The Wondrous and the Wicked (40 page)

“I’m going to miss you,” Gabby said, squeezing Rory’s arm.

“Ah,
laoch
, I dinna think ye’ll be missin’ me long.”

She released his arm and peered up at him. “Why do you say that?”

“Quinns have a way of stayin’ close.”

Gabby stepped away. “But I’m not a Quinn.”

A little smile lifted the corner of Rory’s lips. “I suspect Nolan’ll take care of that in time.”

Gabby, flushed and speechless, let her mouth hang open as Rory bowed and walked away. She didn’t have a moment to think about what Rory had said before a hand settled on her waist. Nolan’s forearm braced her back as he returned her to his side.

“What’s my cousin smirking about?” he asked, looking after Rory. And then, upon seeing Gabby’s shocked expression, added, “What did he say to you?”

Oh no. She wasn’t about to divulge
that.
Gabby straightened her posture and searched for Chelle. Vander was leading her away, toward the abbey.

“Will she be all right?” she asked.

Nolan reached for the collar of Gabby’s cape and drew the panels tighter together for her. “We’re talking about Chelle.”

“But she loved him,” Gabby said, and then realized something. There were words—significant words—she hadn’t yet said. Gabby lifted her gloved hand and caressed Nolan’s freshly shaven cheek. “I love you.”

He stared, gone still at her confession. He had to have already known, but he looked as if she’d just told him the location of the Holy Grail. Or, on second thought, he stared at her the way he had in London, in her room, when he’d confessed that he wouldn’t leave her side.

“Gabriella,” he whispered. If they had not been where they were, surrounded by sadness and gravestones, she knew he would have swept her up into one of his kisses. The ones she dreamed about at night. Instead, Nolan took a long breath and started walking her slowly back toward the rectory.

“Your oaths ceremony will be in Rome,” he said softly. “As soon as you think we should leave.”

Hathaway hadn’t been able to save his precious angel blood
from underneath Yann—who had ultimately suffered the same fate as Axia—but the Directorate representative had witnessed Gabby’s bravery and acknowledged her hand in capturing Axia. Though without genuine excitement in the request, Hathaway had asked her to Rome.

“I don’t think I should leave Mama yet. Or Ingrid,” she answered.

“Don’t forget yourself, lass,” Nolan said. “You lost him too.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder as they walked. He nuzzled the crown of her head.

“I should probably stick around as well. For Chelle,” Nolan said, then tacked on, “And Vander.”

They were mourning Grayson, yes, but Vander had lost something else. It was no longer a secret, not within the Alliance or the Dispossessed, that Ingrid had fallen in love with Luc, and he with her. Things were still tense and uncertain, but so far, the Dispossessed had not acted against Luc in any way. It could have been because he was their new elder. Marco had confided in Gabby earlier that the majority of the gargoyles seemed willing and open to a new way. Or, Gabby considered, they could have been willing because of who Luc’s chosen human was. After Ingrid had unleashed that electrical firestorm into Axia in the Champs de Mars, no gargoyle could believe it wise to cross her.

“Gabby.” Nolan pulled up short of the rectory’s front door. “I know you were having second thoughts about joining the Alliance, and if you decide not to … if you don’t want to go through with it …” He cradled her scarred cheek in his palm. He always reached for that side of her face. Always ran his fingers along the track of scars. He loved every inch of her. Even her flaws.

“Whether you’re Alliance or not, I’m staying with you, lass.”

She leaned into his touch and sighed. “We are a good team, aren’t we?”

“The finest. Although I think I’ll have to be even more disciplined
than I was before. I anticipate being more interested in kissing you than hunting demons.”

Gabby laughed, and she imagined Grayson would like the sound of that more than he would all the sobbing. So she laughed again. “I don’t think my father will approve of that.”

Nolan scowled. “Your father and I will have to come to an understanding, then, because I intend to kiss you every day for the rest of my life. Starting now.”

Without checking to see if they were alone, Nolan took her mouth in a fast, fervent kiss. After a week of feeling cold and lost, it made Gabby feel alive again. Grayson would want her to live—he’d died so that she might.

This was her life. The one she wanted. And for Grayson, for all he was and all he could have been, she would live it.

