The Veil (15 page)

Luc glanced up at it resignedly and shrugged.

“That bulb lasted nearly a month—that’s a record for me.”

I squinted at the light in confusion, but suddenly it hit me that this was not the first bulb I’d seen act up lately. The lamp in Gran’s dining room beside the table where Luc had been sitting, the light up at the Headlands . . . hadn’t the lights in precalc flickered on my birthday? And the only common factor to all of those things had been Luc.

I looked over at him; there was a somewhat amused look on his face as he watched me try to figure it out.

“Electricity,” he explained. “It acts differently around the Annorasi. Lightbulbs seem to have an especially hard time.”

“But they don’t all do
that
,” I pointed to the dead bulb above our heads.

“Just the ones I pass by a lot. Or especially old ones. Believe it or not, this is much better than it used to be.” Luc smiled ruefully as he opened his locker. “I seem to have less of an effect on lights the more time I spend
here
.” He looked at me pointedly, and I understood he meant
the human world
. “Those of us who don’t spend as much time here—well, you should see what happens when
they
get around a lightbulb!”

I tried to ponder this strange new fact about the Annorasi for the rest of the day, but it was hard to concentrate; I couldn’t stop thinking about Nate. We’d had our share of fights over the years, but never in the eleven years that I’d known him had he looked at me the way he did at lunch.

When the school day finally came to an end, Luc did his best to cheer me up as we walked through the parking lot toward his car.

“Nate will come around,” he assured me. “Just give him some time.”

“Uhh huh,” I muttered. On the other side of the parking lot, Nate was getting into Terrance Seaver’s car. Apparently he had found a new person to shuttle him around after school.

I’d been replaced too.

Luc looked at me worriedly as I flopped into the passenger seat beside him. “You’re not thinking of telling—”

“No,” I interrupted him flatly. The thought of telling Nate the truth had occurred to me several times, but each time I had managed to convince myself there was no point. Even if it hadn’t been against the rules, and even if there had been a chance he would have believed
me, he’d never believe me now. Not since he thought I was just trying to get attention. What was more attention-seeking than:

Hey Nate! You were totally right! I
have
been keeping something from you.

The truth is, my mother was part of a secret society of magical beings I now half belong to myself, and Luc is just pretending to be my boyfriend to protect me from some of the other magical beings who didn’t like my parents and might want to kill me.

Yeah. I had a feeling telling him
that
would only take things from bad to worse.

Luc still looked worried when we pulled up outside of Gran’s house. “It’s been a long day,” he said thoughtfully. “Maybe my next Annorasi lecture can wait until tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, reaching for the door handle.

He stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Everything is going to be all right, Addy. I promise.”

He looked so sincere, and so beautiful, at that moment I very nearly started to cry. In actual fact, it had been his sudden presence in my life that had started all of the craziness, but I couldn’t hold him responsible. He was just trying to help me.

“I’m in for the night,” I told him. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Seven thirty,” he said. “And I promise I’ll tell you more about the Annorasi. I want to show you there
are
a few good things about being who you are. It’s not all bad.”

I smiled grimly at him. “Thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Call me if you need to talk.”

I smiled for real as I climbed out of the car. “That was a very boyfriendy thing to say,” I remarked.

He shrugged. “I think I’m getting the hang of this.”

——

Olivia called the second I walked through the door, wanting to
talk about Nate. I mostly listened as she rattled off a complicated theory about how I’d been “the woman in Nate’s life” and how it was difficult for him to see me now being the “woman in someone else’s life.” She concluded it would take Nate some time to figure out I could be both at the same time, and she left me with the same advice Luc had: “Just give him some time.”

After we hung up, I yelled a hello to Gran in the kitchen and trudged upstairs. I was avoiding her on purpose, because I knew she’d almost certainly ask me how Nate was doing, as was her habit whenever we talked right after school. I had zero desire to talk about him for the rest of the day.

I didn’t want to think about him either, so I pulled out my homework, intending to lose myself in my assignments and possibly make up for rushing through my weekend homework and not paying attention to a single one of my classes today.

