“My lady,” Dimitrie greeted her. “I can bring him to your window.”
As she and Nolan spilled out of the confessional, Gabby tried to imagine Dimitrie’s scrawny frame lifting Nolan’s muscled one. Of course, Dimitrie’s body in true form was a different thing altogether.
“Why would you do that?” she asked. Luc would never have offered to help.
Dimitrie shrugged. “Any human willing to fight demons is an asset to the Dispossessed.”
Gabby wanted to smile and say thank you, but she couldn’t stop remembering his pale back and the scars running the length of it like the ridges of a metal washboard. Nolan had called Dimitrie useless, but he wasn’t. He’d saved her from that appendius and had swallowed his pride by taking her to H?tel Bastian for mercurite.
“All right,” Nolan said. “I’ll come to the carriage house tomorrow night, after midnight.”
“Thank you,” Gabby said quickly. Dimitrie bowed. He was so much more gracious than Luc. It was a bit disarming.
Nolan called after Dimitrie as he stepped down out of the alcove chapel. “One more thing. Can you trace Grayson for me? I’d like to speak to him.”
Dimitrie stilled. His fingers tensed into fists. He kept his back to Nolan, his head bowed forward. When he answered, it was through gritted teeth.
“I prefer not to use my abilities to please the whims of humans.”
He strode away without a look back at Nolan or Gabby. She immediately took back every kind thought she’d just had for the gargoyle.
“He’s a bit touchy,” Nolan muttered.
“He could have easily told you,” Gabby said.
Dimitrie’s refusal to trace Grayson didn’t make any sense, especially since he’d practically begged to fly Nolan up to Gabby’s window, as if facilitating some preternatural rendition of Romeo and Juliet.
“Never mind.” Nolan took Gabby’s wrist in hand and persuaded her back to his side. She liked it there, and promptly forgot Dimitrie.
“If I’m going to be coming to your room, I suppose we won’t need this relic,” Nolan said, kicking the confessional door closed with his foot.
Gabby jabbed a finger into his chest. “We’ll be training, not kissing.”
He nodded and sputtered promises of good behavior. Gabby didn’t believe him for a second.
“Why did you want to see Grayson?” she asked.
Nolan ran his thumb across the tender underside of Gabby’s wrist. “He hasn’t told you?”
“He doesn’t talk much lately,” Gabby said with a weary laugh. The sound caught in her throat as Nolan’s thumb coursed over her wrist again. “What happened?”
“He shifted into a hellhound last night,” Nolan answered with stark brevity. Gabby pulled her wrist away and stared, disbelieving.
“Chelle saw the whole thing. She said it wasn’t like before,” he went on. “He was a real hellhound. Smaller than most, but—he didn’t look human at all.”
“But it doesn’t make sense. Why would he shift fully? He hasn’t been in the Underneath, like last time.”
Nolan and Vander had determined that Axia must have done something to him there. Given him some sort of poison to make him shift. That was why his body had come out of the Underneath riddled with bite marks.
“I don’t know,” Nolan said. “But, Gabby, for now, it might be best if you kept your distance.”
She huffed, waving off his concern. “He’s my brother. He isn’t going to harm me.”
“No doubt you’d put him in a hospital bed should he attempt to,” Nolan said as he cupped her cheek, her puffy scars against his palm.
Gabby flinched.
“Just be careful around him,” Nolan pressed. “And tell Ingrid as well.”
He kissed the tip of her nose before stealing back down the ambulatory, toward the transept. Kissing in a church. In a confessional booth! Gabby should have felt sinful. Instead, the only thing clenching in her stomach was dread. How was she supposed to tell Ingrid that Grayson had fully shifted? That their brother had become even less human than before?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ingrid backed away from the fountain. The arcade entrance wasn’t far, perhaps fifty yards. She could make it if the serpent kept its sluggish pace.
Luc. She stole a glance over her shoulder. He wasn’t there, coming for her in full battle regalia. And the glass doors seemed farther away than she remembered.
Ingrid’s soles scuffed over the marble, a rush of desperation making her clumsy. Luc would come. Any moment he would swoop overhead, his wings like black pennants. There were no other humans here to witness him. But a second passed, and then another, and a fast look showed Axia’s pale serpent now gliding over the marble tiles, its shining scales leaving a track of fountain water in its wake.
Where was Luc?