The Beautiful and the Cursed

by Page Morgan

  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.

  He had simply been … hungry.

  “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.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Everything was going to be different now that Papa had arrived. Ingrid trudged through the snow behind the rectory and tried to convince herself that she wasn’t already hiding from him.

  Wasn’t that what they would all be doing from here on out? Hiding from the truth? Hiding from what they were? What they had become? So much had changed since London. What frightened Ingrid the most sometimes was that she didn’t want to go back. Everything she’d been born and bred to be as Lady Ingrid Waverly—a prim and mild society rose whose only ambition was to marry high and well—had disintegrated over the last few months. But her father didn’t know this, and h
e most certainly couldn’t find out. With one word, he could command them all to pack up and leave Paris. What would Ingrid do … refuse? The thought made her sick to her stomach.

  She loved her father, but he had a weight to him. Had he always been so overbearing? Or maybe it was their newfound freedom here in Paris that had made his sudden presence feel like a wet sheet of canvas tossed over all their heads.

  Ingrid felt guilty for it, but she wished he had stayed away.

  She slowed down as she neared the abbey’s cemetery. Her feet were cold, her boots still damp from that morning. Ingrid looked around, the back lawns new for her. She’d seen a corner of the cemetery from the rectory, but she hadn’t yet been out this way. The icy, drizzly snowfalls had kept her from exploring.

  The bars along the iron fence enclosing the cemetery had gone to rust. The gate hung from one hinge and was frozen open by a drift of snow. Her feet were the first to break the perfectly smooth blanket of white as she entered through the gate. The headstones slanted like gray, crooked teeth, and the engravings were all in French, of course—a language Ingrid had, sadly, never grasped. She knew enough to get by, but nothing more.

  She wound her way among the rows of headstones, wondering how she might explain to her father the twice-weekly visits to Constantine’s chateau. What if she said she was receiving French lessons? Ingrid sighed. But then her father would expect her French to improve.

  She didn’t need to know the language to know the headstones here were old. The most recent death she saw dated from a century ago. There were more graves through a second gate on the other side of the cemetery, though these were marked with simple wooden crosses or nubs of stone. A pulpy wooden sign hanging on the entrance gate bore one word: PROFANE.

  She knew the English meaning for this word. Did it mean the same in French? With a forceful shove, the gate swung in, plowing through the snow. This second plot was smaller and wasn’t fenced in; trees and shrubbery made up the perimeter instead. Ingrid stepped inside, wondering how much farther the abbey grounds went. Maybe she’d avoid her father a bit longer and walk the whole property.

  But as soon as she entered the plot, her legs seized. Her knees trembled. A swirl of nausea slammed into her. The whole cemetery seemed to set off on a wobbly spin, blurring around her shoulders. Ingrid squeezed her eyes shut, trying to clear her vision, but with the blackness came a racing cold.

  She opened her eyes and found herself flat on the ground, her cheek buried in the snow. The world around her still shook, unhinged. Her mind was slow to respond, but her hands moved fast. They plunged into the snow and she pushed herself up, her head spinning.

  After a few long blinks, the cemetery plot steadied. The snow and the stones, the trees and sky all came back into focus. And when everything had stilled, Ingrid saw that she wasn’t alone.

  Standing amid the trees that bordered the other side of the cemetery was a girl in a bright white cape. If not for her pink cheeks and the dark brown curls framing her face, she might have blended into the landscape perfectly. Ingrid, still on the ground, peered at the girl, completely confounded.

  “Anna?” she whispered.

  It didn’t make any sense. Anna Bettinger was supposed to be in London preparing for her wedding later that month. Ingrid tried to stand, battling the nauseating fog. Her skirts tangled beneath her in the snow.

  Had Anna traveled with Papa to Paris? Was she surprising Ingrid with a visit?

  Giving up on trying to stand—her legs were so tired—Ingrid looked back at her friend. She’d expected to see Anna coming through the snow, shaking her head at Ingrid’s ridiculous position, a hand pulled free from her mink muff and extended toward her. But instead, Anna stood motionless. The only change at all was a sly little lift at the corner of her lips. It was a smug grin, and it was just as cold as the snow Ingrid knelt in.

  It wasn’t one of Anna’s smiles at all.

  “Ingrid?”

  She startled at his voice. Luc came through the second cemetery gate behind her, halting a split second when he saw her crumpled in the snow. And then he was surging forward, his mouth twisted into a scowl.

  “What are you doing out here?” He jerked her out of the snow. Her knees wobbled, but she refused to slump against him. She forced them to lock and stood on her own.

  “I—” She turned back toward Anna, but there was no one there among the trees. Anna and her white cape and smirking expression were gone.

  “I … I was just walking. I must have hit a headstone buried in the snow and tripped.” It was an awful excuse. Luc kept his firm grip on her elbow.

  “Do you know where you are?” he asked.

