Chapter 3 #2
I sighed, pushing myself to my feet. It wasn’t exactly that I didn’t want to talk to my boss—I like Ward. Most of the time, I enjoy our conversations. However, what I didn’t like was when he wanted to talk to me about things like my safety.
It was probably because I’d actually needed to be rescued—twice—that he seemed to always be concerned about me, and I understood that, but that didn’t make it any less frustrating to be constantly reminded that I was weak and incompetent.
I walked down the hall and into his office.
“Have a seat,” he said.
I sat.
Ward looked uncomfortable. “Has Raj—or anyone—kept you updated on the status of the Garraway case?”
I blinked. This was not at all what I’d expected him to talk about. “No,” I answered honestly. I’d assumed someone would tell me when he actually went to trial, since I’d have to testify against him.
Ward sighed a little. “The trial date has been set,” he said quietly. “For January nineteenth.”
That was still four months away. Almost a year from when he’d kidnapped me. “Okay,” I replied, not sure what, exactly, I was actually supposed to say. This wasn’t really the sort of interaction they’d covered when we’d been given ‘re-socialization’ classes at St. Cyprian’s.
Ward stared at me. “‘Okay’?” he repeated.
Apparently that was not the appropriate response. “Thank you for telling me,” I tried.
He frowned. “Rayn,” he said, and I could tell from his tone that this was the start of a longer speech, but then he stopped.
I waited.
He ran a hand through his dark curls. “I—” I watched him think. Then he let out a long breath. “When we were trying to find you,” he said, and there was something in his voice that told me what he was about to say was very important. “I was—attacked.”
I waited.
“It was… pretty bad,” he murmured, his voice dropping in volume.
“I had to be hospitalized. Hart—Hart arrested my attacker.” He shifted a little, pushing his weight in the chair with his elbows.
“Waiting for his trial was… horrible,” he continued.
“Just… waiting to find out if he would make a plea deal or whether I would have to recount the whole fucking thing in front of dozens of people.” He shuddered a little.
“I really, really didn’t want to have to do that.
” He looked up, his grey eyes haunted. “I know what it’s like to have to wait for something awful like that. ”
I swallowed, now even more uncertain what to say.
I understood that whatever Ward had experienced had clearly been very traumatic.
But what I’d been through at Tranquil Brook had been far, far worse than what Garraway had done to me.
I took in a slow breath, considering my words.
“I’ve had to get used to talking about painful things,” I said slowly, carefully.
I didn’t want to upset Ward by making him think I was dismissing what he’d been through. “This won’t be much different.”
He studied me, as though trying to decide if I was lying to him or to myself.
I waited, and I saw the moment he decided to believe me, his features relaxing a little.
“It’s different telling other people who were there,” he said gently.
“Than it will be telling a room of complete strangers. And it’s very different when there’s someone—the defense attorney—who is going to try to make you contradict yourself. Second-guess your own memories.”
I nodded, considering this. “I don’t want to do it,” I told him. “But I’ll do what I have to.”
He reached out and took my hand, squeezing it. “And I’ll be right there with you.”
I squeezed back. “Thank you.”
I was still thinking about my conversation with Ward when I got home. About the fact that I wouldn’t just have to narrate what Garraway and his men had done to me.
I would have to defend my actions.
Defend the fact that I’d killed Mulrooney.
I knew self-defense was legally allowed.
Hart and Raj had both talked to me about the fact that no one was going to even think about charging me with Mulrooney’s death.
That even though I’d meant to kill Garraway, the fact that Garraway had deflected my death magic meant that Garraway was the one who was legally responsible for Mulrooney’s death.
I wasn’t sure a jury would see it that way.
Especially not a jury that might have members of the Magic-Free Movement among its members.
I was under no illusions that even a jury of regular people—non-Arcs, non-Arcanids—would likely consider me dangerous.
More dangerous than Garraway, possibly, despite the fact that it was my witchcraft, not my Arcane status, that was capable of killing.
But it was the fact that I was an Arc-human that they would hold against me.
They might also hold my witchcraft against me, of course. But most people didn’t really understand witchcraft.
