it with a glance at Ingrid. He’d calmed, and she knew it was because of what she’d said. We have each other.
“I know,” he said. “But if we’re going to go into the sewers to look for him, we’re going to do it smart. We’ll need more Alliance. More silver. Maybe even a pair of wings.”
Luc. He means Luc. Ingrid smiled as Vander steered the horses through the break in the hedgerow along the cross street of rue Dante. The hedges stayed thick and green during the winter months and blocked the view of the old stone rectory from the street.
If Vander was jealous of Luc, he didn’t usually show it. Luc was Ingrid’s protector, and because of that, Vander accepted him. In fact, Vander had accepted much about Ingrid that she’d never thought he would. He knew about the fire that had harmed her friend, Anna. He knew she’d made a fool of herself over Jonathan Walker. It had taken a heavy dose of humility to part with the secrets, but Vander had rewarded her for it. He hadn’t judged her. Hadn’t done anything more than stroke her cheek and say “Jonathan Walker sounds like an idiot.”
The only time a flicker of jealousy flared underneath those wire spectacles of his was when he came upon Luc and Ingrid together. It didn’t happen often. Luc had made her a vow that whatever he’d led her to believe was happening between them was over—and impossible anyway. He’d been true to his word. But now and then, Vander would come to the rectory and see Luc either handing Ingrid down from the landau or working with her in the abbey, cleaning it out to make way for the gallery. It always made Ingrid uneasy. Which of them was she supposed to look at? Speak to?
She quickly scanned the carriage house and stables, then the abbey’s doors. No sign of Luc, even though she knew he’d already sensed her return. Vander held out his hand once he’d braked and descended.
“I’ll send word to Constantine,” he said as they walked to the front door. “Maybe Chelle will help. Gabby, perhaps?”
Her sister was training for the Alliance, yes, but Ingrid still shook her head. “I don’t want her in any danger.”
Vander cocked his head. “But you don’t mind putting yourself in deep?”
Ingrid looked away and opened the front door. Of course she wanted to protect Gabby: she was only sixteen, and she was dangerously eager to prove herself.
The moment Ingrid stepped into the small foyer, a familiar voice boomed from the sitting room. She went still, one of her gloves peeled halfway off. Vander had come in as well, and he passed her now, craning his neck to see inside the room. The peacock-blue drapes had been only partly closed.
“How could you?” the voice boomed again. It struck Ingrid and rattled her to her bones. She must have given a gasp, because Vander whipped his head toward her.
He was mouthing Who? when she raced past him and threw open the drapes, one glove on, one off.
The sitting room fell quiet as all heads swiveled to look at her. Her mother, Lady Charlotte Brickton, sat pale-faced on the sofa closest to the hearth. Gabby stood at the half-shuttered windows, her eyes red rimmed. And between them, standing in the center of the sitting room, his dark navy pinstriped suit perfectly pressed and starched, was Lord Philip Northcross Waverly III, Earl of Brickton.
Otherwise known as Father.
“Papa?” Ingrid said, stepping into the room. The surprised grin hadn’t yet formed fully on her lips when Lord Brickton stabbed a rigid finger at her.
“You!” he bellowed. Ingrid noticed his crimson cheeks, the pronounced vein down the center of his forehead. “You wrote that she had been injured, not that half of her face had been torn off!”
Ingrid froze, holding the ridiculous half-formed grin. Her father was shouting at her. She hadn’t seen him in nearly three months. Now here he was, a surprise arrival, and he was shouting at her. Ingrid felt as if she’d just tripped over something and gone sprawling face-first.
“I—” she started, quickly meeting Gabby’s wide eyes. She’d been crying.
“Where is your brother?” her father demanded.
Her mother was on the edge of the sofa cushion, her lips pursed as if in indecision: intercede, or let her husband have it out?
