Chapter 13
While she did love jewelry, she wished Simon were home more often rather than buy her jewelry. He knew that her tastes—guilty as that made her feel—ran to the flashier, chunkier pieces. Statement jewelry, her mother had always called it.
She lifted the top off the box, dark blue and a soft, leather-like feel, and sucked in a breath. Pearls, in several different colors and about three sizes, interspersed with gold charms shaped like seashells. She felt her lips curve into a smile.
Simon knew her so well.
I pulled my focus away from the box and handed it back to Raj with a shake of my head.
“This one’s for a different necklace,” I told him.
“Pearls and gold charms.” Hart and Raj had come in to Beyond the Veil with a small stack of jewelry cases and boxes, wanting to know if I could get more off of one of the cases than I’d gotten off the necklace itself.
I’d just touched the first one Raj had handed me.
Raj blinked. “That was quick,” he remarked.
I raised both eyebrows in question.
“No fucking shit,” Hart said from my other side, and I turned to look at him. “It was, what, like a week ago you were puking in a bucket after spending like ten minutes in la-la-land, and you just did that in about ten fucking seconds.”
“How very eloquent,” Raj muttered, and even I—who am not the best at detecting tone at the best of times—could tell he was being sarcastic.
I blinked. “Oh,” was all I managed to say. Hart wasn’t wrong—although it had been a month since the incident he mentioned rather than a week.
“It’s… surprising how you’ve developed your skills,” Raj said softly, his voice gentle. “And impressive.”
I felt my cheeks flush. “I—thank you.” I wasn’t really sure what else to say. I held out my hand for the second box, and Raj handed it to me.
She smiled as she pushed the Christmas tree wrapping paper from the box. Of course Simon had gotten her jewelry—he always did. Christmas, birthdays, their anniversary… and sometimes just because.
“I wanted to get you something suitable for a senator’s wife,” he said, smiling at her.
She couldn’t help laughing a little. “You only just announced your candidacy,” she reminded him.
“I know, but I like to be optimistic.” He grinned.
She loved his smile.
She opened the box, hinged black velvet that made that distinctive soft creak of expensive jewelry boxes. She let out a long breath upon seeing the very large single sapphire set in a heavy white gold filigree setting.
I came out of the memory, shaking my head. “No, not that one, either. It had a sapphire necklace.”
I held out my hand again.
“You sure?” Raj asked me.
“Yes.”
She ran her fingers over the red velvet of the box, a small, melancholy smile slipped over her mouth. She’d rather have Simon than jewelry.
She opened the box, gasping a little at the necklace inside—it was far more expensive than the other pieces he’d gotten her, not that those had been cheap. A diamond that was bigger than it had any right to be. And, around it, emeralds, opals, and rubies, all set in gold.
She was almost afraid to touch it, it was so beautiful.
She lifted it out, looking for the note Simon always wrote—but there was no small piece of folded paper under the necklace, and nothing tucked behind the display pad, either.
There had only been the card tucked under the bow, a simple white card that bore the name ‘Capital City Jewelers’ and the typed message, ‘With love.’
It couldn’t be from anybody else.
I took a deep breath, then went deeper.
He ran his fingers over the box, anticipating the power the necklace inside would bring him.
The money that bitch would pay before that was just the icing on the cake, not that he needed it.
But he enjoyed the fact that she and her Nid-loving husband wouldn’t.
Both the money and the power had been all his own idea—Dagget just wanted her dead. He hadn’t specified how.
He’d gone to Garraway looking for something special—he hadn’t told the man what he wanted it for, either. Just that he needed a piece of jewelry that could serve as a vessel for magic. Not that Garraway would object to the fact that he was stripping it from a fucking Nid.
The man had made clear his dislike for Arcane magic, although he had to admit that Garraway’s practices got closer to witchcraft than he was comfortable with.
It might predate the Arcane plague, but he’d always thought of witchcraft as hedge-magic.
Dabbling. Not clean magic. He knew Garraway used—or studied, at any rate—both the Old Way and witchcraft.
And while he might not approve, he wasn’t above using the man’s bastardized abilities to rid the world of yet another Nid bitch.
I was reaching my limit—something else I’d started being able to tell—and pulled myself out of the man’s thoughts, gasping a little. I felt vaguely nauseous, but not so much so that I was actually going to get sick.
“Are you alright?” Raj asked, his voice worried.
“I take it we hit the right box?” Hart asked.
