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.”