“Why are you laughing?” she asked.
“It’s just I wonder what the Earl of Brickton thought when he saw lightning streak from his daughter’s fingertips.”
Oh, she was certain she would hear exactly what her father thought of this entire night all too soon. Though, pleasantly enough, she found she didn’t dread it. What her father thought didn’t matter much just then.
“He’ll never let me return to London now,” she said, a smile playing upon her lips.
Vander’s amusement faded. The carriage took the first small jump onto the cobbled bridge leading onto the city island. He glanced down at her. “Do you want to go home?”
Ingrid squared her shoulders, her velvet cloak suddenly heavier than usual. “I’d rather face off with a dozen more hellhounds or crypsis serpents than return to London.” She sighed. “And it’s not my home. Not any longer.”
Paris was. The abbey and rectory. H?tel Bastian. Clos du Vie. In Luc’s arms, or folded within his great, protective wings. And though it left her feeling conflicted, she knew home was here, beside Vander.
He let his rigid posture go and allowed his leg to relax against hers. He said nothing but urged the horses onward, across the bridge connecting to the Left Bank. The abbey wasn’t far. She could see the belfry towers rising above the trees. This was her home, but it wasn’t perfect. It was both beautiful and savage, a safe haven with evil knocking at the door.
The problem, Ingrid was coming to realize, was that there were no hard and fast rules when it came to evil. It could change shape. Be one thing one moment and something else the next. It could be demon. Gargoyle. Human. Angel.
Ingrid wondered what evil would look like the next time it came knocking.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Marco broke the lock on the rear kitchen door with one twist. He pushed the door open and stood aside, his mouth a taut line. He hadn’t spoken to Gabby yet. In Luc’s carriage-house loft, Gabby had sunk to the cold wooden planks and waited, eyes squeezed shut, while Marco returned to his human form and dressed.
His usual smooth sarcasm, his coy, dangerously playful air, had not returned along with his human skin. She’d seen this man in his birthday suit, she realized, and it had left her feeling exposed. Now, as he glared at her, waiting for her to enter the kitchen, she felt not only exposed but afraid.
Marco was her gargoyle. He couldn’t harm her. But that certainly didn’t stop him from looking like he wanted to.
Gabby stumbled inside, her legs still wobbly from the fast flight high over Paris. Her dress was damp and cold, torn in spots from the fighting at the Daicrypta estate. A low fire was going to cinders in the hearth, and Gabby walked toward it, craving warmth.
Marco slammed the door behind them.
“You’ll wake the servants,” Gabby said, staring at the glowing embers under the grate.
“I scent your mother, her lady’s maid, and your father’s valet,” Marco replied, coming closer to her than she liked. “The rest have quit the house.”
Her father’s disappearance must have been the final straw. Gabby held her hands out to the pathetic fire.
“Good for them,” she said. If she could flee this madness … No. That was a lie. She wouldn’t flee. She wouldn’t leave Nolan or the Alliance. Her hair hung limply around her face, ripped out from the pins, her hat lost long ago. She lifted her hand to push the strands back. The pads of her fingers brushed the bumpy scars along her cheek.
She’d forgotten all about them.
“I killed him,” she said, suddenly not caring at all about her blasted face. She’d killed someone. Her breath came faster. “The dagger, it was the one I took from the draining room floor. The mercurite one. I didn’t know. I just … I just grabbed it and threw and I didn’t mean to.” She swung around and there Marco was, less than an arm’s length from her. His amber eyes were sooty in the low hearth light.
“You pierced his heart,” Marco said, unblinking. “We are not immortal, Lady Gabriella. Whether the dagger had been of silver or mercurite doesn’t matter. A knife in the heart means death to human and gargoyle alike.”
“But I didn’t aim. I just threw. I swear it, I didn’t want to kill him!”
“Then you should not have been so careless.” Marco spun away from her and stalked to the long farm table in the center of the kitchen. He braced himself against it.
Gabby grasped for something to say. Her throat hurt too much. If she tried to speak, she knew she would only let out a sob. Marco was right. He was so right that it ached. She’d panicked. Forgotten everything Chelle had taught her. And now Lennier was dead.
“Forget your conscience for a moment,” Marco said, and she remembered he could pry his way into her feelings the same way Luc could. “As we speak, every single Dispossessed in Paris is learning that their elder is dead. That he’s been killed by an Alliance fighter.”