The Diamond in the Rough (Beyond the Veil #10)

Chapter 1

He looked sidelong over at the kinda weird kid sitting at the front desk, unconsciously tapping the end of the pen he was using to fill out the séance form against his masked chin.

Name of the deceased, purpose of séance, name of client, all of that shit.

He needed the money, so he had to contact the old man, much as they’d always hated each other.

The old bastard was too traditionalist to not have given him money, right?

Grimacing, I put the pen down, annoyed. I hated it when the impressions I received from objects were other people’s thoughts about me.

Even more when they thought of me as the weird kid.

For one thing, I’m not a kid. I’m twenty-four, which I understand might seem like a kid if you’re in your late thirties or forties…

or older. But I have been a legal adult for more than half a decade, and I find it very annoying when people dismiss me because of my age.

I pushed the pen off the edge of my desk and into the trash bin with the end of a different pen, before putting that one back into the clay cup I had made to hold my pens.

People always took pens from my pen cup.

Sometimes they kept them, which I honestly didn’t mind, because it was so much worse when they put them back and then I picked them up.

People who came into Beyond the Veil usually had strong feelings—fear, worry, annoyance, grief—and that meant that they were far more likely to leave impressions on things than if they didn’t have particularly strong feelings.

Like the man—probably in his forties or fifties—who had been here this morning for a séance with his estranged father, looking for a will that would give him some kind of inheritance.

I didn’t know if he got what he wanted or not—but there was a will, and now he at least knew where to find it, although we often didn’t hear what the outcome was beyond that.

I do not enjoy knowing things about the lives of random people I don’t know. Or about people that I do know, either. I do my very best to avoid touching things handled too much by the people I work with, even though I actually like those people.

My name is Rayn Alverno. I was born during a hurricane, and I was six years old when I killed my uncle.

He was going to push my mother—pregnant with my little sister at the time—down a flight of stairs.

Everybody thought I’d used magic to push him, but that even though I’d meant to make him fall, his death was an accident.

He’d actually been dead before his body hit the first stair.

I don’t tell people that, though. They’d get upset.

Sometimes it’s hard for me to tell what upsets people, but I know that admitting to intentionally killing your uncle is not a good idea. Especially since there’s no statute of limitations on murder—something I know very well because of where I work and who I work with.

I admitted it to my mother the night it had happened.

She hasn’t spoken to me since. In fact, she had me locked up in an institution that tried to drain my magic from me. It doesn’t work—not long-term, anyway. Every time they did it, it always came back.

Now I just don’t tell people a lot of things.

I don’t tell them I’m a death witch, or any kind of witch.

I don’t tell them about the number of dead people just hanging out in the world, out of spite or affection or whatever reason.

I don’t tell them the things I can tell about them from just touching the edge of their sleeves, their wedding rings, a link on their watches.

I try very hard not to touch any of those things. That’s why I often wear gloves.

But people think it’s weird that I wear gloves much of the time. It’s easier in winter, when other people are wearing gloves, too—at least outside.

People think it’s weird that I do a lot of things, although most of the time I don’t really understand why.

I’m what they call a contact psychic. I touch objects and know things about the people who owned them, the people who made them, the people who most recently used them.

Shopping for clothing is very hard. Either I have to spend a lot of money buying from specialty shops that cater to contact psychics, or I have to spend hours in thrift stores touching everything, which makes me tired and very cranky because most people are not nice to spend psychic time with.

Anything that was made in a sweatshop is absolutely out of the question.

Most of my shirts come from Ward.

Ward Campion is my boss, but he’s also the medium who saved me.

Saved everyone who was trapped in Tranquil Brook, the institution where my mother sent me.

The one that claimed to be a mental health hospital and was actually draining magic from its patients, and really wasn’t at all concerned about either our physical or mental health.

I like Ward. He’s a good person, a kind person, and his clothes don’t make my skin feel like it’s itching when I wear them—Mason thinks it’s because if there are too many impressions, they blend together and stop being so clear.

Sometimes an object that something he—or someone else I know—hasn’t touched much will contain more clear thoughts, but things people use all the time are more…

blended together. Feelings rather than singular thoughts.

