by Page Morgan
“Your brother is back, but he’s alone,” he announced.
“Excellent. The sooner I scent him, the better,” Marco said, striding toward the open loft door.
“What do you mean?” Ingrid asked.
Luc avoided her eyes, joining Marco at the door. “He can’t trace any of his human charges until he’s scented them.”
“I’ve had the rapturous pleasure of meeting your brother before, Lady Ingrid, but at that time I wasn’t guardian of this territory,” Marco explained.
Luc’s whole body had gone rigid. He hadn’t liked Dimitrie telling Ingrid about their scenting abilities, and he probably still felt that the less she knew, the better. He didn’t want her to be a part of his world. The realization shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did.
“I don’t like that my father is with Dimitrie,” Ingrid said to Luc. “If we don’t know who he is or why he’s been here, we can’t trust him.”
“I know,” Luc said, ripping his shirt free from the waist of his trousers again. “I’ll find them.”
His fingers weren’t fast enough to satisfy what must have been an overwhelming need to flee, because two of his buttons popped off as he was shucking his shirt.
Ingrid saw a swath of pale skin along Luc’s chest and stomach before she spun around.
“Keep her safe.” Luc’s whisper hadn’t been for her, but it was so quiet in the loft she had heard anyway.
“Do I have a choice?” Marco returned.
Ingrid ticked off the seconds. She would give Luc ten before taking a peek. Less than half of that had passed when she heard the distinct sound of wind filling a pair of massive featherless wings.
“He’s gone,” Marco said. “And rather put out, if you ask me.”
Of course he was. This was Luc’s territory. His home. Having to share it with Dimitrie had been difficult enough for him. Now Luc had to share this place with Marco. For an eternity. Ingrid would have wanted to fly away, too.
She turned back around and saw Luc’s clothes on the floor, his shirt atop his trousers, looking as if he had simply vanished.
“I’m a Duster,” she said softly, glancing up from Luc’s clothes. “You want me dead. You want my brother dead.”
Marco straightened and pulled a frown. “I never wanted you dead, Lady Ingrid. If I had, would I have helped you escape the Underneath? I was too curious about you to wish for your death.”
And now he wouldn’t lay a finger on her. She let her shoulders relax. There was nothing to fear anymore; at least, not from him.
“Who is this Duster you call Léon?” Marco asked.
“He has arachnae blood. He had said he was going to the Daicrypta. I thought it was to have his demon blood removed,” Ingrid answered, recalling Monsieur Dupuis’s offer to do the same for her. But Léon couldn’t have had his blood drained. Not if he could still make silk webbing.
“If I had found him cocooning your brother in silk, I would have gladly killed him,” Marco said.
“Then I am relieved you didn’t find him.” She turned for the stairs. Marco might not be able to lay a finger on her, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous.
“My lady,” he said in parting, and she thought how strange it was for him to address her by her proper title all the time.
She held still on the top step. “Why did Irindi choose you?”
“I was slipping into hibernation,” he answered. “Maybe the Order understands I’m more useful guarding a territory than turning to stone upon another one.”
She gripped the banister and faced him. “But why you?”
“Would you rather have Dimitrie?” he countered.
She would rather have only one gargoyle to sense her, to be able to locate her and feel everything she happened to feel. Irindi had been right, though: Luc did need help. The Waverlys weren’t easy humans to protect.
“Does it matter what I want?” she asked.
Marco laughed as she took the steps down and exited the carriage house door.
Back in the rectory, she found Gabby, Grayson, and their mother at the dining room table. They sat in complete silence, the steaming cups of tea before them untouched. Ingrid walked in hesitantly and gripped the back of a chair. She didn’t want to sit and shook her head at the footman as he approached.
“He is going to take us back to London,” their mother said, her hushed voice steady. She lifted her eyes to Grayson, whose rumpled state made sense, considering he’d recently been wrapped in spider webbing. “Not you. You he will leave here, to manage the gallery. My gallery.”