Ingrid shouldn’t have been smiling. She shouldn’t have been feeling so happy and proud. But as the abbey’s fan-vaulted ceilings captured the animated voices of the gallery’s first patrons and organ music breathed from the copper pipes, she couldn’t stop.

The gallery was filled to overflowing. Opening night, so far, was a smashing success. There were oil portraits and bronze sculptures alongside woven tapestries and Impressionistic landscapes, and even works by that awful painter of women’s dimpled backsides whom she and Gabby had so unfortunately met at a salon once.

Ingrid stood mostly to the side, avoiding conversation and waving away Marco when he came around in his crisp tuxedo offering champagne and colorful commentary on the well-heeled guests. His mood had improved in the days following an unexpected visit from Irindi. The angel had repaired Marco’s back, erasing the burns that Axia had wrongly inflicted. The mending had been almost as agonizing as the initial burns, Marco had
said, and he’d gleefully shucked his shirt for Ingrid and Gabby—and unfortunately Mama—to show off the return of his smooth, bare skin. Mama had been quite flummoxed, which Ingrid imagined had been Marco’s intent.

The gallery opening had been delayed by a week, for obvious reasons, but more tourists for the exposition had begun flowing into Paris. Mama had hired an entirely new staff to replace those who had abandoned the rectory, and her energy had returned. As brokenhearted as she was, she’d whisked into the dining room one morning for breakfast, Papa seated at the head of the table with his paper, and made an announcement.

“Grayson worked tirelessly to get this gallery under way for me,” she’d said, fighting back tears. “I will not disappoint him.”

And that had been that.

Ingrid caught sight of her mother now, milling about the nave, her black bombazine dress the only indication that she was in mourning. Papa stood with her, and though he looked as starchy as ever, at least he was there. The grin fixed on her mother’s lips as she spoke and laughed looked genuine to Ingrid, and her own smile felt real, too.

“It’s nice to see that.”

Ingrid startled, stepping aside and brushing against the carved wooden frieze of the twelve apostles near the transept door. Vander had joined her, his gaze following hers.

“Mama’s smile?” Ingrid guessed.

Vander cut his eyes to hers. “And yours.”

She hadn’t seen him since Grayson’s funeral. She’d missed him but understood why he’d stayed away.

“So, Reverend, are you enjoying the gallery?” she asked, stressing his new title.

It earned her a groan.

“What? No clerical robes yet?” she asked, still teasing.

“I think I can follow my calling wearing my usual getup,” he replied.

“What about your crossbow and sword?” Ingrid asked. “They’re hardly reverend-like.”

Vander patted the side of his long tweed coat. “They
are
blessed, remember.”

Ingrid resisted the urge to laugh and flirt. Vander had always made it so easy for her. But that was over now, and Vander, seeming to sense her unease, took a step away.

“How are things going with Constantine?” she asked.

Her teacher had started taking in Dusters at Clos du Vie—both the original seedlings and the Dusters they had created when under Axia’s spell. People like Chelle.

“We’ve got a regular laboratory going on over there,” he answered.

He and Constantine, through correspondence with Hugh, were learning how to proliferate Vander’s mersian blood. The draining machinery Nolan and Vander had been working on had been moved from Hôtel Bastian to Clos du Vie, and with Hugh’s aid, it wouldn’t be much longer until it was in full working order. For now, those who could safely take injections were receiving them, and those whose blood would clot when matched with Vander’s, like Chelle, were learning to adapt to their new powers.

“So you’re an ordained scientist,” Ingrid said.

“I wouldn’t want to be too conventional,” he replied, and then, before she could respond, turned to face her. “Can we talk? Outside?”

Ingrid took a last glance into the crowd. She couldn’t find her mother, but she did see Marco staring at her from beside a marble sculpture of a well-endowed Greek god.
How fitting
, she thought, as she turned and led Vander outside through the transept door.

The late April night was cool, a rain having just fallen. She smelled the spring-rich air as they walked toward the courtyard fountain, burbling for the first time since Ingrid had come to Paris.

The silence between them had started to grow awkward, when Vander finally spoke. And so like him, he swiftly cut to the heart of things.

