by Nalini Singh
Carl nodded, his eyes skating to Janvier. "Should I place your guest on the cleared list?"
"Temporarily." There was no guarantee Janvier was "safe" in this context until Ashwini had personally cleared him.
Leading them down the hallway, Carl stopped in front of the door to the familiar corner suite. That suite was a lovely one, complete with a private sitting room and a bedroom that looked out over the grounds. It was also padded and devoid of anything that could be used as a weapon.
The antique furniture was bolted to the hardwood floor through the padding, the sheets replaced by fine blankets that couldn't be torn up and turned into a noose, the fresh flowers displayed in plastic vases that couldn't be shattered and used to slit the wrists. However, when Carl opened the door after his polite knock received a "Come in," from the other side, the modifications weren't immediately apparent.
One of the myriad reasons why Banli House was so expensive.
"Your boots," Carl reminded her.
She turned to Janvier, having forgotten the routine act in the wake of the sense of loss that so often overcame her here. "You have to take them off." A heavy tread could damage the padding.
Janvier ran his hand over her hair, in the oddly tender way that tugged at her heart, before bending to unlace his boots as she unzipped her heeled ones. They placed them to the right of the door.
Then Ashwini looked into the bayou green of his eyes one last time, drinking in the way he felt about her at this instant before everything changed . . . and led him inside.
Carl didn't come with them, but she knew he'd remain nearby in case he was needed to administer a sedative. Ashwini could tell no sedative would be needed tonight at first sight of the woman who sat by the windows, a serene smile on her face.
Seeing Ashwini, she turned and held out her hand, her features a feminine version of Arvi's, the brown-black of her hair thick and gleaming, with only a rare few strands of silver. "Ashi," she said, using the childhood nickname Ashwini heard from no one else now.
"Hello, Tanu." Ashwini settled into the chair opposite her elder sister.
Tanu's dark eyes flicked up to behind her. "Who's this?"
"Janvier." She glanced back and up at him before returning her gaze to the sister who'd been wrenched out of her life when Ashwini was barely nine. "He's mine."
"Well," Tanu said to Janvier with the acerbic politeness that had so often put men back on their heels before they fell hard for her, "you look well nourished, so I assume you have a job?"
"It even pays in more than whiskey."
Janvier's drawling answer had Tanu's lips tugging up at the corners. "I'd watch out for this one, little sister." The last two words were in the language they'd grown up speaking with their grandparents. "He's apt to steal your virtue and slip out a window come dawn."
Ashwini found herself surprised into laughter. "Maybe I'm the one who'll steal his virtue."
"I'm not sure your Janvier has any left." Tanu's eyes danced and at that instant she was the effervescent beauty who'd once drawn three marriage proposals from total strangers during the course of a single family wedding.
Janvier tugged on Ashwini's braid. "You did not warn me I would be facing such stern scrutiny, cher."
Tanu didn't laugh, deep vertical lines forming between her eyebrows instead. "Where's Arvi? I tell him not to work so late, but does that dratted twin of mine ever listen?"
Ashwini sensed Janvier start behind her as he understood the true scale of the tragedy. "You know Arvi," she said. "I bet you he took 'just a glance' at a pending operation as he was about to leave, and ended up spending hours mapping it out. He's probably on his way here now." A guess that had a good chance of being true . . . because her big brother spent more time in Banli House than in his own. Arvi had lost half of himself when he'd lost Tanu, would bleed from the wound till the day he died.
"That's Arvi for you." Sighing, her sister rubbed at her temple. "God, this headache."
Ashwini didn't offer to get medication. Her sister's drug regimen was finely calibrated to make sure she didn't become an addict or end up catatonic. Ashwini hated that Tanu had to be on them, but without the drugs, her sister became manic, prone to self-harm and nightmare delusions that left her screaming.
The aim of the medication was to give her as many minutes of clarity as possible during her waking hours. Banli House was a high-class facility, after all, one that took its responsibilities seriously. If Ashwini hadn't been entombed here as a teenager, she might even have found it a soothing, caring environment.