My plan worked splendidly, and I spent the next two hours in solid work-mode. I paused only when my pen ran out of ink, halfway through my history assignment. Sighing, I reached into my desk drawer to find another one, and was surprised when my hand hit crinkly plastic.

My Halloween contraband. I had forgotten all about it. Finding it gave my spirits a slight, but desperately needed, lift.

I looked at my watch: six thirty. Still plenty of time for trick-or-treaters.

I emptied both bags of candy into the witch bowl and headed downstairs. Through the living room window and the several layers of plants growing up the front of the house, I could see costumed munchkins already making their way around the neighborhood.

None of them so much as looked at our house. But I had a sudden feeling of confidence that maybe this year would be different.

I settled myself on the sofa, keeping my head propped up on the back of it so I could see out of the window; that way I would have fair warning of any trick-or-treaters and a clear view of any
kid who decided to trash our front gate with toilet paper or silly string. It happened nearly every year, and we’d never been able to catch the perpetrators.

I must have fallen asleep because when I woke up, it was dark. The bowl had slipped off of my lap, and half the candy was on the floor.

Gran was leaning over me, peering out of the window. When she saw I was awake, she put a finger to her lips and gestured outside.

I followed her gaze and saw two dark-clad creatures, creeping around outside of the front gate.

My heart leapt into my throat.

“Are those the Others?” I whispered, trying hard to be quiet.

Gran shook her head. “No, those are the Derby twins from down the street. Hooligans. They must be the ones who make a mess of our front yard every year.”

I nearly collapsed back onto the couch with relief. But then, a totally evil look came over Gran’s face. I drew back, appalled.

She did not appear to notice. “Come on,” she said, and tiptoed to the front door.

“What are you going to do?” I whispered frantically.

“What I’ve wanted to do for years now, only I couldn’t, not without tipping you off. But now that you know all about the Annorasi, I don’t see the harm in it. No one will ever believe them, will they? Come and watch, Addy, you’ll like this.”

I tiptoed behind her as she inched the door open and crept onto the front porch. The Derby boys were totally engrossed in threading rolls of toilet paper through the bars of the gate and didn’t see her coming until it was too late.

A phenomenal roar echoed through the front yard, and suddenly Gran was nearly as tall as the surrounding trees. She was also sporting an impressive set of horns and a pair of leathery wings, which she spread out to their fullest extent and flapped threateningly. The stunned twins stood rooted to the spot, staring at her like . . . well,
like she was the frightening creature they’d always imagined lived in the scary house at the end of their street.

She roared again. The boys screamed in unison, sounding very much like little girls. They dropped their toilet paper rolls and ran headlong down the street, yelling for their mother.

I could only imagine how they felt;
I
was scared, and I’d only seen Gran from the back.

She shrunk back down to her normal self again and walked back into the house. She closed the door and held both of her sides, laughing uproariously. “Ahhh, that felt good. Maybe there is something to this Halloween nonsense after all.”

I held the candy bowl out to her. “Trick or treat?”

She smiled, and reached for a candy bar. “Why not? Happy Halloween, dear.”

That was the first time I’d ever seen Gran acknowledge the passing of a holiday with anything other than an irritated frown. At least the day hadn’t been a total loss.

——

L
UC PICKED ME UP FOR SCHOOL
again the next morning at seven thirty on the dot. I wasn’t sure Nate would accept a ride to school from us, but we swung by Sully’s anyway.

He was not outside, but this wasn’t unusual; sometimes when he got stuck in a busy rush, I went inside to remind him it was time for school.

Luc waited in the car as I entered Sully’s. Immediately, I realized the six-foot tall black man behind the espresso machine was not Nate, but Sully’s son, Jeremy.

Sully waved to me from his place behind the cash register. “Nate’s not working this morning, sweetheart.” He frowned. “Didn’t he tell you?”

“I guess he forgot,” I mumbled.

