Page 43 of The Diamond in the Rough

“Oh, hun, not what I meant,” she said, her voice sounding sympathetic, which was honestly a little confusing, since she’d just been mad at me. “Just making the point that it was easier for him to deal because he didn’t keep… skipping.”

“Skipping?” Mason asked, sounding a little amused. “He’s not a vinyl record.”

Beck shrugged. “That’s kind of what it looks like, though, just…screee. And then like ten to fifteen secondslater, he’s back.”

Maybe it was weird that I’d never thought about it, but it had never occurred to me to wonder what it looked like to other people when someone else’s memories hit me. I knew I lost time—but it wasn’t long. I hadn’t even realized it was ten to fifteen seconds—I knew it wasn’tthatlong, but I’d never timed one. It would be hard to.

I had the feeling that some of my more recent forays into other people’s memories had taken a lot longer—when Raj and Hart had me deliberately trying to go deeper into them. But that wouldn’t have been disruptive the way, apparently, the ones that ambushed me throughout the day.

Ward was right—they were happening more often since I’d pulled down my carefully-built mental brick wall. Putting that wall up had been a lot of work and a lot of concentration. I knew, in theory, that I could put it back if I wanted to when this case was over.

I just wasn’t completely sure I did.

First, there was the fact that the deeper I could go into the memories of victims or criminals, the more useful I could be to Raj and Hart—but also the more useful I could potentially be to the company I worked for.

Because sometimes we had clients come in looking for help with something that wasn’t just dead people and murder. Murders came to us from the Richmond PD. Our clients were usually trying to find an object or a document—a will, a piece of jewelry, a hidden safe. Those were the things that Ward could help with by talking to the dead.

But sometimes our clients found things they didn’t know what to do with—where they’d come from, who had owned them, sometimes even not knowing what they were. Like the woman who had once come in with a brooch that she’d thought was her grandmother’s, but her grandmother—when Ward had summoned her—had no idea what it was or where it had come from. Mason could sometimes help with those things—if they were old enough. Sometimes those clients were Lost Lineage families—people trying to figure out who they were and who their ancestors had been, and all they had was a locket or a key or a handkerchief.

Ward could sometimes get their owners, if they had names he could use to summon the dead to ask… but I could make that all go much smoother. I could touch the objects, find out who had owned them. What they’d felt. Things they’d thought about. And now that I knew I could do something—I didn’t want to go back to just being the guy who sat at the front desk, answered the phone, and scheduled appointments.

I could be arealpart of Beyond the Veil. Instead of whatever the hell I was now. A charity case they’d adopted to make themselves feel better. Or maybe because Ward felt responsible for me. But I was still a charity case.

“Rayn?” A deep voice interrupted my self-pity.

I looked up, finding Mason holding out a plate, an everything bagel with veggie cream cheese sitting on it, each half cut in half again so that there were four pieces.

Exactly the way I did it myself.

He was holding the paper plate using a napkin so that his fingers didn’t touch it.

I swallowed around emotion, managing to mumble a “Thanks” around the thickness of my own tongue.

“You have to take care of yourself,” Mason said softly, the words meant only for me. “That means you have to eat.” I took the plate from him, and he held on just a little longer. “And that you need to protect yourself.”

I frowned, even though he let go of the plate. “Protect myself?” I asked, keeping my voice low. “From what?”

His smile was odd—amused, but also a little sad, it seemed. “Yourself,” he replied, then turned away, although I didn’t understand what he meant by that.

I carried the plate back to my desk, feeling uncomfortable in my own skin and head, then settled in the chair to eat.

The gorgeous carpenter is back, Sylvia announced to those of us who could hear her.

Three of us looked down the back hallway, which was where Hart or Taavi tended to drop Elliot off in the morning. Fiona was here because of Elliot—she’d brought a bunch of symbols and texts that Ward, Mason, and Beck had combined into a customized design that would serve as both a summoning and containment sigil that Elliot was going to hand-carve into the top of the massive oak table he’d finished building yesterday.

I’d seen it this morning. I didn’t know anything about furniture and didn’t have any sort of eye for art, but it was a really nice table. And it was huge. He and Seth Mays had put it togetherinthe conference room, because it was too big to fit through the door.

“Elliot!” Beck called when she saw him come lumbering down the hall, a bulging bag of tools over one shoulder, a case in one hand and a travel mug that I recognized as one of Hart’s in the other.

“Morning,” he called back, his voice still a little slurred. He offered me a slightly lopsided smile. “Coffee in the kitchen?”

I nodded.

“Great.” He dropped the bag and case by the open doorway to the conference room and shuffled into the kitchen.

“You need a refill?” Fiona asked me, pausing by thecorner of my desk. I’d just taken a bite of my bagel, so my mouth was full. I did want more coffee, but I didn’t want her to touch my mug.

“He’ll get his own,” Mason said from behind her, then wiggled the fingers on the hand not holding his bagel.