Page 64 of The Diamond in the Rough

A toy.

A teddy bear.

We’d all gotten one, that first day, when we’d been brought in. Different color bears, some white, some brown, some black, some in unnatural colors like pink or blue or green. Some bears had bows. Some had little stitched-on paw prints.

Mine had been white, its paw prints a dark brown like its heart-shaped nose and stitched mouth, its glassy plastic eyes black.

I’d stopped taking it with me after a while, but I’d kept the bear when I left Cyprian’s, packed away in a box with some of the other things I’d accumulated while in the hospital. A few books, some fidget toys, a fleece blanket Ward had brought me only a week after I’d left Tranquil Brook.

My apartment was tiny, a little kitchen, a small bedroom, a main room that held a cheap desk and office chair and agiant beanbag. There was a closet by the door with a small cabinet above it.

I dragged a kitchen chair over and stood on it to get at the cabinet, opening it to find a couple boxes, one of which was the one I was looking for. At the bottom was the bear.

I couldn’t see my own memories. But I hadn’t been the only person who’d touched the bear—in the early days, Melissa had struggled with controlling her magic, and her bear often ended up soaking wet. So I’d share mine with her, letting her hold its back paw.

Which meant that if I were careful and deliberate, and if I could go deep enough, I might be able to revisit those conversations as they’d happened, rehear the advice we’d been given through Melissa’s eyes.

Except I didn’t want to be alone when I did that.

The memories would be too close to my own—memories of things that I had been present for, things I’d experienced. Things that were linked to fear and anger and trauma.

We all had PTSD as a result of what we’d been through at Tranquil Brook—some of us more strongly than others. Sam’s was pretty bad, but I’d somehow managed to escape with only the occasional bout of night terrors and a rare flashback here and there. It had been almost a year since my last one, triggered by accidentally making contact with the sleeve of Sam’s sweatshirt and getting a mind full of one ofhisepisodes. He’d apologized for weeks, even though I kept insisting that it hadn’t been his fault.

I was pretty sure that touching the bear would cause the same thing.

It had been good that Melissa had been here when I’d triggered the flashback last year. I don’t know what would have happened if Melissa hadn’t been able to pull me backout—and then calm Sam down, because he felt so awful about it. That meant that I needed supervision.

Part of me wanted to ask Violette if she’d sit with me… but I barely knew her. She might be my sister, but we’d met literally once, three days ago. Offloading a massive amount of psychic weight—in both the very literal, magical sense and the mental health sense—on her this soon seemed like it was a bad idea for our still-new sibling relationship.

I could ask Melissa, but I felt guilty about putting either her or Sam in that position—yes, we’d all been through it together, but we were all still struggling to fully grapple with what had happened to us. And, honestly, I didn’t want to force either of them to have to deal with my potentially very bad choices, because those choices might trigger flashbacks or nightmares for them, too.

I knew I could ask Ward—and that he would agree to it without thinking. But I’d already asked so much of both him and Mason. My even being at Beyond the Veil was an imposition, an act of charity, and to ask them to do even more felt like theft.

That left Hart or Raj, and I didn’t want to ask them, either. I was pretty sure they’d both agree to it—either together or separately—if I explained that the point was to help me go deeper and have more control over my psychic reads on the objects they brought to me. But they had their own jobs to do, and I wasn’t quite comfortable enough with either of them to risk a complete breakdown in front of them.

I also wasn’t foolish enough to do it alone, which left me stuck with an idea, but no safe way to follow it through.

Maybe I’d get that desperate, but I hoped I wouldn’t have to.

I tried to come up with an alternative.

Any alternative.

She wantedthis job more than anything. Wanted to prove to herself and every single person—mostly men, honestly—that she could pass the tests with flying colors. That she deserved to be a federal agent, no matter what anyone else thought.

She would prove them all wrong.

I pushed awayCass’s memory from when she’d worried the stone, waiting to begin the sequence of tests she’d had to pass to become an FBI field agent. I wanted to go a step deeper. I picked up the worry stone again.

Her parentsand Alex would support her no matter what she did. Whether or not she passed these tests. But Christine… Christine hadn’t believed in her. Christine had called her a narc and a traitor to the queer community for wanting to join the FBI. Christine had argued that she couldn’t do good work, just work, from within the government.

They’d broken up last night. When Christine had left to go burn off steam at some club or other, she’d packed up her stuff, shoved it all in her car, and found a cheap motel where she hadn’t really slept.

She’d ended her relationship over this, and it had better fucking be worth it.

I hauled myself back out,gasping, sweat beading on my forehead.

I might not be able to block out memories, but I was definitely getting better at going after them.