Well, if that was the case, then she deserved to have them clipped. What right did she have to mourn the loss of wings, when she’d lost far worse than that?
“You seem awfully introspective all of a sudden,” Ronin noted.
Lina schooled a smirk onto her face. “And that’s abnormal?”
“Touché.” His lips quirked into a smile as he tugged his sweater back over his head.
Lina slid her jacket on, leaving it unzipped so her weapons were within easy reach, and followed Ronin to the roof exit. He reached for the door handle and frowned.
“It’s unlocked.”
“Maybe whoever was up here last forgot to lock it.” But when Lina took a closer look, she saw the lock had been smashed. “This was broken from the outside.”
Ronin gave her a loaded glance. “Someone flew up here and broke into the building.”
A second later, the faint sound of a muffled scream drifted up from the stairwell—barely discernible even with her hyper-sensitized hearing. Instinctively recognizing that the two things were connected, Lina threw the door open. In an effort to save time, she jumped the length of the stairs and swung open the door leading onto the top floor, where the scream had originated from. A second gasping cry sounded out. With Ronin hot on her tail, Lina turned left and rounded the corner. She came to a stop in front of an opened doorway.
Just inside stood an elderly woman. A casserole dish lay on the floor at her feet, the cheesy contents spilling out onto the worn beige carpet. A few feet away lay a body in front of a battered leather couch. Blood pooled out several feet onto the carpet. It only took one glance for Lina to confirm the corpse was Sam. There was no mistaking the black Mohawk.
Behind Lina, Ronin let out a muffled curse. “Calm her down before someone else hears her.”
The elderly woman turned at the sound of his voice and, upon seeing them, screamed even louder. She backed away, tripping over her casserole dish and almost falling to her knees.
“Lina. Use your calm,” Ronin urged, but she stayed there, frozen. She hadn’t used that particularly ability in years—had sworn it off the day Sara had died—and she wasn’t about to turn to it now. Truth be told, she didn’t even know if she remembered how.
Finally Ronin swore and brushed past her, closing his arms over the woman’s shoulders. Tendrils of calming energy poured out of him, enveloping and soothing the surrounding space. Lina took two clumsy steps backward, until she stood safely outside of its reach.
The woman calmed down, and Ronin asked, “What happened?”
“I…I live across the hall. Samuel always helps me up with my groceries. Such a nice boy, despite his appearance. So I occasionally drop off a casserole to say thanks. Poor young man, all alone. I worry that he doesn’t eat enough.”
When her gaze began to drift back toward the body on the floor, Ronin gently edged her to the side, so she faced away from it. “What did you see tonight?”
“The door was unlocked and slightly open. So unlike him. I thought he might have forgotten to close it, so I pushed inside to call out his name. That’s when I saw…oh my heavens.”
Her mouth quivered, and Ronin rubbed his arms over her shoulders. “Shh. It’ll be okay. Come, I’ll walk you back to your apartment.”
“But the police—”
“We’ll take care of it.”
He propelled her toward the door, and Lina automatically stepped aside to allow them room to pass.
“Check out the body,” Ronin said to her in a low tone. “I’ll try to keep her calm as long as I can.”
Lina caught the hidden meaning behind his words. He could calm the woman for a period of time, but eventually she would insist on calling the police. Unless they wanted to spend the night down at the station, fielding questions they couldn’t rightfully answer, they needed to be long gone before the police arrived. Human investigators meant well, but they would be of no help, and anything nonhuman about Sam would be passed off as a genetic anomaly by the human doctors who were too ignorant to understand what they were looking at.
“Can’t believe it,” the woman muttered. “He was such a nice boy.”
A stifling sliver of emotion compressed Lina’s chest. Until Sam had betrayed her, she’d also thought he’d been a good person. Hell, maybe he had been, and his hand had been forced by some element outside of his control. Whatever the reason, Lina found that she was sad he was dead.
Once Ronin and the elderly woman were gone, Lina stepped further inside Sam’s apartment. She wasn’t particularly squeamish—anymore—but there was a whole lot of blood pooling on the floor around the body. She moved across the room and stopped at Sam’s feet, taking her time in moving her gaze upward. The lower half of his body was casually splayed out, with the top of his feet pointing straight toward the ceiling. From this vantage point, it almost looked like he’d lain down on the floor and fallen asleep.