Page 3 of The Diamond in the Rough

It bothered me that Agent Parikh didn’t like me, but I reminded myself that I made a lot of people uncomfortable, and there was no reason that Agent Parikh not liking me should bother me any more than when it was anyone else. Which usually only bothered me if it made them rude or belligerent—which Parikh definitely was not.

“How can we help?” Mason asked him.

Parikh opened the baggie and dumped whatever it wasinto his broad brown hand. “I need to know who owned this.”

Mason blinked his odd gold-and-black eyes, then looked at me. “What do you think, Rayn?” he asked me.

“What doIthink?” Nobody ever asked me what I thought about anything having to do with cases. I worked at the front desk. Kept track of appointments. Made them, for clients who walked in off the street on days when Ward, Mason, and Beck were busy or out. Answered the phone and the questions people asked, and made appointments for them, too.

I didn’tdothings having to do with cases.

Mason’s lips twisted slightly around his lower canines. “You would have to be the one to touch it, Rayn,” he said gently. “Is that something you’re willing to do?”

I swallowed.

You are the resident contact psychic, sunshine,came the familiar voice of Sylvia Randolph, one of the company’s two ghosts. Neither of the other two could see her—or hear her. Her empty eyes held compassion as she looked at me, her hands held in front of her as her long, high-necked gown swept behind her into shadow.

I dropped my gaze.I don’t like touching things, I complained to her.

I know you don’t, she replied.But that is your gift, and sometimes life is about doing things we don’t want to do because they’re the right thing to do.

I didn’t think being a contact psychic was a gift. I didn’t like the fact that I always knew things about whatever I touched or whatever touched me. It felt more like a curse.

But I also understood that people came to Beyond the Veil when they needed help, and nobody else here could do what Agent Parikh was asking of me.

Ward often told me that I was helping them help people when I worried about not being able to do enough to repay them for what they’d done for me. But now someone was asking me to do something. Something I could do to help.

“Okay,” I said aloud to Mason, although I didn’t bother to look up.

The hand that appeared in my field of vision was the color of nutmeg, and I sucked in a breath.

I was supposed to take the shiny necklace—I thought it was a necklace—from Agent Parikh’s hand. But the damp cuffs of his coat were very close to the edge of his hands.

My chest tight, I held out my hands, cupped, under his.

He dropped the necklace into my palms.

The city spreadout before her as she gazed across the rooftops from her suite. She was tired. So tired. And worried. Simon had been working late recently, staying in DC more often, and despite sending her gifts to make up for it, she could tell he was upset. When Simon was upset, she worried.

She was also worried about the fact that she’d been getting letters—the creepy, disturbing kind made of letters cut from magazines and newspapers, although she was surprised that anybody still got enough magazines to make as many letters as they’d sent to her.

They’d threatened to expose her secrets.

The fact that she was a shifter.

She wasn’t illegal—she’d registered with the Virginia government, right along with every other law-abiding shifter in the state, even though she thought it was wrong that she had to. Simon agreed, but it was state law, and he was a federal senator. He’d promised to introduce a bill making it illegal to register shifters at the federal level, but she didn’t think it would work.

Not yet, anyway.

Maybe in a decade or two.

Someday.

She ran her fingers over the necklace, wanting to comfort herself by touching something Simon had sent her.

Even if he hadn’t sent the usual hand-written love note with it.

She frowned as her fingers traced it. It had to be from Simon. No one else would send her jewelry.