She didn’t say it possessively. It wasn’t a bitter statement, but one of extreme sadness and disappointment. Ingrid and her siblings had done this to their mother, Ingrid knew. They had been careless and selfish, and everything she had wanted for so long, had been able to experience, even just briefly, was going to be taken away from her.
“We won’t go,” Gabby said. “If we all refuse to leave, he can’t make us.”
“Oh, my dear girl, that is all very idealistic,” Lady Brickton said, slowly pushing her chair back and standing. She still wore her dressing gown and a white lace-trimmed sleeping hat. “But your father holds the winning hand here. It is his title we bear, his holdings that support us, his connections we require. If you haven’t realized that yet, now is the time to start.”
Mama left the room, her steps quick and efficient. She was going to start packing. Ingrid knew it without having to ask.
“How could you leave?” Ingrid asked Grayson.
“You could have at least had the decency not to get caught,” Gabby added.
Grayson stood abruptly, knocking back his chair. “As if the two of you haven’t left this place in the middle of the night before. I just had the misfortune of being seen by a maid. Funny,” he said with a cutting glare at Gabby. “She didn’t witness Nolan Quinn climbing up to your window.”
Gabby scowled at Grayson, and Ingrid was about to chastise her but bit her tongue. Luc had come to her window before. He’d come into her room and kissed her. And, well … he hadn’t been wearing much in the way of clothing. She sincerely hoped Nolan’s visit had been more decent.
“Well, good. Once you’re here all by yourself, you can sack her,” Gabby said.
“He will not,” Ingrid said, tempering her sister’s ire. “She probably thought she was doing her job.”
“Snitching on Grayson is her job?” Gabby cried.
The footman by the swinging doors that led down to the kitchens stepped forward.
“If my lord and ladies would permit?” he said, his head bowed.
Grayson rubbed his temple. “Yes?”
The footman straightened. “I wish to vouch for the maid in question, my lord. She did not witness your departure, but was told by another servant that you had left and that you had seemed rather distressed. The other servant bade her to inform Lord Brickton at once, my lord.”
Grayson lowered his hand. “Which servant was this?”
Ingrid let go of the chair as understanding hit her. “Dimitrie.”
The footman, looking surprised, bowed again. “Why, yes, my lady.”
Gabby surged from her seat. “Why would he do that? He’s our—”
She stopped to clear her throat. Grayson thanked and dismissed the footman, who seemed entirely too grateful to leave.
“He’s our nothing,” Ingrid said, voice low. Her brother and sister squinted in confusion.
“Our nothing?” Grayson repeated.
“He lied. He’s not our—” Ingrid paused and looked to the kitchen doors. “Protector.”
Now wasn’t the time to share the big news about who exactly was.
Gabby tossed up her hands, her dressing gown looking like a half-inflated lace balloon. “Then what is he doing here?”
“I don’t know,” Ingrid answered. “Luc doesn’t know, either. But it’s clear Dimitrie wanted Papa to know Grayson had left.”
Grayson withdrew to the mirrored sideb
oard. Ingrid watched his reflection. Like her, he seemed to feel not anger but the need to understand. To piece it all together. He met Ingrid’s gaze in the mirror.
“If this isn’t his territory, what is?” he asked.
Ingrid went for logic. “It has to be close. If he has humans to protect somewhere, he couldn’t keep himself far from them for very long.”
“Unless he doesn’t have permanent human charges,” Grayson said.
The rectory doorbell cranked its grating blare. The three of them held still an alarmed second before dashing into the foyer. Without waiting for Gustav, Grayson threw open the door. A bleary-eyed messenger boy stood on the front step. He held out an envelope and yawned.
“What is this?” Grayson asked.
“Some people refer to them as letters,” the boy said, his English as proficient as his sarcasm.
Grayson grabbed the note from the boy’s gloved hand and slammed the door without tossing him so much as a sou.
“That wasn’t very kind,” Gabby said, fighting a smile.
Grayson flipped the note over and read the handwriting. He looked at Ingrid and held out the small envelope. “It’s addressed to you.”
