Page 62 of The Diamond in the Rough

“Hello,” I replied meekly.

“You’re Rayn? The kid from the asylum?”

I nodded, glancing around nervously as the rest of the room fell silent.

“Your parents know what they sent you into?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I— They’re dead, so I don’tknow for sure. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did or if they didn’t.”

“Jesus,” somebody muttered, and I didn’t think it was Hart.

Kurtz pressed his lips together. “I’m asking because I need to know how to play this,” he said. “I need to know what to tell them, how to be thinking about the motivations of the families who are looking to send a kid there.”

I swallowed, nodded, then spoke again. “Not everyone’s parents knew what was happening to them, or why. Some families knew that they were stealing our magic—and thatiswhy my parents sent me. Because I had the ‘wrong’ kind of magic. But I don’t know whether or not they intended to help me or to keep me prisoner, although,” I added with a grimace, “I suspect it was the second.”

“Some of the families Ward contacted to let them know the conditions their kids were in immediately called to report the facility for neglect and abuse,” Hart put in, leaning forward on his elbows. “So we know there were people who did genuinely think it was there to help their family members.”

“What we don’t know,” Raj added, “is what, exactly, the current condition of the operation is. Is it there to extort money from families who don’t know what happened, or has a new facility been set up? If the latter, is it actually intended to help people with mental illness or trouble controlling their magic, or is it there to abuse and exploit its patients, just like before?”

Kurtz blew out a heavy breath.

“So what do you need me to do?” Izzy asked, glancing around the table.

“Since we don’t know what we’re walking into,” Raj explained, “it’s hard to say exactly what we’ll need. It’spossible we won’t need much of anything—some background yelling, for instance, during a phone call. They might ask to speak to you on the phone or do a virtual evaluation. They might ask to meet you in person.” He shrugged. “Maybe nothing at all other than being willing.”

Izzy nodded. “I can do that,” he said, although he sounded a little nervous.

“Rayn,” Raj said then, looking at me. “I need you to tell us as much as you can. As much as you’re willing to.”

I took a deep breath. I didn’t enjoy talking about it—didn’t particularlywantto talk about it—but I knew that it was important. That what I could tell them might lead to stopping whoever was trying to revive Tranquil Brook—or was pretending to. Either way, they needed to be stopped, and what I knew might make a difference.

So I told them about how my parents had sent me away because I’d lost control of my magic—although not specifically how or why. I told them about the early years, when they’d mostly just kept us isolated so we couldn’t hurt each other. Told them about the early rituals that had drained our magic. Told them about the first, mostly experimental devices that had left burns and scars as they siphoned off power. Told them about the later models that burned less, but took more. About the wave of Arcanavirus that had ripped through the asylum, providing more magic for the magi and machines. About the neglect and the secrecy.

About how Mason and Ward and Hart had found and freed us.

I skipped over the dreamwalking.

I couldn’t reveal that. Not with Raj in the room.

I finished, staring down at my hands in their thin, dark grey gloves.

No one spoke.

A few people moved—I could hear the shifting of chairs, the rustle of fabric.

I heard a soda bottle open, then saw it appear in front of me—a dark-skinned hand twisting it open with two paper napkins so that he didn’t touch it.

I looked up at Raj, who leaned over me.

I swallowed, my throat a little sore from speaking. “Thanks,” I whispered.

A big, warm hand briefly touched my shoulder. “No, Rayn,” he said softly. “Thank you.”

11

She was brimming with excitement—somuch so that she’d gotten in early enough to beat both Mason and Ward to the office, so she’d set up their coffee maker and made the pot of coffee herself, enough for all three of them.

She had excellent news—Lost Lineage and Beyond the Veil were going to be featured as part of a PBS series on genealogy and history in the American South. She was looking forward to what this would do for the company in a business sense, but she was also looking forward to how many more people they would be able to help once their name got out there.