The Beautiful and the Cursed

by Page Morgan

  From what Grayson had reported, Axia’s hellhounds could shift between human and bestial form in the Underneath, but not on the earth’s surface. That seemed to be something only Grayson had been able to do. He hadn’t shifted for weeks, but he hadn’t gone back to his normal human self, either.

  Ingrid knew her twin well—or at least, she’d known him well once. Grayson had cut himself off from her lately, choosing to stay holed up in the rectory, their small home behind the abbey. He’d refused to acknowledge anything regarding this new world they’d been thrust into. She wanted him to come with her to Clos du Vie, but he wouldn’t budge.

  “And you’re not afraid?” Vander asked. She felt him close to her shoulder, saw his breath in the frigid air.

  Ingrid stopped walking and noticed how cold her toes were. Wickedly, she imagined Vander drawing her stocking feet to his lips instead of her gloved hands, his hot breath turning her into a raging furnace. But it was no use. She couldn’t escape his question.

  “Of course I’m afraid,” she whispered. “Just not of Monsieur Constantine.”

  Axia was stronger now that she had reclaimed the angelic blood Grayson had always harbored. She wouldn’t kill the Dusters, or as she called them, her seedlings. She had given them demon halves for a reason. Ingrid didn’t know what it was, or what Axia’s plans for them might be. She only knew that Axia wanted to use her Dusters in some way against the Angelic Order. Against the human race, too, she suspected.

  Vander came to stand in front of her, his arms folded tightly across his chest. He locked her in the steady gaze he wore when he shifted from intellectual bookseller to deadly serious demon hunter.

  “I promised you once, and I’ll promise you again now: I won’t let anything harm you, demon, human, or angel.”

  She knew he meant it. She also knew she had other protection, which she didn’t want to think about just then. Not with Vander standing so close, looking so earnest. Instead, she thought of her sister, Gabby, and how she had gone the opposite direction from Grayson, wanting to soak up everything there was to know about the Alliance and Underneath demons—specifically, how to destroy them in hand-to-hand combat.

  Vander held out his hand. He didn’t wear gloves like a refined gentleman would, and his fingertips were ink stained. He would have never been permitted into Ingrid’s social circle back in London. But as she took his hand, her chest filled with warmth and gratitude. Yes, Vander Burke had romantic feelings for her. She didn’t know how to define her feelings for him just yet, but first and foremost, he was her friend.

  They walked in silence the rest of the way to the orangery. Inside, balmy air wrapped their chilled bodies. The glass roof and walls drew in the sunlight, trapped it, and created a tropical zone. A maze of bamboo; glossy green palms; bright red, orange, and pink flowers; lemon and lime trees; coconut and mango, too. Constantine’s orangery should have felt like a miniature paradise. Unfortunately for Ingrid, every time she stepped inside it, she remembered him.

  Luc.

  His wavy dark hair, and the way he pushed it out of his eyes, which happened to be the brightest shade of green Ingrid had ever seen. His lashes, coal-black and thick. His expression of constant irritation. His creamy velvet skin as it checkered over into glimmering jet scales.

  Vander could make a thousand promises to keep Ingrid safe, but it was Luc who was her true protector. It was Luc who could sense her every emotion as clearly as if it were his own, whether it was fear, excitement, or joy. It was Luc who knew where Ingrid was at any given moment, and who could be there within seconds should she require his help.

  Luc was her gargoyle. And Ingrid was in love with him.

  “Lady Ingrid?” Monsieur Constantine’s voice came from a clearing amid towering bamboo.

  She walked through the cut path of green stalks, blindingly bright compared to the gray winter day outdoors.

  “Oh—Mr. Burke.” Constantine frowned as he rose from his wicker chair.

  Vander had apparently let himself onto Constantine’s grounds without announcing himself first. How rude of him, Ingrid thought with a grin. Vander saw it and flashed her a smile in return.

  When she glanced back at her teacher, she saw that he was still frowning. The frown was directed not at them, however, but at the newspaper clutched in his hand. He sat back down in his chair.

