Page 13 of The Diamond in the Rough

Sara-no-H had been one of the first people they’d drained of magic, and it had done horrible things to her. She’d gotten pale and weak, and there had been ashadowthat crept over her, a shadow that had seemed to consumeher from the inside out until one day she just collapsed in the common room.

And never got up again.

It happened again with one of the orderlies—one of the kinder ones, who had been efficient, but not rough. And one day, he just hadn’t come back to work. Another orderly—one I’d thought of as a friend—told me a few weeks later that he’d been diagnosed with cancer a year or so before and had to leave work because the treatments hadn’t worked. He’d died a few months after that.

All that told me that the red-and-purple-faced man wasn’t going to die on the spot from a cardiac condition.

There was part of me that thought that was too bad. If he did drop dead, that would solve this particular problem very quickly.

But I didn’t really wish the man dead—I didn’t know him—and I also knew that it would create a lot of paperwork and attention of the kind that Beyond the Veil didn’t need.

Which meant that I was still supposed to be polite.

It did not, apparently, mean that either Hart or Parikh had to be polite, though.

“Not that it’s any ofyourfucking business, but FBI,” Parikh snapped back, taking another step forward and pulling his coat back to reveal the badge clipped on his belt. I was surprised at how angry his expression was, and, when I quickly looked over at Hart, I noticed that he also seemed a little surprised. And amused.

The man was also surprised, but definitely not amused. He gaped at Parikh.

“Now, you want to explain to me why you’re threatening Mr. Alvero?” he nodded at me.

The man stared at him.

Parikh waited a beat or two, then took another step forward, getting closer. The man was probably an inch or two shorter than me, but heavy-set. Parikh, however, was a good four inches taller than me and well-muscled. He had to outweigh the shorter man by ten or twenty pounds, all of it muscle. It was obvious to everyone in the room that Parikh would win if there was a physical confrontation.

Then Parikh spoke again. “I’m waiting.”

“I need to see the medium,” the man blurted.

Parikh’s gold eyes flicked over to me. “Is Mr. Campion here?” he asked, mildly.

“No,” I answered.

“I assume you communicated that to Mr…?” he trailed off, waiting.

I shrugged.

Parikh raised both eyebrows at the man, who looked mulish.

“See, dickhead, this is where you provide your name,” Hart put in. He was leaning up against the structural pillar in the middle of the room and was definitely entertained.

A slight twitch in Parikh’s jaw suggested he was irritated, possibly at both Hart and the man. But his expression otherwise didn’t change.

“That’s none?—”

“We’re the FBI, asshole,” Hart interrupted him. “It absolutely is our business if we decide it is.”

The twitch in Parikh’s jaw got stronger.

The blotchiness of the man’s face acquired a third, pale layer, mixing sallow white with pink and dusky purple. “Rodney Buckley,” he mumbled.

“Well, Mr. Buckley,” Parikh said, shooing Hart a dark look. “What exactly did you hope to accomplish through threats and intimidation?”

Rodney Buckley was escorted out—aftermaking an appointment, although the expressions on both Hart’s and Parikh’s faces suggested that neither one of them was happy about that fact, although I wasn’t completely sure why. Buckley wasn’t exactly the most pleasant man, but he did need a medium, and that was the whole point of Beyond the Veil.

Specifically, he needed a medium because his brother had died—of a massive and surprising heart attack, apparently—without a will, and his two ex-wives and current wife were fighting over his estate. They’d all agreed to abide by whatever the man’s ghost dictated, and Buckley had heard that Ward Campion was the best.

I had no doubt that Ward was the most powerful in the city—probably also the state, and possibly a wider region than that—and that he would easily be able to handle whatever the Buckley family had to throw at him. He’d more than be able to handle it—it almost seemed like a waste of his skill to take on something so banal. In fact, I was fairly certain that the living squabbling would be the bigger challenge, which was why I’d made sure to book both Mason and Ward.