Janvier moved from behind Ashwini's chair. "I may be able to help," he said and, hunkering down in front of Tanu, pressed his fingers to his own temples in an unusual pattern. "Try that."
Copying the motions, Tanu sighed. "Where did you learn that?"
"From my ma-mere--my grandmother. Sometimes what is modern is not always the best, oui?"
"Oui." Tanu laughed and patted his cheek, no indication of any tension on her face at the contact. "Yes, you're definitely trouble. Pretty trouble." Her eyes met Ashwini's. "You should chain him up."
"He probably has the key to the chains under his tongue."
Tanu's vivacious gaze dulled in front of Ashwini's eyes, her head turning toward the window that looked out into the night. "I can hear them."
"Tanu." Ashwini touched her sister on the knee.
But Tanushree Taj wasn't listening, wasn't even aware of her or Janvier any longer, lost in the cacophony of phantom voices that followed her night and day.
Rubbing her knuckles over the heavy ache in her chest, Ashwini put her hand on Janvier's shoulder, said, "We should go. She can stay like this for hours, sometimes days." Ashwini had once returned from a hunt to find her sister hooked up to a feeding tube because she'd gone into a near-catatonic state two days earlier.
Arvi had been sitting at Tanu's bedside, his voice hoarse from trying to talk her back to the world. "Please, Tanu. I don't know how to do this without you. Please, Tanu. Please."
Throat thick with the raw force of the memory, she wasn't ready for the intense and painful tenderness she saw in Janvier's eyes when he turned to her . . . but there was no pity. No horror. He looked at her as he'd always done when he was feeling protective, and the realization made her want to fall into his arms and ask him to never let her go.
Allowing him to tug her up once he was on his feet, she left Tanu with a soft good-bye. "She's gone," she told Carl as she and Janvier put their shoes back on. "Please keep an eye on her." The voices could leave Tanu in agony, until sedation was the only way to give her peace.
"I always do." The nurse walked with them to the front door. "Your sister is going away more and more. You were lucky tonight."
"Do you think you can call me when she's lucid? I'd like to spend more time with her." Before there was no more time. "But only if Arvi isn't here." No matter her own need to see Tanu, Ashwini wouldn't steal Arvi's time with his twin. The two had never made her feel anything but included as a child, but nothing could alter the fact they'd been siblings for nineteen years before she came on the scene.
Unlike some male/female fraternal twins, Arvi and Tanu had never drifted apart, despite living vibrant, individual lives of their own. Tanu had gone to a different university from Arvi's, her social life an active whirl. Arvi, in contrast, had buried himself in medical school, his girlfriends long-term, where Tanu's boyfriends changed with the moon.
However, when the two came home for vacations, it was obvious they'd kept in constant contact. They'd make comments about small incidents in each other's lives, laugh over secret jokes, tease each other mercilessly over their love lives, give their excited little sister gifts that complemented one another.
The only time Ashwini had seen Arvi laugh in the past eighteen and a half years was the day five years ago when she'd arrived for a visit to find Tanu coherent and herself. Her sister had been doubled over in a fit of giggles, Arvi's head thrown back in untrammeled joy as he sat on t
he floor with his back to the window. When Ashwini would've backed away, Arvi had called for her to come in, open affection in his voice.
Ashwini had walked inside, all the pain that separated them buried beneath the wonder of that timeless instant when everything was as it should be. Her brother had held her by his side with his arm slung around her neck, and for a single magical hour, the three of them had been as before, Ashwini quiet and happy just to be in the room with her older siblings while they bickered and talked and made fun of the world.
"Of course I'd be happy to call you." Carl's voice cut into the heartrending echo of memory. "I'll ask the day shift nurse to do the same." He opened the front door. "Until next time."
Leaving with a nod, she inhaled the crisp night air in deep gulps. It felt as if the stranglehold around her throat had eased at last, her lungs expanding gratefully. She hated Banli House as much as she loved Tanu. "Let's get out of here."