  “Monsieur Constantine?” Ingrid said, edging closer to the table. He didn’t often smile and rarely allowed a laugh, but he didn’t usually glower. Constantine’s expressions were always as gray as the clothing he wore—all different hues of gray, from gainsboro to silver to platinum. The color suited him perfectly.

  “It is this morning’s paper,” Constantine stated, his fingers crushing the edges.

  “Is it very bad?” she asked.

  Her teacher set the paper down and smoothed the wrinkled pages. “I am afraid so. A family was found dead in their home.”

  Ingrid blinked, unsure how to respond.

  “Their bodies were intricately wrapped in a mysterious silken thread. ‘Sticky,’ the reporter wrote. A sticky silken thread.”

  Ingrid glanced questioningly at Vander. He raised his chin.

  “As in cocooned?” he asked.

  A meaningful look passed between the two men. Ingrid had taken off her gloves and unbuttoned her cape. She draped them over the back of a wicker chair and sat down.

  “The police found the work of a demon?” she asked.

  “No,” Constantine answered. “They found the work of a Duster.”

  Ingrid stared at him, her mind at a gallop.

  “A Duster?” Vander echoed.

  Constantine leaned back, the wings of his wicker peacock chair enfolding him. “My student, Léon Brochu. He has the blood of an arachnae demon. It appears the victims were his parents and younger brother.”

  A swirl of nausea cramped Ingrid’s stomach. A Duster had murdered his own family. “But why?”

  “The boy only came to me twice,” Constantine answered. “He hadn’t been handling his gift well, and from what I observed, it bubbled to the surface much like yours does—with emotion.”

  If Léon had slain his entire family, it could have been because of any raging emotion: fear, embarrassment, anger. She closed her eyes, trying not to see the memories of the fire she had once started—a lifetime ago, it seemed—in London. It had been a mixture of emotions that evening, humiliation especially, that had sent hot sparks from her fingertips. The nearby drapes had caught fire, and by the time the flames had consumed the ballroom, with people fleeing for their lives, Ingrid’s closest friend, Anna, had been badly burned.

  Ingrid knew what it was to lose control. But this Duster had killed his family. She ached for him. For them all.

  “And Léon?” Vander asked. “What happened to him?”

  Ingrid opened her eyes and found Constantine’s gaze on her. As if he knew where her mind had taken her.

  “The police are searching the city,” he answered. “But I doubt they are looking in the right place.”

  Vander braced himself against the table, glaring at Constantine. “Tell me he isn’t here. Duster or not, he’s wanted for murder.”

  Constantine sat forward, his mustache twitching with defiance. “I would give refuge to any Duster in need of it, monsieur, but Léon Brochu is not at Clos du Vie.”

  Ingrid stood up and rested her hand on Vander’s shoulder. She was certain he would give refuge to any Duster who needed it, too, all ethics aside.

  “But you do know where he is?” she asked.

  Constantine gave a curt nod. “I would like to ask for your help,” he said, his gaze still on Ingrid. “Léon feels very alone, my lady. I’ve always respected the Alliance’s request to keep their existence from common knowledge, so Léon knows nothing of them, or of the Dispossessed, as you do. Most Dusters are unaware of these things. They only know that they are different. Most do not know there are others out there like them. I believe Léon might respond better to a
nother Duster. Especially one of the gentler sex.”

  Vander snorted, unimpressed. But Ingrid stepped forward. She didn’t consider herself gentle, but she understood what Constantine meant. “I want to help.”

  She was lucky, all things considered. She had found out about the Alliance, about demons and gargoyles, all before Vander told her she had demon dust. She had known right away that she fit in somewhere. Léon and the rest of the Dusters out there didn’t have that.

  Vander rolled his shoulders. “Fine. If Ingrid’s going with you, so will I. But if this boy poses any sort of threat—”

  “He is a good boy,” Constantine interrupted.

  “A good boy who murdered his family,” Vander retorted.

  Ingrid took Vander’s hand, lacing her fingers tightly with his. It surprised him into silence. As intended, she thought with a slight grin.

  “We’ll help,” she said again.