Sully insisted I take a cup of coffee to go, and I waited impatiently for him to fill the cardboard cup and add a dash of nonfat milk before I thanked him numbly and shuffled back outside to Luc’s car. This was the first morning
ever
that coffee did not sound (or smell) remotely appealing to me.

I was silent on the rest of the ride to school.

Luc pulled into his usual parking spot and turned to look at me. “Addy, if this is too hard for you, we might be able to think of another way.”

“No, it’s not too hard,” I told him quickly.

“I didn’t come here to ruin your life,” he said quietly. “This isn’t how I imagined this would go. If you think someone else would be a better Guardian for you—”

“No!” I interrupted. I struggled to calm myself. The idea of losing Luc was the only kind of panic that came close to my current fear that I might have lost Nate. “No, that’s not the answer. I thought about this a lot last night,” I really had—I hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep. “If one weird weekend can drive a wedge this deep between me and Nate, there must be bigger problems in our friendship. There’s something more going on here, on his end. Something he’s not telling me.”

Luc nodded slowly as he digested the conclusion I’d come to at three o’clock that morning, around the same time I’d decided to get a drink of water and only narrowly avoided being gored by the pair of Thai warriors (formerly the two Siamese cats) who had been standing guard outside of my bedroom.

“Okay,” Luc said uncertainly. “If you’re sure . . .”

“I’m sure. Luc, I’m sorry about this. All you’re trying to do is help, and I’m being nothing but difficult.”

“Actually, I think you’ve been coping surprisingly well,” he said without a trace of sarcasm in his voice. “No joke. You’ve had a lot to deal with lately.”

“But it gets better from here on in, right?” I asked hopefully. “You’ve dropped all the big bombshells, and now I just have to deal with the fallout, right?”

He looked uncomfortable, maybe because of my violent metaphor.

“We probably shouldn’t be late for precalc.” He undid his seatbelt and let himself out of the car.

——

The school was still buzzing about Emily and Peter, Luc and me, and Nate and me, but now a fourth subject had arisen that took precedence over the others: no one had seen Karinda Walsh since the night of the rally.

Theories abounded as to her whereabouts—most of them included her having a nervous breakdown and being rushed to the same sort of facility I’d been sure I was headed for not too long ago. But all of the teachers in the classes I had with Karinda appeared supremely unconcerned, each noting her absence indifferently on the roll sheet and getting on with the day’s lesson.

I felt a tad responsible; after all, it had been my fake stealing of Luc that caused Emily to take the radical step of severing the previously ironclad bond between Karinda and Peter. But I was also very grateful that Karinda’s disappearance had shifted me over a step from center stage, even if it was only a very small step.

Escort-wise, my day was pretty much the same as yesterday. Luc accompanied me to the classes we had together, and Sonya met me at the door of the periods Luc and I had apart.

Just before lunch, Luc took a plastic bag out of his pocket, quickly dumped the contents into his hand, and held it out for Sonya to eat. “Tuna,” he explained as Sonya inhaled the treat in a single gulp and licked her whiskers expectedly, hoping for more.

He threw the bag away and sniffed his hand distastefully. I usually hated the smell of fish, but on Luc, even tuna ended up smelling like cologne. He probably could have rolled himself in a vat of the stuff, and I still wouldn’t have found him any less attractive.

At lunch, Nate sat with Terrance Seaver and his crowd, clear across the quad from our usual lunch table, where Luc and I were sitting. Olivia came to join us after a silent exchange with Nate, where his glare clearly said, “leave me alone,” and her narrowed eyes screamed “grow up!”

Olivia was very chatty at lunch, plainly trying very hard to convince Luc that at least one of my friends did not disapprove
of him. Luc was trying equally hard to convince at least one of my friends that he was not some horrible monster bent on destroying the delicate balance of our lives. He even offered to run lines with her when we were finished eating, after she mentioned she was having difficulty with a particular monologue in Act 2.

“Opening night is in less than a month!” she squealed, pulling out her script and flipping to the tricky monologue, subtly marked with a bright pink Post-it note that had five exclamation marks scribbled on it.