Ingrid took the note but was wary of opening it. Something was wrong, and she somehow knew that when she read this note, things were going to get much worse.
She took the envelope and walked to the credenza beneath the foyer’s mirror. Slowly and methodically, she lifted the penknife and slit the envelope open. The note inside was on fine card stock, a marbled gray, with an address stamped at the top and slanted handwriting inked below:
Dimitrie is delivering your father to me presently. He will remain unharmed for now.
I told you that you would end up coming to me.
M. Robert Dupuis
The dusky blue hour of four in the morning found them on their way back to Hôtel Bastian. Gabby’s eyes burned. She hadn’t slept and yet somehow she’d become caught in the center of a nightmare, the kind that spun in frenzied circles; the kind where she couldn’t run fast enough or move her body the way she wanted.
Luc had returned to the rectory within minutes of the letter’s arrival. He’d followed Dimitrie and Lord Brickton to a grand Montmartre town house and watched from the skies as they approached the door. Lord Brickton’s shivery unease had dripped through Luc’s chest the whole time. Gabby’s father had known something was off, and yet he’d gone inside the town house anyway.
“He’s concerned, but not hurt in any way,” Luc had told them. He’d waited, circling overhead, devising a way to get inside if Lord Brickton required him. But when nothing more happened, Luc had turned back for the rectory instead.
“He isn’t going to harm Papa,” Ingrid said now, all five of them—Gabby, Grayson, Ingrid, Mama, and Luc—riding in the hired hackney.
Their own landau was still in Montmartre, outside the Paris seat for the Daicrypta.
“He’s using Papa as leverage,” Ingrid said.
“As trade, you mean,” Gabby said, still cold despite the ratty rug that covered her legs. “You for him, isn’t that how it is? We should have pushed Dupuis off the balcony at that dreadful artist’s salon.”
“Gabriella,” Mama sighed. It was a halfhearted admonishment. Gabby was certain that in truth Mama agreed.
“Marco will bring Constantine. Maybe he can tell us more,” Luc said, his posture rigid. Gabby wondered if he planned to leap from the moving hackney should the urge to shift come over him.
“Léon said not to go to Dupuis,” Grayson said. “His warning sounded serious, Ingrid. It has to be bad.”
“So you would leave Papa there?” Ingrid asked.
“I would try to think of another way, that’s all.”
“And what if there isn’t another way?” Ingrid shot back.
“There is always another way, my dear,” their mother said, her gaze fixed to the window and the rising light. “We simply need more heads than we currently have to think of it.”
Her optimism was strange to hear. In fact, her insistence on accompanying them to Hôtel Bastian had been so out of the ordinary that no one had dared object. No one argued with her now, either.
When they arrived at Hôtel Bastian, they went straight up to the third floor and pounded on the dungeonlike door. Luc stood with them, and Gabby was certain he would force his way into Alliance headquarters if need be. Thankfully, it wasn’t required. Rory opened the door, half asleep and for once not wearing his vest of daggers. Gabby figured it couldn’t be very comfortable to sleep in.
The sight of them crowded on the landing was enough for Rory to yank the door open wide and permit them all in. Less than five minutes later, the common rooms were noisy with the mumblings of awakened Alliance, including Nolan and Chelle. Gabby let out a breath of relief when she didn’t see Carrick among them.
“Then Dimitrie is the Daicrypta’s gargoyle?” Nolan asked.
From what Luc had seen and what Dupuis had written in his note to Ingrid, it made the most sense that the Daicrypta had planted Dimitrie within the abbey’s territory. To get close to Ingrid, Gabby suspected.
“But how did the Daicrypta know the Order planned to pair Luc with another Dispossessed?” Nolan asked.
He stood in the center of the open kitchen area. Because of the stove, it was the warmest spot in the apartment and the place where everyone had chosen to congregate. Lady Brickton had been given a chair close to the stove, and Gabby and Ingrid stood behind her.
