If any of her old London friends were to see her now, splayed out in the snow, they would likely think she’d gone mad. A smile tugged the corner of her lips. Perhaps she had. If that was the case, then mad she would remain, because chilled to the bone was the only way Ingrid could feel anything at all.
The clouds rumbled like a hungry belly, promising not snow but a cold February rain. It would likely wash away the hard, thin blanket of snow that had fallen the night before. Ingrid closed her eyes and ordered the first spark to light. She cried out at the sharp twinge in her shoulder, which was followed by a burst of heat. Pain crackled down one arm, coming alive with an electric rush. With her gloves already cast aside, a serrated line of lightning sputtered from her fingertips. It hit the trunk of a poplar less than a body’s length away. Simultaneously, a quick, bright flash of lightning stabbed down from the brooding clouds and struck the poplar. From each striking point, thin trails of smoke eddied toward the sky.
Ingrid’s eyes flew open and she belted out a laugh. She’d done it! After nearly two months of visits to Constantine’s chateau, spending hours upon hours practicing control over this new side of her—a side that her London friends would most definitely believe insane—she had finally done it!
Ingrid pushed herself up, her violet woolen cape and fur-lined hood damp from the ground. The motion set her slushy blood back into circulation, and more tingles pricked at her shoulders. They flooded her arms, pooled at her elbows, and fanned out toward her fingertips. The sudden rush of feeling gave her arms the sensation of being large and unwieldy compared to the rest of her body. But it had happened. For the first time, the electric pulses hadn’t come of their own volition. They hadn’t been ruled by her temper or by fear or any other emotion. She had commanded them.
Ingrid had finally grasped a sliver of power over her demon half.
She still sometimes thought it was preposterous that she had anything other than human blood coursing through her veins, and that demons were real creatures with unspeakable appetites. Some mornings, Ingrid would wake and, for the first few seconds of consciousness, forget that she belonged to two worlds—one of ordinary humans, with their duties and titles, families and responsibilities, the other filled with demon hunters wielding blessed silver weapons, steel-scaled gargoyles protecting territories and humans, untouchable angels that enslaved those gargoyles, and of course, people like Ingrid herself: Dusters, humans gifted at birth with demon blood.
The damp cold closed in as her mind hitched on the memory of one dark-scaled gargoyle in particular. Reluctantly, she let the memory go. Learning that demons were real had thrown Ingrid’s life into a spin. But it had been the reality of living, breathing gargoyles that had surprised her the most. They were far more complex than demons. Shape-shifting slaves to the angels, gargoyles were charged with protecting the humans living within their designated territories. Most humans didn’t know gargoyles were anything more than stone statues or waterspouts, like the ones scattered about Notre Dame. Sometimes Ingrid wished she could still count herself among the ignorant.
She was in too deep to turn back now, though.
Behind her, the brittle layer of icy crust broke underfoot. “I didn’t realize making snow angels would be part of your education.”
She really ought to have been used to his American accent by now. His words were fast and efficient, though softened by his rich, satiny tenor. It warmed her blood a few more degrees.
Ingrid picked up her gloves and got to her feet, the leather of her bright ocher boots stiff from the cold. She quickly flipped back the hood of her cape and shook the snow free before turning to greet Vander Burke. His pale brown eyes were especially radiant in this moody light. She’d first met Vander two months before, inside his cramped Saint-Germain-des-Prés bookshop. Her younger sister, Gabby, had deemed him a handsome bore, much too intellectual and staid.
Gabby had been partially correct. Vander was handsome. He stood a full head taller than Ingrid, with athletically broad shoulders and classic Roman features weakened only by the wire-rimmed spectacles he wore. He was intellectual and staid, aiming—surprisingly enough—to become a reverend. He’d even quit the apartment above his bookshop to live and study at the American Church. But a bore he most certainly was not.
How could any handsome bookseller-cum-demon-hunter who aspired to the clergy be boring?
“You’re not usually this early,” she said, but then stopped to think. Just how long had she been supine in the snow? Vander met her at Clos du Vie after each of her lessons to drive her home, but he usually waited for her in Monsieur Constantine’s foyer. She peered at him. “Are you checking up on me?”
Ingrid wasn’t the only Duster who came to Clos du Vie to explore the powers of demon blood. There were others, Constantine had told her, but he was always careful to schedule their visits so none of them overlapped.