“We’re discussing how an evil society is plotting to drain Ingrid’s blood, and you have an appointment?” Vander asked.
Nolan tucked the watch into his vest and shrugged. “It’s a pressing appointment. Besides, you heard the man: the evil society can’t touch her. I’ll see you at H?tel Bastian tonight?”
Vander grumbled his assent, and with the tip of an invisible hat, Nolan headed toward the quay steps. He turned back as he took the stone steps two at a time. “And don’t go after spider boy!”
Vander squeezed Ingrid’s fingers. “I think he’s talking to you.”
Constantine eyed their joined hands and raised his brow. Ingrid and Vander unlaced their fingers, but as they parted, she felt something cold and sticky pull at the skin on the back of her hand. Looking down, she saw strings of white gossamer waving in the wind. Spider silk. It ran from Vander’s fingers to Ingrid’s hand like an undulating bridge.
“Is that—” Ingrid stopped and tried to shake the webbing free. Vander did the same, wrenching his hand back. The silk stretched, firmly affixed to the tips of his fingers.
Ingrid stared at him. “Is that coming from you?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
An E-flat wheezed from one of the abbey’s wooden organ pipes, belching yet another off-pitch note into the fan-vaulted ceilings. Gabby gritted her teeth as her linen cloth came off the ivory keys coated in gritty black dust. It had taken her the last half hour or more to clean the pipe organ’s dual keyboards, her fingers bringing up ages of dust and playing the keys with all the finesse of a toddler.
“You can cross butchering pipe organ music off your things-to-do-before-I-die list,” Grayson mocked from where he crouched, brushing the newly painted choir stalls with varnish. Their mother had reimagined the choir stalls as a spot to smoke, drink champagne, and mingle between viewing exhibits.
“How was I supposed to know the thing was still able to play?” she shot back.
That morning at the breakfast table, she and Grayson had promised their mother they would help with the abbey, and Lady Brickton had put them to task. It wouldn’t normally have taken Gabby an hour to clean fifty-six keys, even if they were the size of a giant’s knuckles. But the soreness in her shoulder slowed her down significantly. The stitches were small and neat—Nolan had seen to them himself—but they still pulled and stung.
Gabby supposed that was what one got when one tussled with an appendius demon.
“How did you get that wound?” Grayson asked.
Gabby crumpled the dusting linen and went still. She’d told Ingrid about the appendius before her sister had gone out that morning with Vander, but not Grayson.
“You’re left-handed, and yet you’re using your right to clean,” Grayson explained, popping up from between stalls. He wiped his sweaty forehead with the back of his arm. “And I can smell your blood better than usual.”
For whatever reason, this didn’t surprise Gabby as it probably should have. Her brother had been acting strange for weeks, and knowing he had hellhound blood in him … well, heightened senses didn’t seem all that out of the ordinary.
“Because of your demon gift,” she said.
Grayson mashed the bristles of the varnishing brush against the ledge of the choir stall. “I wish people would stop calling it a gift. It’s a curse, not a gift.” He made a messy stroke of the brush. “And why, of all demons, did it have to be a bleeding hellhound? Why not a lectrux, like Ingrid? Or whatever it is Vander has the blood of?”
He jammed the brush back into the tin bucket and a wave of clear, tacky varnish slopped over the edge. Grayson swore.
Gabby wished she knew what to say, but she was caught with an open mouth and no words at all. Her brother didn’t usually speak so much to her, and definitely not about important things like this.
The sound of shoe soles on the tile floor made them both peer toward the narthex. Their father strode into the abbey foyer, the loose cowl of his black woolen great coat fluttering like a raven’s wings. He appraised the interior of the church with a wrinkled brow. He was not impressed. He would have been had he seen the wreck the place had been in early December. Then again, Gabby thought, had he seen it in early December, they would have all been home in London before Christmas.
“Papa?” Gabby’s voice carried far, echoing off the ceiling. She thought the ceiling might be the abbey’s most beautiful feature. Each fanned-out section had been painted into a mosaic of color: sapphire, viridian, iris, onyx, and ruby. She had often gazed at the patterns it made until her neck ached.
“Gabriella, you’re to come with me,” her father replied.
Blast. What had she done now? Gabby put down the dusting cloth, her mind racing. Had he found out about her sneaking out the night before? No. If that had been the case, that telling vein of his would have been standing out in the center of his forehead.