  Her teacher pushed back his chair and stood, his gray eyes flickering with unusual vigor. “Excellent. Tell me, then—is either of you familiar with the Paris sewers?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Gabby gripped the handle of the sword and felt the balancing weight of the silver blade. The bridge was empty, closed to traffic, both pedestrian and wheeled. Tattered canvas sheets draped over long-forgotten bricks and granite blocks fluttered and snapped in the winds coming down the Seine. The river was the color of Connemara marble, and above, cement-gray skies threatened more icy rain.

  She followed the scuttling movements of the rattilus demon as it rushed toward her from behind a pyramid of bricks. She hopped onto the bridge’s footpath, then up onto the metal railings of some scaffolding, the tip of her sword aimed at the ratti.

  The name was deceiving. The creature advancing on Gabby was no river rat. It was the size of a greyhound, and just as long and bony. The ratti’s tail, saw-toothed and twice the length of its body, was its killing feature. Gabby had narrowly missed being struck by it twice in the last five minutes.

  This was not going well at all.

  “Come on, you nasty Underneath rodent,” she muttered as she grabbed a vertical bar and braced her foot on the next crossing of rails up the scaffolding. Poised as she was, Gabby would have the advantage. She’d hack off that vicious tail and send the demon back to the Underneath in a burst of green sparks.

  Foresight. Gabby truly did think it was her strength when it came to hunting demons.

  She pulled herself up—and felt her foot slip out of the notched crutch of the two crossing rails. The back of her knee landed hard on the notch, and she lost her grip on the cold metal bar. Gabby flopped backward, dangling upside down from the scaffolding. Her hat, pinned as it was, stayed in place, but her skirts rushed down around her face, exposing her knickers and completely blocking her view of the rattilus demon.

  She’d have to work on that foresight.

  Gabby slashed her sword through the air blindly, knowing the demon’s razor tail could be coming for her from any direction. In that moment, she felt fear. It jolted her pulse out of the calm rhythm she’d taught herself to maintain these last many weeks, hoping to hide her feelings. Because Gabby knew that she wasn’t the only one who could feel her pulse. She could never truly hide or mask what she felt. Just like her sister, brother, and mother, Gabby was never entirely alone.

  She took a deep breath and, still upside down, chased the fear away. She did not need Luc to rush to the bridge, all black wings and sharp talons, to save her. He didn’t like to coalesce during daylight, but Gabby knew that he would. If her fear set off his trigger to shift, he would come. But Gabby could save herself.

  She straightened her hitched-up leg and released her hold on the scaffolding. She fell, smashing her shoulder on the pavement. Luc will have definitely felt that. Skirts back in place, Gabby finally saw the ratti again—less than a foot away, with its tail cutting through the air toward her head.

  Gabby ducked and the saw-toothed tail bit into the metal scaffolding. She rolled to the side and lifted her sword—and then a firestorm of green sparks exploded right in front of her face.

  Two silver throwing stars with sharp, gearlike edges, polished to a radiant shine, clattered to the pavement in front of Gabby as the demon’s death sparks vanished.

  Gabby groaned. “How am I supposed to learn how to kill demons if you’re always leaping in and doing it for me?”

  Light footsteps came up behind Gabby, and then a petite figure dressed in crisp breeches and a stylish Zouave jacket knelt down in front of her. Chelle picked up the two blessed silver stars and rolled her eyes at Gabby.

  “How are you supposed to learn if you are dead?”

  Gabby got to her feet, her backside cold from the frozen pavement. The bridge had been the perfect place for Chelle and Gabby to stand about idly for the last half hour or so, looking like a pair of stupidly innocent humans and luring any demon worth its salt. The bridge repairs had been postponed long ago, the city workers engrossed in constructing scores of palatial exhibition halls and pavilions along the riverfront and the Champs de Mars for the Exposition Universelle. The world’s fair would open in April, as would Gabby’s mother’s gallery.

  Gabby only hoped that by April, she’d be able to kill a demon without Chelle’s help.

  She sheathed her sword in the leather straps she’d sewn into the lining of her cape as Chelle tucked her twin stars back into the folds of the red scarf wrapped around her waist.

  “I should not be doing this,” Chelle muttered.

  “But you are,” Gabby said. “And you have to admit that you need me.”

  Chelle gawked at Gabby, her round eyes made wider. “What I need is a demon hunter, not an apprenticing nuisance.”

