by Page Morgan
“Je suis désolé, mais non,” he answered, shaking his head as an afterthought in translation of his words.
“We will resolve this, Lady Brickton,” Constantine said quickly and earnestly. “There must be an explanation for his absence. If you wish it so, we can ask the police for their assistance.”
“Why haven’t they already been alerted?” Gabby asked, a fervent shine in her eyes.
Constantine fumbled with a few words in his own language before switching to English. “I have been told,” he said, “that an absence like this is not unheard of with Lord Fairfax. He is rather … tempestuous, the servants say. Here one moment, gone the next. Sometimes for a day or more.”
Ingrid let out a disappointed sigh. She’d hoped her brother had learned to tame his appetite for parties, clubs, and gambling halls. That hope crumbled at Constantine’s explanation.
An awkward silence fell as their mother tried to weather this statement of her son’s reputation with grace. After a moment, Constantine helped her by leaping in with lengthy introductions to the staff he’d worked with Grayson to prepare: the housekeeper and the butler, the cook, a kitchen maid, two housemaids, two footmen, a livery boy, and a driver—Bertrand. Their names were a flurry of accents and sounds to Ingrid as she looked from face to face, trying to follow who was who. Constantine’s rambling seemed to hush as her gaze tripped over, and then locked with, another.
Instantly, everything stilled—her mind, the room, her breathing. The eyes transfixing hers belonged to a young man. The irises, luminous green and gold flecked, were earthy and vibrant, like a patch of pale forest moss long forgotten by the sun. Thick charcoal lashes shaded them.
He didn’t look more than a year or two older than Ingrid, and he watched her with unsettling inquisitiveness. She stared back, sensing hostility in the way he looked at her. His lips weren’t set in a grimace, but the flare of his nostrils expressed clear contempt. As if Ingrid had somehow wronged him. Which was absurd. She had never met this boy before.
Ingrid finally forced her eyes to detach from his, only to find herself looking into the foyer’s rococo mirror. She saw the high color over her cheekbones. Blasted skin. She couldn’t be angry or embarrassed without showcasing it before everyone in the room.
“Ingrid, you look flushed,” her mother said once Constantine had finished his introductions. It only made her cheeks burn hotter. “You’re upset about your brother. You need to rest. Madam Bertot, could you see to it that Lady Ingrid receives tea?” She then turned to Ingrid’s lady’s maid from home. “Cherie, do draw a hot bath for her.”
For some reason, Ingrid’s complexion and slim physique caused people to believe she was frail and more likely to fall ill than her curvaceous sister. The assumption was wholly unwarranted, too, considering that Ingrid hadn’t been sick a day in her life. Nor had Grayson, in fact. Their physician had often marveled at the twins’ perpetual good health, but it never stopped their mother from fretting.
“Mother, I’m fine.” But Madam Bertot, who must have been the cook, and Cherie had already disappeared. The others, including the young man with the lime-gold eyes, remained.
“You mustn’t neglect your health, darling,” her mother said.
“My health is fine,” Ingrid ground out. “I think I would like to go for a walk, actually.” She needed air. Lots of it. Ingrid turned to Constantine. “Is there a bookshop close by, monsieur?”
Her brother liked books almost as much as he liked to breathe. If there was a bookshop nearby, Grayson would definitely frequent it. Anything she could do to track him down would be worthwhile.
Constantine glanced at the servants and cleared his throat. They took it as an order and filed back through the drapes. Except for the young man. He stood rigid, those curious eyes of his rooted on Ingrid.
Constantine followed the path of the young man’s stare before clearing his throat a second time. “Luc? Is there something you wish to say?”
Luc lowered his eyes in answer, to which Constantine replied impatiently, “Then you may leave.”
Luc disappeared through the drapes, leaving behind an uneasy silence. Constantine filled it by dismissing Ingrid’s question.
“It is nearly nightfall, and the Préfecture de Police has been circulating a notice for people to stay indoors after dark.”
Gabby and Ingrid met each other’s gazes with raised eyebrows.
