Dmitri’s answer was a long time coming. “She appears to be in a stable relationship, but she is ... different. I may yet have to execute her.”

19

Dmitri’s chilling words continued to circle in Elena’s head as she dropped by the morgue to ensure the dead woman had indeed been the one who’d murdered the vampire in the park. All it took was a single deep breath—the sweet poison of oleander was embedded in the assassin’s skin. That done, Elena snuck into the Tower to take a quick shower. It felt wrong to meet Evelyn straight after having come from the house of the dead.

“Here we go,” she said twenty minutes later as she led her sister through the solid steel doors of Guild Academy, conscious of the tension in that small, sturdy body. “You’re too young to join as a full member, and no one expects you to live here, but you’ll be set a schedule of after-school classes to help you hone and control your abilities.”

Evelyn glanced over her shoulder, to where Amethyst walked stiff-backed beside Gwendolyn. “Amy can come with me?”

“Yes, if you want.” Unexpectedly, though it was Eve who was hunter-born, it was Amy with her fiercely nurtured anger and keen distrust who reminded Elena most of herself. Eve, she thought, was still young enough to see the world as she wanted to see it. Amy had had the rose-colored lenses ripped off long ago, likely understood the painful truth of the relationship that seemed to exist between Gwendolyn and Jeffrey.

The ghost of Marguerite haunted them both.

Shaking off that thought as they reached the glass door to the waiting area, Elena pushed through. To her surprise, the man who met them inside was in a high-tech wheelchair. That wasn’t the surprise, however. “Vivek!” Closing the distance between them, she cupped his face, kissed him on both cheeks, having not realized how much she’d missed him until this moment.

He blushed but didn’t shove back his wheelchair. “Wow, look at those wings. I thought everyone was pulling my leg even after I saw the news reports.” Moving his chair using a pressure control, he ignored Evelyn, Amethyst, and Gwendolyn as he peered at her feathers. “Would you be willing to let me—”

“Later,” she said, putting her hand gently between Eve’s shoulder blades, compelled by a sense of responsibility to get this right, to make sure her youngest sister would never ever think herself cursed rather than gifted. “I’ve brought the Guild a new student.”

Vivek’s attention shifted at once, his brown eyes hard, incisive. “Hunter-born,” he said with curt assurance. “Nowhere near as strong as you, but strong enough to get herself in trouble if she’s not careful.”

Evelyn shifted closer to Elena at that harsh, almost cold summation. Elena tugged on her ponytail. “Don’t mind him. Vivek talks to computers most of the time—humans are too much trouble as far as he’s concerned.” It was highly atypical to see him away from the subterranean tunnels that were his usual milieu.

Now, grumbling, the Guild’s resident computer genius nodded toward the busy office area beyond. “Go over there; they’ll do the paperwork.”

Elena went in with Evelyn, but when it became clear that Gwendolyn was capable and ready to shepherd her daughter through the process, she stepped out to talk to Vivek. “It’s good to see you, V.”

“Did you get that gun I sent with Sara?” he asked, eyes touched with a trace of envy when they landed on her wings.

She didn’t begrudge him that. He was hunter-born, too, but had been paralyzed in an accident as a child, losing all feeling below the shoulders. His wheelchair, built for wireless capability, was a cutting-edge piece of technology from which he ruled his domain—the Cellars.

She’d always understood why he preferred to stay in the secret hideaway and information clearinghouse beneath the Guild’s main building—it had to be a sensory nightmare for him to be up in the world when he had no outlet for his hunting instincts. That he had managed not only to retain his sanity in the face of that pressure, but to become an invaluable part of the Guild, was a testament to his incredible will.

“You mean this gun?” She retrieved it from an inner thigh holster, then put it back before she got told off for flashing a weapon.

Vivek smiled, and it turned his face striking. He was too thin, his bones too sharp against skin a shade darker than Venom’s, but he was a handsome man. Yet he never made anything of it—as long as she’d known him, he’d been asexual. Intentionally so, she thought. “So what do you want to do with my wings?”

Lines on his forehead. “I was going to ask you to come in for a scan so we could get a better idea of their internal structure, but . . . that might make you vulnerable.” Moving his wheelchair with a minute shift of his head, he rolled away from the office and out to the porch that ran the length of the front of the building.

Following, she leaned against the railing. “Yeah.” She folded her arms, thought about loyalties. “He holds my heart, V. I’d never do anything to betray him.”

Vivek stared at her for a long time. “I always wondered who’d break through that armor—figures it’d be a scary-ass archangel.” Crooked smile creasing his face, he angled his head toward the office. “So ...”

“Yep.” Vivek knew more about her tangled relationship with her family than anyone else aside from Sara. Having been rejected by his own family after his accident, perhaps he understood even better.

