“No, Vincent! Don’t come. We don’t need you,” I said, choking back panic.
There was a split second of palpable shock, and then: “Violette wanted me to come, didn’t she?”
I didn’t respond.
“Kate, you can’t go. At least tell me you’ll wait until I get there,” he said. I could hear he was moving quickly while holding the phone to his ear.
“My grandfather and I will be there in about fifteen minutes. Tell Geneviève’s people to accompany us, but we don’t need you,” I said, trying to catch my breath. Papy walked with a fast gait on a regular day. Tonight I was practically jogging to keep up with him.
“Ambrose, Charlotte, and I will meet you in the Crillon lobby,” he insisted, ignoring my request. “Don’t go up to the room without me.”
I didn’t respond. I heard Vincent cursing on the other end as I hung up. Pocketing the phone, I sped up to match Papy’s pace. We had to get there before Vincent could join us. Violette’s plot to lure him to her by kidnapping his girlfriend’s grandmother was transparent. I wasn’t going to let her win the fight this time. Papy and I would find some way of saving Mamie without Vincent having to sacrifice himself again.
Within ten minutes we were crossing the Pont de la Concorde and entering the grand square. Papy threw himself into the oncoming traffic, and I held on to his arm to minimize the chance of one of us getting hit. We made it intact to the entry of the museum-like building housing the Crillon Hotel, and slowed as we passed under the monumental stone entryway and through the glass doors.
“Where do we go?” I asked as we glanced around the sumptuous lobby filled with giant flower arrangements and lined with marble columns. And then I spotted two men walking toward us from a far corner of the room. “Okay, here come the numa,” I said.
“How do you know they’re numa?” Papy looked at me quizzically.
“Can’t you see that black-and-white kind of fuzziness around them? Like an aura where all of the color has been sucked out of the air.”
“No,” he said, peering at them and then back at me worriedly. I’ve been hanging around supernaturals too much, I thought, just as Vincent, Charlotte, and Ambrose strode through the door, suited up in their black leather battle gear. Papy’s eyes widened, but the hotel staff just glanced at them blithely as if they had seen it all before. Add the two similarly dressed numa, and it looked like a rock band was throwing a party in a hotel suite.
Vincent made a beeline toward me. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, glancing worriedly toward the advancing numa, “but I didn’t ask you to come.”
Vincent ignored my protest. “Kate, don’t say anything about me not being the Champion. If Violette hasn’t figured it out, that’s the one card we can still play.”
The numa shot the bardia lethal glares as they neared. “Please, follow us,” said the shorter of the two. I saw a flash of silver from underneath his long black coat.
“Only you two,” said the second one, nodding to Vincent and me.
“I am coming with them,” said Papy in a voice that indicated they would have to forcibly restrain him from following.
“Ditto,” said Ambrose. Charlotte slid her hand down her waist to show the outline of the weapon hidden beneath her duster.
The numas’ eyes flicked to each other and then toward the desk staff and back to us. “You can accompany us as far as the suite, but you’re not going in,” Shorty said finally.
They turned and led us past an elevator bank to a stairway, insisting we go first. Our group climbed two flights of stairs, and emerged into a long corridor with scarlet silk lining the walls and gold sconces lighting the passage.
At the end of the hall, a numa with salt-and-pepper hair, wearing an expensive suit and a silk cravat, stood outside a double door. It was Nicolas. He stiffened as he saw the size of our group. “She’ll only see the two,” he said, nodding imperiously toward Vincent and me.
“We couldn’t make a scene in the lobby,” explained one of our escorts.
“And we can’t all stand around here in the hall, now can we?” said Ambrose with a wicked smile. “Being a public place and all.”
“You will guard them in the suite’s antechamber,” hissed Nicolas, giving the numa a look that promised trouble once he had them on their own.
“So, Nicolas,” said Vincent as we followed him through the door. “Once Lucien’s right-hand man, now you’re playing second to an adolescent?”