Ingrid could tell that Luc hadn’t wanted to leave. His expression had remained cool and unconcerned when he’d explained to her about Gaston’s visit and how something important regarding Vincent and the Chimeras was under way. It had to be now, he’d said, and would she please stay here, in front of the fire with the curtains drawn, until he returned?
“I’m not invited,” she’d stated.
Luc had given her a relaxed smile. “You’re safer here.”
When he’d taken her into his arms, however, she’d felt tension turning his muscles into steel rods. He’d kissed her forehead, breathing a long, warm sigh against her skin. Then he had pulled away and left in a rush, shutting her inside the second-floor sitting room.
He’d stacked wooden cabinet doors on the fire before leaving, so at least she’d have light and heat. No food, however, and Ingrid’s stomach complained. She paced before the fire and, after a quarter hour or so had passed, grew bored. There was nothing for her to do except worry and wonder. What was happening out there? What exactly did Luc and Gaston mean to do about Vincent and the Chimeras? Where were Grayson and Vander? Was Marco going to be with Luc and Gaston? If so, then her mother would be left unprotected at the rectory. The thoughts and doubts spiraled on and on as she paced, the first blue hints of dawn seeping through the gaps in the curtains.
She felt trapped and restless, and not having even a lick of a spark in her arms or hands for the last day and a half was not as welcome as Ingrid had imagined it would be. Not that she wanted to black out again and wake up in some strange place consumed by flames, but it would have been nice to know that she could protect herself.
She spent the next half hour trying to conjure up a current, the same way she had during lessons at Constantine’s home before she’d figured out her electricity could be fueled by other electric pulses. Fast-flowing water had electricity, as did dark, brooding thunderheads in the sky. Fire, too. Ingrid was staring into the flames eating away at the charred cupboard doors when she heard noises coming from outside. After the uneasy silence of the day before, when Paris itself had seemed to curl into a protective ball, the racket outside seemed unnaturally shrill.
She moved away from the fire and toward the windows overlooking the street. She widened the gap between two curtains. Dawn was much closer than she’d realized. The building across the street, with its terraces and tin smokestacks unevenly placed along the roof, was visible. The silhouettes of at least a dozen corvites lined the roof, a few more scattered along the balcony railings.
Something black, fast, and huge raced by the window. Ingrid jerked back and swallowed a scream. It hadn’t been one winged creature, but many. A whole flock of corvites, growling through the air, black and thick as a cloud of midnight. Ingrid went back to the window and looked out again, this time down toward the street. There were people out. More people than she and Luc had seen the afternoon before, when they’d last peered outside. One courageous shopkeeper had even opened his awning and set out a few baskets of bread. The shopkeeper and the people who had ventured from their homes had likely grown restless hiding away from something they most certainly could not understand. And if they didn’t understand it, they could not properly fear it.
A few mounted police officers trotted by, but the horses they were riding were shifting and snuffling loudly. Ingrid was just about to step away from the window when a carriage, pulled by two horses, clattered past, the horses whinnying and jumping, their bodies smacking into one another in panic. There was no driver at the reins, just a pale, nearly translucent crypsis serpent coiled on the roof of the carriage. Half of its body hung over the roof’s canvas edge and inside the window. The driverless carriage cut from one side of the road to the other in a deranged zigzag.
Ingrid tugged the curtains together and closed her eyes. The demons hadn’t left, and now people were chancing going out among them. It would be another bloodbath.