The Veil (25 page)

“So?”

“So, that also indicated to me you were not the one I was looking for. Oh, I knew you wouldn’t know what an Annorasi was, and you probably wouldn’t even be able to sense one, not right away, but I was pretty sure the girl I was looking for would be attracted to me in some way.”

I gave him a
look
, and he laughed.

“I don’t mean ‘attracted’ in the romantic sense,” he explained quickly. “I thought you’d be able to pick up a feeling of . . . of something, when you were around me. Something a bit familiar, maybe. Something that would inspire you to seek me out, to talk to me.”

I shook my head. “You don’t know much about girls, do you?”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

“It means,” I explained patiently, “when a girl totally and completely ignores a guy, it’s a huge tip-off she’s attracted to him.”

“What?” he asked doubtfully.

“It’s true! When we ignore you, you start to wonder
why
we’re doing that, and it makes us seem like a challenge. It makes us interesting. Complicated. Alluring.”

He frowned. “I’m fairly certain that’s not how every human girl goes about it—thankfully, for the rest of the male population of the world. Emily, for example, quite plainly did not take that route.”

“
Emily
is a different type of girl.” I sniffed.

“So, is that why you came to precalc early every morning? Because you were trying to be interesting? Complicated? Alluring?”

“Something like that, yeah,” I mumbled, my face burning hot.

Laughing, he pulled me into him and kissed me thoroughly. He was still smiling when he sat back. “Then I suppose I should compliment you on a job well done. Your plan of totally ignoring me appears to have worked.”

“See?” I tapped him playfully on the nose. “Don’t underestimate girl-wisdom. It works every time—in this world
and
the Annorasi one.”

“Whatever you say.”

——

Before I knew it, it was nearly nine thirty, and Luc had to break multiple traffic laws in order to get me back to Novato and home by curfew. We screeched up to the front of Gran’s house at exactly one minute to ten; I gave Luc a quick kiss and then ran inside, crossing the threshold just as the old clock in the living room began its ten quiet chimes.

I leaned against the door and listened as Luc’s car drove away. Suddenly, I regretted saying goodbye to him so quickly. My first, real goodnight kiss from Luc, and I rushed it. Damn. I would have to speak to Gran about my curfew again—maybe I could work out a five-minute grace period for emergency situations like this.

I fell asleep that night with a tremendous smile on my face. I didn’t think about the summons or my upcoming confrontation with the Council for even one second. I briefly thought about Nate and his newly discovered sexuality. But then I turned my thoughts to Luc, and that’s where they stayed, long after I fell asleep.

——

I
WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING
in a blind panic, the pleasant thoughts of the night before completely forgotten.

It was Sunday. Only two full days until my meeting with the Council. Somehow, that seemed like infinitely less time than the three days I had woken up with yesterday. How did I let an entire day slip by? Shouldn’t I be outside right this very minute, savoring my freedom and kissing Luc as much as possible just in case things went terribly wrong? Or maybe I should be doing something crazy—like those people who take up skydiving or decide to travel the world after they find out they have a limited amount of time left to live. Shouldn’t I be spending what were at least potentially the last two days of my life doing something like that?

But I couldn’t think of anything extraordinary to do right then. So I settled for getting up, feeding Rialto, and then pouring myself a bowl of cereal in the kitchen.

I called Olivia, who had recovered enough from her near-death experience to be angry about the run of her play being abruptly cut short. She also told me her dad had spoken to the police, and they found nothing in the rubble of the auditorium that even
remotely suggested foul play, so the “incident” was now officially an accident, and we were all off the hook. Except for Mrs. Grimsby, who Principal Chatsworth refused to reconsider firing.

I felt bad for our grumpy old drama teacher until Olivia told me she’d spoken to her, and apparently Grimsby was only a year or two away from retirement anyway and hadn’t been terribly upset about her dismissal.

After I hung up with Olivia, I went back to the kitchen to help Gran with her second cooking project of the weekend: calzones. As I rolled out a stubborn bit of dough and glared at the free-floating rolling pin just beside me that effortlessly flattened out its share of dough without sweating a drop, I wondered what Luc was up to.

No sooner had the thought entered my head than the doorbell rang.

I dusted the flour off of my hands and opened the front door to find a slightly twitchy delivery guy whose hat said Novato Florals. He nervously eyed the front of the house as though there was a chance it might decide to swallow him whole at any second.

I recognized the look and felt a flicker of respect for the guy; most delivery people never even got past the front gate of Gran’s house.

He was holding a single red rose, which he practically threw at me before hightailing it back to his car.

There was a note wrapped around the stem.

I grinned down at the note and practically skipped back into the kitchen.

——

Later, as I got ready, I tried hard not to think about how, in addition to being my first official date ever, tonight might also turn out to be my last. Somehow, the entire day had slipped by unbelievably quickly, and I was almost to the point where I could count the hours before my meeting with the Council.

But I tried to put that thought, and all similar ones, firmly out of my head; after all, if tonight really was going to be my one and only date, I wasn’t about to ruin it with thoughts of my (potentially) imminent execution.

I puzzled over what Luc had meant by “fancy dress.” I didn’t own anything that qualified as an actual fancy dress, but I wasn’t sure he meant I literally had to wear a dress—fancy or otherwise. I tore through my closet twice before I pulled out my favorite beaded black skirt and a black top I’d once borrowed from Olivia and forgotten to return. The shades of black matched so completely that, once I had them both on, it almost looked like I was wearing a black dress—I figured that would cover all of my bases.

The only real pair of heels I owned were, fortunately, also black. After examining my reflection in the mirror on the back of my door, I rummaged through the back of my closet until I found my red Jest Jewels purse from two birthdays ago, just so Luc wouldn’t think my idea of “fancy dress” was closer to “funeral.”

