Chelle was cut off by a woman jumping through the smashed display window of a boulangerie. The woman landed on the sidewalk in front of Chelle. Grayson reached out to pull Chelle back, but again she wrested her arm free. She spared him a glance of irritation—and that was when the long, razor-edged tail protruding from underneath the woman’s dress swiped through the air and sawed into Chelle’s thigh.
She screamed and her knees buckled. Grayson dove forward, catching her before she could hit the sidewalk. He moved quickly, pulling a hira-shuriken from her red sash. He sliced his palm before whirling the star toward the female Duster. The star missed, and the Duster sprinted away.
Chelle clawed at her thigh and gasped for air, her face contorted in agony.
“Let me see it.” Grayson peeled her hand back, but the wound wasn’t gushing blood. It wasn’t even that deep. Nothing someone as fierce as Chelle would lose every last ounce of coloring over.
Her lips pressed together and her eyes fluttered shut. “P-poison.”
Grayson swore. That thing had been a Duster, not a demon, and yet it had still injected poison?
“Tell me what to do.” He took her head in his hands to keep her from rolling it side to side, and made her look into his eyes. “Chelle, what do I do?”
Her hand clutched at her trouser pocket and Grayson rifled through it, his fingers closing around a glass vial the size of his pinky finger. Mercurite. He uncorked the vial with his teeth and spat it out. The viscous silver liquid ran like honey over Chelle’s blood-smeared wound. It beaded into wide globules and seeped into the torn flesh. Chelle grunted and tensed, her back arching off Grayson’s thighs. But a few moments later she was still squirming and panting in agony.
“Not … working,” she gasped.
He chucked the vial, shattering the glass on the ground. The few drops of remaining mercurite balled together on the pavement, creating a miniature silver dome. Mercurite was supposed to destroy all demon poison.
But a demon hadn’t attacked Chelle.
“It’s Duster poison,” Grayson said, staring at her wound. “We have poison, too.”
Why hadn’t he thought of that before? They were half demon—why wouldn’t they have poison?
Chelle began to seize. Grayson stood up, cradling her against his chest and pinning her arms and shoulders. The only other thing that cured demon poison was gargoyle blood. He had no idea if it would prove as useless as the mercurite had, but there was nothing else he could think of. The only gargoyle he could approach—the only gargoyle he trusted—was Luc.
“You’re going to be fine,” he whispered as he started to run, Chelle’s body shivering and twitching.
Her voice came through as a whine. “Common … grounds.”
Good. Even locked in anguish, Chelle was present enough to know his plan. For once, Grayson didn’t feel inadequate. He’d take care of her. He’d make her safe. And then he’d let himself think about Ingrid.
She smelled the acrid bite of smoke. Heard the muffled blare of screams. Ingrid woke with her face cheek-down on something soft. Grass. The Champs de Mars. The two thoughts were so clear that when Ingrid opened her eyes she expected to see the exhibition buildings surrounding her. Instead, she saw the curved brass legs of an upholstered theater seat. She wasn’t lying on grass, either, but on a floor of red velvet carpet.
She tried to push herself up, collapsing twice before succeeding. Her arms were stiff, and her hands stung with the fiercest case of pins and needles she’d ever had. As she struggled to sit back upon her knees, her head spinning like a dervish, Ingrid saw she was most definitely not on the Champs de Mars. Why had she thought such a thing? She wasn’t in Vander’s room, either. She had found consciousness on the carpeted floor of a theater balcony box. How on earth had she gotten here?
She wobbled to her feet, clutching the edge of one burgundy upholstered seat with her numb hand, and looked out over the theater in horror. It wasn’t just any theater, but l’Opéra Garnier, and below, flames had consumed the stage.
An echoing crack ripped through the theater, and Ingrid shrieked as the stage collapsed in a ball of fire. More screams sounded from the other side of the balcony box door, and suddenly Ingrid was back in her friend Anna Bettinger’s ballroom, the curtains going up in flames, guests tripping over one another to flee the fire that Ingrid had accidentally set.
She held up her numbed hands before her. Her gloves. They were gone.
Had she done this?
She coughed as the box filled with smoke. She staggered toward the door and pushed it open, only to be met with another gray wall of smoke. Ingrid fell to her hands and knees. The air was easier to breathe near the floor, though barely. She coughed and choked and crawled, not knowing where she was going.
She remembered being in Vander’s flat, and the darkness that had overcome her. The voice tunneling into her head: Come, my seedlings. It had been Axia.