Page 12 of The Diamond in the Rough

“Where’s the medium?” he repeated.

“Currently occupied with another client,” I replied. “Would you like to make an appointment?” It was what I was supposed to say when Ward, Mason, or Beck were busy and someone wanted to talk with them. Since he’d asked for a medium, I didn’t offer Beck up as an option—I wasn’t supposed to do that, anyway, even if whoever it was happened to be free. She’d be back in an hour, where the other two would be gone all day.

Mason and Beck both wanted people to get in the habit of making appointments, rather than marching in and demanding that they drop everything. Ward was far more likely to break that policy than either of them, which usually earned him an eyeroll from one or both of the others.

“No I don’t want afuckingappointment,” the man snapped, turning a contemptuous expression back at me, a few flecks of spittle flying from his lips. I was glad he wasn’t very close to me—saliva doesn’t carry psychic impressions, but it is both disgusting and deeply unsanitary. “Where’s the fucking medium?”

While I was glad Ward wasn’t here, I really wished that Mason was—people tended not to get hostile or violent when a very large orc was present. Beck might have been feisty, but she was barely over five feet—shorter even thanTaavi—and I hoped the man would be gone before she got back, anyway. And while I had a bit more than average height, I knew I wasn’t particularly strong.

Neither one of us was well-equipped to handle an irate man who probably weighed over two-hundred-and-fifty pounds.

That isn’t accurate.

I am fully equipped to handle myself, magically speaking. The problem was that I was just as likely to kill the man as I was to just stop him if I unleashed magic against him. And killing him wasn’t a reasonable alternative to profanity and some spittle.

I was now regretting my lack of discipline in both the psychic and magical realms. I’d let Ward teach me to call and speak to the dead—although Sylvia herself had been more helpful—and Mason had spent time with me on control, but I hadn’t bothered actually learning how todoanything. Just nownotto do things that I didn’t want to do.

Which meant that I could shut my magical abilitiesoff, but I couldn’t focus them. I could choosenotto kill someone who threatened me, but I couldn’t hurt them to make them back off without killing them. Or, at least, I wasn’t sure whether or not I could stop them without killing them.

I knew that Ward and Mason really wouldn’t appreciate it if I killed this man, no matter how irate he got. Unless he tried to kill me, but I didn’t think he was going to. He struck me as all bluster and very little actual capacity for violence. Or critical thought, if his lack of mask was any indication.

“He’s not available,” I told the rapidly-reddening man. “The best way to make sure that he is available is to make an appointment.” I tried to make my voice placating. Polite.

The man puffed up his chest and took a couple stepstoward me, clearly trying to be intimidating. I didn’t like the fact that it worked, feeling my pulse increase and my lungs tighten. I could feel the fear rising in the back of my throat.

I started counting to ten.

“Then you fuckingmakehim available,” the man snapped. This time, the spittle came flying at me, speckling my keyboard.

I tried not to cringe.

Swallowed. Counted to two. “I can’t do that,” I said, trying to make my voice firm, but not angry. Getting angry was dangerous—and it would only antagonize this man. He clearly wanted a fight, although I suspected that it would be the kind that involved yelling and threatening to sue rather than fists or some other form of violence.

I hoped.

“I think you’d better rethink that, you useless piece of shit. I demand to see the medium, and if you don’t get him out here right now?—”

“Is there a problem here?”

I let out a squeak because I hadn’t heard him come in. Him being Agent Parikh.

The man turned back toward the front door, which had just admitted both Parikh and Hart. I immediately felt safer—calmer. I knew that Hart could more than handle himself, and I assumed Parikh was probably just as capable. Not only did both work for the FBI, which I assumed came with some sort of self-defense or combat training, but both shifters and elves are much stronger than humans.

“None of your business,” the man hissed, looking Hart over with obvious disgust.

One of Hart’s elegant eyebrows went up. I recognized the expression.

I scooted back a little from the desk.

But it wasn’t Hart who responded. “No?” Parikh drew the word out on a drawl. “Why don’t you let us be the judge of whether or not threatening Mr. Alverno here is our business?”

“And who the fuck are you?” he spat. The man’s face was turning an odd shade of purple. If I hadn’t been a death witch, I might have wondered whether or not he was going to have a heart attack—but that’s one thing I do have the capacity to tell—when someone is about to die.

Not murder victims or victims of sudden violence or trauma. I can’t tell if someone is about to walk out in front of a bus, for instance. But I can tell if someone is dying of an illness or injury.

The first time I saw it was in one of the other patients at Tranquil Brook. That was in the early days, before I’d contracted Arcanavirus—not that I’d known that was what had happened to me, exactly, although I remembered wondering once or twice while coughing up substantial quantities of mucus. They had let us interact for an hour or two a day with one another, so I’d been able to meet some of the other patients.

Her name had been Sara, no H. That’s how she’d introduced herself: Sara-no-H. She was a kid—six or seven. I was… maybe fourteen or fifteen at the time. It was hard to mark days and months and years in there. I knew now how old I was, but only because of math. I knew when I’d been born, and now that I knew what day it was, I knew that I was twenty-four years, nine months, and eight days old.