I was just saying goodnight to Gran when Luc rang the doorbell. The clock in the living room said five thirty on the button.

After I opened the door, I swayed a bit and had to grab the doorframe to keep from losing my balance in my pointy, totally-unsuited-for-dizziness heels.

Luc wore a black suit that reminded me a little bit of the one his father had been wearing the night before, only the rich material that made his father look mean and intimidating made Luc look . . . well, even more gorgeous than usual. His green eyes glimmered in contrast to the somber color of the jacket and pants, and his tie was the exact
color silver I saw so often in the Annorasi world.

When I recovered my balance enough to take one step out of the door and kiss him, I closed my eyes and thought to myself it would be all right with me if we spent the entire date right here on the doorstep.

But Luc apparently had other plans. He ended our kiss (much too quickly, in my opinion), called a hello to Gran, then took my hand and led me down the walk to his waiting car. “You look beautiful,” he said, opening the passenger door for me.

“You too. Are we going somewhere fancy?”

Luc pondered my question as he got behind the wheel. As he turned the key and took the car out of park, I watched his hands. There were small pieces of metal holding his shirt cuffs together.
Cuff links
. For the first time in a long while, I thought about how Luc was only pretending to be high school age; he was actually nineteen. The cuff links were a dead giveaway—no
real
high school boy wore cuff links.

“
I
think it’s appropriate to dress up for where we’re going,” he said. “But not everyone feels they have to.”

“Are we going to be overdressed?” I asked.

“Think of it this way—we’ll probably be the best-dressed people there.”

He
certainly would be—but then again, Luc would probably still have won best-dressed if he had shown up in a dirty T-shirt.

“You’re not going to tell me where we’re going?” I asked. I’d been pondering the question all day but ended up frustrated by the lack of clues in his note.

“Nope,” he said, smiling. “It’s a surprise. But feel free to guess.”

“Sully’s?” I ventured, not really seriously, as we were already on the freeway heading toward San Francisco.

“Not quite. Although there will be food involved—at least, at our first stop.”

“There’s going to be more than one stop?”

“I’m planning on three, actually. Don’t worry—I’ll have you home by ten. With time to spare, hopefully. I don’t feel like we had a proper goodbye last night.”

I smiled over at him. “I was thinking the same thing.”

The clock on the dash said 5:35 p.m. There were exactly four hours and twenty-five minutes of our date left, and I intended to make every moment count.

——

Our first stop turned out to be an Italian restaurant on Union Street. We both ordered pasta and talked for so long over dessert we had to flag down our waiter, beg for a quick check, and run to the car so we wouldn’t be late for the still-mysterious second stop of the evening.

Luc drove straight up Van Ness and turned right after we passed city hall. He circled behind symphony hall and pulled into an underground parking lot. “Have you ever been to the symphony?” he asked, pulling into an empty parking spot.

“Once,” I said evasively, trying to hide a slight feeling of disappointment. I had been to the symphony only once before, when Nate’s grandma took us to an afternoon performance and I discovered, twenty minutes into it, that I had absolutely no ear for music. I had spent the next hour and forty minutes fidgeting in the dark, wishing there were actors or a set on stage—or at least
something
to look at.

But Luc seemed excited, so I tried to smile enthusiastically as I exited the car.

He wasn’t fooled. He took my hand and bent to kiss me on the back of my neck. “Just trust me,” he said into my ear.

When we entered symphony hall, I could tell right away what Luc had meant about us being “best dressed.” There were a few other people wearing suits and dresses, but the majority of our fellow symphony-goers were in jeans or khakis; I even saw at least one girl wearing flip-flops. But it was impossible to feel overdressed
in our opulent surroundings. The brass fixtures and the plush, red velvet material on the curtains and on our seats made it seem like it was the casual dressers, and not us, who were doing it wrong.

Our seats were in the second balcony, right in front of the railing, and we just barely sat down before the lights began to dim.

Luc leaned over to me. “You didn’t bring your glasses, did you?” he asked.

“No,” I answered. “I lost them in the fire.”

“Good. I want you to see this with your real eyes.”

I squinted over at him; in the dark theater, I could just barely see his eyes. “You do understand the whole concept of a symphony?” I teased him. “There’s nothing to see.”

Even in the dark, I could tell he was grinning. “Watch.”

There was a ripple of applause as the conductor stepped out onto the stage, bowed once to the audience, then turned to face the orchestra. As he raised his hands, the musicians all slightly raised their instruments, and the music began. Probably because I was missing the part of my brain that was supposed to understand music, I never grasped how one person could direct dozens of musicians all at once. I was so focused on the conductor’s smooth, yet precise arm movements that I hardly noticed the colors at first.

Then I saw there was an unmistakable, multicolored haze forming over the heads of the musicians. It grew brighter over the sections the conductor pointed to at any given time, and as the song wore on, swirling bits of the mist rose up high into the air, dipping and turning in time to the music. It was like watching a ballet made up of hundreds of the most flawless, gravity-defying dancers imaginable. It was unspeakably beautiful, and I felt tears forming in the corner of my eyes. This was definitely what had been missing from my first symphony experience.

When the first movement ended and the colors faded, I finally dragged my eyes from the stage and looked over at Luc.

He was watching me instead of the show.

“That’s the look,” he said, whispering so the people seated near us couldn’t hear. “I thought I might see it tonight if I brought you here.”

“But I didn’t lift the veil,” I protested, then paused. “At least, I didn’t mean to.”

“You didn’t,” he assured me. “You’re looking at the human world; you’re just seeing it as only an Annorasi can.”

“I don’t understand. The musicians—the conductor. Are they Annorasi?” I mouthed the word
Annorasi
, even though the nearest person was three seats away from us.

“No. Those are humans doing that. All humans.”

“How?”