CHAPTER FIFTEEN
L eaning his temple against the window, Jules stared into the midnight dark as the train eased out of Nice. He watched Selene’s reflection in the glass and considered her words.
Who are you really, Jules Lacroix?
Selene had switched gears between breaths, manipulating him with ruthless skill until he told her more than he’d intended.
Now they were alone. At least Eliot, with his innate calm, had seemed to rub off on her.
They were spared any obligation to speak to each other by the arrival of what looked like an empress’s high tea of tiny sandwiches. Jules ate everything himself, while Selene radiated her disinterest across the compartment.
The movements of the train shifted and Jules leaned his forehead against the glass. ‘Strange.’
‘What is?’
‘We’re turning inland.’
Selene moved to the window. ‘You’re right.’
‘ Huh .’ Sarcasm wasn’t beneath him.
She marched across the cabin and Jules followed, curious what she intended to do. Demand they reroute for her personal convenience? But before she reached the door, it snapped open.
She stepped back, bumping into his chest. Instinctively Jules caught her slim waist in his hands to steady her.
‘Get off .’ Selene jabbed him in the ribs with a pointy elbow. Jules kneaded his ribs. That would leave a bruise.
‘Forgive the intrusion, mademoiselle , monsieur— ’ The conductor nodded to each of them. ‘We’ve had a slight diversion. We’ll be arriving in Rome via Milan.’ Selene’s expression darkened, and he hurried on. ‘I’m afraid the order comes direct from Vatican City. We have no choice. Je suis terriblement désolé .’
Through the window beyond the brass-appointed rack stacked high with expensive luggage, the coast dwindled away as they turned inland. Going via Milan would add hours to their journey. Irritably Selene waved the conductor away and collapsed back into her seat.
Jules watched her as she flipped through her portfolio, spreading a few loose pages across the seat beside her. She turned her face away, hiding a yawn.
He nodded to the pages. ‘What’re you reading?’
‘Nothing.’ Of course .
Bored, he took a huge bite of baguette sandwich.
Selene scrunched her nose. ‘Don’t choke.’
‘That wasn’t very sincere, exorcist,’ he said, spraying dry crumbs.
Her face twisted in distaste. ‘How could you tell?’
‘I suppose you must be used to it by now.’
‘What?’ she asked, voice dangerously soft.
The words came faster than his teeth could stop them. ‘People dropping dead around you.’
Her gaze bored into him, each subtle shade of honey a fragment of loathing. Did he really want to taunt a girl who could kill him a dozen different ways before his next breath? But the way she stared him down, and her extreme self-possession, coaxed forth a self-destructive impulse he couldn’t resist.
‘You are used to that, aren’t you, Bouchère de Rome ?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe we should test the theory.’ Her fingers made a move toward her boot knife.
Jules grimaced. Touché .
When she turned back to her pages, it was his turn to smother a yawn. But he refused to be the first to sleep. Jules was unsure when their mutual exhaustion had turned into an unspoken competition to see who could stay awake the longest, but he was determined not to fold. He’d lived in the trenches, sleeping in stolen seconds between gunfire. He could outlast the Vatican princess.
He swallowed his last bite of France and brushed baguette crumbs from his hands. It did nothing to fill the hollow in his chest. Homesickness. Or maybe loneliness. He’d only been back in his motherland for a day. He didn’t want to leave again so soon.
There were so many things he didn’t want. He sank lower in his seat and put his boots on the one opposite, watching her reflection.
Selene pressed her fingertips against her temples.
He repressed a grin. ‘Sure is getting cold. Bed sounds real cosy right about now.’
With saintly patience that didn’t fool him for a moment she replied, ‘Well, don’t let me keep you up, Lacroix. I need a cappuccino.’
Lightweight . If she was already resorting to caffeine, he could win this. With sleep deprivation the prize.
Setting her sword on one shoulder, she stepped over his legs. ‘I’m going to the dining car,’ she said tightly, then under her breath, ‘where I can breathe.’
Her barb landed like a roundhouse. No longer smirking, Jules waited until she was gone to sniff his shirt. Yeah, he needed a shower.
