Chapter 1 #2
“You.”
“Me?” My voice squeaked. Nobody wanted a consult with me. There wasn’t—
And then I saw what he’d pulled out of his pocket.
It was a clear plastic baggie with a label across the top—inside was something shiny and metallic and glittery.
“I need to know more about who owned this. Where it came from. You can do that, yes?”
I swallowed, the words gone again. Maybe I could, but it was probably just as likely that I couldn’t—being psychic didn’t work how most people thought it did. But I had no idea how to tell him that.
So we just stared at each other.
“Agent Parikh.” I jumped a little at Mason’s deep voice.
“Dr. Manning,” the federal agent replied, his body relaxing a little when Mason came out into the lobby because now he wasn’t alone with me.
It bothered me that Agent Parikh didn’t like me, but I reminded myself that I made a lot of people uncomfortable, and there was no reason that Agent Parikh not liking me should bother me any more than when it was anyone else.
Which usually only bothered me if it made them rude or belligerent—which Parikh definitely was not.
“How can we help?” Mason asked him.
Parikh opened the baggie and dumped whatever it was into his broad brown hand. “I need to know who owned this.”
Mason blinked his odd gold-and-black eyes, then looked at me. “What do you think, Rayn?” he asked me.
“What do I think?” Nobody ever asked me what I thought about anything having to do with cases.
I worked at the front desk. Kept track of appointments.
Made them, for clients who walked in off the street on days when Ward, Mason, and Beck were busy or out.
Answered the phone and the questions people asked, and made appointments for them, too.
I didn’t do things having to do with cases.
Mason’s lips twisted slightly around his lower canines. “You would have to be the one to touch it, Rayn,” he said gently. “Is that something you’re willing to do?”
I swallowed.
You are the resident contact psychic, sunshine, came the familiar voice of Sylvia Randolph, one of the company’s two ghosts.
Neither of the other two could see her—or hear her.
Her empty eyes held compassion as she looked at me, her hands held in front of her as her long, high-necked gown swept behind her into shadow.
I dropped my gaze. I don’t like touching things, I complained to her.
I know you don’t, she replied. But that is your gift, and sometimes life is about doing things we don’t want to do because they’re the right thing to do.
I didn’t think being a contact psychic was a gift. I didn’t like the fact that I always knew things about whatever I touched or whatever touched me. It felt more like a curse.
But I also understood that people came to Beyond the Veil when they needed help, and nobody else here could do what Agent Parikh was asking of me.
Ward often told me that I was helping them help people when I worried about not being able to do enough to repay them for what they’d done for me. But now someone was asking me to do something. Something I could do to help.
“Okay,” I said aloud to Mason, although I didn’t bother to look up.
The hand that appeared in my field of vision was the color of nutmeg, and I sucked in a breath.
I was supposed to take the shiny necklace—I thought it was a necklace—from Agent Parikh’s hand. But the damp cuffs of his coat were very close to the edge of his hands.
My chest tight, I held out my hands, cupped, under his.
He dropped the necklace into my palms.
The city spread out before her as she gazed across the rooftops from her suite. She was tired. So tired. And worried. Simon had been working late recently, staying in DC more often, and despite sending her gifts to make up for it, she could tell he was upset. When Simon was upset, she worried.
She was also worried about the fact that she’d been getting letters—the creepy, disturbing kind made of letters cut from magazines and newspapers, although she was surprised that anybody still got enough magazines to make as many letters as they’d sent to her.
They’d threatened to expose her secrets.
The fact that she was a shifter.
She wasn’t illegal—she’d registered with the Virginia government, right along with every other law-abiding shifter in the state, even though she thought it was wrong that she had to.
Simon agreed, but it was state law, and he was a federal senator.
He’d promised to introduce a bill making it illegal to register shifters at the federal level, but she didn’t think it would work.
Not yet, anyway.
Maybe in a decade or two.
Someday.
She ran her fingers over the necklace, wanting to comfort herself by touching something Simon had sent her.
Even if he hadn’t sent the usual hand-written love note with it.
She frowned as her fingers traced it. It had to be from Simon. No one else would send her jewelry.
Would they?
She took a deep breath, her body shaking, her senses hyper-aware. Listening for the footsteps that would tell her that whoever it was blackmailing her was here to collect. The bag with the cash. Unmarked bills under twenty or less.
She hoped this would be the last time, but she knew it probably wouldn’t.
