Archangel's Shadows (Guild Hunter #7)(33)

“Thanks,” she said when the stocky blond handed over the keys. “I was planning to jump on the subway to your place, but Nic told me you were already on your way.”

“I needed the drive and it wasn’t like I was asleep.” Yawning, the twentysomething male stretched, bones popping one after another. “Anyway, I better get back home before my wife decides to divorce me for leaving her alone with the baby.” A good-natured laugh. “The lungs on her come from her ma, no doubt about it.”

Ashwini frowned when he turned to head to the nearest subway station. “Hop in with me,” she said. “I’ll drop you off on my way out.”

He scratched his head. “You sure? You paid for it fair and square—more than fair.”

“It won’t take me out of my way,” she lied. “The company would be nice.”

“In that case, I won’t say no.”

He was good company. Easygoing and besotted with his wife and baby both. Listening to him patter on about the two of them distracted her for the time it took to drive him back to his apartment building. Once there, she saw him stop in front of the stoop to wave up at the silhouette of a woman in a third-story window, her arms rocking a baby.

Ashwini sat there for another minute and she didn’t even know why until she saw the silhouette change, mother and child joined by a masculine form, stocky and with arms that went around them both. Wrenching her eyes away from a scene that would never be a part of her own life, she drove off.

It was stupid to do this, she knew that. Once she was outside Manhattan, the drive would take eighty minutes or more there, the same back, and she planned to wake early to attend the autopsy. But a night without sleep wouldn’t kill her, and her gut pulsed with the remorseless tug she felt only during the worst episodes, when neither medication nor therapy would fight the monsters. Oddly, Ashwini’s voice, reading from a piece of classic literature, had proven the best panacea when things began to go downhill . . . as was happening more and more frequently.

She reached her destination just under an hour and a half later, was welcomed by a familiar nurse, his red hair combed in a simple style. All the senior staff knew Ashwini had permission to visit at any time.

Carl’s face made it clear her instincts hadn’t let her down. “How bad?” she asked.

“Most severe end of the scale.”

“Did anyone unauthorized go into the room?”

Shaking his head, Carl said, “I double-checked. The episodes are simply getting worse, Ash.”

It was a fact she’d admitted to herself three months back. “Have you told Arvi?” Unlike her, he refused to face the truth even a blind man could see.

“Yes. He’s here, but you know your voice is the only one that seems to help.” Blue eyes sad against the freckled paleness of his skin, he spread his hands, palms out. “I would’ve called you, but it was so late and with your injury . . .”

“It’s all right, Carl.” Leaving the nurse at his station, she strode down the thick gray carpet of the hallway toward the corner suite, the walls around her hung with elegant pieces of art, and the arched window at the end reaching the floor. It allowed sunlight to pour in during the day while showcasing the hedge maze that was part of the extensive gardens.

Tonight it revealed only stygian darkness.

The book was waiting for her on the little hallway table beside the closed door, the soundproofing so good that she couldn’t hear anything beyond it.

Arvi sat on a chair beside the table. His head was in his hands, his shoulders slumped and the white of his business shirt stretched across the breadth of them. He’d always seemed so big to her, larger than life. Yet he was only a man, a man who was in pain. She went to reach out, closed her hand into a fist before she could make contact.

Turning, she picked up the book . . . and Arvi’s hand closed over her wrist, the leather of her jacket insulating her from the skin-to-skin contact that might have plunged her into her brother’s life and his secrets against her will. Chest thick with a thousand unsaid things, she shifted to look at him.

When his shoulders shook, a harsh sound escaping his throat, she turned completely and held his head against her stomach as he cried. Her own tears were locked up inside her, knotted up with fear and anger and loss. But she held Arvi as he cried, her strong, determined older brother who couldn’t fix this one thing that had changed everything.

The past. The present. The future.

Janvier.

He could’ve been her future in another world, another time, when Arvi’s rough tears didn’t hold pure heartbreak and the knots inside her weren’t formed of a terrible, inevitable truth. Because Ashwini would never permit herself to be the one on the other side of the locked door.

No matter what.

? ? ?

Raphael walked downstairs long past midnight, his city swathed in a moonless and velvet dark while his consort lay peacefully in their bed. She’d been sleeping with her hand over his heart until he left. Though Elena had gone to bed tired but happy and he didn’t expect the nightmares to find her, he didn’t like to leave her in the twilight hours. However, Dmitri had made direct contact, and his second didn’t interrupt Raphael at such times for trivialities.

A woman is dead, Dmitri had told him, and her body bears hints of Lijuan’s hand. Janvier is on his way to the Enclave to give you a report.