Page 5 of The Diamond in the Rough

Parikh huffed. “Fine,” he said. “So whatdidyou see?”

I swallowed. “I—she was standing at the window. Someone was blackmailing her.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

He huffed.

“She didn’t know,” I amended. “She was waiting for them. She had money with her.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know. Just… small bills. She didn’t think of the total. Just that it was a lot. Had been a lot.”

“Had been?” he asked, his voice sharp.

“This wasn’t the first payment.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know.”

Another huff, this one even more annoyed than the last. “What else?”

“The phone rang. Someone was saying something she didn’t understand on the other end. And then she was struggling to breathe. She pulled off the necklace, and then I think she… passed out?” I glanced over at Mason. “And then you took it away from me.”

“You were gasping,” Mason replied, his voice gentle, although the look he shot at Parikh wasn’t gentle at all.

I drew a deep breath, grateful that I could. My chest still ached, although I wasn’t entirely certain if that was because I still felt a psychic connection to the woman who had been wearing the necklace or because the vision had actually made me experience what she had.

When I’d been taken to St. Cyprian’s after Ward freed us all from Tranquil Brook, they’d said there were degrees of psychic power, just like there were degrees of most Arc-human abilities. They ranged from weak impressions to visions to full-body experiences.

Sometimes it depended on the intensity of the person’s emotions who’d made or owned the object. Sometimes on the ability of the psychic. Sometimes both.

You could train the skill. Cultivate it. Strengthen it, to a degree, within the bounds of the psychic’s abilities.

I hadn’t bothered.

I didn’t want to be a contact psychic, so I hadn’t seen any point in trying to get better at it.

“Do you know who gave it to her?”

I swallowed. “She thought Simon, but…” I frowned, concentrating. “But he usually sent her a note when he gave her gifts. She was starting to not be sure it was him.”

“Who owned it before her?” Parikh asked me.

I blinked at him. “What?”

He pressed his lips together. “You saw the last person to wear it. Presumably shortly before her death, although I’m not sure that’s what you saw.”

I wasn’t sure, either.

“Should I ask Ward to summon her again?” Mason asked. Apparently they had already spoken to the dead woman.

“We might get to that point,” Parikh replied. “But right now I want to know who gave it to her. Where it came from.” His brow furrowed, thinking. “Because her husband claims he didn’t recognize it.”

“I didn’t see anything else,” I told him, although I didn’t look up from my hands in my lap. My chest still felt a little tight.