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That same unearthly coldness had surged through my body before. It was a familiar, comforting sort of thing, particularly when I was in pain. Like the first blush of snow in winter, but could run white-hot at times. It was power. Ruan’s power. My breath caught in my chest. “Good God, she’s the pellar…” My gaze shot to Ruan, who was as lost as I. “But she’s only a child…”

Every incongruent piece suddenly fell into place. It hadn’t been Félix I sensed at the lake at all. It had been her. He’d been speaking to someone in the woods—he’d been speaking to her. The eerie slowness of her pulse, just like Ruan’s. The gold flecks in her eyes, just like the silver in Ruan’s. The power I smelled in the office. It had been hers. She’d tried to help me.

My breath came uneasily as my mind raced onward. Sister Agathe had all but told me the fact in the cemetery, if only I’d put the pieces together. Manon had six other siblings who died in Dinant before she was born. She was the seventh child. I suspected if I asked her cousin we’d learn that one of her parents had also been a seventh born. Seventh of a seventh … my housekeeper Mrs. Penrose said when she explained what Ruan was all those months ago. Back when I believed it all just folklore and fairy stories.

“Where is she?” I asked him. “She’s likely afraid and worried and doesn’t even know what she is—”

“She’s asleep.” He shushed me, pulling me against his side and letting out a shuddering breath. “Ruby, I thought I lost you tonight … Twice. Twice within the span of four days, I thought you dead.”

I wriggled away from his tenderness. I didn’t need tenderness. I needed to see the girl. “But Ruan … she’s a child and she’s just done something extraordinary. Surely you recall the first time. You have to understand—”

“I understand a great deal better than you do what she is. But she needs sleep after what she did far more than you need answers.”

I closed my mouth. He was right, damn him. I rested my cheek on his shoulder, feeling rather hopeless. “And after all this, we still haven’t found my mother…”

“We will,” he said softly, pressing another glass into my hand. I sniffed it. “It smells awful.”

“So do you.” He raised a brow. “Now drink it.”

I quaffed it down. The sharp herbal tang was enough to make me choke. He took a pitcher, filling the cup with water again, which I drank in irritation. Within seconds Ruan replaced it with another. “Are you trying to drown me now?”

“As if I could,” he grumbled beneath his breath. “You’ve got more lives than your bloody cats all put together.”

I swatted him away, grateful he was teasing me again and not looking at me as if I might break.

“I’m glad you’re feeling more like yourself.”

“You mean contrary and quarrelsome?” I ran my hands over my face—hissing in pain. For whatever reason my belly had healed just fine but my burnt palm still hurt like the very devil. Ruan’s gaze dropped to the wound and that cloud of worry returned.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t mend it, I tried but something about the burn, it did not want to fully heal. It’s going to leave a nasty scar—”

Of all the silly things for him to worry about. I reached up, cupping his cheek with my bandaged hand, rubbing my thumb across his lips. “I don’t mind my scars…” I went to kiss him, when I caught a whiff of my hair, smelling of chemicals and smoke from the fire. Good God, he was right. I smelled horrible.

I wrinkled my nose in disgust. “Where do you suppose a girl could find some hot water around here?”

Ruan just laughed.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVEA Good Priest

ONCE I’d bathed, washed my hair, and put on a fresh day-dress that Ruan had fetched from our motorcar, I hurried down to Sister Marie-Thérèse’s study. It wasn’t quite dawn yet, but I could wait no longer to speak with the sister. My hair remained damp, I’d not even given it time to fully dry before stepping into the elder nun’s study, but she was already there waiting on me—and she was not the only one.

The room was full to bursting with people. She sat behind an old oaken desk—Manon and Sister Agathe to her left, seated upon a small velvet-covered settee from two centuries past. Violet Devereaux was there as well. The reporter cast me a rueful smile as I walked past her. An apology of sorts, I supposed, for the fact she’d taken part in kidnapping me. Dr. von Keller was there too, as was Father Étienne. The young priest nodded to me, his brows furrowed apologetically as I walked past with Ruan at my side. It seemed Étienne felt an iota of guilt for drugging me at the cemetery.

Good.

I looked from face to face, realizing one was missing. Félix. “Where is Félix?”

Dr. von Keller ran a hand over his jaw sadly, a peculiar expression on his face. “I do not know. I haven’t seen him since yesterday afternoon when the gendarmerie let us free.”

My mind flashed back to those final moments in von Keller’s office, just before I slipped from consciousness. There had been two men coming through that door. Ruan Kivell and Félix Thys at his heels. He’d been there. I turned to Ruan. “That’s not possible. He was with you when you broke in to get us.”

Ruan shook his head, his hand coming to my shoulder as he shook his head. “No. Ruby. It was only me. Me and two officers.”

Ruan couldn’t lie. I knew that as well as I knew my own name. Which meant he hadn’t seen him. I sucked in a sharp breath. Not again. During the war, I’d been convinced I’d seen things that weren’t real. Told time and again I was slowly losing my grasp upon reality. But that was not true then, it certainly couldn’t be now. My pulse sped up. It wasn’t possible. Félix had been there. I saw him.

Von Keller gave me the strangest expression, cocking his head to one side, clearly misunderstanding my unease. “Félix does this. Truth be told, there wasn’t a lock in this world that would keep him in. I used to privately wonder if he had more in common with Houdini than Holbein. Rest assured, with Father Crawford gone, he will be safe.”

Ruan placed his hand on my shoulder. “You had lost a lot of blood. People are known to—”