“Every year at Christmas, Agatha knitted me a new present. It was always the same shade of blue, like she bought the yarn wholesale and needed to get rid of it. It was a pretty color, but never something I could actually use. Scarves. Hats. Tea cozies. She gave me a pot holder when I was six. My mother called them my Blue Hoard.”
Doug's sudden laugh filled the room. It was a rich sound that lifted the tension from us both. A comfortable warmth settled in me. Not onlyhad I found a way to reach him, but the thought of my mom and Agatha grounded me. I’d had a life here once. Maybe I could find it again.
“Okay, Doug.” I put my pen on the desktop and folded my hands, giving him my full attention. “Would you like to tell me about your ability?”
“Not much to tell.” Doug’s shoulders lifted in a deep shrug. “If you’re doing or saying something that goes against your nature, I know it.”
“How?” I leaned forward a bit, conveying my interest. “In all of Agatha’s notes, I noticed the detail of your magic isn’t in there. Given that a week ago I didn’t know anything like this existed, you’d be helping me out if you explained it to me.”
“Thought you were here to help me?” Doug bit the words out, an edge of his frustration showing through. Good. He was taking the bait.
“I want to help you.” I leaned back and smiled, gesturing at his massive folder. “It’s difficult to do that from a stack of files, though.”
Silence crowded the room as Doug’s eyes met mine. A clock ticked on the far wall, a clock I hadn’t seen earlier. At least the house had a sense of humor. I held firm, gnawing on the inside of my lip.
At long last, Doug grunted at me and waved his hands.
“You have a shadow. Sometimes it has color.” He traced an outline of me. “When you aren’t being true to yourself or you're telling a lie, it gets darker. Big lies go black.”
“That must have been helpful when you were catching bad guys.” His lips thinned again, and I realized I'd made another misstep. Why was I struggling with my words? “And even more difficult when someone you trust is being dishonest with you. Like your partner in the force, who was on the take and put your life in jeopardy for money.”
His dark eyes flooded with unshed tears that surprised me. When was the last time Agatha had acknowledged that pain? He cleared his throat roughly and shifted in his seat.
“We all got hardships. Mine ain’t so bad.” His fingers fluttered to his collar, as if verifying he had it buttoned. “I’m only here because my wife makes me.” The fingers clasped into a fist, exposing gnawed-on, dirty fingernails. “What I meant to say was, my wife made me.”
“Your childhood sweetheart Maggie. Her death three years ago must have been devastating.” I felt his pain all the way across the room, and it struck a chord I wasn’t interested in plucking at the moment.
Jeff wasn’t dead, but my husband was gone, too. Years from now,would I feel the pain of our breakup the way Doug did? We’d raised a child together. Would I mourn this loss forever?
I didn’t think I would. I hated to admit it, but I barely missed him. My life was immensely different and yet, in terms of how often I saw or talked to him, it was the same. Maybe I hadn’t realized how far apart we’d grown.
Or was it that I’d never loved him in the first place?
I pinched the soft flesh between my thumb and index finger. Just enough to bring me back to Doug and the moment. My rambling mind and insane empathy had their time and place. It wasn’t now.
Something about Doug’s case was resonating with me, though. Maybe because it was my first supernatural one. Or maybe because he struggled with his gift, and I’d never known I had one. At least not a magical one.
We’d been silent for three full minutes. While I waxed rhapsodic internally, Doug was staring out the window behind me. I tried to bring him out a bit more.
“Know what else Agatha wrote about your sessions? That you spent a lot of time staring at the ceiling and not talking.”
“At least the window has a better view than the couch.” Doug’s dry smile broke my heart. The love he’d had for his wife sat on him like another skin.
He’d promised her he would seek therapy. He’d never intended to actually benefit from it. I couldn’t blame him. Ray was from a generation where men didn’t show feelings. They certainly didn’t talk about them.
Which was why Agatha’s well-meaning but outdated methodologies hadn’t made a dent in his resolve.
But his pain enveloped him like a shroud. It was a shield he’d worn to keep the world at bay, dented only by his wife. Now she was gone, and he was stuck in a dark past with no hopes of living out the last years of his life, of which he should have plenty, with any sense of joy.
Since he still wasn’t talking, I referred back to his notes. Doug had three grandchildren, still young. He had a job with Lone Wolf Sentries, a local security firm. He tended a garden in his backyard. He still had a life worth living.
Maybe I could help him see that. I took a deep breath and decided to use the tactic that had gotten me into this mess in the first place.
CHAPTER 13
“Doug, I’d like to try an experiment with you. Would you be willing to attempt something new today?”
It was almost physical, the barrier he put around himself. I waited, holding his eyes so he could read my intent and see it was pure. I didn’t love being analyzed so thoroughly, but if it showed him I wanted to help, then I’d let it happen.
