• • •
They rode for hours, taking a break now and then to stretch their legs or admire a view—or for Ashwini to get some hot coffee into her.
“I’m going to hit caffeine overload at this rate,” she pointed out the second time Janvier made a quick pit stop at a diner, the snow that had begun to fall soft and pretty and no challenge to Janvier’s skill at handling the bike.
“Humor me, cher. I don’t want you frozen.” A wicked smile. “I like your blood running hot.”
“Stop thinking about my blood.”
“Now you ask for the impossible from your cuddlebunny.”
With each mile that passed, each playful word from him, Ashwini felt more and more of the strain caused by the unexpected encounter with Arvi leaching away . . . and more and more of her heart falling into the hands of the man who’d seen the fractures in her and given her laughter to heal it.
What was she going to do about this, about them? It no longer seemed as simple as keeping a secret, keeping her distance. Because, as proven by her current position, the latter had proved a spectacular failure, and the former seemed a betrayal of everything they’d become to each other. “Naasir is right,” she said when Janvier brought the bike to a halt at a gas station on their way back to Manhattan, the air clear of snow once more.
Taking off his helmet, Janvier looked over his shoulder at her. “About what?”
“About people making things too complicated for—” A loud buzzing interrupted her words. “Hold on,” she said, her heart slamming into her ribs because the decision about what to tell Janvier might just have been made for her.
However, the late night call wasn’t from Banli House.
“It’s Sara.” Ashwini felt her blood go cold; the Guild Director wouldn’t be calling her at a quarter after eleven unless there was a serious problem. “Sara, what’s happened?”
“Cops just contacted me. They have a body they’ve tagged as Guild business. From the description, it’s in the same condition as the dog.”
Ashwini had steeled herself for bad news, but Sara’s words knocked the air out of her nonetheless. “Damn it.” Fisting her hand against Janvier’s shoulder, she closed her eyes for a second before flicking them open. “I’ll handle this.”
“You’re not in hunting condition, Ash. You know that.”
Janvier tapped her thigh and made a motion for her to cover the phone so they could speak.
“One second, Sara.”
“I couldn’t hear her clearly,” Janvier said as soon as she blocked the receiver, “but did she say a body connected to the dog?” At her nod, his face grew grim. “The city doesn’t need this right now, so soon after the battle. It’s barely begun to heal.”
“Are you offering Tower assistance?”
“No way around Tower involvement,” he pointed out. “Guild would have to report this to Dmitri sooner or later. Might as well work together from the start.”
Ashwini couldn’t argue with him—this was no normal Guild case. “I’ve got Tower assistance,” she said to Sara. Annoyed as she was about having to fight to do her job, she also knew the Guild Director was right; she wasn’t in the physical condition to handle this on her own. It’d be stupid not to have backup in case things turned to shit.
“Janvier?” Sara asked.
“Yes.” She passed on what he’d said about the city’s psychological state.