“Dupuis told you all this?” Benjamin asked, leaning against the wavy glass, his back to the activity below.
Portions of the loft had been sectioned off as meeting spaces, open training areas, even a kitchen and dining hall, and there were probably a dozen or more people milling about. Each one had glanced up toward the glass-faced office every now and then during the past fifteen minutes.
“Yes, but Rory and I saw it on our own as well,” she answered. They’d already explained how they’d met Hugh Dupuis on the London docks. “Mr. Dupuis simply explained the nets in more detail to me yesterday during my visit.”
Nadia, a middle-aged woman with close-cropped, mostly gray hair, lifted her booted foot onto the seat of a low stool and leaned forward. “And you thought nothing of going inside a Daicrypta doyen’s home alone?”
She, like Chelle, dressed as a man, in trousers and a jacket, but unlike Chelle, Nadia truly had no feminine features and, Gabby had learned, went by the name of Ned outside these warehouse walls.
“I was never in any danger,” Gabby said with a sigh. “I truly don’t believe Hugh Dupuis is a threat.”
“He’s Daicrypta,” Nadia threw back, as if the single word were enough of an argument. To the Alliance, perhaps it was.
“Yes, but he goes about things much differently than his father did.”
Nadia put her foot back down and mumbled “Or so he says” under her breath. Gabby ignored it. There was no way to convince Nadia or Benjamin or the handful of others in the room of what Gabby had felt while in Hugh’s presence: that he wanted to help.
“I think he would share these nets with the Alliance if you expressed an interest,” Gabby said. “They could be useful in demon hunting.”
Benjamin stood free of the window and paced the creaky cork floor. “We don’t have a use for nets,” he said. “We hunt and destroy demons. We don’t trap them or experiment on them.”
She looked at Rory, who stood beside the door, working the tip of one of his daggers underneath his nails and doing a smashing job of ignoring the conversation.
“But you do hold demons for experimentation,” she argued. “There’s a whole room in Paris at H?tel Bastian dedicated to it!”
“Well, there isn’t one here,” Benjamin said, flashing her the universal expression for don’t argue with me.
He was the leader in London, but perhaps he was still in the dark about the Directorate’s dealings with the Daicrypta. Or perhaps he did know about them but wasn’t authorized to say so. Really, the Alliance was starting to give Gabby a headache.
“I expect you both to show consideration for the way we do things here. Neither of you is part of my faction, but you’re still Alliance.” Benjamin tilted his head toward Gabby. “Almost, as far as you’re concerned. And we do not work in tandem with the Daicrypta. Especially a Daicrypta with the name Dupuis.”
Gabby wasn’t sure whom she was more frustrated with: Benjamin, for his unwavering shortsightedness, or Rory, for keeping his mouth shut and his head down for the entire meeting. She told Rory as much as soon as they’d been escorted out through the side door.
“There’s no arguin’ wi’ the leader of another faction,” Rory explained as he helped her into the enclosed carriage that had been waiting for them outside the warehouse. They settled in, and the driver didn’t waste a moment directing the horses onward, out of this part of the city.
“He’s right, Gabby, we should stay away from the Daicrypta.”
There was no arguing with Rory, either. He was as stubborn as his cousin. If Gabby told him exactly what was going through her mind—that she had found herself liking Hugh Dupuis’s company infinitely more than Benjamin’s or Nadia’s—he might have guessed that she had no intention of staying away from the Daicrypta simply because someone had told her to. If she wanted to pay another visit, then she would.
It made her wish she actually had a reason to go back.
The nets were only proven to capture full-blooded demons, though. Who knew how much demon blood Axia had developed while in the Underneath? It might not be enough for the nets to seal to her, the same way they hadn’t sealed to Ingrid or Vander.
Gabby leaned against the cushioned wall, which jostled her even more now that the carriage traveled along a road that felt like it had been pockmarked by a rain of meteorites. She wished for one useful thing to do. How had she suffered through her days before Paris? Teas and parties and dress fittings and dancing lessons and nothing but luxurious ridiculousness.
“I see I’ve got to do something drastic to keep ye from trouble, don’t I, laoch?”
The words sounded playful, but Rory gave too much worry away with his watchful eyes. To her body’s relief, the carriage stopped. The grumblings of their driver, raised voices from other nearby carriages, and a chorus of braying, agitated horses all pointed to a cluster of traffic.