“I’ll wear them when I go outside.” Naasir raised his arm to rub the sleeve against the side of his face, his pleasure in the texture open. “Why is Ash at the Academy? She should be here. She’s one of us.”
“She disagrees.” Immortality didn’t hold the lure for her that it did for so many, and Janvier couldn’t blame her. “You know what she can do—imagine her living in the world of immortals.”
Naasir took time to think over his words. “I don’t know how to fix that,” he said at last, his silver eyes on Janvier. “This is bad, Cajun. I don’t want to watch Ash die.”
Wrenching pain in his gut at the idea of it. “I don’t have an answer, either.” The very things that made Ash who she was were also the same things that made immortality a bad choice for her. Janvier knew in his bones that she had the strength to handle the challenges, but he wasn’t sure how to convince her of that.
Naasir narrowed his eyes as the elevator doors opened, and took off toward the stairs. When Janvier stepped out on the floor of the Tower that held Dmitri’s office, high, high above the city, it was to see Naasir coming through the door on the other side. The vampire’s face was pumped with energy, his hair falling around his face, but he wasn’t even out of breath.
“Stupid race,” the other man growled. “You didn’t run.”
“Yeah, I should have.” He had too much energy inside his skin, too much pent-up want. “I’ll race you down later.”
They walked together to Dmitri’s office. Raphael’s second and the leader of the Seven was standing by the large wall of glass behind his desk that looked out over Manhattan, his hand cupping his wife’s cheek. Dressed in black jeans paired with a fitted black jacket over a top the color of fresh raspberries, Honor St. Nicholas laughed up at her husband. Her eyes were an intense dark green that reminded Janvier of a shadowed jungle he’d once traversed as a courier, her hair soft ebony.
Ashwini’s best friend had come through the transformation to vampirism with a luminous physical beauty it took most vampires hundreds of years to achieve. Her physical appearance, however, wasn’t what made her beautiful to Janvier. It was the way she looked at Dmitri. No one in the world could doubt her allegiance to the lethal vampire, her heart worn on her sleeve.
Hearing Janvier and Naasir at the door, she glanced toward them. “Oh, look at you!” Pure delight in her expression.
Janvier stared as Naasir ducked his head, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. Was he blushing? Impossible. Naasir didn’t blush. But the vampire stayed in place as Honor closed the distance between them to stroke her hands over his shoulders. “It suits you,” she said with open affection.
Naasir took his hands out of his pockets in response and put his arms around Honor. Then he held her, rubbing his cheek against her hair, his eyes closed. It was rare to see the vampire so quietly content. Janvier knew Naasir was staying in Honor and Dmitri’s Tower suite—he didn’t like living alone, eschewed his own quarters. He’d also stayed with the couple the two days he’d remained in the city after the final battle.
It was clear he’d bonded with Honor during their time together.
The hunter hugged him back with the same warmth, unafraid though she had to know she was being held by a predator. No, Janvier realized, that wasn’t right. Despite the fact that Naasir’s arms were around her upper body, hers around his waist, it was Honor who was doing the holding. Naasir had subtly ceded control of the embrace.
Janvier glanced at Dmitri, saw an intensity of emotion on his face that made his own heart squeeze. He’d never truly thought about the fact that Dmitri was over a thousand years old, the other man was so at home in this time period. Today, however, he felt the ache of memory within Dmitri, the weight of a history that had left scars on his soul, and he thought again of Ash, of the gift that could drown her in a stranger’s past.
Beside him, Honor drew back and, rising on tiptoe, stroked the jagged cut of Naasir’s hair off his face. “I have to go. I’m teaching a class at Guild Academy.” Tugging him down, she kissed him on the cheek. “I didn’t know you’d already bought clothes, so I picked up a few things for you earlier this morning. I put the packages in your room.”
The rumble that came from Naasir’s chest was so close to a purr that Janvier wasn’t sure he hadn’t imagined it. Sending Janvier a warm smile and Dmitri a far more tender look, Honor slipped out.
The strange, beautiful, unexpected moment ended with her departure.
Dmitri motioned for the two of them to walk out with him to the balcony, the light fall of snow having passed to leave the city glittering under a crystalline winter sun. “Tell me about the autopsy.”
“It uncovered a tattoo that may help us track the victim’s identity should the fingerprint search fail,” Janvier said, then shared the details of the weakness in the bones, the skin. “However, the pathologist also confirmed the presence of fang bites as well as the long-term abuse we suspected.”
“So while the bones echo what Lijuan did to her sacrifices, the long-term nature of this would seem to nudge us away from her.”
“Yes, she ate up her people all at once,” Naasir said, having crouched at the very edge of the railingless platform, his bare feet on the thin layer of snow that had collected on the flat surface. He stared out at the city below in unbridled fascination.