“A few incidents have made night travel unsound,” he said in response to their confused expressions.
“Do these incidents have anything to do with my son’s disappearance?” their mother asked.
Constantine ushered them from the foyer into the sitting room. The place looked straight out of a castle, utterly medieval, with its tapestries, mullioned windows, and walls of roughly cut stone blocks. They soaked up the warmth of the fire, a natural barricade against the raw winter twilight.
“Certainly not. I am afraid, Lady Brickton, that your son leads a rather colorful lifestyle here.” He guided her to the sofa nearest the hearth.
“He’s young,” their mother said with practiced defense as she sat. It was the same excuse she often tried using on Papa. It worked better on Constantine.
“That he is,” he replied. “Lord Fairfax is a fine young man, and certainly not involved in these recent incidents.”
“What has been happening?” Gabby asked. She perched on the arm of the sofa at their mother’s side.
Constantine shuffled in place a moment, reluctance twitching at the corners of his mouth.
“A few young ladies have been reported missing. The papers print nothing but rumors, of course, and I do not like to speculate, but there are whisperings of violence having been involved.”
Their mother drew herself up with a shudder. “I do not wish my daughters to hear any more on the matter. They will stay indoors for the time being. Thank you, Monsieur Constantine.”
He made a deep bow. “Please, do not concern yourselves. You have had a long journey and, just as her ladyship has said, are in need of rest.”
Their mother rose to see him to the door, leaving Gabby and Ingrid alone in the sitting room.
“Did you hear him?” Gabby shot off the arm of the sofa. “ ‘Do not concern yourselves.’ He tells us our brother is missing, and that we should avoid the darkened streets of Paris for fear of losing our lives, and then tells us to never mind!”
Ingrid didn’t respond. Sometimes it was best to let Gabby’s outbursts just fizzle. Instead, she went to the window. The bottom sash had been rigged with wooden shutters painted the same peacock-blue as the drapes. Ingrid ran her fingers over the flaking paint in thought. That was what Ingrid did—she contemplated while Gabby took action.
Behind her, Gabby paced the room. “And I don’t care what Grayson’s reputation is. Four days gone without a word? It’s too long. The police should have been called by now.”
Through the top panes of the mullioned glass, the snow covering the churchyard looked pale violet. A stone fountain had been turned off, and snow-crusted apple trees and boxwood shrubs lined the yard. Four days. The effects of any wild soirée Grayson might have attended would have worn off long ago, and besides, Ingrid’s sixth sense was positively humming.
“We should find out more about these ‘incidents,’ ” Gabby said, nervously patting the sides of her skirts. “I hardly know what to think.”
Ingrid did, however. Something bad had happened to her brother. It wasn’t a knowledge she could put into words. It was only something she could feel, just as when, after they’d left the nursery for their own bedrooms, Grayson would wake from a nightmare and Ingrid would instinctively wake as well. Even if her dream had been a happy one, she’d know somehow to leave it so that she might tiptoe into Grayson’s room and climb into bed beside him, assure him it had only been a dream.
Ingrid stared up at the ruined abbey, at the series of stone gargoyles stamped darkly against the twilight. The sight of them made her shiver, and she started to
look away.
From the corner of her eye she saw the wings of one hunched black statue flutter up.
With a gasp, Ingrid turned back. She pressed closer to the glass, straining to see through the failing light. The gargoyle’s wings were no longer up but were hanging like curtains. What had she just seen?
Ingrid closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the cold glass. Nothing. She’d seen nothing. She was just overwhelmed and the poor light had been playing tricks on her.
Her brother was missing. There might be a kidnapper—or a murderer—stalking the girls of Paris. And Ingrid was confined to the rectory for the night. Come morning, first thing, she’d set out to find Grayson.
Turn the page for a sneak peek at the sequel to The Beautiful and the Cursed
The Lovely and the Lost
Look for it Spring 2014!