Their father was supposed to have been on his way to Paris when the hellhound attack had happened, when Ingrid and Grayson had been taken into the Underneath. But a few days later a telegram had arrived, announcing that an issue had arisen in the House of Lords. Their father would need to stay in London indefinitely. Ingrid’s letter to him had been brief, and yes, she’d played down the gravity of Gabby’s wounds, but only because she hadn’t wanted to worry him. And perhaps, if she was honest, Ingrid hadn’t been ready to have her father come to Paris just yet. He would be an outsider to the world she, Gabby, and Grayson had become a part of. How could they explain any of it to him?
“I believe your son was to meet with an architect this morning,” Vander said, entering the sitting room from behind Ingrid. “For abbey repairs.”
Lord Brickton’s scowl deepened. “And you are?”
“Vander Burke, my lord,” he answered, and Ingrid was impressed at just how unruffled he sounded. This was not an ideal first meeting. “I’m a friend of your—”
“Mr. Burke, this is a family affair. If you don’t mind.”
Ingrid held her breath. She had never witnessed her father being so rude before. Lady Brickton flushed violently, and Gabby’s eyes grew wide with disbelief. Vander, however, bowed deeply.
“Of course,” he said. He straightened and took Ingrid’s hand. He pressed his lips to the leather. “I’ll call on you soon.”
He had made a point to take her gloved hand, not the bared one. Pressing his lips to her skin in front of her father would have been scandalously wrong.
Vander was already trying to gain her father’s favor, she realized. Though at the moment, she couldn’t understand why. Her father was being an absolute beast.
“You’re protecting him,” he said as soon as the front door had closed behind Vander.
Ingrid turned back to her father. “Protecting whom?”
Brickton swiped an arm out. “Your brother! Don’t lie to me, Ingrid. You didn’t relate the severity of your sister’s injuries because it was he who caused them!”
They all stared at him, momentarily shocked silent. Gabby recovered first.
“He did this to you—don’t lie to protect him. He doesn’t deserve it,” their father quickly retorted.
Gabby and Ingrid shook their heads, their eyes meeting quickly. What was their father saying?
“He would never,” Ingrid said. What would make their father even suggest something so awful?
“Philip, it was that crazed man,” their mother said, finding her voice at last. “Ingrid wrote you. She told you about Nora and the other girls he kidnapped and killed. Gabriella was lucky. She got away—”
Lord Brickton hacked at the convenient excuse they had fed all the news reporters and police in the days following Gabby’s injury and Nora’s murder.
“Lucky? You call this lucky?” He stabbed his finger again, this time in the direction of Gabby’s inflamed cheeks. The flush made her pink scars ever brighter.
“My point is, it wasn’t our son who harmed her,” Lady Brickton said.
Ingrid’s father turned on his heel and stormed toward the windows overlooking the churchyard. Gabby, standing near them, darted away, toward Ingrid. They shared a horrified glance.
“He’s a fiend. You think you know him, but you don’t. None of you does,” their father said, staring out at the snowy lawns.
What on earth was happening? Their father had shown up unexpectedly, exploded into a rage, and was now calling his own son a fiend? Ingrid took hold of Gabby’s hand and pulled her close. She felt her little sister tremble. A spark shuttled from Ingrid’s right shoulder, like a shooting star arcing toward her fingertips. Anger. She was getting angry, and that always set the sparks off. She breathed deeply and remembered the cold. She closed her eyes and imagined shoving her arms into a bank of snow.
“It wasn’t Grayson.” Ingrid’s whisper cracked loud against the silence. She opened her eyes. Her father was still staring out the window, his face pinched.
It hadn’t been Grayson, though it very well could have been. When he’d been in hellhound form, he’d tried to kill Gabby. He’d sunk his fangs into Ingrid’s skin, injecting her with enough demon poison to take her through a fissure and into the Underneath. He’d certainly had the claws to do the kind of damage that had been done to Gabby’s face.