Jules stepped out of the adjoining shower room later to find Selene had returned. He rubbed the towel against his hair, watching her from the doorway.
She turned her face away, smothering a yawn. So stubborn.
Her contradictions and sharp edges were fascinating. The Butcher of Rome, right here. If only he could tell Farah or his regiment about this. They’d never believe it. Stories about Rome’s exorcists sometimes reached them on the front. He’d always assumed most were fiction, but since he’d met this particular exorcist, he was no longer sure. Even on the front, they’d rarely seen exorcists in action. Only when things went really bad.
‘You know, exorcist, if I’m going with you to the Vatican fortress—’
‘We don’t like that name,’ she interrupted, not looking up from her writing—filling page after page with that same intriguing hand.
‘I don’t really give a shit.’ He filed the information away for later. ‘On that note, thank you for perfectly illustrating my point—’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘What point?’
‘ Patience .’
‘I have none.’
He smirked and lingered on that for a moment. At least she was self-aware.
‘I know nothing about what goes on in the Vatican. Not nearly enough to convince everyone I belong there.’ He grabbed the D’Alessandro blades and tossed them at her feet. They landed with a heavy thunk. ‘You think having these will be enough to fool anyone?’
She was silent. Point .
He sat opposite her, plastering on a charming smile. She looked faintly irritated. ‘You know I’m right.’
‘And?’ she snapped.
‘This Milan detour gives us some much-needed study time. I want you to teach me about the Vatican.’
She sighed. ‘I suppose we could begin with the history of Rome—’
‘Um, that’s fine,’ he interrupted quickly. ‘I’ll just ask questions.’
‘Well then, I get to ask you questions too,’ she retorted.
He blinked. ‘Why?’
She threw up her hands. ‘I don’t have time to waste answering asinine questions.’
‘ That’s rude. You’re just assuming my questions will be asinine ?’
‘Obviously.’
‘Huh.’
She set aside her papers, interest finally lighting her eyes. ‘Go on, then. You can go first.’
‘Well, it’s a lot of pressure now .’
She snorted delicately. ‘Just do it so I can gloat.’
‘Fine.’ He raised his hands in surrender. ‘Why did you want to become an exorcist?’
She smothered a frown, her eyes going a little distant. ‘My father was an exorcist. And my uncle, too.’
‘Was?’
Her expression sharpened. ‘No follow-ups.’
‘Wow, this is turning out so fun. Your turn, I guess.’
‘It’s not meant to be fun.’ She tapped her chin as she plotted her question. ‘All right. What’s the highest class of demon you’ve ever faced, and how did you dispatch it?’
He snorted. ‘Fuckin’ exorcists.’
‘ Excuse me?’
‘Nothin’. Besides, you cheated. That was two questions.’
‘I used a conjunction.’
He repeated his curse and this time she didn’t pretend not to hear.
‘If you don’t want to answer my questions, we can always stop,’ she said archly. The threat was clear. You wanted to do this, not me .
Jules carded fingers through his hair. ‘I don’t know anything about classes. Forgive me,’ he said, voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘I wasn’t classically trained, like some.’
She rolled her eyes and waved for him to hurry up.
‘It was in Ostrava.’ He moved aside the D’Alessandro blades and sat cross-legged on the floor, lowering his voice as he got into the rhythm of the story. ‘The demon was seven feet tall, her skin pale as ice—’
‘ Seven feet?’
He scowled.
She gestured for him to continue. ‘Proceed.’
‘No interrupting.’
‘Fine!’
‘She was a weather demon. Terribly beautiful. Too many teeth.’
She looked intrigued now, and eased off the tufted leather seat to join him on the floor. ‘And you killed her?’
He smirked. ‘ Obviously .’
‘How?’
He echoed her again. ‘No follow-ups.’
‘Subsection One says I already asked how you dispatched her in the original question.’
He groaned. Arguing would be futile. ‘Pike through the gut.’
‘A weather demon …?’ she echoed, sounding skeptical. ‘Sounds like a Level Five. A Viscount?’ Her intense gaze didn’t move from his.
He widened his eyes. And?
‘Impressive.’ There was a shift in Selene’s expression, as though she was re-evaluating him, and he decided he didn’t entirely dislike surprising this girl. It could become addictive.