Excerpt copyright © 2014 by Angie Frazier. Published by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
PARIS
RUE SAINT-DOMINIQUE
EARLY FEBRUARY 1900
The quiet ached.
After all the crying and screaming, all the pleas for Léon to stop!, silence crushed the dining room. Now Léon trembled on the rug beside the table, his arms wrapped tightly around his knees.
He wanted to shut his eyes, but terror froze them open. He wanted to clap his palms over his ears so he wouldn’t have to listen to the weak, muffled cries coming from all around him—but his fingertips were still leaking.
Léon’s father was at the head of the table. Every inch of the man, from his thinning crown to his polished brogans, even the spindle-back chair upon which he sat, had been bound in a cocoon of thick white silk. The untouched plate of coq au vin still steamed in front of his father’s mummified figure. The scent of mushrooms and wine, a sauce Léon’s mother had spent the afternoon stirring at the stove as she hummed little songs, now turned Léon’s stomach.
Unblinking, Léon turned his head. The lacey trim of the tablecloth hung low, but not low enough to block the sight of his mother’s cocoon as it wriggled on the floor. And moaned.
Léon jumped to his feet and crashed back into his chair. A third, smaller silken cocoon, the one imprisoning his younger brother, had already gone still. The venom had worked its way through his sticklike limbs the quickest. Léon’s wriggling mother would stop moving next. But his father, whose meaty frame was fully upright in his chair, might remain conscious another few minutes. Five at the most.
Léon hadn’t wanted to hurt them. But he’d lost his temper when his father had started to shout the way he always did whenever Léon had done something wrong in their pâtisserie downstairs. He had thought he’d become immune to his father’s blustering, but lately, things had started to change. With every flare of Léon’s temper, Léon himself had started to change: the swelling pressure at each of his fingertips and the piercing pain in the roots of his eyeteeth were always the first signals.
Tonight, they had come on too quickly.
With his father’s insults pounding in his ears, the white drops had pushed through Léon’s skin and beaded at each of his fingertips. Within seconds, marble-sized globules had dripped free like white icing, distending toward the floor as long ribbons of silken web.
Léon’s eyeteeth had erupted from his gums next. They had pushed past his lips into plain view, shocking his silent father, his openmouthed mother, and his trembling brother, transforming into thin, hooked pincers.
And then the screams had shattered the air.
Léon had wanted to assure them that this body wasn’t his. That the sticky tangle of webbing was as repulsive to him as it was to them. But they had all kept wailing, and Léon had lost himself. It was the only way to describe it. It hadn’t been Léon sinking his pincers into his father’s neck, or his brother’s forearm, or his mother’s shoulder. It hadn’t been Léon who had then used the endless strands of silken thread oozing from his fingers to swathe each of them in tightly wound pods.
But this was Léon now, eyes blurred by tears, body shivering. There was no way to help them. The antivenin Monsieur Constantine had promised was still at least a week away from being complete. There was nothing Léon could do. Nowhere he could go. Constantine had said Léon would be able to get better, that he’d be able to control himself. All he’d wanted to do was hide what he’d become from his family—and now they were dying. Because of him.
Léon gasped for air and stumbled away from the table, toward the dining room door. He whimpered as he passed the white cocoons, trying to ignore the way they twitched.
CHAPTER ONE
PARIS
CLOS DU VIE
EARLY FEBRUARY 1900
Ingrid’s body had gone numb in the snow. She lay on her back, staring up at steel skies, and wondered how long this was going to take. The grounds surrounding Monsieur Constantine’s home, set in the airy outskirts of the city, within the Bois de Boulogne, were quiet, just as he had promised. Ingrid needed privacy, and here, she could have as much as she wished.
If any of her old London friends were to see her now, splayed out in the snow, they would likely think she’d gone mad. A smile tugged the corner of her lips. Maybe she had. If that was the case, then mad she would remain, because chilled to the bone was the only way Ingrid could feel anything at all.