And if I know them, those feelings are familiar, comfortable.

Eventually, Ward’s residual energy fades from his clothes and they become mine.

I like having things that feel like mine.

I was wearing one of his old polo shirts, dark and light blue striped, although it didn’t feel like him anymore.

I also had on a cardigan that Ward’s aunt had knitted for me—I like Pearl, too, and I’m okay with things she’s made me.

Socks, mostly. This sweater, grey and cream-colored.

A bright orange and pink scarf. She’s made a lot of them, and everybody who has ever worked at Beyond the Veil has socks and scarves and sweaters or vests knitted by Pearl.

The great part about the scarf and socks was that she used wool instead of synthetic yarn—wool comes from an animal, and nothing that was part of an animal, including a human animal, carried emotions that I could read. It was really too bad that good quality wool was expensive.

It was chilly, so I pulled my sweater closer around me as I shifted at my desk—the front desk at Beyond the Veil—uncomfortable after touching the pen.

I took a deep breath, then tried to get back to work, my laptop carefully lined up so that I could also see through the front door and main window so that no one could sneak up on me.

Okay, no one I didn’t know.

It’s okay if Ward or Mason or Beck walks up behind me.

Or Hart, although he doesn’t work here anymore, so he comes by a lot less often.

They all know not to do alarming things like touch me on the shoulder or try to shake my hand.

Although I don’t get any thoughts from touching skin, it’s really easy to brush a sleeve, or touch a ring or watch or bracelet.

Even fake nails contain the annoyance—usually—of the person who put them on at the nail salon.

People who come in the front door usually don’t know that.

Sometimes they get mad because they think I’m rude, but I just don’t generally have my gloves on at work—it’s hard to type with gloves on—and I don’t want to touch them. Honestly, I generally don’t like touching people irrespective of my psychic ability. I always try to be polite anyway.

Ward says that if people are too sensitive to handle not shaking someone’s hand, they don’t need a medium badly enough for me to worry about them leaving in a huff. Admittedly, that only happened once. Usually they just got angry and complained to Ward or Beck.

Either of whom would just roll their eyes once the client left and assure me that they didn’t mind.

I still wish people didn’t get mad at me, though.

I picked up my coffee mug—I made it, glazed it, and fired it, so it’s mine—and wrapped my fingers around it.

It was cold and raining outside, and my hands were chilly from walking into the office.

I lived about a mile away, and I liked walking, so I walked to work, but my gloves hadn’t been warm enough to keep my hands from getting cold. The heat of the mug felt good.

I watched the rain beading on the glass of the front window, the drops chasing one another as the wind blew them in diagonal patterns across the surface.

Then a tall, hunched-over figure in a long coat jogged past, then grabbed the door.

I sat up straighter.

I never knew what to say to him.

With most people, I can pretend. I know the script I’m supposed to use.

But not with him.

Federal Agent Rajesh Parikh. He works with Hart, but usually Hart is the one who comes in. Sometimes they both do. But Hart wasn’t with him today.

Agent Parikh is a shifter, although I didn’t know what kind, specifically, and he was powerful. The witch part of me could feel it pulsing off him in waves that felt like heat and spice and something wild.

I watched as he shook both arms, casting rain from the sleeves of his coat onto the wide entryway mat.

Then he looked up at me, and I froze.

Eyes like honey, gold and brown and liquid, stared back at me.

His skin was chestnut brown, hair thick and black, his jaw and cheekbones wide and clearly defined behind a carefully trimmed goatee-style beard.

Because he was a shifter, he didn’t need to wear a mask and usually didn’t. He didn’t have one on now.

I swallowed.

He stared back at me, then blinked, rolling his shoulders a little. Rain slid from his coat and dripped onto the brown scruff of the mat.

“It’s… Rayn, isn’t it?”

His voice was a warm rumble.

I nodded.

“You’re a contact psychic, correct?”

I nodded again.

He reached into his pocket. “I need a consult.”

I finally managed to get some saliva into my mouth so I could speak. “With whom?” I asked, ready to pull up the company schedule.