“If a life with him is what you want, if it will make you happy, then I’ll never say another word about it.”

He wasn’t roiling mad, as he’d been in her room the time he’d found her with Luc. He didn’t corner her or rail at her the way he had then, teetering on the verge of losing control. He was just determined now.

“You know …” Vander gathered a breath. “You know that I love you.”

Ingrid had been crying for weeks, and not just over losing Grayson. She was exhausted, though, and she didn’t want to cry any more.

“And I love you,” she whispered. “But I can’t have you both.”

Vander stuck his hands in his pockets and nodded. “And right now you choose him.”

Right now. Right now and forever. “So long as he exists.”

He nodded again, though to himself, as if conducting his own conversation in his mind. “Luc saved my life. I don’t think he would have done that if you didn’t love me.” Vander met her eyes, which were rebelling against her will and filling with tears again. “That says something about him.”

Vander leaned forward and kissed Ingrid on her forehead, his hands still in his pockets, unable to touch her. He then turned and walked away, toward the hedgerow. He didn’t look back.

Ingrid stared after him. Being hurt was one thing. Doing the hurting was another. She didn’t know which one felt worse.

The grass squeaked under someone’s approaching feet.

“Griddy?” her sister called, using the awful nickname that she had graciously abandoned lately.

She must have seen Vander disappear through the hedgerow gap. She touched Ingrid’s arm. “He understands. He’s hurt, but he understands. He’s a reverend, for goodness’ sake.”

Ingrid smiled and quickly wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. The black lace glove scratched at the tender skin. She turned toward Gabby and was pleased once more to notice that her sister had not pinned on one of her veiled hats. She was still reluctant about holding her head high and meeting a stranger’s gaze, but she was determined, and Ingrid was proud of her.

“Do you think the pain will ever go away?” Ingrid asked after a moment.

She trusted her sister would know that she was speaking not of Vander, but of Grayson. Gabby did.

“No,” she answered. “But if we feel the pain together, we can share it. We have each other, Ingrid. And we have people who love us.”

When had her little sister become so wise? Ingrid held out her hand. Gabby took it.

“Would you understand if I said I had somewhere to go right now?” Ingrid asked.

Gabby squeezed her fingers. “I’ve covered for you before. I believe I could do it again.” She smiled and Ingrid tugged her into an embrace.

“You’ll crease my dress!” Gabby complained, laughing and swatting her away. “I’ll fetch Marco.”

They had a proper driver now, and Marco had been relegated to strict butler duties once more. But for this particular outing, only a gargoyle would suit.

T
he fire breathed low in the grate, casting weak light around the front room of Lennier’s apartment.
Luc’s
apartment. He had to get used to calling it that. A change in furniture might help. He’d hung up drapes, at least, to block the guttering light of the fire from the many tourists who had taken to wandering inside common grounds. Luc had also given the order for the Dispossessed to come on foot rather than by air, and to stay in their human skins as often as possible. To the ignorant humans, now awakened to the existence of otherworldly monsters, demons and gargoyles were one and the same. Vincent’s campaign against the Dusters in plain sight hadn’t helped things.

Lengthwise on the sofa—he might keep it, he thought; the thing was comfortable—Luc paged through one of the books that Chelle, the Alliance tomboy, had delivered to his door the week before. He had felt the presence of a human and had gone to meet whoever it was, to drive them off his private property. When he’d seen Chelle in the ramshackle ballroom carrying a
crate of books as heavy as she was, Luc hadn’t known what to say. The girl had stopped in her tracks, conveying only a glimmer of anxiety, before demanding to know why Luc had not yet offered to carry the bloody crate for her.

They were Alliance texts: personal journals, scholarly volumes, and histories, and there were many more back in the Alliance library at Hôtel Bastian. In his rooms, Luc had dropped the crate on the sofa and turned to Chelle, who he knew despised gargoyles. Without being asked, she had launched into an explanation.

“Grayson believed there were good gargoyles. He believed in you,” she’d said. And then she’d asked for his help. Since Luc was eternal and was not responsible for any humans at the moment, perhaps he would be willing to change things between the Dispossessed and the Alliance.