The Wondrous and the Wicked (11 page)

Ingrid closed her eyes again and tried to think of what to do. She was too cold and tired to flinch when the roosting pigeons squawked and scattered in a flutter of excitement. A rush of air
fanned down over her, tousling the hair that had fallen loose around her face. The familiar rustle and snap of wings from close overhead caused tears to well up behind her closed lids. Marco had found her.

Her body moved, nudged gently by what she knew were talons, not hands. Ingrid mewled as even that slight touch renewed the pain in her leg and calf. She forced her eyes to open as Marco’s arms wedged underneath her and lifted her from the cold ground. His scales were desert hot in comparison, and as he drew her to his plated chest, she felt the tug of a memory. Marco had never held her like this before, and yet she knew these arms. Knew the warmth of this steel chest, and what it felt like to be cradled against it.

Ingrid looked up, already knowing what she’d see. A pair of peridot eyes, pale and bright as jewels; shimmering jet scales tightly woven along his face; and short, clipped ears set high upon his head.

“Luc,” she managed to whisper before her head fell against his chest once more. Luc had come for her. She didn’t know how he’d known, but he was here and she was safe and there wasn’t anything for her to worry about any longer. So Ingrid let her eyes close and Luc took her into the night sky.

The soft down of a pillow had replaced Luc’s hard, reptilian scales when Ingrid found consciousness again. She was warm, buried underneath the weight of a thick duvet.
Her
duvet, she saw after opening one eye.

She stirred under the covers, and by the clear honey light coming in through the window, she determined it was early morning. She heard the even, rhythmic breaths of someone sleeping and pushed herself up onto one elbow. Luc had flown her here.
Luc.
After a full month of not seeing or hearing from him, he’d come for her when she’d needed him most.

It wasn’t Luc in her room now, though. With a start, she saw Vander in a chair at the foot of her bed, his arms crossed, his legs wide, and his chin tucked into his chest as he slept. The sun lit his golden-brown hair, mussed from where he’d likely raked his hands through it again and again. She wondered what Vander had said to her mother to gain permission to sit watch here without a chaperone. The fact that he was to be ordained soon must have certainly come into play. A smile touched her lips, until she twisted to sit up and felt the soreness of her shoulder where the hellhound’s fang had sliced into her.

The memory hit her like a fist. Ingrid batted the heavy duvet off and yanked up the hem of the nightdress that someone had changed her into. Her calf didn’t burn with the same fury that it had in the Underneath or when she’d woken in that darkened park, but the spot was tender. Luc had likely healed her wounds with his blood, because the skin along her calf was unmarred by the fangs Axia had plunged into her flesh.

Ingrid closed her eyes, a hand pressed to her temple. How could she have been so stupid? Racing into that alley, chasing Grayson’s voice. And now Axia had reclaimed her blood. All of it? Ingrid didn’t know. She didn’t feel any different than before, other than the sweep of panic making her hot and then cold again. What would happen now?

“Ingrid?”

Vander shot up from the chair, sleep rasping his voice.

“She has it,” Ingrid said, her thumb rubbing the two strawberry ovals on her calf. “She took her blood back. She had me in her cave again and I couldn’t move, I couldn’t make any electricity, and the demon poison, it burned—”

Vander came to her side and lowered himself onto the bed. The mattress shifted and dipped.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, gasping for air around the tight, aching ball of a sob lodged in her throat.

Vander’s hands cradled her neck and jaw, his fingers
combing through her hair. He forced her head up, her eyes to look into his.

“Ingrid, you have nothing to be sorry for.”

She shook her head, though his hands held her tightly.

“She has her blood and now she’ll be coming here, for her Harvest. I gave her exactly what she wanted, Vander.”

He pressed his fingers into her skin more firmly. “She
took
what she wanted. Do you believe any of us care about that right now? You were taken into the Underneath. You were gone a full day. I’d started to worry that you weren’t—” Vander stopped, his thumbs sweeping over the curves of her jaw. “I should be the one apologizing. I shouldn’t have left you alone.”

A whole day? She’d been in the Underneath for that long? Vander let go of her but remained on the edge of her bed.

“You’re here,” he said. “You’re safe. That’s all I care about.”

