“Léon said that if his family ever discovered what he had become, he would take refuge in the sewers like Jean Valjean. This entrance is relatively close to his home.”
Hearing that Léon had read Les Misérables, a book Ingrid had recently read, too, only made him all the more human to her.
“It has been a handful of days,” Constantine said, with an accusatory glance at Vander. “Perhaps by now he will have calmed a bit. He might even be willing to come to Clos du Vie.” He tapped his cane on a brass manhole cover at their feet. “Messieurs?”
Ingrid watched distractedly as Nolan and Vander crouched and started to discuss the best way to pry the cover free. She looked past the underbelly of the bridge, where pigeons trilled and cooed from their roosts. The Zouave statue molded to the base of one of the bridge’s arches seemed to stare at them with rapt distaste.
It was daylight. What if something happened down in the sewers? What if Luc felt even a nominal resonance of fear from her? He’d have to shift. He’d have to fly through skies that would reveal him to anyone who happened to look skyward.
He would know where she was. Luc had watched from the stables as she’d left with Vander. Not for the first time, Ingrid wondered if afternoon was the best time for this.
“Maybe we should come back at night,” she suggested.
Using Nolan’s sword as a lever, Vander and Nolan heaved the round brass cover and slid it to the side. It scraped along the paved walkway.
Vander stood and brushed his hands on the sides of his trousers. A few seconds of eye contact was all he needed to read Ingrid’s mind.
“You won’t need him.”
The words weren’t an attempt to reassure her. They had been sewn together with a black look that flashed behind his spectacles. It was gone fast, before Vander could return his focus to the open manhole. But she’d still seen it. Her thoughts for Luc had upset him.
“It’s not about me needing him,” she said as Nolan shinnied through the manhole. Constantine followed without difficulty, as if he descended into the sewer every day. “His instinct won’t care that two Alliance members are beside me with their blessed weapons. He’ll be forced to come to me. And in daylight—”
“He might be seen. So what?” Vander interrupted. “Why should that bother you, Ingrid? It’s Luc’s problem. Let him worry about it.”
Her eyes watered as if he had struck her. Vander saw it and looked away, lips pursed.
Ingrid gathered her skirts and concentrated on lowering herself to the edge of the manhole, then finding the metal ladder with her feet. So she’d been wrong about Vander. He was jealous of Luc after all. How well he’d covered that up, she thought as she climbed down the two dozen or so rungs and stepped onto another stretch of pavement.
It was warm and dark, with only two electric jets visible along the railed-in walkway. The humid air wasn’t as overwhelming as it had been in Constantine’s orangery, and it wasn’t nearly as fragrant. There was a smell, though. A dank, sulfuric odor that reminded her that human wastewater flowed nearby.
Above, Vander slid the cover back into place before climbing down. The cover sealed with a gong, and the dense air immediately felt harder to breathe.
“Well, this is cozy.” Nolan’s voice rolled off the arched tunnel walls and briefly ate up the steady hum of fast-moving water. It ran in a gushing strip just beside the raised walkway where they stood.
Thick, sweaty pipes snaked overhead, but they were lost to the murky darkness outside the limited sphere of light.
“It is the picture of solitude, is it not?” Constantine said, and with a flourish of his cane began walking.
Ingrid started after him, the water rushing at such a fast clip it threw wind up over the railing. Vander grabbed for her arm and roughly jerked her back, his crossbow already aimed into the darkness.
“Stop.”
Nolan swung his broadsword into an offensive position. “How many are there?”
Demons. Vander could see their dust.
“At least four,” he answered. “We should leave.”
“No.” Ingrid wrested herself from Vander’s death grip. “One of those streams of dust could be Léon’s.”
She squared her shoulders and continued on Constantine’s heels. The old man had already started walking again.
“He could be dangerous,” Vander said for what felt to Ingrid like the millionth time.
“And he could be scared and confused, just like I was when I started lighting things on fire,” she returned.
She peered over her shoulder and saw Vander and Nolan following closely, their weapons at the ready. “Don’t you remember what it was like? Knowing something was wrong but not having any idea what or why?”
“I know helping him is the right thing to do, Ingrid, but this isn’t one of your lessons at Clos du Vie. This is real. You’re in no way prepared to fight demons, so it’s left to me to make sure you’re safe.”