They thought they understood Arcanism.
People generally thought they understood a lot of things. In my experience, however, most people understood a shockingly low number of things. Even things that you would think they would know, such as things related to their jobs.
Not long after I’d started working at Beyond the Veil, I’d asked Ward why it was that so many people we hired to do things—like plumbing or building repairs—either didn’t solve the problem we’d hired them to fix or created a new problem that we had to then hire someone else to fix.
He’d laughed, a little bitterly, and told me that basic competence wasn’t something you should expect out of most people.
I’d asked him why people did the jobs they did if they weren’t any good at them, and he’d replied that not everyone has good choices about their careers, either for financial or family reasons.
I supposed he was right about that. I worked where I did because Ward and Mason had taken pity on me.
I’d likely have had a very hard time finding a job that would pay me enough to live on given my lack of both practical and social skills when I’d gotten out of St. Cyprian’s.
I wasn’t even sure I’d have been functional enough for a so-called unskilled job at that point—things that involved customer service would likely have been an unmitigated disaster, and jobs like janitorial work might have still been too physically demanding for my painfully un-exercised and under-nourished body.
I probably hadn’t been all that good at my job at the front desk when I’d started, either.
But I’d gotten better, especially at interacting with other people, learning how to read their emotions on their faces and in their body positions, hearing the stress or excitement or grief in the tone beneath the words.
But I still wasn’t particularly good at it.
And that was what had me worried about Garraway’s trial, now that Ward had brought it up.
Because while I could report what I’d experienced—either the evidence I’d read off of the necklace or my own kidnapping and attempted murder—I wouldn’t be very good at handling questions designed to confuse me.
Because they almost certainly would. And then I would appear untrustworthy or foolish—an unreliable witness.
And without my testimony, I didn’t know whether or not the case would be successful. Maybe it would. Maybe Raj and Hart had enough physical evidence—they had pulled me out of a well on Garraway’s property, after all—to make the case whether or not I testified.
But I had the feeling that if they hadn’t needed me, Raj wouldn’t have let them call me as a witness in the first place.
He knew it would be upsetting, and he’d have done everything he could to keep me from having to experience that—having to recount what Garraway had done, and what I had done in response.
People expected you to show remorse for having killed someone, and I didn’t have any. I’m also terrible at faking emotions, so pretending to feel anything like it would probably be worse.
Maybe I’d ask Hart what it was that they needed me to say.
I could ask Raj, of course, but I wasn’t certain he’d give me an honest answer.
It wasn’t that I thought he’d lie to me, exactly, but he would try to protect me from whatever unpleasant truth there was that required me to testify.
He’d tell me he didn’t want to—or shouldn’t—talk about it, or deflect by giving me vague or general answers that provided no actual information.
Hart would at least be straightforward. If he couldn’t tell me, he’d say so, and if he could, he would. And then I’d know what to do, or at least what they were hoping to get out of putting me on the witness stand.
I sighed, having changed into sweat pants, a t-shirt, and a zipper sweatshirt, and went into the kitchen in my socks in order to put something together for dinner.
I knew I wouldn’t see Raj—the case that he’d been called to five days ago was taking up most of his time, and while he’d managed to have dinner with me the night before, it had been a bit rushed, since he’d had to go back to work after only about an hour and a half.
I had a can of chick peas, some leftover cold pasta from a few days before when I’d made too much pasta for my jar of sauce, and a can of tuna, so I could cobble together something that resembled a tuna noodle salad.
It was still warm out, so I didn’t bother heating it into a casserole, taking a bowl that I’d mixed the noodles, chick peas, and tuna with some onion powder and celery salt and mayonnaise, made my way out to my beanbag.
I’d slowly been playing my way through an exploration-style videogame—Jackson’s recommendation—and it seemed as good a way as any to kill the rest of my lonely evening.
It would keep me from thinking any more about Garraway, anyway.
Garraway bent over me where I was strapped to the gurney, arms and legs buckled in, the leather straps they always used biting into my wrists and ankles. I struggled. Fought. Attempted to draw on my magic to defend myself.