‘All right,’ he murmured, thinking for a moment. ‘Tell me about a time you made someone cry.’
‘Does today count?’ She bit back a smile, but he saw it there at the corner of her mouth.
He chuckled. ‘Someone other than me.’
She leaned her head back against the seat, staring at the ceiling. One leg stretched out beside his knee, close enough for him to touch the shiny leather boot hugging her shapely calf. ‘There are so many possibilities.’
‘I bet.’
Finally she jerked upright. ‘Oh! This one’s funny. So, one time Gabriel—he was a couple of years ahead at the Academy—told Eliot that sometimes exorcists go insane and sate their bloodlust by eating little children, right?’
Jules stared, wide-eyed. ‘Uh-huh?’
‘Anyway! I told Gabriel that he was actually right . That it was this big secret, and that if they found out he knew, they’d eat him.’
‘And he cried?’
‘Oh yeah. Loads of tears. I got in heaps of trouble. What a wuss.’
‘Was he right?’
‘Not the eating children part, as far as I know. What was your biggest accomplishment before you went to war?’
Not the eating children part … Jules shook it off, deciding against chasing the scary rabbit down that particular rabbit hole. ‘Probably … not dying in the cruel institution where I was raised?’ He played with the leather laces of her boot, tugging until they nearly came undone.
She pouted out her lower lip. ‘Grim.’
He snorted. ‘And your thing wasn’t? What’s your biggest regret?’
The air seemed to chill. Jules looked up from the bow he’d almost completely untied.
All colour had drained from her face.
He drew his hand back to his lap. ‘What?’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing. Just … That won’t help you.’
‘Afraid to expose your soft underbelly, exorcist?’ He smirked to cover up his discomfort and pulled on his gloves.
‘ No ,’ she said icily.
‘Fine, I’ll ask a different one.’ At that, blotches of colour appeared on her cheeks—she clearly hated him seeing her weakness nearly as much as she’d hated the question. ‘What was your childhood like?’
She looked away and he instantly regretted the question.
The air had grown noticeably colder inside the cabin and the gas lamps flickered low. The train was moving through the mountains now. Outside the window was an eerie vista of night-bright snow and nothingness. Jules didn’t mind the cold. The concept had new meaning since Ostrava. But Selene was clearly feeling it. Her long, elegant fingers were bone white.
Jules drew off his gloves and extended them to her. A peace offering. One he hoped wouldn’t bite his ass, this time. They were all he had left of his kit other than his boots, and the soft leather was only slightly charred.
Other than the tinkle of glass tassels on the lanterns, swaying with the movement of the train, the sounds of the steam engine were muffled. Even the steady thrum of the iron wheels charging toward Rome had faded away.
Her amber eyes held his for a long moment before Selene took them. ‘Thank you.’ She traced the cognac stitching with her thumb then tugged them on, pulling them taut at the wrists. A soft sigh escaped her at the warmth. Her hands looked absurdly small in his large gloves.
Jules smothered his smile when Selene returned her attention to him and cast around for a safer question. ‘I didn’t learn a lot of history.’ Perhaps he’d been too hasty when he dismissed the subject earlier—now it sounded good and safe. ‘Tell me something interesting about the Vatican. Make it good or I’ll never give history another chance.’
Selene leaned back to pull her coat off the seat and over her shoulders. ‘All right.’ Her eyes were distant. She tapped a finger against her cheek.
‘Can’t think of anything?’
‘The opposite,’ she replied. ‘The list is too long.’ She crossed her legs and retied the bow he’d untied. ‘Do you know anything about the Academy?’
He knew what it was, of course. The elite school for training Vatican exorcists. But what happened within those walls was far above his pay grade.
‘I really, genuinely, know nothing. I promise I’m not just being modest.’
She snorted. ‘You, modest?’
‘Exactly.’
She nodded. ‘Interesting, you say. All right. Not many records remain from the early days of the Holy Vatican Empire. I suppose the previous system collapsed and was rebuilt in a time of war.’
A smile tugged at his lips as he listened to her speak.