But to tell their father this, to confide in him the truths those at l’Abbaye Saint-Dismas now knew, would ruin everything. If he knew the truth, he’d whisk them all back to London. It was a fate none of them wanted. Mother, with her gallery on the horizon and artists barraging her with requests to exhibit; Gabby, with her Alliance dreams and Nolan’s promised return; Grayson, who was nothing at all like the young man who’d left London in the fall. And as for Ingrid, returning to London could be a disastrous move. Axia could get to Ingrid anywhere. Paris, London, the darkest corners of Africa—it didn’t matter. There were fissures all over the world. When the Alliance leaders, a group known as the Directorate, had strongly urged Ingrid and Grayson to go to Rome for better protection, she had flat out declined. At least here in Paris, Ingrid had Luc. She had Vander and the Alliance members she knew and trusted. Leaving them simply wasn’t an option.
“Philip—” their mother started to say, but the front door opened and then slammed, silencing her. Ingrid turned to the blue drapes. Grayson never had quite grasped how to gracefully shut a door.
The drapes swished aside and her twin stepped into the sitting room. His dark blue eyes settled on their father immediately. His blond hair was a tousled mess, his jaw tight, nostrils flaring. Grayson still held one panel of the drapes in his clenched fist.
“I half expected you to have disappeared again,” their father said to him.
He still believed Grayson had driven their mother into a panic last December when he’d gone out carousing, sending no word at all. Grayson had actually been a prisoner in the demon realm, but of course their father couldn’t know that.
“Grayson has taken charge of the abbey’s repairs,” Lady Brickton offered, slipping into her role as ambassadress between warring father and son. She would have a new role now: protector of her children’s secrets.
Lord Brickton gave a sarcastic snort, the kind he reserved for anything he found ridiculous or a waste of time. Ingrid flicked her gaze back to Grayson. She couldn’t be sure that it actually had happened, but for the briefest moment, she thought she saw a ripple of color roll over the whites of his eyes, turning them pale rose. In a flash, it was gone, and Grayson quickly averted his gaze, staring at the floor.
“The architects will be here Monday,” he said to their mother, ignoring their father’s presence completely. “The restorers can’t begin on the final stained-glass panel until next week, and they think the rose window will need more time than they predicted.”
The report floated out into the dead silence. Finally, their mother cleared her throat and thanked him. Grayson didn’t spare them another moment. He turned on his heel and disappeared through the drapes, into the foyer, and back out the front door. Slamming it yet again.
Ingrid let out the breath she’d been holding.
“One more incident,” their father said, his attention resting on Gabby and her scars. “One more incident and I will put an end to this. We will all go home—where we belong, might I add.”
He rushed from the sitting room, barking to the butler to send for his valet. Ingrid, Gabby, and even their mother, who was still seated, seemed to sway, exhausted, in his wake. One incident? Ingrid’s heart plummeted. In a house filled with demon gifts and a gargoyle, incidents were bound to happen.
Grayson slipped along boulevard Saint-Germain’s slushy pavements. His only objective was to get as far away from the rectory as possible. He felt his feet go out from underneath him, but he shot out a hand and grasped a lamppost before he went down on his arse like a fool in front of everyone on the whole damned street.
He swore beneath his breath and raked a hand through his hair once he’d righted himself. Why come to Paris now? Couldn’t the mighty Earl of Brickton have stayed in London for the rest of the winter? As if the old man even cared about the bloody gallery. In all the years Grayson’s mother had dreamed aloud about her future endeavor, Father had answered with long sighs and vague promises such as “I’ll think about it, my dear.”
No, the only reason Lord Brickton was here now was because of Grayson’s disappearance back in December. He’d been gone a little less than two weeks, and he remembered his time in the Underneath well. He remembered his prison, that hot, dry hive flickering with blue light. Grayson still woke from nightmares about the hooded woman, Axia, and the fanged man—a hellhound, Grayson had realized, though in human form, something hellhounds couldn’t maintain while on the earth’s surface. I require more flexibility in my pets, Axia had said. She needed her pets to look human on the outside, even when they were monsters at heart.
Monsters like Grayson.
He had besmirched the Brickton name plenty back in London, long before Mama had called on the police to search for him, hired the fake private detective Nolan Quinn, and sent urgent telegrams to Waverly House pleading for assistance from Scotland Yard.
