Chapter 3
She touched the stone with her fingertips, knowing how much Mother would have hated the fact that she wasn’t wearing formal gloves.
The thing was beyond ostentatious. Black marble, double-wide—for both her and Father—with carvings of columns on either side of the very traditional names, dates, and bullshit “Beloved wife and mother,” “Beloved husband and father” crap.
They both would have appreciated the stupid thing.
She didn’t particularly care what marked the place where their mortal remains were going to molder into dirt and maggots.
Or, more likely, given the cost of the funerary preparations and the ludicrous wake she’d had to sit through, they’d just sit there not decomposing thanks to the copious amount of formaldehyde and other dead-people-pickling chemicals that must have been injected to replace what had passed for blood in her mother’s veins.
It certainly hadn’t been whatever people said was thicker than water.
The bitch.
She shifted her weight in her uncomfortable heeled boots.
She’d contemplated wearing hot pink, or yellow, or anything that would cause a scandal for being wildly inappropriate to wear to the funeral, but she’d eventually decided that was childish and had gone with black heeled boots, a long black skirt, and a flowy black top.
Understated. Appreciated by her parents’ peers.
‘Appreciated’ was a term she never really wanted to hear again.
Her mother always ‘appreciated’ things. Or didn’t ‘appreciate’ things.
Like her attitude. Her mother didn’t appreciate her attitude a lot.
She hadn’t appreciated her refusal to date the sons of the other stuck-up warlocks they associated with, either.
Some of those sons—and most of the stuck-up warlocks—were at this stupid funeral.
Well, they could all go to hell.
I pulled my hand back and glanced sideways at my sister. “You really didn’t like our mother much, did you?” I remarked, not really needing to ask the question.
“God, no,” Violette scoffed. “I wasn’t a child to her.
To either of them, really. To Mother, I was a status symbol.
My grades, my magic, all of it was something she could use as currency in order to raise her status in magical society.
” She snorted. “Although I suppose it’s better than how Father saw me. ”
“How did he see you?” I asked. She hadn’t been thinking much about him.
“As a brood mare.”
I winced. “I’m sorry.”
She grimaced, then shrugged and smiled at me. “Better than what they did to you,” she remarked. “I at least got to go to school and eat pizza and shit.”
I smiled back at her, odd as it might seem, given the circumstances and the fact that we were standing over our parents’ gravestone. “I would rather have been doing that,” I affirmed. “Although it seems to have mostly worked out for me.”
I was in my last year of online degree, assuming I’d actually be able to finish up by August, which was kind of exciting, although if I were being completely honest, it felt somewhat…
anticlimactic. I had no plans to leave Beyond the Veil, and no particular plans to do anything with the Associate’s degree in Arcane Studies that I’d only decided on this fall, although I still had five classes I needed to take in Arcane Studies, so maybe one of those would be inspiring.
Two each in the fall and spring, and the last one next summer.
Maybe I’d decide to keep going to finish the BA, maybe I wouldn’t.
But if I didn’t need to, I didn’t see the point.
At the moment, I was in a class called Arc-Humanity and The Mind, which was focused on the neuroscience and psychology of different Arc skills, and I would take another history class, Witchcraft, Magic, and the History of the US, which I was mostly taking because of Mason.
He’d be able to help me with anything I needed help with, especially because our professor had assigned Mason’s first book for the class.
I hadn’t yet mentioned to my professor that I worked for Mason Manning. I wondered what he’d think if I did.
“Earth to Rayn,” my sister said, bumping my shoulder with hers.
“Sorry,” I apologized. “Just thinking.”
“What about?”
I grimaced. “School, actually.”
“You’re, like, almost done, yeah?”
I nodded. “I’ll finish in August, assuming I don’t fail something or… something.”
“Something,” she repeated. “Like another FBI case?”
“Something like that,” I replied with a snort.
Cass Reinhertz had roped me into another case last summer, once my arm had healed, and while it wasn’t nearly as exciting as the one that had ended with me at the bottom of a well, I was totally fine with that.
I had no interest in getting kidnapped ever again.
But I had gotten to help solve a murder by identifying the knife the killer had used out of about a hundred of them in a hotel kitchen.
I’d almost not passed my summer Arcane Biology class because I hadn’t studied for the final exam because I’d been touching knives in that kitchen. I’d done pretty terribly, but, fortunately for me, a C- is still a passing grade.
“You passed that bio class, though, right?”
I nodded. “Barely, but yeah.”