Now, he looked out over the paved drive and to the massive iron gates that guarded the entrance to Guild Academy. “I was watching the surveillance monitor before you landed. Your father drove your sisters here. He’s outside, sitting in his Mercedes.”

Elena felt her shoulders lock, and it was an instinctive response, one she couldn’t fight. She understood without being told that Gwendolyn was the reason Jeffrey had come. Somehow, the beautiful woman who had always seemed nothing but a decorative fixture had found the will to force her intractable husband into supporting her children.

“I’m not strong enough. Forgive me, my babies.”

The memory of her own mother’s voice, so taut with pain, so lost, tangled through her mind, making her hand fist. Unlike Gwendolyn, Marguerite hadn’t been there to stand for her daughters against a Jeffrey who’d slowly turned into a stranger. But then Gwendolyn hadn’t been forced to listen to two of her daughters being tortured to death, hadn’t had her arms and legs broken so she couldn’t go to them, hadn’t suffered such degradation that she’d screamed for days afterward.

“Ellie.”

Blinking at Vivek’s sharp tone, she straightened and glanced back toward the office. “Will you watch over her, Vivek?” Paralyzed or not, he had eyes everywhere. “While she’s here at the Academy, will you watch over her—over them both?”

“You know you don’t have to ask.” His gaze was liquid-dark with pain when she met it again. “Does it ever go away? The hurt?”

Her immediate answer was to say no, but she hesitated, thought about it. “No,” she finally replied, gripping his shoulder with her hand. “But it can be . . . muted by the strength of other emotions.” Like the blinding fury that tied a hunter to an archangel.

“Are you ever afraid? That it’ll all be taken way?” Again.

“Yes,” she admitted, because he’d had the courage to ask the question. “But I’m not a helpless child anymore. If for some reason Raphael wants to leave me, I’ll fight for him to my last breath.” Because he was hers now.

Vivek’s smile was small, solemn. “I hope you make it, Ellie. For all of us.”

Her phone rang in the silence that followed the quiet, heart-felt wish. Checking the display, she said, “Sara,” to Vivek before answering. “Hey, boss.”

“I just got a request for assistance from the police.” Sara’s tone was crisp, what Ransom liked to call “directorial.” Only once had he used the word “dictatorial”—and been assigned a hunt in the wilds of some boondock town where the locals took one look at his hair and leather jacket and termed him a “fancy boy.”

Lips twitching at the memory of how he’d had to make a run for it after the hunt ended—to avoid the local beauties and their shotgun-toting daddies—she said, “Yeah?”

“I know you had a tough day yesterday, but you’re the only one not on assignment today, so haul ass.”

Elena was more than happy to get back into the rhythm of work, but—“Am I really the only one you’ve got?” Sara had access to a large network of hunters across the five boroughs.

“I want to rest Ransom up after the spill he took,” Sara replied, as Vivek whispered that he was off. “Several others suffered similar injuries in the chaos yesterday. Ashwini’s around, but she dragged herself down to the Cellars at five this morning, so she’s out like a light.”

Hunters slept in the Cellars for any number of reasons, but one of the biggest was that they needed a place to hide. “Do I need to ask?” She waved at Vivek as he headed down the ramp to his transport.

“It involves Janvier, a handwritten sign, and large quantities of honey. That’s all I’m permitted to say.”

Snickering at the images that sprang into her mind at the mention of the Cajun vamp Ashwini seemed to spend half her life hunting, Elena said, “So, where do you need me?”

“Delancey Street, right under the Williamsburg Bridge. DB, might’ve been vampire-bit multiple times, but cops say there’s so much damage they can’t really tell. Should be a simple assignment.”

Her spine turned into a steel rod. “I don’t need to be coddled, Sara.”

“Don’t give me lip.” Snapped-out words. “You’re not back to full hunting strength, and if I’d had anyone else, I wouldn’t have sent you into Boston yesterday. Use the downtime you have to get back into shape, or I’ll be putting you on penny-ante assignments involving idiots who think they can break their Contracts after a measly year or two.”

Elena winced. “Mean.”

“That’s why I earn the big bucks.”

Glancing into the office area, Elena saw that Gwendolyn and the girls seemed to be finishing up. “I’ll probably be about twenty-five minutes.”

“Cops’ll hold the scene.”

The cops had not only held the scene, they’d quarantined it behind so much yellow crime-scene tape it might as well have been a fence.

“Fuck me.” The uniform closest to Elena shoved back his cap and stared as she landed on the lush green of the parklike area beneath the bridge. “They real?”

She couldn’t help it. “Nah, costume-shop rejects.”

He narrowed his eyes, stared some more before a big-shouldered plainclothes detective came between him and Elena. “Welcome back, Ms. Deveraux.”

“Nice to be back, Detective Santiago.” Shooting the veteran cop a genuine smile, she nodded at the crime-scene tape. “Slight overkill don’t you think?”