Of course, Grayson’s father had refused to help, and without a good explanation. Had he been honest, Lady Brickton would have needed smelling salts to revive her. Grayson would have loved to have seen that telegram:
No to Scotland Yard -(Stop)- Our son killed a girl -(Stop)- The police are already nosing about -(Stop)- Be glad you are rid of him -(Stop)-
Being flippant was the only way to endure the harsh truth of it. Lord Brickton had shipped Grayson off to Paris for one reason: to shield him from the London police should they connect Grayson to the prostitute found dead on the rocky mudflats of the Thames last September.
Because Grayson had indeed been the one who’d killed her.
And now here he was, drawing more attention to himself in Paris. Attention his father had wanted to avoid entirely. No wonder he’d shown up. No wonder he’d looked ready to throttle Grayson back in that sitting room.
Then again, he was pretty sure his father wouldn’t have made it halfway across the room alive. And that was why Grayson had fled the rectory for the frigid February air. For the slippery streets and the nameless faces crowding the pavements along the main boulevard in their arrondissement. He’d needed to calm his racing heart, his building fire. Grayson had felt it come close to the surface, and he knew Ingrid had seen it, too.
No, Grayson hadn’t shifted from human to hellhound in months. But it was getting harder and harder to resist. He thought again about the man with fangs. He came to Grayson in nightmares sometimes. The man would taunt him, saying that in the end, he wouldn’t be able to fight what he was.
Grayson’s feet stopped carving a path through the slush and he stood still, hands in his pockets. Axia had said she’d wanted more flexibility in her hounds. If they couldn’t hold human form on earth, how valuable would someone like Grayson—someone who could shift—be to her?
The scent of coffee and bread came at him, pulling him away from the panic that question always inspired. He knew exactly where his aimless wandering had taken him. Or maybe it hadn’t been aimless after all. He always seemed to end up here.
Café Julius wasn’t busy. Through the windows, where the café’s name had been etched in red and gold across the glass, Grayson saw maybe a half-dozen patrons. He pushed open the door, the small brass bell ringing in his arrival. From the corner of his eye, he saw her turn, look up from what she was doing at the counter.
Grayson went to a small round table near the window and pulled out a chair. Why did he keep doing this to himself? He shrugged off his jacket, his temperature from encountering his father in the rectory still cranking. Maybe he kept coming here because he knew he deserved to be punished. What he’d done … Grayson had wanted to forget it. He’d wanted to pretend that it had never happened. Being in the Underneath and hearing Axia speak about it with such nonchalance—as if she had been proud of him—had made him ill.
The truth was, he didn’t remember killing the girl. He didn’t remember anything beyond seeing her in that greasy tavern. She’d hooked him with her eyes, an unspoken offer lingering there. And then an intoxicating, all-consuming need had overcome him.
That was where Grayson’s memory started to haze.
A desire for her had driven him out of his chair. He’d followed her though the tavern’s back door, into a dank, dark alley. He remembered the confusing hunger pangs clenching his stomach, closing off his throat. He didn’t want the girl the way he’d wanted other girls.
“If you’ve come to ask me to stop training your sister, you’re wasting your breath,” Chelle said. She stood beside the table with a shining silver coffeepot in one hand and a cup and saucer on a tray in the other. His usual request.
Grayson smiled, but not just because she’d anticipated his order. He could never hold back a smile when Chelle spoke. She sounded like a gruff military general. He sat back in his seat and put an ankle on one knee before glancing up at her. He furrowed his brow. No doubt she’d pour the contents of that silver pot in his lap if he said the wrong thing.
“I’ve come for the coffee, actually.”
Chelle narrowed her round eyes at him in suspicion. She wore what she always did when working her shifts at Café Julius: male waiters’ attire, complete with a white blouse, black vest, and tie. She’d put on breeches today, though sometimes she wore a long black skirt. He liked her in breeches. And the bright red scarf tied around her waist accentuated her petite hips.
Grayson had imagined spreading his palms around those hips. She was beautiful. She was Alliance. And she didn’t like Grayson at all.
