Page 55 of The Diamond in the Rough

I nodded.

“Was it—” Her voice broke a little, and she had to start again. “Was it bad?”

Ward’s hand on my arm stopped me from answering. He did that when telling the truth wasn’t a good idea, although I didn’t always understand why. I did now. “It wasn’t the right place for Rayn to be,” he said.

It wasn’t a lie, but it definitely wasn’t the truth, either.

“So it was bad.” She sounded sad, but her eyes bored into me, looking for an answer.

I nodded.

“Figures.” She sounded glum.

“Would you like to have some time to talk… privately?” Ward asked gently. “We have a sitting room you can use.”

The room used to be Hart’s office, before he moved to the FBI. Mason had come up with the idea to turn it into a sitting-type area with comfy chairs and a table with boxes of tissues for when people were upset by séances or his research. It was a lot less awkward than having them weeping openly in the lobby.

Violette hadn’t taken her eyes off me. “Um. Yeah. Thanks. I—” She swallowed again. “I came here to find him, but I didn’t expect to… well,findhim.”

The muscles around Ward’s eyes relaxed, telling me that he’d softened towards my sister. That he didn’t think she was here for some sort of nefarious purpose. That she really wanted to find me. “Ms. Alverno—” he began.

“Vi. Please.”

The corners of his eyes turned up as he smiled. “Vi. Your brother went through a lot—including contracting Arcana and becoming a touch-psychic while at Tranquil Brook.” There was a hard edge to his voice the way there always was when he talked about the asylum. Most people couldn’t hear it, but I could.

“A touch-psychic?” she asked, her grey-green eyes wide.

“That’s right,” he said gently.

“I know things about things when I touch them,” I explained. “Objects, not people.”

Those grey-green eyes widened again. Then she did what people tend to do when they find out I’m a touch-psychic and pulled something out of her purse, which she held out to me.

It was a heavy gold ring, a heavy central stone of onyx carved with the profile of a mountain and bordered with tiny diamonds.

But I didn’t need to touch it.

“That’s Uncle Dean’s,” I whispered, and I felt Ward’s hand come to rest on my arm again. I was glad I knew what it was, because I didn’t want to touch it. I never wanted to know how that man’s thought process worked.Never.

“You didn’t even take it,” Violette breathed.

“I didn’t have to,” I replied. “I recognize it.”

“Recognize?”

“He wore it all the time. Except when he took it off because it would leave a mark.”

Beside me, Ward sucked in a breath.

“A mark on what?” Violette asked, confused.

“Me,” I answered, almost swallowing the word.

“Oh.” She looked crushed. I didn’t know what to do about that.

“How about we take this in the other room?” Ward suggested, and I let him lead us into Hart’s old office. I hadn’t minded the room when it belonged to Hart—he’d been with us just long enough that things had started to feel like him, blended thoughts and feelings that just felt like Hart.

But they’d taken that furniture out, and now the room was mostly just full of sadness and weight. I’m sure it was much more comfortable for people than being exposed in front of the huge windows, but the people who came in here were grieving—sometimes having just found out something horrible about a loved one. And it painted darkness on every surface in the room.