I nodded, then drew in a long, slow breath, and told them what I’d gotten from the killer.
“Jeeeesus fuck,” Hart breathed, tugging on the end of his long white braid. “So we’ve got one anti-Arcanid fuckwad making magic-sucking shit, and another one using that shit.”
Raj didn’t say anything at first, and I looked up at him. His expression was thoughtful.
I waited to see what he would say.
“But that does suggest that this Garraway is not a member of the Ordo,” he remarked.
“Oh, joy,” Hart drawled, derision thick in his voice. “There’s another bunch of murderous anti-Arcanid assholes out there. Be still my beating heart.”
Raj glared at him. “Or we could be grateful that the Ordo hasn’t managed to survive underground and resurface.”
Hart scowled back. “Or possibly both,” he grumbled. “In which case we’re completely fucked.”
Raj rolled his eyes. “God forbid we have to do our jobs, Keebler.”
“Not trying to get out of doing my job, Tony,” Hart snapped back. “Just wanting to make sure I know which fucking secret organization it’s my job to shut down.”
Raj grunted, his expression smoothing out slightly.
I didn’t understand the working relationship between Raj and Hart.
I understood Hart—I knew that he cursed and swore and blustered, but that, fundamentally, he was a good person.
A thoughtful one. He’d been the first person to suggest that I was part of a family at Beyond the Veil—the first person to suggest that I was part of any sort of family.
And, sure, everyone else immediately agreed with him, but he’d been the one to say it.
He thoughtfully brought coffee and donuts, brought me cocoa with espresso and poured it into my mug, he was careful and cautious about giving me things that might trigger a psychic episode.
I didn’t understand Raj. I liked him—maybe more than I should, given how little I knew about him. He’d been nice to me, too, having bought my dinner that night at the Secret Sandwich Society. He was considerate, making sure that I wasn’t over-extending myself, always asking me if I was alright.
And I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Couldn’t stay out of his dreams, even though I knew I really should.
So, instead, I cleared my throat. “Do you still want me to touch the rest of the boxes?” I asked.
I handed the last box back to Raj, not having learned very much at all from them other than that Yvonne Gates-Adams seemed to genuinely love her husband. Whether Simon Adams loved and missed her or just felt guilty, I couldn’t tell, but I hoped he’d loved her, too.
“Learn anything new?” came Ward’s voice as he rolled past the doorway of the gathering room that had been Hart’s office where we were sitting.
“Looks like we’re dealing with a whole new set of fucking assholes,” Hart replied, briefly summarizing what I’d told them about the man who had killed Yvonne Gates-Adams.
As he spoke, Ward’s brow furrowed. “So this Garraway person, who made the necklace, is anti-Arcanid, and the killer is also anti-Arcanid?”
“Seems that way,” Raj replied mildly.
“And you haven’t been able to find anyone by that name to talk to?” Ward asked.
Raj’s lips pressed together.
“With only a last name,” Hart replied, “we can’t fucking do much but keep an eye on people.”
Raj sighed. “We’ve identified possible families with those last names, but we have nothing else to suggest which members of those families might be involved.
” He briefly tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair he was sitting in.
“We can keep an eye on their activities to determine whether or not they engage in any suspect behaviors.”
Ward didn’t look convinced. “So they can do this again?” he asked.
“So that we can figure out who the actual killer is,” Raj replied, his voice firm.
“If we bring in our suspects, or even are more obvious about our surveillance, the killer himself will go to ground. We’d rather be able to catch all three of them at the same time—and anyone else who comes to light during the course of the investigation. ”
I could tell he was annoyed from the clipped, formal tone.
Ward crossed his arms, not taking terribly kindly to Raj’s irritation. “Just make sure no one else gets killed in the mean time.”
“We’re doing everything we can,” Hart interrupted. “Even though it fucking sucks to have to wait.”
Ward let out a little harumphing sound, clearly still displeased. “You’re just going to run Rayn into the ground in the mean time,” he grumbled.
I felt my face flush. While I appreciated that Ward was trying to look out for me, it made me feel like a child who couldn’t make his own decisions, and that I didn’t appreciate.
“Rayn is under no obligation to do anything he doesn’t feel comfortable doing,” Raj retorted, also clearly annoyed.
Ward looked over at me. “Are you okay?” he asked me.
“Yes, fine, thank you,” I replied. A little tired, but I didn’t feel too exhausted, and the nausea had mostly faded.
“Really?” Ward asked.
I frowned at him. “Yes,” I repeated.