‘But we do know that during the first years of the Academy they tried to train everyone as exorcists. The death rate was … terribly high. Now the Academy tests for aptitude before dividing the cohort. And that’s when it’s decided whether you’ll become an exorcist or an artificer.’
‘Artificer?’ he asked.
‘They’re more like you soldiers. Their weapons do the heavy lifting. Caterina and Lucia are artificers.’
He snorted. He’d seen Caterina and Lucia in action. They were nothing like the soldiers he knew.
If Selene was trying not to look annoyed, she was failing. ‘Think what you want, deserter.’
‘I shall, exorcist.’
‘Why are you so irritating?’
He smirked. ‘Born that way.’
She rolled her eyes, but then a reluctant smile stole onto her mouth. ‘Their magic is less potent and temporary.’ She continued as though he hadn’t spoken. ‘Just enough to give them an edge in a fight.’
‘An edge? Caterina’s made like a damn throwing star.’
‘You saw her grumpy side.’
‘She has another side?’
Selene considered that. ‘Not really, no.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Do you have a hidden talent?’
‘Maybe … luck?’
‘Try again, Lacroix.’ Her cheeks were blotching red from the chilled air.
Rubbing his thumb over the marks on his knuckles, Jules smothered a yawn. Could killing be considered a talent? He sure was good enough at it.
Selene went unnaturally still. ‘What are those ?’ she asked softly.
He turned his hand in the guttering light of the gas lamps. His marks were stark slashes in his skin in the odd light. He curled his fingers into fists as though to hide them, but that only made the silvery scars across the ridge of his knuckles stand out more.
Selene reached for him, her slim hands swallowed by his large leather gloves. Taking his hand, she turned it in her own, examining it like one might examine a relic. Impatiently, she tugged off her gloves and leaned closer, tracing her thumbnail over a scar.
Jules froze. Her fingers were so gentle—so different to the sharp little elbow between his ribs earlier. And with his mind fogged by exhaustion and heart bruised by grief, he let her touch him.
It was the first gentle physical contact he’d experienced in days—since before Kian died—and it felt so good. Even from her, this exorcist who’d said not a single kind word since they’d met.
‘You did these to yourself?’
‘Yes,’ he breathed.
Her eyelashes dipped low, casting crescent moons against her cheekbones.
Maybe they weren’t so different after all. Selene, too, knew what it was to kill. She’d survived to walk away from fights where others had died. She’d lost friends.
‘Why like this?’
He let himself really look at the marks. Countless now.
The words slipped from his tongue. ‘Because I wanted to carve my hatred into my skin. To remind myself why I kill. So that if I ever forget, all I have to do is look at my hands.’ He flexed his fingers. ‘If it’s been a few days between attacks, they remind me not to become complacent or I’ll become one of these.’ He traced one of the horizontal lines with his pinkie, flicking a glance up at her. Her expression was sombre and he could see no recrimination there. ‘So instead, I make more of these.’ He traced a vertical line—the demon kill. ‘It started with my original crew. The five of us who survived our first battle together.’
Without a word Selene held his wrist in one hand and turned his sleeve. Rolling the cuff again and again. And again . Finally she stopped, her eyes darkening with realization. ‘I see.’ Her fingers fell still against his skin and he felt her touch intensely. Like it might scorch him to his core.
Jules yanked away from her, rolling his sleeve down. He wasn’t ready for this—this intimacy , if that’s what it was. They breathed the same air, him and this strange girl who knew more about him than anyone should. Farah had been the last to see them. Selene acted like she understood, but she didn’t —couldn’t .
‘Lacroix …’ She drew a steadying breath. ‘I read the reports, of course, but it doesn’t really … I had no idea.’
Her eyes were large and earnest, and he knew he was seeing her for the first time. Really seeing her.
‘Hard to describe wholesale slaughter, is it? Didn’t whoever wrote your reports have a thesaurus on hand?’ His voice had a bitter edge, but she didn’t move away, so neither did he. He could practically count each one of her long dark eyelashes.
Selene knelt up and flipped the portfolio case open with a fingertip. ‘I don’t know,’ she said so seriously he knew she was playing along. ‘Perhaps you should ask an officer by the name of—’
With a sudden jolt, the train’s wheels squealed against the tracks.