She pulled at the long stem of one of the ornamental grasses growing out of the little black granite planters on either side of the stone.
“I’m thinking about law school,” she said.
“So I’m gonna switch and do poli sci. And maybe sociology.
” Last year, she’d been thinking biology and maybe vet school.
“You want to be a lawyer now?” I asked her.
She nodded. “I’m thinking so,” she said. “I—I really want to work in Arcanid rights. Either as a defense attorney or, like, as an advocate. Maybe both.”
“It’s a pretty thankless job these days,” I told her. “And… dangerous.” While there hadn’t been a fatal protest in Richmond for over a year and a half, they did happen, especially when they were organized by the Magic Free Movement or other, similar, anti-Arcane groups.
“Says you,” Violette retorted. “Mr. Got-Kidnapped-and-Thrown-in-a-Well.”
“That’s why I’m saying it,” I told her. “I’ve known too many people who’ve gotten hurt at those.
” I drew in a deep breath. “I’m not saying not to do it,” I said, trying to explain.
“Just that… it’s not a safe job. And you should know that before you go into it, that’s all.
” Something Mason had said to me once came back to me. “Go in with your eyes open.”
She let out a grunt. “Fair enough.” She fiddled with the stem of the grass. “I just—it’s not right, you know? What people are saying.”
“Which part?” I asked her. “The part where no Arc-humans or Arcanids are allowed to have rights, or the part where people think we don’t even deserve to live?” I winced, a bit surprised at the bitterness in my own voice.
Violette looked up at me, as surprised as I was. “What happened?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Nothing,” I admitted. “Not to me, anyway. Not because of that.” I sighed, sticking my hands in my pockets so that I didn’t start fidgeting with them.
“Everything I’ve had to deal with is because I’m a witch.
” It was why my parents had committed me to Tranquil Brook, and it was why Martin Garraway had kidnapped me and tried to steal my magic.
None of that had happened to me because I was a psychic.
“If not to you, then who?” she asked, her voice quiet and serious.
I sighed. “Lots of people,” I admitted. “Mason. Hart. Ward and Beck, too, but less. And Raj, if people know.”
“That he’s FBI?” she asked.
“That he’s a shifter.” I was surprised she didn’t know, but there really wasn’t a reason she should have. I felt a little guilty I’d said it, though—it was rude to out people as shifters or Arcs without their permission. I hoped it wouldn’t bother him that I’d told Violette.
“Oooh,” she said. “Is it true they’re hotter than we are? Like, temperature-wise, not like, sexy-wise.” Then she grinned at me. “I mean. I also want to know if he’s hot that way, too. You never talk about him.”
I rolled my eyes. “Clearly I do, since you know he’s my boyfriend,” I retorted.
“And I know his name is Raj, and he’s an FBI agent, and he’s older than you… and, now, that he’s a shifter. That’s what I know. So. Dish. Is he hot?”
I felt my cheeks heat. “You actually want to talk about this over our parents’ grave?” I asked her. I might not have the best sense of decorum or social awareness, but even I knew that talking about your love life wasn’t generally something considered appropriate to discuss at gravesides.
Violette pushed the grass stem away. “Nah. I don’t really have much to say to these assholes, anyway. You get what you wanted?”
I shrugged. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted,” I told her. “It just seemed… like something I should do at least once.”
“You want to piss on the grave?” she asked me.
“What? No! Why would I do that?” I stared at her, horrified. Not because I found the idea particularly offensive, just… unsanitary. And also illegal.
She laughed. “I dunno. Revenge? Retribution for having thrown you in that hell-hole?”
I kept staring at her. “What good would that do?” I asked her.
Another laugh. “Nothing real, obviously. But it might feel good to just do it,” she said.
“Why?” I honestly couldn’t think of any reason why that would feel good.
“Because they’d hate it,” she replied.
I thought about this. “Do you want to pee on their grave?”
This set her off into gales of laughter.
“Oh, God, that’s hilarious. I—I kind of do?
Just… the image of someone—of me—just squatting down—” She burst out laughing again.
“Oh, God. I mean, yes, I’d love to. Just because I know they’d hate it so, so much.
But I also don’t really want to have my ass sticking out, since I’m pretty sure that’s illegal. ”
“It’s just as illegal if I do it,” I pointed out. “It’s just a little less… obvious.”
She snorted, then hooked her arm through my elbow. “Fine. Let’s go get lunch and you can tell me all about your dreamboat shifter.”
“Rayn, can I talk to you?” Ward’s voice was serious.