Vander nudged his spectacles higher on his nose and smiled. “I’m checking up on Constantine.”
Ingrid sighed. Vander had made it clear that he didn’t trust Constantine. Not that Ingrid blamed him for his skepticism. Monsieur Constantine had fooled them all, beginning with her twin brother, Grayson. Masquerading as an estate agent, he had helped Grayson select a property for their new residence and their mother’s future art gallery here in Paris. He’d led Grayson to L’Abbaye Saint-Dismas, which consisted of an old, crumbling stone church, a cold stone rectory, and a dilapidated carriage house, all of which had been adorned with a number of les grotesques—gargoyles.
Then, when Ingrid, Gabby, and their mother, Lady Charlotte Brickton, had arrived, it had been Constantine who had informed them that Grayson had gone missing. Constantine had been at Lady Brickton’s beck and call, playing the helpfully ignorant family acquaintance, when in reality, he had known just about everything.
He’d known about Ingrid and Grayson’s demon dust; that Ingrid and Gabby had started working with the Alliance, a well-established underground society of demon hunters, to find their missing brother; and that Ingrid’s demon blood had given her a supernatural ability, one that she had no control over. He’d even known about gargoyles; that L’Abbaye Saint-Dismas, with its sacred ground and the stone gargoyles covering the place like creeping ivy, would doubly protect whoever lived there.
Constantine had bided his time, observing Ingrid from a distance, and then, when she’d needed it most, he had offered his assistance. She was glad he had, even if Vander wasn’t.
“Monsieur Constantine is a gentleman, Vander. He’s helping me.” She hesitated to tell him about the electricity she’d just conjured. It had only happened once. She didn’t want to brag prematurely.
“Perfect gentlemen allow their guests to lounge in snowdrifts?” he returned, but she caught the mischievous gleam behind those spectacles of his.
“It helps, believe it or not,” she answered, avoiding his gaze as she shook snow from one of her ocher gloves. “When I can’t feel anything at all … it’s like having a blank slate before me. I don’t understand it, but Constantine suggested it might help me focus. And it did.”
She dropped a glove, her fingers too stiff to hold it. Vander stooped to snatch it up.
He held it out to her. “It might also help you catch your death.”
Ingrid tried to take the glove, but Vander must have seen her blanched skin and purplish-blue fingernails. He slipped the glove onto her hand himself and then lifted her palms to his lips. She felt his hot breath through the soft kid, and the warmth brought out an embarrassing moan of relief.
She gathered her wits and pulled her hands away from the press of his lips. “I won’t catch my death.”
It was the truth, and it was also a reminder of how different Ingrid was from other Dusters. Axia, the guardian angel who had been cast into the Underneath for her sin of gifting babies with strains of demon blood, had given Ingrid and her twin something more: she had hidden her own blood within their veins.
Axia had needed to safeguard her blood from the toxic Underneath, where its power would wither. She had chosen Ingrid and Grayson to harbor her angel blood, and for all of their lives, the two had been blessed with good health and fast-healing bruises and cuts. Recently, Ingrid had discovered something more. She didn’t know why or how, but on two occasions, she had been able to force gargoyles into submission. And once, she had actually glowed. All this because of the angel blood.
So no, a little time in the snow wasn’t going to give her pneumonia. The only thing Ingrid had to fear was Axia herself. The angel wanted her blood back, and she’d already proven she had the power to get it.
“All right, so you’re healthy as an ox,” Vander said, taking her by the elbow. “But what about Constantine?”
“I think he’s rather healthy himself, for a man of his age,” she said, knowing full well that she was being cheeky. She liked making Vander smile.
“Minx,” he muttered. “You know what I mean. Have you figured out his mystery? Why does he have my demon gift when I can’t trace a speck of dust around him?”
That was yet another reason Ingrid felt so at ease with Vander Burke. He was a Duster as well; his gift was the ability to see the colorful dust particles demons left in their wakes. Constantine had once told her that his students’ demon gifts ranged all over the map. There was an endless variety of demon breeds, it seemed, and Vander hadn’t yet discovered what demon he shared blood with. Whatever it was, his was a useful gift for a demon hunter.
“I don’t know why Constantine can see dust,” she said, knowing her comment would only cause Vander’s brow to pull together into a frown.