Gabby peered down at the locked case, and this time, comprehension struck. Angel blood. Nolan had brought them angel blood.
“Hugh,” she whispered, suddenly so restless she wanted to get up and pace. “Hugh!”
Nolan peered at her from the sleepy position into which he’d begun to slouch.
“Hugh who?” he asked, frowning.
Rory groaned. “Daicrypta.”
That got Nolan out of his slouch. He sat forward and opened his mouth, but Gabby waved her hands to hush him.
“He needs angel blood to test something.” She couldn’t stop her gloved hands from clapping. “Oh, this is perfect!”
Nolan’s confusion turned into a solid glower. “You want to hand angel blood over to a disciple named Hugh?”
“He’s a doyen, actually,” she corrected him, and Nolan’s mouth went wider with disbelief, his throat making little hoarse clicking noises when words failed.
“It’s all right, cousin,” Rory soothed with an elbow to Nolan’s shoulder. “He seems moderately trustworthy.”
Nolan’s stare of disbelief shifted toward Rory. “I honestly have no idea what’s happening right now.”
Why would he? He’d been absent for weeks, and in more ways than one. He’d hurt Gabby with his silence, of course. She’d been reminded of that every night when she’d lain down to sleep, only to be haunted by questions like Why? and Am I that easy to fall out of love with? But until that moment, she hadn’t known how angry his silence had made her. The knowledge surged inside her so quickly that she was certain the temperature in the carriage had jumped.
Well, good. Let Nolan be in the dark. Let him try to find a footing here, the same way she’d had to. And let him do it without her.
“You are not required to come with me, Mr. Quinn; however, I am taking that blood to the Daicrypta,” Gabby said, the steel in her voice bringing both Nolan and Rory to attention. “Please give my thanks to your instincts.”
Grayson paced in front of the locked vendors’ stalls along a corner of the Quai d’Orsay and a bridge spanning the Seine. Only a few of Paris’s many bridges were protected by the Dispossessed. This was one of them. Grayson stopped and stared through the darkness. There were precious few lamps along this pedestrian bridge, and the weak light made it difficult for him to see Chelle from where he stood. Others would have a difficult time as well. That was a good thing, considering Chelle had just climbed onto the bridge’s thick stone parapet and was gazing down into the black water of the Seine.
Chelle didn’t want any passing humans to help her. That wasn’t the plan. The plan, Grayson had started to realize with that cold, greasy feeling that came with knowing he’d made a horrible decision, was wrong. Wrong and dangerous, and he couldn’t just stand there waiting for his moment to leap in, the way Chelle had instructed. He had to move. Now.
Grayson clenched his hands into fists and stepped onto the bridge, walking fast. Chelle braced her weight confidently against the stone griffin. They hadn’t talked about her father after their kiss in the abbey vaults earlier that afternoon. When Chelle had finally pulled away from him, a gorgeous pink blush on her cheeks, Grayson hadn’t been able to think about anything besides her mouth and when he would be able to kiss her again. If she’d let him. She’d left the abbey with a promise to pick him up at ten o’clock.
He’d thought that he could do it. He’d listed off all the reasons why he should do it. Yann had tried to kill Grayson before; he was a Chimera, and next to Vincent, he was the most influential of his caste; he was likely the one killing Dusters, too. But he was still a man. A gargoyle, but also a man, and that was what stuck in Grayson’s throat like a wad of dry crackers. Chelle wanted to kill a man, not just a gargoyle, and she wanted Grayson’s help.
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t kill again, not even someone who deserved it.
Grayson had just parted his mouth to call her name when another person came through the vaporous shadows, toward Chelle’s perched figure.
Too late.
Grayson reached for the hilt of his sword, hidden at his waist under his long frock coat.
“I would ask you to step down to safety, boy,” Yann entreated in French, his tone bored rather than concerned.
Chelle stood still and unresponsive. Yann took a step closer to the bridge.
“I will remove you if need be,” he said, switching to English and probably growing irritated at the threat of an angel’s burn.
Grayson knew Chelle’s next move, and he dreaded it. She spun around and sank into a crouch, taking Yann by surprise when she aimed a primed crossbow at his chest. But Chelle had allowed him to get too close, and he’d moved quickly. He grabbed her ankle and swiped her off her feet. She landed hard on her side, momentum rolling her backward, toward the drop-off into the river below.