Archangel's Shadows (Guild Hunter series Book 7)

Janvier handed back her phone, his anger an icy film over the green of his eyes. “Before we do anything else,” he said, his voice rigid with control, “we have to make sure news about the condition of the body won’t spread. She deserves better, but this could affect an entire territory.”


Ashwini normally had no time for politics, but this particular political situation could quickly turn deadly—the archangels were all watching New York for any signs of fresh weakness. More, as Janvier had pointed out earlier, the city had only just started to heal from its losses. One more kick could tear the wounds open again.

“The senior cop told me she didn’t radio in any details, only the fact that they’d found a deceased female.” Ashwini had serious respect for the officer and her quick-thinking response in contacting the Guild by using her phone rather than the radio. “With this location, anyone listening in would’ve assumed she was a honey feed who serviced one of the fringe clubs. The media aren’t going to respond to anything as ‘routine’ as a honey feed death.”

The honey feeds—male and female—were part of the gray world. Light didn’t penetrate that world and it was one that “ordinary” people didn’t like to think about. Once lost, the people in the gray were forgotten, and that was both sad and an ugly indictment on society.

This time, however, that callous attitude would work to their advantage.

“That leaves the restaurant owner and his son,” Janvier said, his eyes on the open doorway through which the senior cop had exited a couple of minutes earlier with two steaming mugs of coffee. Both patrol officers were now at the open end of the service passage. “Boy had the photos.”

Ashwini frowned. Yes, she’d deleted the images, but Coby had had plenty of time to e-mail a copy to himself, or to someone else. “I’ll talk to them,” she said, fairly certain the teenager wasn’t the type to leverage fame out of atrocity.

“No.” Stripped of any hint of charm, Janvier’s expression exposed the relentless will at the core of his nature. “We’ll talk to the boy and his father together.”

“These are good people.” Ashwini folded her arms. “They don’t need to be terrified in repayment for being honest enough to call in the body when they could’ve allowed sanitation to pick it up, no one the wiser.” Where Coby and his father had seen a person, many others would’ve seen garbage.

Janvier touched his fingers to her jaw, a cool, slightly rough brush that was over before she could protest. “Fear is what keeps the mortals alive in a world of predators.” Unspoken was that he was one of the predators.

Ashwini had always known that, always seen the complex strata of him, because the charm? It was real, too. “I’ll do the talking.” Taking a minute to speak to the crime scene techs to make sure the victim would be transported to the Guild morgue as fast as possible, she headed toward the restaurant.

“You don’t want her out in the cold,” Janvier said, stopping her on the doorstep.

Ashwini didn’t deny her irrational but visceral impulse. No one should have to lie in the cold dark after having been so brutally tortured. “Come on,” she said, forcing her eyes away from the body so emaciated that it made barely a ripple underneath the tablecloth that was its shroud, “let’s do this.”





11


Inside the restaurant, father and son were cleaning up, the scent of baking in the air.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” Coby asked.

“No, thank you,” Ashwini said to the sad-eyed teenager and reached out in unspoken sympathy—to close her hand over his where it lay on the counter. She saw Janvier start to move toward her, shot him a look that told him to back off. His expression became flat, shoulders unyielding, but he didn’t interrupt, though his gaze remained locked on her face.

Coby was too young for her to sense anything accidentally. It would’ve been different had he been a friend or family. That painful quirk was why she’d known things as a child no girl should know—like the fact that her divorced aunt picked up strange men in bars every Friday and that her grandfather mourned the death of the unsuitable girl he hadn’t been permitted to marry.

Tonight, she consciously focused her ability as she did only in rare circumstances, and all of Coby slammed into her: naked pain and heartache, love for a girl and for his family, the horror and pity he’d felt at seeing the body, worry for his father . . . so many pieces of the teenager’s soul.

Ashwini didn’t like drowning in another’s life, was afraid one day she’d go under and not find her way out. But she didn’t want Coby to be hurt, didn’t want Janvier to become a monster to the boy and his father. So she ignored the fear, found what she needed in relation to both, the boy’s memories of his father enough to reinforce her gut feeling about the man.

Breaking contact, she said, “Thank you for what you did today.”

Eyes shining, the teenager looked away, while his father allowed his tears to fall.

“Please don’t mention the details of what you saw to anyone.”