Janvier drove them back not directly to Manhattan but to the Enclave lookout he'd brought her to on the bike. Leaving the car, the two of them walked to the edge of the cliffs and took a seat notwithstanding the snow, their legs hanging over the side and the Hudson flowing smooth and deep below them.
The Manhattan skyline glittered in the distance, the Tower a spear of light. The brilliance of it caught on the wings of angels who flew in and out, turned the glass of nearby skyscrapers into dazzling mirrors.
"Every time I go to Banli House," Ashwini said, "I want to break her out, take her to some place better. Only the thing is, there is nothing better."
Even Arvi had accepted that.
Tanu had round-the-clock care at Banli House and friends among the other long-term residents. She was never mistreated, the staff scrupulous in following the rules about not making physical contact with her unless she initiated it or it was absolutely necessary. When it was, only a small group of people were authorized to touch her, all individuals whose minds wouldn't hurt Tanu.
If no one on the cleared list was available, Banli House called Ashwini or Arvi. And when Tanu was lucid and herself, the staff made sure she had access to whatever she wanted, be it the freedom to walk the pathways in the woods behind Banli House, eat a particular meal, or paint the hours away on a large canvas.
Once, she'd surprised Arvi by turning up to take him out to lunch. But that had been a long time ago. Tanu didn't leave the grounds now, didn't trust herself to remain coherent and rational for long enough. The voices were too loud.
Janvier held her gaze. "Your sister appears at peace."
"Sometimes I almost believe it, but--" Shaking her head, she said, "I have to start at the beginning."
Janvier turned sideways, placing one of his legs behind her, his knee bent so she could lean against him, and his hand warm on her nape. "I am here."
25
"Most everyone," Ashwini began, drawing strength from his unwavering support, "thinks my parents and Tanu all died in that car crash when I was nine. The truth is, only my mother and father died on impact. Tanu was badly injured but she survived."
"That is the cause of the wounds to her mind?"
"No." Terrible as that would've been, it wouldn't have torn what remained of their family to shreds. "Before I tell you about Tanu, I have to tell you about our mother."
Grief pulsed in her heart at the memory of her parents; it had dulled with time, but it would never leave her. Because while they had made mistakes, unable to understand a daughter who was so different from everything they knew, her mother and father had loved her, loved all their children. "You know my mother was a professor of literature--what I didn't tell you is that she was like me, able to see into people with a touch."
Placing one hand on Janvier's thigh, the muscle warm and taut beneath her hand, she anchored herself. "Tanu had it, too. No one in our family ever acknowledged it, ever even joked about the way they'd both occasionally know things they shouldn't. There was always a tinge of fear beneath the surface I didn't understand at the time."
"Wait." Janvier ran his thumb over her nape, a scowl on his face. "Were you and your sister both in that place at the same time?"
Ashwini shook her head. "She was moved to a satellite facility when I was moved in. Because I grew up thinking she was dead, it was decided that my coming face-to-face with her would be too big a shock." Everyone had already thought her unstable.
"But the thing was, a couple of the people who regularly interacted with me, touched me, had touched her, too. I thought I was going insane when I started getting flashes of her as if she were still alive." For a while, it had convinced her to take the medication that made her feel so fuzzy and lost.
Unlike Tanu, she hadn't needed the drugs. The medication had simply made things worse. "Then," she continued, "I realized I only got the flashes near certain people and it began to make a terrible kind of sense."
She'd confronted Arvi once she was free of Banli House, made it clear she knew the truth. "Arvi eventually told me Tanu had had a psychotic break a month before the car accident, had spent seven nights under psychiatric hold. She said the voices wouldn't leave her alone."
Ashwini couldn't imagine Arvi's pain as he watched his vivid, brilliant twin disintegrate in front of his eyes. Because the psychotic break couldn't have been the first sign--and Arvi and Tanu were too close for Arvi not to have known. Ashwini would bet her life on the fact that Arvi had tried desperately to get Tanu help, that he'd fought to save her. But Tanu was already lost.
"As soon as she was mobile after the accident, my sister apparently went into the hospital bathroom and tried to slit her wrists."
