Chapter 4 #2
I paused outside the door to juggle the tray of drinks and box of Sugar Shack when the door opened in front of me, and I looked up, surprised. Then I flushed.
Maybe someday I would learn to control my reactions around Raj, but that day had apparently not yet come.
“Hi,” I mumbled, as he held open the door for me.
“Did you bring enough to share, kid?” Hart wanted to know from where he was lounging on the couch.
“Obviously, Keebler,” Raj answered for me. “Since the only other person here is Ward.”
“I figured the two of you would be appearing before long,” Ward replied, rolling himself out into the reception area.
I set the box of donuts and the tray of drinks—Ward’s pumpkin spice latte, Hart’s salted caramel latte, my hot chocolate with two shots of espresso, and a hazelnut latte that I guessed was for Raj.
I should really have known my own boyfriend’s coffee order, but we never went out for coffee. Lunch, yes. Dinner, all the time. We’d had breakfast that one time that he’d made it for me. But never coffee that hadn’t been made in my apartment or Beyond the Veil’s kitchen.
I handed him the cup, my face still hot.
“What is it?” he asked me.
“Hazelnut latte,” I mumbled back. “Is that… okay?”
He smiled. “I’m not picky.”
“What—what would you rather have?” I asked him.
“Toffee, if they can make it. Or chestnut or pistachio, when they have those. But hazelnut is good, too.” He smiled.
I smiled back, then felt self-conscious and went back to keep distributing drinks, only to discover that Hart had already grabbed his and passed Ward his pumpkin spice. So, instead, I opened the donut box and then passed out napkins.
“Fuck, yeah,” Hart said, diving in after a donut.
I waited for Hart, Raj, and Ward to all take their first choice before perusing the remaining donuts, settling on a red velvet and a strawberry iced.
Ward was navigating his way around biting into one with tiny graham crackers and marshmallows on the top of it, while Raj had claimed the maple bacon and Hart was licking cream off one elegant finger.
“So,” Hart began, once the finger was clean. “I’m guessing you know why we’re here.”
“The hit-and-run case,” I answered, hoping that was actually true. Because if it wasn’t, then that meant we were about to have two cases, and I wasn’t sure I was mentally or magically prepared for that.
“We need you to re-read the evidence from the RPD,” Raj put in. “And,” he added, glancing over at Ward. “We’d like to try victim interviews, as well, even though there didn’t seem to be much to be gotten out of those in Maza’s case files.”
Ward nodded, swallowed, then answered. “No. Both victims tried to identify the vehicles, but other than extremely general details, they didn’t get much.” He pressed his lips together. “Panic does that.”
Both Raj and Hart nodded. “Yeah, we know,” the elf replied.
“But we’re gonna need you to do it anyway, because the FBI thinks it’s the shit and that the RPD are a bunch of dumbasses.
” He shrugged. “They’re not wrong about the RPD, generally speaking, although I trust Dan to have done his fucking job. ”
I took a long, deep breath, trying to mentally prepare myself to revisit both cases. Raj looked over at me, and I offered a weak smile.
“You okay doing this?” he asked me, his eyes worried, although he kept his expression fairly neutral.
I nodded. I didn’t enjoy it, but I was okay doing it because it would help solve the case. I just really wasn’t looking forward to touching that car light again. The moment the victim had died was not something I wanted to experience ever again—but I would, if it helped to get him justice.
“Not right this second, though, kid,” Hart said, which meant that I probably looked uncomfortable. “We haven’t gotten all the paperwork to take custody of evidence from the RPD yet.”
I nodded, relieved, and broke off a piece of donut.
“We would like both of you to go through what you can recall, though,” Raj said softly. “For the record.”
I was standing in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil water when I felt a warm hand touch the small of my back.
“You okay?” Raj asked softly, coming to lean against the counter beside me, letting his hand slide around my hip before crossing his arms over his chest, his expression serious.
I sighed. “I’m fine,” I replied. “I just don’t enjoy remembering or re-experiencing someone’s literal dying thoughts very much.”
“Understandably,” he replied, although I could feel him studying me, trying to decide if I was hiding something from him. I wasn’t. “We’ll catch them.”
I grunted a little. I know people say that sort of thing to make other people feel better, but I felt like it wasn’t necessarily a realistic declaration.