The real question was when Simon would find out. Because he would, eventually, when he noticed how much money she was paying. How much she’d already paid. She knew she should tell him before that point, but she couldn’t figure out how.
The phone she’d been sent along with the most recent demand rang, and she answered it. “Yes?”
She frowned, pulling it away from her ear, confused at the chanting she heard coming out of the speaker.
So tired.
It felt like her energy was draining out of her.
The air being pulled from her lungs.
The necklace.
It burned.
It tightened around her neck—except that when she grabbed at it, it wasn’t any tighter.
She ripped it off, trying to throw it as far from her as she could, even as she fell to her knees.
She tried to gasp, and failed.
Tried to stay upright.
To keep her eyes open.
To—
“Rayn!”
I gasped, choking, as Mason took the necklace from my hands.
“That’s enough of that,” the big orc snapped, glaring up at Parikh.
“Whose was it?” Parikh asked me.
I swallowed. “A woman,” I rasped, pushing my palms against the black fabric on my thighs, trying to hide the fact that they were shaking. “She thought about a Simon?”
Parikh’s eyes narrowed. “Simon Adams?”
I shook my head. “She didn’t think a last name.”
“And you can’t—?” He trailed off.
I looked up, not sure what he was asking. “Can’t?” I repeated.
“Find out?” he asked.
I frowned. “No.”
His expression looked annoyed as he kept staring at me. Then, finally, he spoke again. “And why not?”
“It’s a vision, not an interrogation,” Mason interrupted. “He can’t pick and choose what he sees.”
Parikh huffed. “Fine,” he said. “So what did you see?”
I swallowed. “I—she was standing at the window. Someone was blackmailing her.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
He huffed.
“She didn’t know,” I amended. “She was waiting for them. She had money with her.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know. Just… small bills. She didn’t think of the total. Just that it was a lot. Had been a lot.”
“Had been?” he asked, his voice sharp.
“This wasn’t the first payment.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
Another huff, this one even more annoyed than the last. “What else?”
“The phone rang. Someone was saying something she didn’t understand on the other end. And then she was struggling to breathe. She pulled off the necklace, and then I think she… passed out?” I glanced over at Mason. “And then you took it away from me.”
“You were gasping,” Mason replied, his voice gentle, although the look he shot at Parikh wasn’t gentle at all.
I drew a deep breath, grateful that I could. My chest still ached, although I wasn’t entirely certain if that was because I still felt a psychic connection to the woman who had been wearing the necklace or because the vision had actually made me experience what she had.
When I’d been taken to St. Cyprian’s after Ward freed us all from Tranquil Brook, they’d said there were degrees of psychic power, just like there were degrees of most Arc-human abilities. They ranged from weak impressions to visions to full-body experiences.
Sometimes it depended on the intensity of the person’s emotions who’d made or owned the object. Sometimes on the ability of the psychic. Sometimes both.
You could train the skill. Cultivate it. Strengthen it, to a degree, within the bounds of the psychic’s abilities.
I hadn’t bothered.
I didn’t want to be a contact psychic, so I hadn’t seen any point in trying to get better at it.
“Do you know who gave it to her?”
I swallowed. “She thought Simon, but…” I frowned, concentrating. “But he usually sent her a note when he gave her gifts. She was starting to not be sure it was him.”
“Who owned it before her?” Parikh asked me.
I blinked at him. “What?”
He pressed his lips together. “You saw the last person to wear it. Presumably shortly before her death, although I’m not sure that’s what you saw.”
I wasn’t sure, either.
“Should I ask Ward to summon her again?” Mason asked. Apparently they had already spoken to the dead woman.
“We might get to that point,” Parikh replied. “But right now I want to know who gave it to her. Where it came from.” His brow furrowed, thinking. “Because her husband claims he didn’t recognize it.”
“I didn’t see anything else,” I told him, although I didn’t look up from my hands in my lap. My chest still felt a little tight.
“Can you try again?” he asked, his voice intense.
I swallowed. I didn’t want to.
“Raj—” Mason began.
I held out one hand, willing it not to shake.
It didn’t obey me, and I felt Mason studying me.
Are you sure? Sylvia asked.
No. But Ward would, so I should.
Not if it’s going to hurt you, she replied.
That never stopped him, I pointed out, then gestured a little when Mason didn’t put the necklace back in my hand.
“Rayn—”
“Mason,” Parikh interrupted. “We don’t have anywhere else to go, and he’s already given us more than the victim was able to.”