The clouds rumbled like a hungry belly, promising not snow but a cold February rain. It would likely wash away the hard, thin blanket of snow that had fallen the night before. Ingrid closed her eyes and ordered the first spark to light. She cried out at the sharp twinge in her shoulder, which was followed by a burst of heat. Pain crackled down one arm, coming alive with an electric rush. With her gloves already cast aside, a serrated line of lightning sputtered from her splayed fingertips. It hit the trunk of a poplar less than a body’s length away. Simultaneously, a quick, bright flash of lightning stabbed down from the brooding clouds and struck the poplar. From each striking point, thin trails of smoke eddied toward the sky.
Ingrid’s eyes flew open and she belted out a laugh. She’d done it! After nearly two months of visits to Constantine’s chateau, spending hours upon hours practicing control over this new side of her—a side that her London friends would most definitely believe insane—she had finally done it!
Ingrid pushed herself up, her violet woolen cape and fur-lined hood damp from the ground. The motion set her slushy blood back into circulation, and more tingles pricked at her shoulders. They flooded her arms, pooled at her elbows, and fanned out toward her fingertips. The sudden rush of feeling gave her arms the sensation of being large and unwieldy compared to the rest of her body. But it had happened. For the first time, the electric pulses hadn’t come of their own volition. They hadn’t been ruled by her temper or by fear or any other emotion. She had commanded them.
Ingrid had finally grasped a sliver of power over her demon half.
She still sometimes thought it was preposterous that she had anything other than human blood coursing through her veins, and that demons were real creatures with unspeakable appetites. Some mornings, Ingrid would wake and, for the first few seconds of consciousness, forget that she belonged to two worlds—one of ordinary humans, with their duties and titles, families and responsibilities, the other filled with demon hunters wielding blessed silver weapons, steel-scaled gargoyles protecting territories and humans, untouchable angels that enslaved those gargoyles, and of course, people like Ingrid herself: Dusters, humans gifted at birth with demon blood.
The damp cold closed in as her mind hitched on the memory of one dark-scaled gargoyle in particular. Reluctantly, she let the memory go. Learning that demons were real had thrown Ingrid’s life into a spin. But it had been the reality of living, breathing gargoyles that had surprised her the most. They were far more complex than demons. Shape-shifting slaves to the angels, gargoyles were charged with protecting the humans living within their designated territories. Most humans didn’
t know gargoyles were anything more than stone statues or waterspouts, like the ones scattered about Notre Dame. Sometimes Ingrid wished she could still count herself among the ignorant.
She was in too deep to turn back now, though.
Behind her, the brittle layer of icy crust broke underfoot. “I didn’t realize making snow angels would be part of your education.”
She really ought to have been used to his American accent by now. It was fast and efficient, though softened by his rich, satiny tenor. It warmed her blood a few more degrees.
Ingrid picked up her gloves and got to her feet, the leather of her bright ocher boots stiff from the cold. She quickly flipped back the hood of her cape and shook the snow free before turning to greet Vander Burke. His pale brown eyes were especially radiant in this moody light. She’d first met Vander two months before, inside his cramped Saint-Germain-des-Prés bookshop. Her younger sister, Gabby, had deemed him a handsome bore, much too intellectual and staid.
Gabby had been partially correct. Vander was handsome. He stood a full head taller than Ingrid, with athletically broad shoulders and classic Roman features weakened only by the wire-rimmed spectacles he wore. He was intellectual and staid, aiming—surprisingly enough—to become a reverend. He’d even quit the apartment above his bookshop to live and study at the American Church. But a bore he most certainly was not.
How could any handsome bookseller-cum-demon-hunter who aspired to the clergy be boring?
“You’re not usually this early,” she said, but then stopped to think. Just how long had she been prostrate in the snow? Vander met her at Clos du Vie after each of her lessons to drive her home, but he usually waited for her in Monsieur Constantine’s foyer. She peered at him. “Are you checking up on me?”
Ingrid wasn’t the only Duster who came to Clos du Vie to explore the powers of demon blood. There were others, Constantine had told her, but he was always careful to schedule their visits so none of them overlapped.