She crouched in a most unladylike manner on the narrow quay beneath the Pont de l’Alma, considering ways to pry a manhole cover free. The tarnished brass disk had to weigh at least five stone. She needed to lever the blasted thing up if she wished to descend into the sewers before daylight broke over the city.
Entering miles of dank, serpentine sewage tunnels alone was a risk at any time of the day, but Ingrid needed to slink her way in, and she preferred to do so without being seen. She had to find her brother. Grayson had been gone for nearly a month, and she’d started to have that old bubbling awareness again. The caged restlessness that always beset her when she simply knew her twin was in trouble.
The sewers were as good a hiding place as any, and Grayson had most definitely been hiding. For a month he’d been on his own in Paris, avoiding Ingrid and their mother. Had Gabby still been in the city, instead of in London, Ingrid was certain he would have steered clear of their younger sister as well. Anything to avoid facing the reality of their grim situation: that he and Ingrid were Dusters—humans who had been given demon blood at birth. A rogue guardian angel had gifted them this blood, and with it, inhuman abilities. Ingrid could create electricity at her fingertips. As for Grayson … his ability was a bit more complicated, and much more dangerous.
Well, she was finished waiting for him to come home. She needed her brother—even if he was a hellhound some of the time. Ingrid would find him and drag him back to the abbey by the ear if she had to.
She untied the silk drawstring pouch cinched around her wrist and withdrew the petite hand dagger she kept for emergency use. When Vander Burke had given her the four-inch blade of blessed silver with its polished ebony handle a few weeks prior, he’d intended for her to use the weapon to fend off hungry Underneath demons trespassing in the human realm. Ingrid, however, was perfectly content using it to try to lift this sewer manhole cover.
She scraped the point of the blade along the rim of the cover, searching for a gap. It was nearly impossible to see in the predawn darkness. The point slipped into a crevice and Ingrid pushed against the weight of the brass disk with all her strength.
“You are not going down there.”
She paused at the low, surly voice. She’d wondered if Marco might follow her. Butlers didn’t usually keep such close tabs on the members of the family they worked for, but Marco was more than just the butler at l’Abbaye Saint-Dismas. And Ingrid was more to him than just his employer’s daughter.
The dagger had barely raised the cover an inch, but she continued to hold it propped open.
“Not by myself,” she replied, glancing quickly over her shoulder to where he stood. “My gargoyle wouldn’t be so negligent as to allow that.”
Marco came around to stand before her. The dark gray merino of his butler’s livery was a few shades darker than anything else around them. Sunrise was closer than she had thought.
“If you’d help me with this, please?” she asked, pushing on the handle again. With his strength, Marco could easily rip the cover up and toss it aside.
Instead, he set his foot on the cover, forcing it to slam shut and her dagger tip to pop free.
“And as your gargoyle, I am forced, once again, to keep you from getting yourself killed.” He crouched down until his eyes met hers.
Marco’s dark features were even darker than usual in the coming blue of dawn. Ingrid had once feared the scowling face before her. Even more, she’d feared him when he would take on his true form—a thick, cinnamon-red jacket of reptilian scales, featherless sienna wings, and long, wickedly sharp talons. At one point, not very long ago, Marco had considered killing her. That was before he’d been assigned to the abbey and become her gargoyle protector. Before everything that he was forbade him to harm her.
“I’m not afraid of what I might find in the sewers,” Ingrid said, though the tunnels were rife with demons. Her last visit beneath the city had been with two demon hunters, Vander Burke and Nolan Quinn, and she hadn’t known the first thing about protecting herself.
Things were different now. Ingrid knew how to use her demon half, powered by the blood of a lectrux demon. She knew how to summon electricity and store it in her fingertips, and more importantly, how to release a current of lightning without completely draining her reserves. If she came across a demon threat in the sewers, she was certain she could subdue it.
Marco leaned forward. “Then why, Lady Ingrid, could I taste your fear in the back of my throat?”
She clenched her teeth and beat back a wave of nausea. Marco himself didn’t make her uneasy. It was his vivid connection to her that did. He could sense her so intimately that if he held still and drew up her scent, catalogued within his memory, he could feel the beat of her heart echoing his own. He could feel her every breath, the shift in her pulse, even her emotions. He could find her and be at her side within moments.
These things were all meant to help him keep his human charge from harm. Still, Ingrid didn’t want him to have such access. She didn’t want him to be her gargoyle.