More than half of all cases—much more, if you were looking at Arcanid victims—went unsolved, either because they just never got the leads necessary to solve them or because they lacked sufficient evidence for an arrest or conviction.
I wasn’t foolish enough to think that it would be at all straightforward or simple to bring down the hit-and-run killers or their Preacher Dale.
Religion provided protection from prosecution in far too many cases, as did the First Amendment, although I understood why freedom of speech was protected.
I just didn’t like what a lot of people did with that freedom.
I also understood far too well that the current state of American politics meant that people who wanted to speak out against Arcanids and Arc-humans were being given a lot more toleration and air-time than they had a decade ago, even if I’d technically missed what things were like a decade ago.
I know how libraries and the internet work, and I’ve taken classes on the history of Arcane law—the policy kind, not the internal rules that governed magic usage.
I hadn’t taken classes on those, although I had been tutored directly by a professor who was also a witch and one of my bosses.
“We will catch them,” Raj told me, his voice firm.
“You can’t know that,” I countered. “I know you’re going to try, and that you’ll do your best, but you can’t know that.”
He grimaced. “Technically, no, I can’t,” he agreed, although I could tell he didn’t like saying it. “But this one feels like one we can solve, so I believe we’re going to solve it.”
I smothered the instinct to sigh again, then nodded.
I didn’t have much to contribute to the sentiment, and I knew he didn’t like it when I tried to inject realism into discussions about resolving cases.
It made sense, I supposed, for him to want to maintain a certain level of optimism, realistic or not.
Because if you didn’t believe you could solve a case—or, worse, if you believed you couldn’t solve the case—you were far less likely to be successful.
So I kept my thoughts about realistic expectations to myself.
“If it were one guy,” Raj said, and I could hear the thinking going on behind the words, “then I would give us much worse odds. But if you’re right, and they’re connected, especially through some sort of religious organization, then it will be much easier to find them.”
I hadn’t considered that angle, which did explain a certain amount of his optimism.
I nodded, acknowledging the point. The light clicked off at the base of the kettle, and I poured water into my mug, liquefying the powdered hot chocolate that I’d put into it already.
I glanced over at Raj, then pulled out another mug and filled it with water, then passed him Mason’s box of tea bags.
“Oh, thanks,” he said, flashing me a quick smile as he pulled a bag of chai spice out of the box, tore it open, then set the bag in the steaming water.
“You’re welcome.” I put the tea box back where it belonged, then took out a spoon and stirred my cocoa, focusing carefully so that none of the objects I touched triggered anything.
I was much better than I used to be, but the dying man’s thoughts had left me feeling raw and uncertain.
“Rayn.”
I looked over at him, and Raj reached out and put a hand on my arm.
“It’s okay to not be okay, mera ravi,” he said softly.
I half-glared at him. “You’re not the only one who works with crime and death, you know,” I told him, the words coming out a bit sharper than I’d intended. “It’s not like these are the first dead man’s thoughts I’ve encountered.”
He pulled his hand back. “I know that,” he replied, his voice low and gentle. “But that doesn’t mean that sometimes it doesn’t get to you.”
I winced, remembering that last week he’d been the one who very much wasn’t okay. “I’m sorry,” I half-whispered, staring down into the grey-brown of the grocery-store brand cocoa.
“You don’t have to be,” he said, his voice even gentler, and he came over and put his arms around me.
I closed my eyes and let myself lean back into his warmth.
Not for long. I was at work, and I knew that was unprofessional.
But the heat of his body seemed to seep into me, helping to ease the tension that had been there since I’d first touched the yellow shard of plastic.
I sighed, and, with one final—but gentle—squeeze, he stepped away. “Will you be alright?” he asked.
I nodded, picking up my hot chocolate and blowing on it slightly so that I wouldn’t burn my mouth on the first sip.
He hesitated, clearly not satisfied with my answer, or maybe he just didn’t want to leave me when I was clearly still stressed.
I took a sip of hot chocolate, letting the taste roll over my tongue. “I’ll be fine,” I told him.
“Can I see you tonight?” he asked, those golden-brown eyes studying my features.
I forced a small smile—not because I didn’t want to see him, but because I wanted him to know I wanted to see him—then nodded.
He brushed a thumb across my cheek, then leaned forward to kiss my temple. “I’ll bring dinner,” he said, then left the kitchen, taking his tea with him.