Ashwini’s heart kicked. “You kept them?” Felicity’s belongings could provide a near-foolproof source of DNA and/or fingerprints.
“The landlord sold off most of it to pay the back rent after she didn’t come back,” Seth said, “but I went in beforehand and gathered up the stuff I knew meant something to her. Rest of it was furniture she got from Goodwill, few clothes and books.”
“It’d be helpful if we could take Felicity’s things with us.”
Getting up at Ashwini’s reply, Seth retrieved the slain woman’s belongings from the back room. “I hid it there in case the landlord figured out I saved stuff for her.” His face crumpled again. “I kept hoping she’d come back.”
He placed the pitifully small box on the table in front of Ashwini, then sat down and rubbed Taffy’s head with his fingers when the cat returned to her perch on his lap. “After you’re done . . . could I maybe have the picture in the red frame? It’s of us after we went out to a ball game one time with some other friends.”
That was when she understood the keening note of anguish beneath his sadness. It was love. Felicity had been deeply loved and had never known it . . . or perhaps she had, but was unable to reciprocate it for reasons of her own. People didn’t always love who they should, or the ones who were good for them. “I’ll make sure you get it back,” she said.
“Her funeral . . .”
“Do you know Sina, Carys, and Aaliyah?”
A jerky nod. “I’ll talk to them, take care of Felicity.”
So many lives, Ashwini thought, Felicity had touched so many lives.
Not able to leave Seth sitting there alone with the cat in his arms and tears in his eyes, she said, “Do you have family in the city? Friends?”
“Yeah.” A rough answer. “But I need to be alone right now. I need to try to understand it.”
Ashwini didn’t have the heart to tell him there could be no understanding this. Leaving him to his grief, she didn’t say anything until they’d stowed the box of Felicity’s belongings in the car. Their first stop afterward was the Guild forensics lab, where a senior technician looked in the box and commandeered a black picture frame he said had a good surface for prints.
It held an image of Felicity standing on a rooftop, her arms raised and feet spread as she looked toward the Tower. A classic tourist shot—and Felicity, she looked so young and brimming with hope.
The forensic tech also took a small hairbrush with a carved wooden handle. “I can see several hairs we might be able to use for DNA . . . yes, the follicle is attached,” the bespectacled man said as he meticulously picked the strands out.
Meanwhile, the no-nonsense woman who took care of fingerprints lifted several from the picture frame. A number were too big to be Felicity’s, likely Seth’s. But the smaller ones matched the body they’d found. To confirm, the tech also printed an ID card from a fast-food chain that had Felicity’s name and face on it.
“No doubt, it’s a match,” she said.
The DNA would put the final stamp on the identification, but there was no longer any question in Ashwini’s mind that Felicity Johnson was their victim.
Taking the rest of Felicity’s belongings, she turned to Janvier. “Let’s go to a pretty place to look at this.” It seemed an insult to Felicity’s hopes to do it in such hard, clinical surroundings.
“I know a spot,” Janvier said, and they headed back to his car.
Watching the city pass by, the snow ground into ice and dirt in places, pristine in others, she kept her silence. There was no need to speak. She’d seen the same grim sorrow that lived in her heart on Janvier’s face. When he pulled into a parking garage near Chelsea Market, she thought he meant for them to go into a tea shop inside, but he led her through to the High Line.
Originally elevated railway tracks used by freight trains, the area had been converted into a living green space. Summer days and nights saw it filled with New Yorkers out to grab a little sun, take a stroll, or just hang out. And it wasn’t popular only with mortals and vampires. Angels liked to drop by, often sitting on the specially reinforced railings, their wings hanging over the sides. Ashwini had once seen two of them eating ice cream and watching the stream of yellow taxis below while a curious boy of about seven leaned on the railing beside them and asked a million questions.
Long grasses and wildflowers, trailing vines set up on trellises, innovative pieces of sculpture in among the greenery, the mood of the High Line changed at the whim of the gardeners and curators, making it a place that was new again and again and again. Then there were the birds and the butterflies, their song and color filling the air on sunlit summer days.
The sunshine today couldn’t banish the cold snow on the deep wooden seats where people liked to lounge in warmer weather, but it remained a pretty place surrounded by the pulsing heart of the city. The gardeners allowed the plants and trees to grow freely in winter, so that instead of the barren lines of a manicured park, here there were waving grasses that had beaten the snow with grit and resilience, bare tree limbs stark against the sky.
Janvier placed the box of Felicity’s belongings on a small wooden block that he brushed free of snow, then walked toward a winter-barren tree in the center of the garden. “Come here, cher. Look at this.”
Joining Janvier under it, she sucked in a gasped breath. A delicate and secretive new sculpture had been added to the tree. Tiny bronze fairies sat on the branches, peeked out of a small hole in the trunk, tiptoed along in readiness to pounce on friends who sat gossiping. Each was exquisite in its detail, its features unique.