Page 110 of The Rut in the Road

So we all gritted our teeth and went about doing our jobs.

I’d left my car at Mason and Ward’s house in order to swap it out for Mason’s Tacoma, and Vi and I were working on loading up the bins to put in it—lots of party favors, lots of business cards, some precautionary measures, just in case things went wrong because there were too many dead people or some of the dead people were hostile. It wasn’t likely, but you don’t prepare only for what is likely in our line of business.

I paused.

“What?” Vi asked.

I shrugged, then kept packing. “Nothing, really,” I answered. “I just was thinking about being prepared in our line ofbusiness,” I told her. “And it struck me that thisismy line of business.”

“Yeah?” she said, confused. “So?”

“It feels like this is what I do,” I explained. “Not as something to do because I don’t know whatelseto do, or something I’m doing while I finish college, but what Iactuallydo.”

“Like your career, you mean?” she asked.

“Yes,” I agreed. “Like that.”

“Good,” Ward said, rolling into the inventory room.

I felt my face flush. “I was just…” Except I didn’t quite know how to finish that sentence without sounding arrogant or entitled.

“Rayn,” he interrupted. “We want you to stay here, and to do more than just work the desk—not because you aren’t good at that, but because you do have skills that we can absolutely use.”

I frowned now. “For Lost Lineage, you mean?” Yesterday, someone had come in to see Mason and had brought a brooch from their grandmother, and she’d said it belonged tohergrandmother’s grandmother, but there had been a dispute about that. Mason had asked me to see what I could find out from it.

The brooch had beenfarmore pleasant than anything I’d been touching for the FBI, and I’d been more than happy to lose myself in it—until Mason had shaken me out two hours later. I was still a little drained from that.

It had, for the record, belonged to the client’s great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, just… not the one she was expecting. Her four-times-great grandmother had been an enslaved girl, the illegitimate daughter of the plantation owner’s son. She’d stolen the brooch from her grandmother in a rage after having been beaten for an infraction she hadn’t been guilty of.

So that had been interesting.

“Sure, for Lost Lineage,” Ward answered. “But also for the RPD or any other clients who might come in, including the FBI as needed.” He grinned at me. “Also, you can talk to the dead as well as I can.”

“I can’t summon them,” I pointed out. At least not reliably. I could pull someone nearby, or someone I knew, like Sylvia or Archie, but I couldn’t summon someone with a name like Ward could.

“I bet you could, if you had bone,” he replied. “Or a body, but they don’t usually have to come to us with that.”

I must have looked alarmed at that.

“Come on, that would be cool!” Vi said, bumping my shoulder with hers.

“I don’t think I want to touch a human corpse,” I replied.

Ward let out a sound that might have been a laugh, but had an edge of something else. “No, you probably don’t,” he replied. “I never do.”

But I knew that meant he did it anyway. And so would I, if someone asked me to.

I was pushing down on the lid for a bin when the front door bells jangled, and Vi stood from her squat to go see who had arrived and what they needed.

I looked up at Ward. “How worried is Mason?” I asked him.

He let out a half-laugh, half-huff. “Losing his fucking mind,” he admitted. “How’s Raj?”

The fact that he laughed—more of a laugh, anyway—told me he’d accurately read my expression.

“Um. Guys?” It was Vi. Dan Maza was standing behind her.

“Dan,” Ward said, spinning his chair around to look up at the detective. “What’s going on?”