Archangel’s Shadows (Guild Hunter #7)(69)
Author: Nalini Singh

“Yeah.” A rough answer. “But I need to be alone right now. I need to try to understand it.”

Ashwini didn’t have the heart to tell him there could be no understanding this. Leaving him to his grief, she didn’t say anything until they’d stowed the box of Felicity’s belongings in the car. Their first stop afterward was the Guild forensics lab, where a senior technician looked in the box and commandeered a black picture frame he said had a good surface for prints.

It held an image of Felicity standing on a rooftop, her arms raised and feet spread as she looked toward the Tower. A classic tourist shot—and Felicity, she looked so young and brimming with hope.

The forensic tech also took a small hairbrush with a carved wooden handle. “I can see several hairs we might be able to use for DNA . . . yes, the follicle is attached,” the bespectacled man said as he meticulously picked the strands out.

Meanwhile, the no-nonsense woman who took care of fingerprints lifted several from the picture frame. A number were too big to be Felicity’s, likely Seth’s. But the smaller ones matched the body they’d found. To confirm, the tech also printed an ID card from a fast-food chain that had Felicity’s name and face on it.

“No doubt, it’s a match,” she said.

The DNA would put the final stamp on the identification, but there was no longer any question in Ashwini’s mind that Felicity Johnson was their victim.

Taking the rest of Felicity’s belongings, she turned to Janvier. “Let’s go to a pretty place to look at this.” It seemed an insult to Felicity’s hopes to do it in such hard, clinical surroundings.

“I know a spot,” Janvier said, and they headed back to his car.

Watching the city pass by, the snow ground into ice and dirt in places, pristine in others, she kept her silence. There was no need to speak. She’d seen the same grim sorrow that lived in her heart on Janvier’s face. When he pulled into a parking garage near Chelsea Market, she thought he meant for them to go into a tea shop inside, but he led her through to the High Line.

Originally elevated railway tracks used by freight trains, the area had been converted into a living green space. Summer days and nights saw it filled with New Yorkers out to grab a little sun, take a stroll, or just hang out. And it wasn’t popular only with mortals and vampires. Angels liked to drop by, often sitting on the specially reinforced railings, their wings hanging over the sides. Ashwini had once seen two of them eating ice cream and watching the stream of yellow taxis below while a curious boy of about seven leaned on the railing beside them and asked a million questions.

Long grasses and wildflowers, trailing vines set up on trellises, innovative pieces of sculpture in among the greenery, the mood of the High Line changed at the whim of the gardeners and curators, making it a place that was new again and again and again. Then there were the birds and the butterflies, their song and color filling the air on sunlit summer days.

The sunshine today couldn’t banish the cold snow on the deep wooden seats where people liked to lounge in warmer weather, but it remained a pretty place surrounded by the pulsing heart of the city. The gardeners allowed the plants and trees to grow freely in winter, so that instead of the barren lines of a manicured park, here there were waving grasses that had beaten the snow with grit and resilience, bare tree limbs stark against the sky.

Janvier placed the box of Felicity’s belongings on a small wooden block that he brushed free of snow, then walked toward a winter-barren tree in the center of the garden. “Come here, cher. Look at this.”

Joining Janvier under it, she sucked in a gasped breath. A delicate and secretive new sculpture had been added to the tree. Tiny bronze fairies sat on the branches, peeked out of a small hole in the trunk, tiptoed along in readiness to pounce on friends who sat gossiping. Each was exquisite in its detail, its features unique.

“Did you know it was here?” she asked, heart aching at the ephemeral beauty of the piece—because visitors who glimpsed the secret wouldn’t be able to resist; they’d take a fairy or two home as a treasure.

“It’s one of Aodhan’s,” Janvier told her. “He put it here three nights past with Illium’s help. He says they are for taking—tiny sparks of laughter caught in bronze, meant to travel where wonder will bear them.” Picking up a fairy who sat with her chin in her hands, her face expressive with delight at the world before her, he gave it to Ashwini. “For when Felicity is put to rest. I think it suits a woman who was never sad.”

Ashwini pressed a kiss to his cheek on a wave of raw emotion and tucked the tiny creature carefully into her pocket, making sure the fairy’s face popped out so she could continue to drink in the world. Then, brushing aside the snow from a couple of the seats, they sat opposite one another, the wooden block between them.

Though tall buildings looked down on them, Ashwini didn’t feel enclosed. The rush of traffic, the car horns, and the fragmented conversations that drifted up from the street, added to the bite in the air, the shadow of angel wings on the snow as a squadron passed overhead, it all spoke of freedom. This was a good place to step into Felicity’s past, to see who she’d been before a monster decided to treat her as disposable.

Ashwini lifted the lid off the box.

30

Felicity’s box held an impossibly small amount for an entire life.

A pretty gold chain with a heart-shaped locket sat inside a decorative wooden box with a blue velvet lining. Opening the locket, Ashwini saw pictures of a man and woman who looked to be in their fifties or early sixties. “Probably her grandparents.”

There were three more photos. The one of Seth with Felicity, both of them laughing and waving foam fingers in the air with one hand, the other closed around hot dogs bursting with all the fixings. Felicity was beaming at the camera, Seth at her. “She knew,” Ashwini said, running a thumb over the red of the frame to brush away a fleck of dust. “She couldn’t look at this photograph and not know how he felt about her.”

Janvier picked up the second-to-last photograph, its frame sparkly pink. “This one, too, holds those who loved her.” He turned it to show her an image of Felicity with Carys, Sina, and Aaliyah, the four women laughingly holding up pretty-colored drinks at a bar. Felicity was wearing a body-hugging white dress and had a silky-looking scarf of sunny yellow around her neck, purple butterflies on the fabric. She looked young and pretty and happy.

The last photograph was of the older couple in the locket again. Ashwini traced the tractor in the background, took in the endless turned earth, caught the glint of a shovel in the corner of the frame, the sun lines that marked the faces of the two smiling people who looked out of the image. “She was a country girl.”