Archangel's Shadows (Guild Hunter 7)

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.”

“I don’t ever want to put that nightmare in anyone else’s head,” Tony said to his son’s jerky nod.

Janvier held his silence until they were outside and far enough away from the patrol officers that they wouldn’t be overheard. When he spoke, his voice vibrated with fury. “You opened yourself up to everything in the boy’s head.”

“Yes, I did.” It had been a violation, but she told her conscience that she’d saved Coby from a far bigger violation. Should the Tower even think Coby or his father had—or would—disseminate any information, the reprisal would be icily cold, darkly terrifying.

“I’ve survived far worse than the memories of a sweet boy and his father.” An angel had once gripped her wrist, twisted it in an effort to haul her close so he could “taste” her. She’d thrust a heavy-duty hunting knife into his eye, because there really was no way to escape an angel that old except with surprise and speed and smarts.

She’d done so by the skin of her teeth—and with so much of the creep’s life stuffed into her head that she’d thrown up the instant she was in a hideout. “You might have lived more than two hundred years,” she said to Janvier, “but I don’t think you know the depth of cruelty and horror some immortals are capable of.”

Jaw working, Janvier lifted his hands as if to grab her upper arms but dropped them halfway. “You infuriate me.” She had no care for herself. He’d seen her in agony after unavoidable contact with an immortal old and twisted—never in public, of course, never where anyone could see the weakness.

Janvier had simply happened to be there and he knew her well enough to pick up the signs of pain she was so good at concealing. So he’d engineered their exit, gotten her into a room where she could collapse, her hands clutched to her stomach. He’d never felt as helpless as when he’d had to watch her suffer without being able to do a fucking thing about it.

Now, she planted her feet in a combative stance, hands on her hips. “Yeah, well, you’re infuriating me right back.”

The two of them went silent as the morgue van pulled in, the body loaded into it with care, the doors shut. The crime scene techs continued to work, but it was obvious they weren’t getting much.

However, that wasn’t Janvier’s priority right now. “You took a dangerous risk.”

“He’s a boy. There was no horror in him, only sorrow.”

Janvier knew she hadn’t given him the right, but he took it anyway, reaching out to grip the side of her neck with his hand, shift his body close to hers. “You didn’t know that when you touched him.” He was so angry at her for putting herself in that position. “You didn’t know what would rush into your head, sorcière.”