“One more incident,” their father said, his attention resting on Gabby and her scars. “One more incident and I will put an end to this. We will all go home—where we belong, might I add.”
He rushed from the sitting room, barking to the butler to send for his valet. Ingrid, Gabby, and even their mother, who was still seated, seemed to sway, exhausted, in his wake. One incident? Ingrid’s heart plummeted. In a house filled with demon gifts and a gargoyle, incidents were bound to happen.
Grayson slipped along boulevard Saint-Germain’s slushy pavements. His only objective was to get as far away from the rectory as possible. He felt his feet go out from underneath him, but he shot out a hand and grasped a lamppost before he went down on his arse like a fool in front of everyone on the whole damned street.
He swore beneath his breath and raked a hand through his hair once he’d righted himself. Why come to Paris now? Couldn’t the mighty Earl of Brickton have stayed in London for the rest of the winter? As if the old man even cared about the bloody gallery. In all the years Grayson’s mother had dreamed aloud about her future endeavor, Father had answered with long sighs and vague promises such as “I’ll think about it, my dear.”
No, the only reason Lord Brickton was here now was because of Grayson’s disappearance back in December. He’d been gone a little less than two weeks, and he remembered his time in the Underneath well. He remembered his prison, that hot, dry hive flickering with blue light. Grayson still woke from nightmares about the hooded woman, Axia, and the fanged man—a hellhound, Grayson had realized, though in human form, something hellhounds couldn’t maintain while on the earth’s surface. I require more flexibility in my pets, Axia had said. She needed her pets to look human on the outside, even when they were monsters at heart.
Monsters like Grayson.
He had besmirched the Brickton name plenty back in London, long before Mama had called on the police to search for him, hired the fake private detective Nolan Quinn, and sent urgent telegrams to Waverly House pleading for assistance from Scotland Yard.
Of course, Grayson’s father had refused to help, and without a good explanation. Had he been honest, Lady Brickton would have needed smelling salts to revive her. Grayson would have loved to have seen that telegram:
No to Scotland Yard -(Stop)- Our son killed a girl -(Stop)- The police are already nosing about -(Stop)- Be glad you are rid of him -(Stop)-
Being flippant was the only way to endure the harsh truth of it. Lord Brickton had shipped Grayson off to Paris for one reason: to shield him from the London police should they connect Grayson to the prostitute found dead on the rocky mudflats of the Thames last September.
Because Grayson had indeed been the one who’d killed her.
And now here he was, drawing more attention to himself in Paris. Attention his father had wanted to avoid entirely. No wonder he’d shown up. No wonder he’d looked ready to throttle Grayson back in that sitting room.
Then again, he was pretty sure his father wouldn’t have made it halfway across the room alive. And that was why Grayson had fled the rectory for the frigid February air. For the slippery streets and the nameless faces crowding the pavements along the main boulevard in their arrondissement. He’d needed to calm his racing heart, his building fire. Grayson had felt it come close to the surface, and he knew Ingrid had seen it, too.
No, Grayson hadn’t shifted from human to hellhound in months. But it was getting harder and harder to resist. He thought again about the man with fangs. He came to Grayson in nightmares sometimes. The man would taunt him, saying that in the end, he wouldn’t be able to fight what he was.
Grayson’s feet stopped carving a path through the slush and he stood still, hands in his pockets. Axia had said she’d wanted more flexibility in her hounds. If they couldn’t hold human form on earth, how valuable would someone like Grayson—someone who could shift—be to her?
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.