Page 30 of The Diamond in the Rough

Seeing and hearing ghosts was more than enough dead people in my life. I didn’t want to seek them out and I definitely didn’t want to learn how to do anything else with them, either, although Ward and Beck both thought I should learn how to banish in case I needed the ability in a pinch. My plan was to avoid ever putting myself in a situation where I might need that particular skill set.

Of course, my plan had also been to avoid ever having to use my psychic abilities, either, and that wasn’t working so well at the moment.

I took another drink of my cocoa, pulling my legs up a little tighter against my chest.

“You okay, kid?” Hart asked.

“Fine,” I replied.

“That’s a load of bullshit, peewee, and everybody knows it.”

I glared at him.I didn’t ask for your opinion,I told him privately. I also hated that he called me peewee, especially since I had a good five inches on him, not that it mattered when you were dead and could float.

Rayn should be allowed to make his own decisionsabout how to use his abilities, Sylvia put in, shimmering into existence so that Ward, Archie, and I—although not anyone else—could see and hear her.

Ward’s lips pressed together, but he didn’t say anything out loud, although I could imagine he was both agreeing and arguing with both of the ghosts. Agreeing that I wasn’t fine, but also that I was the one who got to make the decisions about what I was and wasn’t going to agree to do.

“Rayn can decide for himself what he is and isn’t capable of contributing,” Mason said out loud, and both Ward and I glanced over at him, then shared a look between us. Sometimes I wondered if maybe there wasn’t more to Mason’s gifts than he let on. He claimed to be sensitive, and I knew he knew when Archie or Sylvia was around, but he supposedly couldn’t hear or see them without Ward’s supporting magic. But it was a little disturbing how similar to Sylvia’s argument his had been.

At the moment, he was looking at Archie, who was visible and audible to everyone in the room.“You don’t want a death witch pushing his limits too far,”Archie argued.“It’s not pretty when that backfires.”

“No shit,” came Ward’s sharp reply. “We’re well aware of that.”

I jumped when a hand touched my arm.

“Are you alright?” Raj asked me softly.

I stared at the brown of his fingers against my sleeve, then looked up to meet his mild expression and nodded.

I wasn’t alright in the existential sense, but I wasn’t about to lose control or pass out or throw up, and that was the metric I’d decided was most appropriate at the moment. I hadn’t been alright in a more traditional sense in a very, very long time, and I didn’t expect that I was suddenly going to start being so any time soon.

At that precise moment, I was a more surprised that he was touching me than anything else. It was the second time that day, and he didn’t seem to think anything of it, despite the fact that nobody else ever seemed to want to touch me, even though they often casually touched each other all the time.

“It’s your choice, Rayn,” Raj said softly, speaking just to me, despite the fact that everyone else in the room had been loudly discussing the same topic. “What you do or don’t want to do—at any moment. You can say yes today and no tomorrow and yes again the day after that.”

His gold brown eyes were studying me, reading my features, trying to determine something from them, although I wasn’t quite sure what.

I nodded. “I know.”

“I don’t want you to push yourself too far,” he said, then. “You made yourself sick today. That’s not how I want your help.”

I sucked in a breath. “I didn’t know I’d get sick,” I admitted. “Not until I came out of it.”

“You gotsick? Sick how?” Ward demanded. “Rayn, that’s pushing too far.”

“Ward,” Mason said, and there was a note of warning in his voice.

“He shouldn’t be making himself sick,” the warlock argued.

Mason just raised his eyebrows.

Ward turned pink. “Shut up,” he said.

“I didn’t say a word,” Mason replied mildly. Then the big orc looked over at me and winked.

I gaped at him.

“We all have to find our limits somehow,” he said mildly. “And while I don’t like the idea that anyone even connectedto someone in the Ordo is involved in this, it’s up to Rayn how far he wants to push himself.” He smirked at me. “Just take out the trash if you puke in it.”