Archangel's Shadows (Guild Hunter #7)(68)

“Of course I’d be happy to call you.” Carl’s voice cut into the heartrending echo of memory. “I’ll ask the day shift nurse to do the same.” He opened the front door. “Until next time.”

Leaving with a nod, she inhaled the crisp night air in deep gulps. It felt as if the stranglehold around her throat had eased at last, her lungs expanding gratefully. She hated Banli House as much as she loved Tanu. “Let’s get out of here.”

Janvier drove them back not directly to Manhattan but to the Enclave lookout he’d brought her to on the bike. Leaving the car, the two of them walked to the edge of the cliffs and took a seat notwithstanding the snow, their legs hanging over the side and the Hudson flowing smooth and deep below them.

The Manhattan skyline glittered in the distance, the Tower a spear of light. The brilliance of it caught on the wings of angels who flew in and out, turned the glass of nearby skyscrapers into dazzling mirrors.

“Every time I go to Banli House,” Ashwini said, “I want to break her out, take her to some place better. Only the thing is, there is nothing better.”

Even Arvi had accepted that.

Tanu had round-the-clock care at Banli House and friends among the other long-term residents. She was never mistreated, the staff scrupulous in following the rules about not making physical contact with her unless she initiated it or it was absolutely necessary. When it was, only a small group of people were authorized to touch her, all individuals whose minds wouldn’t hurt Tanu.

If no one on the cleared list was available, Banli House called Ashwini or Arvi. And when Tanu was lucid and herself, the staff made sure she had access to whatever she wanted, be it the freedom to walk the pathways in the woods behind Banli House, eat a particular meal, or paint the hours away on a large canvas.

Once, she’d surprised Arvi by turning up to take him out to lunch. But that had been a long time ago. Tanu didn’t leave the grounds now, didn’t trust herself to remain coherent and rational for long enough. The voices were too loud.

Janvier held her gaze. “Your sister appears at peace.”

“Sometimes I almost believe it, but—” Shaking her head, she said, “I have to start at the beginning.”

Janvier turned sideways, placing one of his legs behind her, his knee bent so she could lean against him, and his hand warm on her nape. “I am here.”





25


“Most everyone,” Ashwini began, drawing strength from his unwavering support, “thinks my parents and Tanu all died in that car crash when I was nine. The truth is, only my mother and father died on impact. Tanu was badly injured but she survived.”

“That is the cause of the wounds to her mind?”

“No.” Terrible as that would’ve been, it wouldn’t have torn what remained of their family to shreds. “Before I tell you about Tanu, I have to tell you about our mother.”

Grief pulsed in her heart at the memory of her parents; it had dulled with time, but it would never leave her. Because while they had made mistakes, unable to understand a daughter who was so different from everything they knew, her mother and father had loved her, loved all their children. “You know my mother was a professor of literature—what I didn’t tell you is that she was like me, able to see into people with a touch.”

Placing one hand on Janvier’s thigh, the muscle warm and taut beneath her hand, she anchored herself. “Tanu had it, too. No one in our family ever acknowledged it, ever even joked about the way they’d both occasionally know things they shouldn’t. There was always a tinge of fear beneath the surface I didn’t understand at the time.”

“Wait.” Janvier ran his thumb over her nape, a scowl on his face. “Were you and your sister both in that place at the same time?”

Ashwini shook her head. “She was moved to a satellite facility when I was moved in. Because I grew up thinking she was dead, it was decided that my coming face-to-face with her would be too big a shock.” Everyone had already thought her unstable.

“But the thing was, a couple of the people who regularly interacted with me, touched me, had touched her, too. I thought I was going insane when I started getting flashes of her as if she were still alive.” For a while, it had convinced her to take the medication that made her feel so fuzzy and lost.

Unlike Tanu, she hadn’t needed the drugs. The medication had simply made things worse. “Then,” she continued, “I realized I only got the flashes near certain people and it began to make a terrible kind of sense.”

She’d confronted Arvi once she was free of Banli House, made it clear she knew the truth. “Arvi eventually told me Tanu had had a psychotic break a month before the car accident, had spent seven nights under psychiatric hold. She said the voices wouldn’t leave her alone.”

Ashwini couldn’t imagine Arvi’s pain as he watched his vivid, brilliant twin disintegrate in front of his eyes. Because the psychotic break couldn’t have been the first sign—and Arvi and Tanu were too close for Arvi not to have known. Ashwini would bet her life on the fact that Arvi had tried desperately to get Tanu help, that he’d fought to save her. But Tanu was already lost.

“As soon as she was mobile after the accident, my sister apparently went into the hospital bathroom and tried to slit her wrists.”

Janvier bit off a hard word. He might still never forgive Arvan Taj for what he’d done to Ash, but he could better understand the scars on the man’s heart that had led to the terrible decision to institutionalize a teenage girl who’d simply been a little different. He must’ve believed history was about to repeat itself.