Archangel's Shadows

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 the 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.”