“That’s what we want to know,” Gabby said. “We told no one other than you, Vander, and Chelle.”
“What about Constantine?” Chelle asked, seated on a zinc-topped counter. “Did Ingrid tell him as well?”
One of the Alliance men Gabby didn’t know spoke up. “He was Daicrypta once. Maybe he still is.”
“He isn’t behind this,” Ingrid said. “And no, I didn’t tell him. We don’t talk about things like that.”
Gabby wondered what they did talk about. How to aim lightning? How to put a stopper on it?
“There are many Dispossessed who knew,” Luc said, speaking for the first time. Rory and Chelle, along with a few Alliance Gabby didn’t know, looked at Luc with marked reproach.
“There you have it, then,” the same man who’d doubted Constantine said with a wave of his hand toward Luc.
“You can’t place blame on the gargoyles without proof,” Grayson said. “There were others who knew.”
Ready to argue, the man stood up from the chair in which he’d been reclining. Nolan held out a hand toward each of them.
“Grayson is right. There were others,” he said. “I told my father when we were in Rome. He could have told someone else.”
Gabby thought again of Carrick and wondered at his absence. Not that she wished to even look upon him, but still.
“Where is your father?” she asked.
Nolan lowered his hands. “He said he would be patrolling late tonight.”
To make up for time lost during their lovely dinner, no doubt. Gabby’s eyes traveled past Rory and caught on his puckered brow. He was scowling at the floor, his hands on his hips. As if feeling her eyes on him, Rory glanced up. He couldn’t hold her gaze very long.
“Rory?” she asked. “What is it?”
Nolan and the rest of the kitchen turned their attention toward him. Rory didn’t look as tall or threatening without all that blessed silver strapped to his chest. In fact, he looked a bit like a cornered cat.
“It happened while we were in Rome,” Rory began. “Uncle had a visitor. I didna think a thing of it—he’s part of the Directorate and deals wi’ peace ambassadors from time to time.”
Rory held the note Ingrid had brought aloft. “Uncle’s visitor was this man. Robert Dupuis.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The sun was slow to rise. At least, it felt slow. Ingrid took a restless turn around the roof of Hôtel Bastian, running her hand over the curved wrought-iron balustrades. The roof gravel crunch
ed under her feet, the pink dawn fully under way now. A few stories below, her family and members of the Alliance continued to convene. They were tossing around ideas on how to retrieve Lord Brickton, speculating about whether Carrick would have been in league with the Daicrypta, and why, and above all, about how to keep Ingrid away from Dupuis and his bloodletting machines.
She had said she’d needed air and gone to the roof. Really, though, she was trying to devise a way to sneak out of Hôtel Bastian and give Dupuis exactly what he wanted.
How could she sit back and allow something awful happen to her father when she could stop it? He’d been infuriating since he’d arrived in Paris, but before, in London, when Ingrid had been younger, he’d been different. Better. And right now his life was in her hands.
If she went to Dupuis, the risk of death was there, of course. She wasn’t too proud to admit that it scared her. The blood draining could go badly; her organs could quit if they were deprived of the blood needed to sustain them. Yes, she could die. But if she didn’t go to Dupuis, her father most certainly would.
The roof door opened as she was leaning against the corner balustrade, gazing down at the street below. Luc had let her go to the roof alone, but she knew he would be keeping watch, surfacing her scent time and again to make sure she was okay. She didn’t have to turn around to know it wasn’t Luc who’d come to the roof. She could always feel Luc’s eyes on her like two fingers pressing against her skin.
“They said you were up here.” Vander closed the door behind him.
“I’m going to Dupuis,” she said, dispensing with pleasantries.
“I thought you might try to,” he said.
Vander’s boots crunched over the gravel toward her. He stopped a distance away. Most likely to stay out of her field of dust and avoid sapping her of her lectrux power, the way he had been this whole time.
Ingrid turned away from the ledge, her arms crossed over her middle. It was cold, and she had left her coat in the apartment. “It’s my decision to make.”