Page 9 of The Diamond in the Rough

He pulled those eyes off me and looked at Ward. “Then help me prove it.”

Ward’s expression was grim. “How many dead people will it take,Agent Parikh?” he asked, his voice cold. “Because I can get you more.”

She was gasping for air—

I had to go earlier.

Hate and glee—

Even earlier.

Pride.A lot of it. He was so proud that he’d been able to create this work of art, this magical talisman using stones from more than one older artifact. From families with old blood and older magic.

The emeralds were from an old family in France. The rubies from India. And opals from Ethiopia. The large, central diamond from South Africa. All the stones had been collected and imbued with power by the old families, and then he’d recast them, resetting them in gold worked through with magic.

It was the perfect vessel.

He closed the box.

I shuddered,not liking that man any more than the later one who had possessed the necklace. I still felt like I needed a shower, although the necklace’s third-previous owner hadn’t seemed as actively violent as the second. But there was still something about him that felt wrong. Malicious.

I didn’t know how to explain that to Agent Parikh, though.

“Well?” He sounded impatient.

“Its… creator? Re-creator?” I grimaced. The words were all wrong. “He thought of it as theperfect vessel.”

“Vessel for what?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

He let out an irritated breath, then flipped back through the notebook he had with him. “So this man makes a vessel, the next one made it into something designed to sap hermagic, and then…” He trailed off. “Did it? Is that why she passed out?”

“I don’t know,” I said again. I only knew that she had been losing consciousness, I couldn’t tell why.

Parikh let out a grumbling sound, although I wasn’t sure whether it was anger, frustration, or some other emotion that I couldn’t identify. “Whatdoyou know?” he asked. Irritation, then. With me. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t think there was anything I could do about it.

I also didn’t know how to answer the question, or whether I was even supposed to. People sometimes asked questions they didn’t actually want answered. So I said nothing.

Parikh ran a hand through his hair, the thick, dark waves becoming tousled. I couldn’t remember if I’d ever seen him with his hair out of place. Or, now that I looked at him more closely, with such deep wrinkles in the rolled-up sleeves of his cream-colored shirt.

He’d come back later that afternoon and asked if we could use the conference room. Mason and Ward were working with a client at their house in Petersburg. Beck was here, but although she’d had an expression on her face that I recognized as curiosity, she hadn’t asked too many questions.

I liked Beck, but she wasn’t Ward or Mason. She didn’t feel any particular impulse to try to protect me from things the way they did, although I was pretty sure she’d have come into the conference room with me if I’d asked. I hadn’t.

This felt like something I had to do myself.

I was grateful for Ward and Mason’s protection, and for the fact that they’d brought me to Beyond the Veil to workfor them. And, of course, for getting me out of Tranquil Brook.

But, sometimes, I wondered whether or not I still wanted that protection.

Whether or not it was one of those things that the therapist I was required to talk to once a month referred to as something that was keeping me from reaching what she called my ‘full potential.’ I’d asked her once what my full potential was for, and she’d told me that it was up to me to figure that out.

I’d dismissed it as one of those things that people say sometimes—a platitude that was supposed to be inspiring, but that ultimately didn’t really mean much of anything at all. I’m not a fan of platitudes. I’d much rather people just say what they mean.

But now I was starting to wonder if maybe I should have been thinking more about my potential, because I didn’t like the fact that I wasn’t able to help Agent Parikh with this case as much as he clearly thought I should be able to.

Maybe if I’d been trying to reach my full potential, I’d have been able to be more helpful. To answer the questions he kept asking and to which I had no answers beyondI don’t know.