Malachi grunted and Luis backtracked, clearly free from the earlier compliant fog Malachi had put him under. “I mean, she’s mentally ill! Or… something. I don’t know. I think she’s been violent in the past because I had to find a place that had housing for high-risk patients.”

“Where?” Malachi asked.

Luis swallowed and looked at Ava, his eyes begging. “Ava.”

“I need to know, Luis.”

“He wanted to protect you. He didn’t want you to think… I know there’s some stuff about you he hides. Even from me. From everyone.”

Malachi pressed the knife closer and the man whimpered. “I want a location. Where is she being kept?”

“It’s in France. There’s a hospital outside Albi. Catholic. Saint… Saint Cecelia’s.”

Malachi leaned down to the man, whispered in his ear, then stood. “Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Luis’s face was pale, the line of red blood dripping into the silk sheets that were rumpled around him. “Ava, I’m sorry.”

How exactly did you say good-bye to the man whose life you just threatened, knowing you’d probably see him again?

“Um… It’s fine, Luis. Take care of my dad.”

“Jasper loves you, you know?”

“No, I don’t know. I never did. Not from him.” She walked over and took Malachi’s hand. “Good-bye. And… sorry about the sheets.”

Chapter Eleven

VOLUND PACED THE RITUAL room where Malachi dreamed.

Angry, Malachi thought. The angel was very angry.

Frustrated.

The Fallen muttered words in the Old Language that Malachi couldn’t catch. Bit out curses under his breath.

He didn’t know what had happened to make the angel so enraged, but he couldn’t help feeling satisfied.

Just as the feeling threatened to bring a smile to his face, Volund spun and forced Malachi’s eyes to his.

Volund roared, and the rage rolled over him, searing his skin, stealing his breath.

“You cannot,” Malachi choked out, “hurt me.”

He gasped for breath. His mind knew this was illusion, though the dream state felt real. Ava was still nowhere in sight. He stood naked and stripped of every shield while the angel continued to rage.

Ash and cinders whirled around the ritual room, burning and scraping his skin until he could smell his own blood in the wind.

“You cannot hurt me,” he said again.

Malachi opened his eyes and Volund was there, gold eyes wide with madness.

“She is mine!” the angel screamed.

In the next breath, Volund plunged the black dagger into his heart, and Malachi woke, gasping for breath, a hand pressed to his chest.

HE didn’t speak of his nightmare. She had too much on her mind. Too many worries creased her forehead. He longed for a time when it could just be the two of them again.

Malachi wanted answers, but he also wondered whether Martin had sent them on another leg of an endless wild-goose chase. A mental hospital in France? Even if they found Ava’s grandmother, what would they discover? Kostas hadn’t painted a pleasant picture of female Grigori in the human world.

But Jasper Reed’s money had provided an escape for his daughter. Perhaps it had sheltered his mother in a similar manner.

In the end, it was easier to drive to Saint Cecelia’s than fly. They stayed one more night in Portofino before heading to France in the same rented car they’d picked up in Genoa. Nine hours of driving to reach an uncertain reception. Nine hours farther away from Vienna.

The converted chateau fifteen minutes out of Albi in the Tarn region of France could have been a luxurious country home or even an exclusive hotel. Rhys’s search confirmed that it was neither of the two, but rather a very exclusive, very secure mental health facility run privately with a live-in staff and only fifteen to twenty permanent residents.

As far as caring for the mentally or emotionally troubled, it didn’t get more comfortable than Saint Cecilia’s.

Malachi turned into the drive, approaching the house through an allée of stately trimmed linden trees, their branches winter bare. They’d stayed the night in Albi before coming to the hospital that morning. Malachi called Max after they left Italy and told him their plans. They would leave the rented car in Marseilles and from there catch a flight to Vienna.

He was edgy. Mala had already taken Orsala to the city. Rhys and Leo had closed up the scribe house in Istanbul and joined them. Renata and Max were flying to Prague to check on an Irina safe house there before they joined Damien and Sari. All the former scribes of Istanbul were crisscrossing the continent with one destination in mind.

Vienna.

Kostas might have wanted his existence to remain a secret, but the Irin Council needed to know of the existence of Grigori females. The whole Irin world—especially the Irina—needed to know.

Because along with the inevitable dread of facing the council, Malachi also carried a mad hope.

The Irin race was dying.

Yet Ava had Grigori blood, and they had mated. More than that, he and Ava were reshon. Bound. Destined for each other by the Creator. And if he and Ava had a future together, anything was possible.

The Grigori had decimated the Irina, while the Fallen had thrown their own daughters to the chaos and darkness of the human world. If those women, the silent ones, could be found, it was possible they could be saved. Grigori and Irin alike. The very women the Fallen had shunned could be the salvation of the Irin race.