  The weight of Gabby’s sword was a comfort, even if Chelle’s words were not. She kept the blessed blade close to her whenever she could manage it, and not just because a few weeks before, Chelle, one of the last two Alliance members remaining to safeguard Paris, had reluctantly agreed to train Gabby in the art of demon slaying.

  The sword reminded her of Nolan.

  It had been his gift to her for her sixteenth birthday, and Nolan Quinn, another Alliance member in Paris, had promised to teach her how to use it when he returned from Euro-Alliance headquarters in Rome. But he’d been gone for more than six weeks, and Gabby had been champing at the bit to train. She’d needed something to obsess over, and she certainly hadn’t wanted it to be the set of ugly scars that marred the right side of her face.

  Her encounter with a hellhound in December had left a three-pronged track of deep claw marks down her right cheek. Sitting around the rectory while she waited for the doctor’s judgment that the wounds had fully healed had been torture. The moment the bandages had come off, Gabby had gone to Hôtel Bastian, Alliance headquarters in Paris.

  “Give me one more week,” Gabby said as Chelle rewrapped a thin woolen scarf around her neck and tugged down the short brim of her cap against the gusting wind. She avoided Gabby’s pleading stare. “I almost had this one.”

  And if Nolan knew, he’d be furious. Chelle didn’t have permission to train Gabby, even though the Paris Alliance was hurting for fighters. It had been thinned out months before when higher-ranking members had gone to Rome for some big summit. Gabby didn’t know much about it, but she did know that with Nolan gone and two treasonous members, Tomas and Marie, in Rome for their trials, Vander Burke and Chelle were the only two Alliance left in Paris.

  They needed all the demon hunters they could get.

  Secretly, Gabby imagined with pleasure how stunned Nolan would be when he returned and saw how well she fought. Impressing Nolan wasn’t her main desire, but it was one of them. Before he left, he’d assured her that the scars the hellhound’s claws had carved wouldn’t matter. He’d made Gabby that promise and she’d accepted it with a slow, heated kiss. But she still felt the need to make up for the puffy pink marks. If she couldn’t be beautiful anymore, she had to be skilled—and demon hunting was a sk
ill she knew Nolan admired.

  “As if I could rid myself of you anyway,” Chelle said, starting for the bridge’s Left Bank exit. Gabby wasn’t one of Chelle’s favorite people. Nolan had a lot to do with that. Chelle harbored old feelings for him.

  “Thank you,” Gabby said, following Chelle’s brisk footsteps. The words wouldn’t make Chelle like her, but she was thankful.

  Gabby nearly trod on Chelle’s heels a moment later when Chelle ground to a halt and held up an arm, her short, well-manicured nails poking through the open tips of her gloves.

  “What—” Gabby sealed her lips when she saw a man emerge from behind a stack of steel beams. He brushed aside the frayed, flapping canvas cover.

  “This bridge is closed.” The words traveled to their ears clearly on the wind. His voice was calm and measured, but firm. Gabby had no doubt that this man, whoever he was, had every right to order them gone.

  “This bridge is also marked,” Chelle replied, twisting around to look past Gabby’s shoulder. Gabby pivoted to follow her gaze to a rampart topped by a canvas-wrapped statue. She had noticed it earlier but paid it no attention—the whole bridge seemed to be wrapped in canvas. But now, on second glance, Gabby saw a bit of the statue poking out. A pair of sharp stone claws curled into a ball of granite atop the rampart. The stone around the claws had been carved to look like shaggy fur. Lion’s paws. What lay beneath the canvas seemed so obvious now, especially given the hump where the figure’s back must be: wings. It was a gargoyle, and it had a twin directly across the center of the bridge.

  Gabby turned back to the approaching man with new clarity. The presence of those two statues meant this bridge had a gargoyle protector. The number of statues didn’t determine the number of Dispossessed assigned to a territory—there were scores of gargoyles upon the abbey, yet Luc was the sole Dispossessed there. Gabby didn’t know how many gargoyles protected this bridge, but this man, his black hair streaked with ribbons of silver at the temple, was most certainly one of them. And Gabby was trespassing on his territory.