Page 25 of The Diamond in the Rough

She didn’t want her sister to die.

The stone clatteredon the cheap thrift store table as I dropped it, managing to open my own fingers to break the spell of the memories. I sniffed, my nose congested, and then swallowed, confused. I hadn’t been sick when I’d picked up the stone—but then I touched my fingers to one cheek and discovered tears. I’d been crying… because Cass had been upset and scared.

“Shit,” I whispered out loud, scrubbing my hands down my face.

I guess I’d been more open to the memories contained in the worry stone.

A lot more open.

I really hoped that I’d be able to find a bit more balance—I didn’t want to break into sobs every time I touched something that someone had held while upset.

I got up and made my way to the bathroom, where I could use tissues to blow my nose. I flinched back from my reflection when I caught sight of it in the mirror—I looked, to quote Hart, like absolute shit. My eyes were bloodshot and a little puffy, my skin an unattractive combination of too-pale and pink splotches, and my hair, which was called dishwater blond on a good day, was a mess. Apparently, I needed a hair cut.

I’d beg Beck to do it when she got back.

If I managed to get myself put together enough to leave the apartment ever again.

I probably should have been more excited about the fact that I’d managed to accomplish my goal—to pull more from the memories anchored to the worry stone Cass had given me. But that also meant that I’d had tofeelmore—the fear Cass had for herself and, worse, for her sister. The memories and feelings tied to their illness. The details that had swum beneath the surface and which had given color and life to the fleeting impressions I’d had before.

Except I wasn’t entirely certain that I wanted the emotional fallout that came with it.

Because now I was terrified at what would happen if I touched the necklace again—the one that had been held by a woman about to be murdered. Cass was alive and healthy. She didn’t have deep-seated trauma from her transformation—both she and her sister had come through it, although I hadn’t held on long enough to find out whether or not her sister had also ended up with some sort of Arcana-triggered ability or transformation.

What would a necklace made by a murderer and given to a murder victim tell me if I touched it now, with my guard down?

I shuddered, leaning over the bathroom sink, refusing to look myself in the face any longer. I didn’t want to see the haunted look in my own unnaturally dark eyes, the slight sheen of sweat on my skin, or the flushed pallor of my face.

I didn’t want tobethis. Didn’t want to feel like I had some sort of obligation to the dead that would force me to take up someone else’s memories.

I wanted…

But that was the problem.

I didn’t know what I wanted. From myself, out of life,anything. Half the time I didn’t even know what I wanted for dinner, much less what goals or aspirations I had for my life.

I suppose that shouldn’t have been surprising, given the fact that I’d spent fourteen years in an asylum that didn’t even bother to pretend to be trying to do anything for me other than strip away my deemed-inferior magic and keep me locked up so that my parents didn’t have to deal with me. No education, no magical training, nothing except locked rooms, enough food and water to keep us technically alive, and sessions that stripped our magic from us.

I’d been one of the lucky ones.

I was still alive and I could string together a mostly-coherent sentence. So what if I barely grasped the basics of algebra and had almost no understanding of most of world history? Mason was working on gradually teaching me the latter, but nobody really seemed concerned about my arithmetic skills.

Lightheaded, I sank down onto the seat of the toilet, careful not to break the lid or let it slide too far to the side. The last thing I needed was to fall into my toilet or, even better, fall off it and crack my head on the floor or the side of the bathtub.

At least I could use a spreadsheet like a pro, and my basic math abilities seemed to be capable of getting me everything I needed, since spreadsheets would do the math bit for you if you knew how to type in the right commands.

Don’t get me wrong—the first couple years out of Tranquil Brook were rough. But when you have a professor willing to help tutor you through the worst of it, you can learn surprisingly quickly, although Mason professed not to be that good at math or science. Ward was definitely better at math, and as they helped Jackson with his homework, I’d learn social studies and science andwhatever else the public schools dictated that Jackson had to learn.

I knew I was still missing a lot, but most days I had enough to get by.

But the GED curriculum didn’t teach you how to deal with being a contact psychic.

At least I could pick up the death witch stuff with Jackson, although he was a lot more willing to experiment than I was. I knew that I had the ability to cause serious damage—and I didn’t have the sense of invincibility that only a child can have. Not to say that Jackson Turner-Manning was reckless—far from it. Especially for a twelve-year-old. But observation of normal and mostly-normal kids told me that they weren’t really aware of their own mortality the way that adults were or I’d had to be when I was his age.

I wasn’t going to be the one to burst his bubble, either.

But I wished I could see the world through his comparatively innocent eyes. That I could unsee all the death and pain and terror of the asylum—to quote Hart, Tranquil fucking Brook, my ass—and just have had something even remotely resembling a normal childhood.

But I hadn’t. And I had no idea what it would be like tobea child, even one with the capabilities of a death witch. I had no idea what it was like to beloved. Even as a kid, I’d understood that I wasowned. That I had a duty to be what my parents wanted me to be. That I was, in some sense, a trophy for them to show off their own power and virility.