Page 2 of The Diamond in the Rough

I picked up my coffee mug—I made it, glazed it, and fired it, so it’smine—and wrapped my fingers around it. It was cold and raining outside, and my hands were chilly from walking into the office. I lived about a mile away, and I liked walking, so I walked to work, but my gloves hadn’tbeen warm enough to keep my hands from getting cold. The heat of the mug felt good.

I watched the rain beading on the glass of the front window, the drops chasing one another as the wind blew them in diagonal patterns across the surface.

Then a tall, hunched-over figure in a long coat jogged past, then grabbed the door.

I sat up straighter.

I never knew what to say to him.

With most people, I can pretend. I know the script I’m supposed to use.

But not with him.

Federal Agent Rajesh Parikh. He works with Hart, but usually Hart is the one who comes in. Sometimes they both do. But Hart wasn’t with him today.

Agent Parikh is a shifter, although I didn’t know what kind, specifically, and he was powerful. The witch part of me could feel it pulsing off him in waves that felt like heat and spice and somethingwild.

I watched as he shook both arms, casting rain from the sleeves of his coat onto the wide entryway mat.

Then he looked up at me, and I froze.

Eyes like honey, gold and brown and liquid, stared back at me. His skin was chestnut brown, hair thick and black, his jaw and cheekbones wide and clearly defined behind a carefully trimmed goatee-style beard. Because he was a shifter, he didn’t need to wear a mask and usually didn’t. He didn’t have one on now.

I swallowed.

He stared back at me, then blinked, rolling his shoulders a little. Rain slid from his coat and dripped onto the brown scruff of the mat.

“It’s… Rayn, isn’t it?”

His voice was a warm rumble.

I nodded.

“You’re a contact psychic, correct?”

I nodded again.

He reached into his pocket. “I need a consult.”

I finally managed to get some saliva into my mouth so I could speak. “With whom?” I asked, ready to pull up the company schedule.

“You.”

“Me?” My voice squeaked. Nobody wanted a consult with me. There wasn’t?—

And then I saw what he’d pulled out of his pocket.

It was a clear plastic baggie with a label across the top—inside was something shiny and metallic and glittery.

“I need to know more about who owned this. Where it came from. You can do that, yes?”

I swallowed, the words gone again. Maybe I could, but it was probably just as likely that I couldn’t—being psychic didn’t work how most people thought it did. But I had no idea how to tell him that.

So we just stared at each other.

“Agent Parikh.” I jumped a little at Mason’s deep voice.

“Dr. Manning,” the federal agent replied, his body relaxing a little when Mason came out into the lobby because now he wasn’t alone with me.