“Damn it, it can’t end like this,” she said, every muscle in her body taut enough to snap. “This evil monster isn’t going to get away with it!”

Cupping her face, he just held her, touched her.

At first, she almost vibrated against him, ready to tear away . . . but she didn’t. Sliding his hands down to wrap his arms around her when she leaned into him, he held her close, her own arms wrapping around him in turn. They stood in silence, uncaring of the people who streamed past them on the sidewalk.

His heart hurt.

The things she’d told him, the future she’d predicted, it threatened to crush him.

Full throttle, he reminded himself. It was how they’d always lived, would live, to the last flicker of the flame that was his Ashblade’s clever, vivid mind.

“Let’s go for a walk,” she said when she drew back after an unexpected kiss to his throat. “Clear our heads, try to think of other avenues to explore.” Then, to his delight, she reached up and fixed the scarf that was about to slide off one side of his neck.

She scowled at the smile that creased his cheeks. “Don’t try to hold hands.”

So, of course he did. Not to tease her, but because it felt good to have her palm sliding against his . . . especially when she curled her fingers around his with a tug of her lips. It felt like coming home.

They walked through the businesspeople and the tourists, the occasional mother with a pram, the restaurant hawkers trying to talk them inside for a meal, the roadside stall owners calling out to them about “genuine imitation” gold watches and “faux designer” handbags. It was loud and chaotic and it was New York.

“I wasn’t sure I would like this city,” he said to her. “Yet the mad spirit of it has a way of getting under a man’s skin.”

“You miss the bayou, though, don’t you?” Rich and dark, her eyes saw to the heart of him, and that was her right. “That old hut I tracked you to once—”

“You mean the place where you threatened to bury me in a swamp hole then douse me in fire ants?”

Ashwini bared her teeth at the taunting vampire who was the only person who’d ever totally “got” her. That time in the bayou, he’d answered the door barefoot and wearing jeans only partially buttoned, his body lazily relaxed as he leaned up against the doorjamb of the house surrounded by water on almost every side. The half-submerged cypress trees in that water had been lush with foliage and heavy with Spanish moss in the thick humidity, the landscape unearthly in its beauty.

A different, bright green moss had grown up the sides of the hut, turning it into a part of the bayou, and to the right she could see a hammock slung between two submerged trees with enough height to make it worthwhile. At any other time, she’d have climbed into that hammock and let out a sigh, happy to spend the afternoon watching the bayou water move slow and sinuous as a woman intent on seduction.

Right then, however, she’d been sorely tempted to shoot Janvier in the gut. “You made me traipse through the bayou for weeks,” she muttered now. “Then, right when I had you, you made nice with the angel you’d pissed off.” It wasn’t the first time he’d done that, either. “You knew how mad that made me—why did you keep doing it?”

Lifting their clasped hands, he pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “I was courting you.”

“Only someone with a twisted sense of humor would consider that a courtship.” Turned out she was one of those people, but damn if she hadn’t had fun when she didn’t want to kill him. “I was going to ask if that place is yours.”

“Yes. It is close to where I grew up.” She saw him train a single look at a street thief who’d been eyeing them, and suddenly, the curly-haired teen with spotty skin decided he had to be across the road. “It is a simple, quiet place. There is no rush there, non?”

“Yes.” She could imagine relaxing into the hammock with him, feeling all the cares of the world slide away. “Let’s go there . . . after this is over. After Felicity can rest.”

Eyes the shade of his homeland held hers, his accent evoking the lush, humid, haunting welcome of it as he said, “After Felicity can rest.”

They kept walking, going nowhere in particular, the air cold in their lungs and the sunshine bright from a winter blue sky. When Ashwini’s phone buzzed, she took it out with her free hand. “Guild confirmed her accounts have all been closed, and our contacts in banking say it appears she did it herself.”

“Her killer talked her into it,” Janvier said with absolute confidence. “Told her he’d take care of her, that if she loved him, she’d do as he asked.”

Ashwini could almost hear the bastard convincing Felicity to do just that. Except . . . “She kept her apartment as long as she could, didn’t give up her cat,” she said slowly. “I bet you she set up an account somewhere else.”

“Or,” Janvier said, “left money with someone she trusted.”

“No.” Ashwini shook her head. “He’d cut her off from her friends by that time. I’ll get the Guild cyber-geniuses to search across all possible banking institutions.”

She sent the message, but wasn’t hopeful they’d find anything that’d lead them to Felicity’s murderer—regardless of her attempts at maintaining her independence, it was clear the young woman had been almost totally dependent on her “lover” by the end. In all probability, she’d been imprisoned soon after she was last seen, giving her no chance to access any money she had managed to hide away.