Janvier bit off a hard word. He might still never forgive Arvan Taj for what he'd done to Ash, but he could better understand the scars on the man's heart that had led to the terrible decision to institutionalize a teenage girl who'd simply been a little different. He must've believed history was about to repeat itself.
"Arvi moved Tanu temporarily to Banli after her suicide attempt." Ash looked out over the water, but he could tell she didn't see the skyline beyond. "He thought it'd be a better environment for her than a hospital ward, but the temporary stay kept being extended. Each time they thought she was better, she'd go into screaming fits for days or try to harm herself."
"I don't understand why the fact that she lived was kept from you. Your grief must've been devastating." Broken or whole, Tanu was Ash's sister, was clearly loved by his hunter.
"Tanu didn't want me to see her that way," Ash said, her voice rough. "Directly after her first psychotic break, she told Arvi that if she was ever institutionalized, I was to be told she was dead." Breathing in harsh gulps, she gripped his thigh more tightly. "And with the car accident . . . Arvi just said she'd died from unexpected complications."
A lie, Janvier saw, that a heartbroken child would have had no reason to disbelieve.
"Neither Tanu nor Arvi has ever said so," Ash continued in that voice shredded with pain, "but I think they wanted to give me a clean slate, no preconceptions about my future . . . because Tanu's ability was stronger than my mother's had been, and my mother had also begun to exhibit signs of mental illness in the months before the crash." Agony in her every word. "I was meant to be the one who made it . . . and I turned out the strongest of us all."
Staggered, Janvier saw that he'd been wrong, that until this instant, he'd had no real idea of the root of Ash's fear about immortality. "You believe the older you become, the greater your chance of becoming as she is." And a vampire's madness could last an eon.
"It's a certainty with our history. Tanu's initial psychotic break happened at twenty-eight and I'm only six months away from turning the same age." A long exhale. "It's why I've always encouraged the other hunters to see me as a little kooky, a bit crazy." Her smile was faint. "Not that I'm not, but I figured it'd make it easier to hide the first signs of degeneration."
Refusing to listen, Janvier tugged her against his chest, his jacket open. She came, swinging up her legs to lie alo
ng the cliff edge, her head on his shoulder and one arm around him as they faced the city skyline.
"Two women in a family doesn't equal an inevitable pattern," he said, his heart tearing at the idea of losing his Ashblade to the insidious illness that had consumed her sister. "You said yourself that your ability is stronger than your sister's, and yet you're not showing any symptoms despite being so close to the age she was when she suffered her first psychotic break."
Ash pressed a kiss to his chest, searing him through the fabric of his tee. "I can feel the darkness licking at me, whispering ugly, vicious things just out of my hearing. It's coming."
"No. I won't accept this." More than two hundred years he'd waited for her, and now she was telling him he'd lose her in a heartbeat? No.
"I tracked down my maternal grandmother's medical records."
Janvier's blood turned to ice.
"I never knew her," Ash said. "My mother told me she died when my mother was twenty-one. What she didn't tell me is that my grandmother spent fifteen years in a psychiatric facility."
He shook his head in mute denial, but Ash wasn't finished.
"It was much harder to track my great-grandmother, but I finally found one of her girlhood friends." A ragged breath, her body rigid against him, and he knew she was fighting the same rage and pain and screaming sense of loss that had him in its grip. "She told me my great-grandmother hung herself when she was about forty, after 'the ghosts would not leave her alone'--as they hadn't her mother."
He knew what she was trying to tell him, didn't want to understand it.
"I'm so sorry, Janvier. I should've stopped us before--"
"Don't you say that. Don't you ever say that." He crushed her to him. "You were always meant to be mine." His eyes burned, his chest so painful that it felt as if his heart had burst. "Whether it's for a year or a century, it doesn't diminish who and what we are together."
Ash didn't fight his hold, the kiss she pressed to the pulse in his neck an agonizing tenderness. "I'm yours." Her fingers trembled as she curved them around the side of his neck. "Only ever yours."