Chapter 5 #3
“I took it out,” Raj said quietly. “Since I was the one who asked him to try reading the necklace again.”
Ward sucked in a breath, but then let it out again without actually saying anything.
Mason smiled a little. “Wouldn’t be the first time we had somebody puke in a trash can,” he remarked mildly. “I’m sure it won’t be the last.”
Ward huffed out a sigh and rolled his eyes. “It’s been years,” he muttered.
“Yeah, what happened?” Hart asked him, his tone teasing. “Maza says you haven’t splattered a crime scene in ages.”
“Fuck all of you,” Ward grumbled.
Hart grinned over at me, and I realized that both he and Mason had done this on purpose—to make me feel better. My face heated.
“Like it or not, Campion, the kid’s our best shot here,” Hart pointed out. “And he’s not doing anything dumber than you ever did.”
“Arguably less dumb, in fact,” Mason put in. “Given that he’s doing so here, where we can help him if he needs it.” He paused a moment. “And he hasn’t even set anything on fire yet.”
Ward glared at him.
A votive on the table suddenly caught fire.
“Hah!” Mason said, pointing at Sylvia, who had been staring intensely at the candle. “Fire. I knew it!”
She looked over at him primly, then gave herself substance so that he, Hart, and Raj would be able to see and hear her. “Did you now?” she asked mildly.
“Ward isn’t a fire-witch,” Mason replied smugly. “And your little experiments catch on fire an awful lot.”
“Would someone care to explain what this has to do with Rayn using his psychic abilities to help us with this case?” Raj interrupted.
“Not a thing, my swarthy darling,” Sylvia cooed.
“God, Sylvia, not okay,” Ward snapped. “You can’t say shit like that.”
Raj did look rather nonplussed by her remark.
Sylvia rolled her eyes. “Should I use sahib, then?”
“NO!” Literally everyone except me and Archie answered that question at the same time with various degrees of horror. Archie cackled. I just gaped at her.
“Sylvia,” Ward said, his voice and expression pained. “You cannot use racist terms from the height of the fucking British Empire.”
The Victorian ghost pouted. “None of you are any fun. Especially you, Nancy.”
“Sylvia, so help me God, I will banish you if you don’t cut that shit out,” Ward threatened, although I knew he wouldn’t do it.
So did she. “Pah. You will not. You adore me.”
I could practically hear him grinding his teeth. “But I can take away your ability to speak, and if that’s the shit that comes out of your insubstantial mouth, I absolutely will.”
Sylvia let out a dramatic sigh—made even more melodramatic because she didn’t need to breathe. “Oh, very well.” She looked over at Raj. “I beg your pardon, Agent Parikh. It was all meant in good fun.”
Raj stared at her for a moment. “Apology accepted,” he said, finally. “And you may call me Raj, if you wish.”
Sylvia grinned at him, but the expression was more predatory than friendly. “Very well. Raj it shall be, kitten.”
Hart chortled.
Raj glared at him.
Sylvia’s grin was definitely more smirk than smile.
Raj looked over at Ward. “That’s the best I’m going to get, isn’t it?” he asked, sounding resigned.
“Probably,” Ward agreed, looking pretty resigned himself.
In the end, over pizza that Hart ordered on the FBI’s budget, Ward grudgingly agreed to let the FBI officially hire me through Beyond the Veil, but he wasn’t going to put me out there as an optional hire unless and until this case was over and I agreed that psychic consulting was something I wanted to do more permanently.
Since even I didn’t really know if it was something I wanted to do as a one-off, much less as a regular thing, I thought that was more than fair.
I’d also gotten to eat pizza with pepperoni, sausage, bacon, and ham on it, because there was somebody eating pizza besides me who wasn’t a vegetarian—Mason by choice and Hart and Ward because otherwise both of them would end up very ill.
I didn’t mind eating vegetarian, but it was a special treat when I got to eat meat that wasn’t cold cuts or canned tuna or prepackaged ham slices, which was usually all I ever got for myself, since I live on a pretty tight budget.
Ward and Mason pay me more than fairly—far more, given how largely useless I am at anything other than spreadsheets and scheduling—but being a psychic is expensive if you actually want to buy things that don’t come with a whole emotional history.
Some things are cheap and easy—things like paper plates, tissues, anything mass-manufactured that never needed to be touched by human hands.
But anything more complicated than that—furniture, for instance, and even clothing—got handled at some point by human beings, either in the manufacturing, inspecting, processing, shipping, or sales part of its life.
And anything actually nice that was made by live human beings had to be magically wiped or it had to be made by somebody who loved their job—and most people, for the record, don’t seem to love their jobs.
So if I wanted things that didn’t come with lots of memories and feelings, I had to spend more to get them.
I didn’t really get pizza much, and if I did, it was the cheap frozen kind.
It wasn’t fresh and it never had more than one kind of meat on it.
The fact that Raj, as a shifter, needed more protein meant that I got a special treat, although I did feel a little bit like Raj was letting me have pizza that he otherwise would have eaten himself.
Not that shifters can’t also eat vegetarian pizza—of course they can.
But I still felt a little guilty about the slice I’d taken.
But that was beside the point.
I was officially working for the FBI. Temporarily, but officially.
I wasn’t at all sure that I was ready for that kind of pressure.