They were simple, straightforward statements. They helped to calm her. Ingrid kept her hand on her calf, rubbing at the small ache underneath her demon marks. Vander followed the motion with his eyes. She gave a start, realizing her leg was exposed from knobby knee to bare foot.

Ingrid let go of her calf and grabbed the hem of her nightdress, ready to tug it back into place. Vander’s hand came up and rested atop of hers, stopping her.

“Is it healed?” he asked. He then took the liberty of skimming the soft curve of her calf with his palm.

Ingrid sat frozen in place. Though her eyes watched him inspect her demon marks, it wasn’t Vander she was seeing in her mind. It was Luc, that first night in the abbey when he’d revealed to her what he was. A hellhound had nipped at her calf, and Luc had demanded to see the wound, roughly tossing up her skirt hem and grabbing her leg. She saw Luc, lifting her off the cold brick and gravel walkway so her bare feet wouldn’t have to endure a painful walk back to the rectory. Luc, storming into Axia’s
hive, coming to take Ingrid home to safety. Luc, his damaged wings hanging limply in the Daicrypta courtyard, his bond to her severed, and yet there to help her anyway. And there in the park also, her body belched up from a fissure, too weak to move. He was always there.

He would always come for her.

Ingrid shoved the hem of her nightdress down, dislodging Vander’s hand.

“It’s fine,” she said.

Vander adjusted his spectacles before standing up and moving away from the bed.

“We have Marco to thank for that,” he said.

Ingrid paused in bringing her duvet up around her waist. “Marco? But I thought …”

Vander went to the window and pushed back the gauzy drapes. “Luc was with Marco when he found you,” he said, his words clipped to sharpened points. “He couldn’t stay.”

Ingrid propped herself against the pillows, relieved. She hadn’t imagined him, then.

“He had to return to his territory,” she said.

Vander stayed silent at the window, looking at the churchyard lawn as if there were actually something interesting to see there.

“You know where he is. Don’t you?” Ingrid asked.

She hadn’t had the nerve to bring up Luc’s name or ponder his new territory with Vander these last weeks. She’d also been careful to keep Luc’s stone talisman in her pocket and out of Vander’s sight. She knew his feelings for her, and he knew of hers for Luc. It would have been awkward to discuss her heartbreak with someone who was likely rejoicing inside, so she’d stayed quiet instead.

“Lennier’s old territory,” Vander finally answered. He turned away from the window and added, “Luc didn’t want you to know.”

She leaned into the pillows, stunned. He’d been close this whole time. Guardian of gargoyle common grounds, a mere ten-minute walk away. She pictured him in Lennier’s sitting room, in front of the hearth. In the guest bedroom where they had kissed and held one another in the four-poster bed—the very action that had decided Luc’s fate as guardian of l’Abbaye Saint-Dismas.

Of course he hadn’t wanted Ingrid to know. He would understand how tempted she’d be to go to him, and he wouldn’t want her at gargoyle common grounds, not when any number of Dispossessed could be there.

Vander left the window. “I have to get back to Hôtel Bastian. Things are … busy.”

The way he’d hesitated took Ingrid from her thoughts of Luc. “What is it? Do you know which gargoyle killed Léon and the others?”

He picked up his jacket from the back of the chair and avoided her eyes.

“Vander, you can tell me. I can handle it.” Another thought stilled her. “Or is it Axia? Has something happened while I’ve been sleeping?”

How long would it take for the fallen angel to set her Harvest in motion?

Vander shrugged on his jacket, the blessed silver crossbow inside weighing down the faded tweed. “No and no. It’s Alliance matters, that’s all. You need to rest.”

She pressed her lips tight and cocked her head, as if to say
I don’t think so.
Vander started to laugh a moment before the door to her bedroom creaked open. Ingrid’s mother stepped inside all smiles and bright eyes. Ingrid was about to ask why when someone else came in on Mama’s heels.

“Grayson!” Ingrid pushed back the duvet once again and leaped up. Her brother reached the bed in time to catch her before
she fell. Her leg didn’t hurt, but she wasn’t steady on her feet just yet, either.

Her mind whirled, her vision spun, but it didn’t matter. Grayson was here and he was holding her. She breathed in deeply, and with the air came a rush of anger. She pulled back and cuffed his arm.

“Where have you been? You could have at least sent a note saying you were still in Paris. That you were still
alive
.”

