Page 15 of The Rut in the Road

I knew self-defense was legally allowed. Hart and Raj had both talked to me about the fact that no one was going to even think about charging me with Mulrooney’s death. That even though I’d meant to kill Garraway, the fact that Garraway had deflected my death magic meant that Garraway was the one who was legally responsible for Mulrooney’s death.

I wasn’t sure a jury would see it that way.

Especially not a jury that might have members of the Magic-Free Movement among its members.

I was under no illusions that even a jury of regular people—non-Arcs, non-Arcanids—would likely consider me dangerous. More dangerous than Garraway, possibly, despite the fact that it was my witchcraft, not my Arcane status, that was capable of killing. But it was the fact that I was an Arc-human that they would hold against me.

They might also hold my witchcraft against me, of course. But most people didn’t really understand witchcraft.

Theythoughtthey understood Arcanism.

People generally thought they understood a lot of things. In my experience, however, most people understood a shockingly low number of things. Even things that you would think they would know, such as things related to their jobs.

Not long after I’d started working at Beyond the Veil, I’d asked Ward why it was that so many people we hired to do things—like plumbing or building repairs—either didn’t solve the problem we’d hired them to fix or created a new problem that we had to then hire someone else to fix. He’d laughed, a little bitterly, and told me that basic competence wasn’t something you should expect out of most people.

I’d asked him why people did the jobs they did if they weren’t any good at them, and he’d replied that not everyone has good choices about their careers, either for financial or family reasons.

I supposed he was right about that. I worked where I did because Ward and Mason had taken pity on me. I’d likely have had a very hard time finding a job that would pay me enough to live on given my lack of both practical and social skills when I’d gotten out of St. Cyprian’s. I wasn’t even sure I’d have been functional enough for a so-called unskilled job at that point—things that involved customer service would likely have beenan unmitigated disaster, and jobs like janitorial work might have still been too physically demanding for my painfully un-exercised and under-nourished body.

I probably hadn’t been all that good at my job at the front desk when I’d started, either.

But I’d gotten better, especially at interacting with other people, learning how to read their emotions on their faces and in their body positions, hearing the stress or excitement or grief in the tone beneath the words.

But I still wasn’t particularlygoodat it. And that was what had me worried about Garraway’s trial, now that Ward had brought it up. Because while I could report what I’d experienced—either the evidence I’d read off of the necklace or my own kidnapping and attempted murder—I wouldn’t be very good at handling questions designed to confuse me. Because they almost certainly would. And then I would appear untrustworthy or foolish—an unreliable witness.

And without my testimony, I didn’t know whether or not the case would be successful. Maybe it would. Maybe Raj and Hart had enough physical evidence—they had pulled me out of a well on Garraway’s property, after all—to make the case whether or not I testified.

But I had the feeling that if they hadn’t needed me, Raj wouldn’t have let them call me as a witness in the first place. He knew it would be upsetting, and he’d have done everything he could to keep me from having to experience that—having to recount what Garraway had done, and what I had done in response.

People expected you to show remorse for having killed someone, and I didn’t have any. I’m also terrible at faking emotions, so pretending to feel anything like it would probably be worse.

Maybe I’d ask Hart what it was that they needed me to say. I could ask Raj, of course, but I wasn’t certain he’d give me an honest answer. It wasn’t that I thought he’d lie to me, exactly, but he would try to protect me from whatever unpleasant truth there was that required me to testify. He’d tell me he didn’t want to—or shouldn’t—talk about it, or deflect by giving me vague or general answers that provided no actual information.

Hart would at least be straightforward. If he couldn’t tell me, he’d say so, and if he could, he would. And then I’d know what to do, or at least what they were hoping to get out of putting me on the witness stand.

I sighed, having changed into sweat pants, a t-shirt, and a zipper sweatshirt, and went into the kitchen in my socks in order to put something together for dinner.

I knew I wouldn’t see Raj—the case that he’d been called to five days ago was taking up most of his time, and while he’d managed to have dinner with me the night before, it had been a bit rushed, since he’d had to go back to work after only about an hour and a half. I had a can of chick peas, some leftover cold pasta from a few days before when I’d made too much pasta for my jar of sauce, and a can of tuna, so I could cobble together something that resembled a tuna noodle salad.

It was still warm out, so I didn’t bother heating it into a casserole, taking a bowl that I’d mixed the noodles, chick peas, and tuna with some onion powder and celery salt and mayonnaise, made my way out to my beanbag. I’d slowly been playing my way through an exploration-style videogame—Jackson’s recommendation—and it seemed as good a way as any to kill the rest of my lonely evening.

It would keep me from thinking any more about Garraway, anyway.

Garraway bentover me where I was strapped to the gurney, arms and legs buckled in, the leather straps they always used biting into my wrists and ankles. I struggled. Fought. Attempted to draw on my magic to defend myself.

Garraway just laughed. “There’s nothing left,” he told me in a sing-song tone that I didn’t remember him ever using. “Nothing left! Nothing left!”

The man was clearly mad.

A cackle came from near one of my hands, and I struggled to see who it was, but my head was strapped down, too, a bite guard shoved between my teeth, cutting off my airway as I tried to cry out and choked on my own saliva.

“Rayn!”

I knew that voice.

But that was impossible. He hadn’t been there.

Either there.