“Something,” she answered. “Anything other than hide. You’ve already proven you do that well enough.”
She drew back as soon as she’d said it. Her lips parted and her expression betrayed a look of regret. But it was gone just as fast.
“Is it because of your dust?” she asked. “Vander has it, too, and it hasn’t stopped him from doing good things for the Alliance.”
“Don’t compare me to Vander Burke,” Grayson muttered, reaching into his pocket for a few coins. “He doesn’t turn into an enormous rabid dog.”
“It only happened once, Grayson, and you were under Axia’s influence.” Chelle lowered her voice. “If you would just try—”
“You want the wrong things.” Grayson tossed the coins onto the table. “You shouldn’t be asking me to join you. You should be asking me to stay away.”
Grayson started for the door. Why did he keep doing this to himself? Going to Café Julius, seeing Chelle. It never made him feel better. The Alliance was interested in him and his sister because of their dust, and had gone so far as to request that they go to Rome for observation and interviews, even protection from Axia, if need be. Neither he nor Ingrid had accepted, though. He couldn’t imagine anything worse than being drilled with questions about his demon half or letting the secret he clutched come out into the open.
If anyone knew what he’d done in London, knew the urges he fought every single day, they would realize he shouldn’t be hunting anything.
They would realize they should be hunting him.
CHAPTER FIVE
Everything was going to be different now that Papa had arrived. Ingrid trudged through the snow behind the rectory and tried to convince herself that she wasn’t already hiding from him.
Wasn’t that what they would all be doing from here on out? Hiding from the truth? Hiding from what they were? What they had become? So much had changed since London. What frightened Ingrid the most sometimes was that she didn’t want to go back. Everything she’d been born and bred to be as Lady Ingrid Waverly—a prim and mild society rose whose only ambition was to marry high and well—had disintegrated over the last few months. But her father didn’t know this, and he most certainly couldn’t find out. With one word, he could command them all to pack up and leave Paris. What would Ingrid do … refuse? The thought made her sick to her stomach.
She loved her father, but he had a weight to him. Had he always been so overbearing? Or maybe it was their newfound freedom here in Paris that had made his sudden presence feel like a wet sheet of canvas tossed over all their heads.
Ingrid felt guilty for it, but she wished he had stayed away.
She slowed down as she neared the abbey’s cemetery. Her feet were cold, her boots still damp from that morning. Ingrid looked around, the back lawns new for her. She’d seen a corner of the cemetery from the rectory, but she hadn’t yet been out this way. The icy, drizzly snowfalls had kept her from exploring.
The bars along the iron fence enclosing the cemetery had gone to rust. The gate hung from one hinge and was frozen open by a drift of snow. Her feet were the first to break the perfectly smooth blanket of white as she entered through the gate. The headstones slanted like gray, crooked teeth, and the engravings were all in French, of course—a language Ingrid had, sadly, never grasped. She knew enough to get by, but nothing more.
She wound her way among the rows of headstones, wondering how she might explain to her father the twice-weekly visits to Constantine’s chateau. What if she said she was receiving French lessons? Ingrid sighed. But then her father would expect her French to improve.
She didn’t need to know the language to know the headstones here were old. The most recent death she saw dated from a century ago. There were more graves through a second gate on the other side of the cemetery, though these were marked with simple wooden crosses or nubs of stone. A pulpy wooden sign hanging on the entrance gate bore one word: PROFANE.
She knew the English meaning for this word. Did it mean the same in French? With a forceful shove, the gate swung in, plowing through the snow. This second plot was smaller and wasn’t fenced in; trees and shrubbery made up the perimeter instead. Ingrid stepped inside, wondering how much farther the abbey grounds went. Maybe she’d avoid her father a bit longer and walk the whole property.
But as soon as she entered the plot, her legs seized. Her knees trembled. A swirl of nausea slammed into her. The whole cemetery seemed to set off on a wobbly spin, blurring around her shoulders. Ingrid squeezed her eyes shut, trying to clear her vision, but with the blackness came a racing cold.