Grayson sighed and hung his head, nodding once. “I know. I’m sorry, Ingrid.”

Mama stood in the doorway, watching them. She was still smiling, without a trace of anger anywhere on her lightly lined face.

“I have already spoken with him,” Lady Brickton said, her corseted figure cut into an hourglass. Plump and firm and trim all at once, like a pincushion, Ingrid often thought. “And I am holding him to the promise he has made me. Mr. Burke?”

Mama held the door open, graciously indicating that it was time for Vander to take his leave. Grayson turned his head to watch Vander in his side vision. They didn’t make eye contact, and Vander, Ingrid noted, fled the room rather quickly, without so much as a hello for her brother. If he was upset about Luc, she would just have to worry about it later.

Mama closed the door behind herself and Vander.

“I was supposed to be there,” Grayson said the moment they were alone.

He pulled away, his jaw tight. His eyes were red-rimmed, as if he’d been crying.

“It was my flat. The one I share with Léon.”

“Oh, Grayson.” She reached for his hand. He let her take it, wind her fingers through his, and squeeze.

“I took an omnibus to Hôtel Bastian instead. To see Chelle.”

She tried not to show her hurt. “You’ve been seeing Chelle?”

He brought their joined hands into his lap and started twisting the ring on her center finger. The single pearl set in silver had been their grandmother’s.

“No, and she wasn’t there, so I still haven’t seen her. By the time I made it back to the flat …”

Even if he had been seeing Chelle, she couldn’t be upset with him. Not right then. He’d come too close to being among those slain Dusters.

“You made Mama a promise,” Ingrid said. “What was it?”

Grayson quit fiddling with her ring and stood up. His light blond hair flopped forward and nearly covered his brows. It had grown past his ears and had an easy wave to it at this length.

“I can’t come back here to live, Ingrid. Accepting the rectory as my home again will bind Marco to me.” He said the gargoyle’s name with a heavy dose of acid. “I don’t want him, and he doesn’t need another human to guard right now anyway. But do you really think Mother would let me go off without having a place lined up?”

“I can’t imagine she would,” Ingrid replied, refraining from saying anything more. Like how worried their mother had been over his absence.

Grayson seemed to hear the words anyway.

“I don’t know if you’re safe with me,” he said.

“I wish you trusted yourself as much I trust you.”

He couldn’t make a reply to that, it seemed, so instead, he leaned over and kissed her forehead.

“Mother’s already found a flat across the street for me to let. I promise I won’t disappear again.”

She jabbed him lightly in the stomach before he could straighten back up. He pretended to double over in pain.

“See that you don’t,” she said. “Now that Axia has all of her blood back, I have a feeling we’ll need one another.”

G
rayson leaned against one of the steel tables inside Hôtel Bastian’s medical room, his right sleeve rolled up and cuffed past his elbow. It was the same shirt he’d been wearing for the past month: white linen with small ivory buttons and a short club collar. Grayson had never had to wash his own clothes before, and he was certain the numerous times he’d plunged the thing into brown tap water at the flat hadn’t done the expensive bespoke shirt, made just for him on London’s Savile Row, much good. But he was also sure it wouldn’t have caused it to shrink.

Grayson’s muscles had bulked over the last few weeks, causing the seams to bite into his shoulders and the buttons at his chest to pull when fastened. It couldn’t be blamed on an abundance of food—he and Léon had scraped by, living on bread and cheese, eating well only on visits to Constantine’s chateau. The change in his musculature had to be attributed to the numerous times he’d changed from human to hellhound. Sometimes the shift had been on purpose. Other times, he hadn’t been able to
fight his body’s urge to let go. Grayson wondered if his muscles had hung on to a little bit of the hellhound bulk to make shifting less of an ordeal.

“I’m glad you went to her,” Vander said from where he stood at one of the glassed in cabinets. He had his kit out and was drawing blood from a vial into the glass barrel of a syringe.

Grayson hadn’t gone to Hôtel Bastian for his first mersian blood injection, as he and Vander had planned. The massacre at the flat and Ingrid’s abduction into the Underneath had made them both forget. Seeing Vander in Ingrid’s room at the rectory that morning had reminded Grayson, so he’d made his way to Alliance headquarters after tucking Ingrid into bed to rest some more.