Ingrid paused in bringing her duvet up around her waist. “Marco? But I thought …”
Vander went to the window and pushed back the gauzy drapes. “Luc was with Marco when he found you,” he said, his words clipped to sharpened points. “He couldn’t stay.”
Ingrid propped herself against the pillows, relieved. She hadn’t imagined him, then.
“He had to return to his territory,” she said.
Vander stayed silent at the window, looking at the churchyard lawn as if there were actually something interesting to see there.
“You know where he is. Don’t you?” Ingrid asked.
She hadn’t had the nerve to bring up Luc’s name or ponder his new territory with Vander these last weeks. She’d also been careful to keep Luc’s stone talisman in her pocket and out of Vander’s sight. She knew his feelings for her, and he knew of hers for Luc. It would have been awkward to discuss her heartbreak with someone who was likely rejoicing inside, so she’d stayed quiet instead.
“Lennier’s old territory,” Vander finally answered. He turned away from the window and added, “Luc didn’t want you to know.”
She leaned into the pillows, stunned. He’d been close this whole time. Guardian of gargoyle common grounds, a mere ten-minute walk away. She pictured him in Lennier’s sitting room, in front of the hearth. In the guest bedroom where they had kissed and held one another in the four-poster bed—the very action that had decided Luc’s fate as guardian of l’Abbaye Saint-Dismas.
Of course he hadn’t wanted Ingrid to know. He would understand how tempted she’d be to go to him, and he wouldn’t want her at gargoyle common grounds, not when any number of Dispossessed could be there.
Vander left the window. “I have to get back to H?tel Bastian. Things are … busy.”
The way he’d hesitated took Ingrid from her thoughts of Luc. “What is it? Do you know which gargoyle killed Léon and the others?”
He picked up his jacket from the back of the chair and avoided her eyes.
“Vander, you can tell me. I can handle it.” Another thought stilled her. “Or is it Axia? Has something happened while I’ve been sleeping?”
How long would it take for the fallen angel to set her Harvest in motion?
Vander shrugged on his jacket, the blessed silver crossbow inside weighing down the faded tweed. “No and no. It’s Alliance matters, that’s all. You need to rest.”
She pressed her lips tight and cocked her head, as if to say I don’t think so. Vander started to laugh a moment before the door to her bedroom creaked open. Ingrid’s mother stepped inside all smiles and bright eyes. Ingrid was about to ask why when someone else came in on Mama’s heels.
“Grayson!” Ingrid pushed back the duvet once again and leaped up. Her brother reached the bed in time to catch her before she fell. Her leg didn’t hurt, but she wasn’t steady on her feet just yet, either.
Her mind whirled, her vision spun, but it didn’t matter. Grayson was here and he was holding her. She breathed in deeply, and with the air came a rush of anger. She pulled back and cuffed his arm.
“Where have you been? You could have at least sent a note saying you were still in Paris. That you were still alive.”
Grayson sighed and hung his head, nodding once. “I know. I’m sorry, Ingrid.”
Mama stood in the doorway, watching them. She was still smiling, without a trace of anger anywhere on her lightly lined face.
“I have already spoken with him,” Lady Brickton said, her corseted figure cut into an hourglass. Plump and firm and trim all at once, like a pincushion, Ingrid often thought. “And I am holding him to the promise he has made me. Mr. Burke?”
Mama held the door open, graciously indicating that it was time for Vander to take his leave. Grayson turned his head to watch Vander in his side vision. They didn’t make eye contact, and Vander, Ingrid noted, fled the room rather quickly, without so much as a hello for her brother. If he was upset about Luc, she would just have to worry about it later.
Mama closed the door behind herself and Vander.
“I was supposed to be there,” Grayson said the moment they were alone.
He pulled away, his jaw tight. His eyes were red-rimmed, as if he’d been crying.
“It was my flat. The one I share with Léon.”
“Oh, Grayson.” She reached for his hand. He let her take it, wind her fingers through his, and squeeze.
“I took an omnibus to H?tel Bastian instead. To see Chelle.”
She tried not to show her hurt. “You’ve been seeing Chelle?”
He brought their joined hands into his lap and started twisting the ring on her center finger. The single pearl set in silver had been their grandmother’s.
“No, and she wasn’t there, so I still haven’t seen her. By the time I made it back to the flat …”
Even if he had been seeing Chelle, she couldn’t be upset with him. Not right then. He’d come too close to being among those slain Dusters.