“So, may I?” he asked.
Chelle stared at him. “May you what?”
He looked pointedly at the silver coffeepot. “Have a coffee?”
She saw the pot in her hand and seemed to startle, as if just remembering she was holding it. With an ungraceful motion, she set the cup and saucer on the table and splashed in some steaming black coffee. She spilled, drops splattering on the white linen tablecloth. Chelle flushed.
Grayson smiled, liking the color on her cheeks. But then another scent cut through the bitter aroma of roasted beans. Sharp and decadent. At once sweet and tart.
A memory sparked. Grayson, rising from his engorged haze in that London alley. Warm blood smeared over his hands, his shirt. He’d licked his lips and tasted it in his mouth. So sweet. So delicious. And then he’d seen her on the stones beneath him. So much blood. Her blood.
Grayson bolted up from his chair and Chelle jumped back, the flush still on her cheeks. Blood. That’s what he smelled. The rush of Chelle’s blood to her cheeks.
“Did I spill on you?” she asked, looking at his lap. “It wasn’t intentional. I only purposely spill hot liquids into the laps of old men who wink at me.”
Grayson brushed at his trousers, going along with it. “What about young men who wink at you?” he asked, attempting to laugh off what had just happened. What had been happening for some time, actually.
He could smell blood as it sluiced through a person’s veins. He could hear the heart pumping it. And every time, it made his throat hot and tight.
“Forget their laps,” Chelle replied. “I aim for their hands.”
She didn’t smile. Grayson wondered whether she might be serious. He sat down, searching for something else to say to her. After all, she was the reason he always found himself here.
“I didn’t realize you were so devoted to my sister’s training.” He held his coffee closer to his nose, wanted to smell that instead of another whiff of Chelle’s coppery blood. It made every muscle in his body tight, as if he were holding himself together by will somehow.
“I am practical, not devoted. We need the help.” She held his gaze and vaulted a brow with obvious expectancy.
Grayson pushed his coffee away. “No. I’ve already told Ingrid and Gabby and Vander—and you, if I recall. I’m no demon hunter.”
They all wanted him to be one, though. They wanted him to join. Pick up a silver sword or dagger and prowl the streets at night. Protect the city and its people.
“You know about us, Grayson. You know about the Underneath and the Dispossessed,” she said.
He stared into the coffee he no longer wanted. Yes, he knew about them. But they didn’t know about him. They didn’t know how hard it was becoming to fight the urge to shift, and he certainly didn’t wish to tell them.
Chelle exhaled loudly. “Don’t you feel as though you should do something?”
“Like what?” he asked, more curtly than he liked. It made his pulse jump, which was never a good thing. Not anymore. He got to his feet and Chelle stared up at him.
“Something,” she answered. “Anything other than hide. You’ve already proven you do that well enough.”
She drew back as soon as she’d said it. Her lips parted and her expression betrayed a look of regret. But it was gone just as fast.
“Is it because of your dust?” she asked. “Vander has it, too, and it hasn’t stopped him from doing good things for the Alliance.”
“Don’t compare me to Vander Burke,” Grayson muttered, reaching into his pocket for a few coins. “He doesn’t turn into an enormous rabid dog.”
“It only happened once, Grayson, and you were under Axia’s influence.” Chelle lowered her voice. “If you would just try—”
“You want the wrong things.” Grayson tossed the coins onto the table. “You shouldn’t be asking me to join you. You should be asking me to stay away.”
Grayson started for the door. Why did he keep doing this to himself? Going to Café Julius, seeing Chelle. It never made him feel better. The Alliance was interested in him and his sister because of their dust, and had gone so far as to request that they go to Rome for observation and interviews, even protection from Axia, if need be. Neither he nor Ingrid had accepted, though. He couldn’t imagine anything worse than being drilled with questions about his demon half or letting the secret he clutched come out into the open.
If anyone knew what he’d done in London, knew the urges he fought every single day, they would realize he shouldn’t be hunting anything.
They would realize they should be hunting him.