  “The headstones give it away, Luc,” she answered, shaking off his hand. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, and she realized he must have had to race away from whatever he’d been doing when he’d felt her … her what? Fear? Confusion? Whatever it had been, he’d believed she was in trouble.

  He hooked his chin toward the pulpy wooden sign strung with wire over the center arch of the gate. “Profane. This is unconsecrated burial ground.”

  Oh. It wasn’t blessed, then. But so what? Ingrid couldn’t stay on holy ground forever.

  “Why is it set apart?” she asked as Luc led her back through the gates into the first, consecrated burial ground.

  “Because that’s where they buried the people who weren’t good enough for this supremely blessed soil,” he answered with unabashed sarcasm, spreading his arms wide. “Nonconformists. Suicides. The generally unworthy.”

  Luc shut the gate behind them. “Whatever the reason, the spirits buried in profane lots lie restless. Certain demons feed on those restless souls. And demons beget demons.” Luc speared her with his pale, lime-colored eyes. “You should remember that.”

  Ingrid remembered a lot of things, including the fact that to Luc, she was just a human. Just a duty. He’d come to her aid just then because he had to, not because he wanted to.

  “Did I hear you speaking to someone out there?” he asked, scanning the profane plot once more.

  He hadn’t seen Anna. Ingrid drew in a breath and shuddered. “No.”

  Again, he stared at her just a beat too long. He knew she was lying. She wondered if he could feel her emotions, her senses, that well. Did everything about her echo within him?

  They went through the consecrated plot in silence, and Ingrid started wishing for dry clothes and a steaming cup of tea to wrap her fingers around. She’d been in the snow far too long for one day.

  At the gate, though, another person stood waiting for them. It was a boy, thin and gangly, about a year younger than Gabby, Ingrid presumed. He met Ingrid’s eyes and smiled at her. She slowed, suddenly wary. Luc stiffened, no doubt feeling her hesitation.

  “Lady Waverly,” Luc said, his formal use of her name out of character. “This is Dimitrie, the new livery boy.”

  The boy immediately dropped into a deep bow, his chin drawn in so that the crown of his head was pointed at Ingrid’s feet. “My lady,” Dimitrie said, his voice muffled.

  Gustav, their butler, should have hired a new groom in December, right after Bertrand, their first driver had died and Luc had ascended from his position as groom. But Lady Brickton had been distracted with the disappearance of her son, and then, once Grayson had returned, she’d told Gustav to hold off on hiring new staff. The fewer people to encounter Ingrid’s and Grayson’s abnormal abilities, the better.

  “Stand up,” Luc ordered, and the boy did. But he was smiling, his bright eyes as blue as a spray of forget-me-nots.

  “Your scent is delectable,” the boy said.

  Ingrid frowned. “Excuse me?”

  “Your scent, my lady,” he replied.

  “My what?” she asked, her cheeks quickly heating.

  Luc stepped between Ingrid and Dimitrie, glaring at the new groom with the kind of ferocity he might show a hellhound.

  “Irindi sent him,” Luc explained. Ingrid felt herself inch back a step. She inspected Di
mitrie again. He was a gargoyle? But he was so young.

  “Oh,” she replied, unable to think of anything else to say at first. But then, “I have a scent?”

  Dimitrie, unfazed, nodded eagerly. “Of course. We keep our humans’ individual scents in a kind of olfactory memory,” he said with a nervous laugh. “It’s how we trace you. How we call you up inside ourselves.”

  Ingrid immediately looked at Luc. He hadn’t told her any of this, and yet, here Dimitrie was spilling forth information less than a minute into their first meeting. Why had Luc held back? She’d already known that he could trace her, but she hadn’t known how. Her scent was the key.

  Luc ground his jaw, clearly annoyed. She recalled Luc’s words the last time she’d been in his loft, in December. You’re just a human. You’re not supposed to know.

  Dimitrie caught Luc’s harsh stare and seemed to shrink back.

  “Go inside,” Luc said. Ingrid startled when she saw that he was looking at her, not the new gargoyle. “And stay out of that cemetery.”

  Ingrid bristled. How dare he? Luc couldn’t order her to stay on hallowed ground forever. She marched past him, keeping her gaze locked on his. “I will go where I please.”

  She turned away and stormed through the snowy back lawns, her ire stoked high enough to keep her raging hot from head to toe. Luc might be her gargoyle, but he wasn’t her master. Ingrid wouldn’t be returning to that profane cemetery plot anytime soon, but not because he’d ordered it. Something had happened to her there. It was as if she’d been attacked somehow, and then that vision of Anna … a trick. Something had played a trick on her.

  It had been a quiet two months, and Axia seemed to have forgotten about Ingrid. There hadn’t been a single attempt to reclaim Ingrid’s angel blood. Axia had said that if she ever got it back, it would give her enough power to challenge the Angelic Order. She would be an untouchable fusion of demon, human, and angel. But how she planned to wield her power was still a matter of speculation among the Alliance and gargoyles.