“That wasn’t very kind,” Gabby said, fighting a smile.
Grayson flipped the note over and read the handwriting. He looked at Ingrid and held out the small envelope. “It’s addressed to you.”
Ingrid took the note but was wary of opening it. Something was wrong, and she somehow knew that when she read this note, things were going to get much worse.
She took the envelope and walked to the credenza beneath the foyer’s mirror. Slowly and methodically, she lifted the penknife and slit the envelope open. The note inside was on fine card stock, a marbled gray, with an address stamped at the top and slanted handwriting inked below:
Dimitrie is delivering your father to me presently. He will remain unharmed for now.
I told you that you would end up coming to me.
M. Robert Dupuis
The dusky blue hour of four in the morning found them on their way back to H?tel Bastian. Gabby’s eyes burned. She hadn’t slept and yet somehow she’d become caught in the center of a nightmare, the kind that spun in frenzied circles; the kind where she couldn’t run fast enough or move her body the way she wanted.
Luc had returned to the rectory within minutes of the letter’s arrival. He’d followed Dimitrie and Lord Brickton to a grand Montmartre town house and watched from the skies as they approached the door. Lord Brickton’s shivery unease had dripped through Luc’s chest the whole time. Gabby’s father had known something was off, and yet he’d gone inside the town house anyway.
“He’s concerned, but not hurt in any way,” Luc had told them. He’d waited, circling overhead, devising a way to get inside if Lord Brickton required him. But when nothing more happened, Luc had turned back for the rectory instead.
“He isn’t going to harm Papa,” Ingrid said now, all five of them—Gabby, Grayson, Ingrid, Mama, and Luc—riding in the hired hackney.
Their own landau was still in Montmartre, outside the Paris seat for the Daicrypta.
“He’s using Papa as leverage,” Ingrid said.
“As trade, you mean,” Gabby said, still cold despite the ratty rug that covered her legs. “You for him, isn’t that how it is? We should have pushed Dupuis off the balcony at that dreadful artist’s salon.”
“Gabriella,” Mama sighed. It was a halfhearted admonishment. Gabby was certain that in truth Mama agreed.
“Marco will bring Constantine. Maybe he can tell us more,” Luc said, his posture rigid. Gabby wondered if he planned to leap from the moving hackney should the urge to shift come over him.
“Léon said not to go to Dupuis,” Grayson said. “His warning sounded serious, Ingrid. It has to be bad.”
“So you would leave Papa there?” Ingrid asked.
“I would try to think of another way, that’s all.”
“And what if there isn’t another way?” Ingrid shot back.
“There is always another way, my dear,” their mother said, her gaze fixed to the window and the rising light. “We simply need more heads than we currently have to think of it.”
Her optimism was strange to hear. In fact, her insistence on accompanying them to H?tel Bastian had been so out of the ordinary that no one had dared object. No one argued with her now, either.
When they arrived at H?tel Bastian, they went straight up to the third floor and pounded on the dungeonlike door. Luc stood with them, and Gabby was certain he would force his way into Alliance headquarters if need be. Thankfully, it wasn’t required. Rory opened the door, half asleep and for once not wearing his vest of daggers. Gabby figured it couldn’t be very comfortable to sleep in.
The sight of them crowded on the landing was enough for Rory to yank the door open wide and permit them all in. Less than five minutes later, the common rooms were noisy with the mumblings of awakened Alliance, including Nolan and Chelle. Gabby let out a breath of relief when she didn’t see Carrick among them.
“Then Dimitrie is the Daicrypta’s gargoyle?” Nolan asked.
From what Luc had seen and what Dupuis had written in his note to Ingrid, it made the most sense that the Daicrypta had planted Dimitrie within the abbey’s territory. To get close to Ingrid, Gabby suspected.
“But how did the Daicrypta know the Order planned to pair Luc with another Dispossessed?” Nolan asked.
He stood in the center of the open kitchen area. Because of the stove, it was the warmest spot in the apartment and the place where everyone had chosen to congregate. Lady Brickton had been given a chair close to the stove, and Gabby and Ingrid stood behind her.
“That’s what we want to know,” Gabby said. “We told no one other than you, Vander, and Chelle.”
“What about Constantine?” Chelle asked, seated on a zinc-topped counter. “Did Ingrid tell him as well?”
One of the Alliance men Gabby didn’t know spoke up. “He was Daicrypta once. Maybe he still is.”
“He isn’t behind this,” Ingrid said. “And no, I didn’t tell him. We don’t talk about things like that.”