The Veil (28 page)

“Damon Mallory,” Luc said—growled, really—under his breath.

The man, Damon Mallory, cocked his head toward Luc. “Do you truly think I’d hurt her now?” he inquired. “When she’s right where I want her to be?”

“Then what are you doing here?” Luc demanded, not loosening his grip on me one little bit.

Damon Mallory looked over Luc’s shoulder at me. Only my face was visible to him, but he stared at me for such a long time my heart started thudding uncomfortably inside of my chest.

“You look like your father,” Damon said to me finally, his ill-defined eyes still trying to bore holes through mine. “I don’t see any of Margaret in you at all.”

“What do you know?” I spat out.

“Ah,” he smiled. “
There
she is.”

I glared at Damon Mallory as he continued to grin at me. It was a knowing smile, devoid of any actual happiness. It acknowledged only that there was something about what I just said—whether it was something he merely expected, or actually hoped to hear, I wasn’t sure.

“What do you want, Mallory?” Luc cut in roughly, just as it started to register in my mind that this man had been talking about my parents in a disturbingly familiar way.

“Only to meet her face to face,” Damon Mallory answered. “Just once before tomorrow.”

“Now you’ve met,” Luc said dryly. “What do you think of this person whose life you are trying to destroy?”

Damon Mallory only shook his head slowly. “I have been waiting a long time for this,” he said, still staring at me and not bothering to answer Luc’s last question. “I have very high hopes for you, my dear. You are going to bring me my war.”

“The war is
over
,” Luc corrected him, drawing Damon Mallory’s attention back to him. “You lost, remember?”

“Is that what your father told you?” Damon asked my Guardian. “If I were you, I wouldn’t rely on Renard and others like him to give you the full story of what happened back then.”

Luc snorted. “Then why don’t you enlighten us?”

“I wouldn’t waste my time,” Damon Mallory spat. “Your father
and his kind are no better than humans—and their time is over. You’ll go down with the rest of them, young Stratton. Not quite as soon as your charge here—” he glanced over at me—“but soon.”

Luc stiffened. “You’ll never touch her.”

“We’ll see.”

Damon Mallory nodded curtly at us and turned away. Oran Tighe, who hadn’t uttered a single word during the short exchange, remained in front of us. Slowly, he raised his right hand; in it was a long, silver knife. Grinning at us, he slashed the knife through the air, just in front of his throat. He pointed the tip of the blade briefly in my direction before he turned and hurried after Damon Mallory.

The yellow-green light faded as the two Others disappeared into the darkness at the edge of the park. The silver light in Luc’s hand also winked out. We walked back to the car wordlessly and in the dark.

——

“S
O HOW DID THE
flying lesson go last night?”

I looked up at Mr. Stratton’s sudden question, not entirely sure what to say. The events of the past hour were still swimming through my head.

After Damon Mallory and Oran Tighe had left, and Luc and I found our way back to his car, we didn’t say a single word to one another during the short drive back to Mr. Stratton’s house.

It wasn’t until we pulled into the garage that I finally got up the courage to ask: “Who is Damon Mallory?”

The answer was not all-together unexpected.

“The leader of the Others,” Luc told me. “He’s the one who manipulated the Council into calling you before them tomorrow.”

“And he knew my parents?”

“Yes.”

“Was he the one who
killed
my parents?”

“Yes.”

Luc did not explain further; I gave him a pleading look, and he sighed heavily. “I think that’s a story for another time.”

I didn’t necessarily agree, but his frown told me, very clearly,
that was all I was going to get out of him on the subject. And I was not entirely sure I wanted to press the point just now.

Mr. Stratton and Gran were both appalled when we told them what happened.

“In the middle of San Francisco!” Gran shook her head. “Right under the Council’s nose—in a public place, no less!”

“We’ll never be able to prove it. They were just trying to send us a message,” Mr. Stratton pointed out, bringing the subject to a close.

Somehow, Gran already had dinner on the table, enough for the four of us and her ten boys. It wasn’t until we started dessert that Mr. Stratton thought to inquire about my flying lesson the night before.

“It went fine,” Luc answered without elaborating.

Mr. Stratton nodded in understanding. “Well, it might have been helpful, but I wasn’t counting on it. The Council probably won’t even ask.”

I put down my fork; suddenly Luc’s uncharacteristic pushiness on the bridge made a great deal more sense.

“Is that why you wanted me to try it so badly?” I asked him. “So I could show the Council how ‘Annorasi’ I am?”

Luc shot a glare at his dad, who shrugged.

“The more of your Annorasi side we can show the Council, the better,” Mr. Stratton explained. “The ability of flight is a typical Annorasi ability, and it would’ve been helpful to demonstrate you have it. It might make you seem more like one of us. But it’s not the only thing we can use. You can see our world, and that should be enough to prove you have more than a trivial amount of Annorasi in you.”

It might make you seem more like one of us.
The implication being I was
not
actually one of them—not entirely, anyway. I frowned down at my empty dinner plate.

Gran’s boys jumped up and began arguing over who was going to clear the table; in the confusion I managed to leave the dining
room and wander upstairs by myself. I went up the first flight of stairs I found and kept going until I faced a sturdy metal door, which opened only after I threw my entire weight against it—twice. The door led to a rooftop garden, and a view of the city I would have thought beautiful if I hadn’t been so preoccupied with other things.

Am I going to die tomorrow?

Even after I’d been told about the Others and the Council and the danger awaiting me there, dying wasn’t something I spent much time dwelling on. I doubted many seventeen-year-olds did.

But now—now that I was in the relative safety of this strange house, and I had come face to face with a person who not only clearly wanted me dead, but spoke about it casually as though it was already a foregone conclusion, the full reality of the unknown horror awaiting me tomorrow came down on me like a hammer.

I started to shake.

“Addy!” Luc burst through the door and onto the roof, heaving an enormous sigh of relief at the sight of me. “Don’t
do
that!” he scolded, dropping down beside me and hugging me briefly.

When I didn’t respond, he scooted back, holding me at arm’s length so he could see my face.

I wasn’t crying, but I was close. I continued to shake while he pulled me into his lap and wrapped his arms around me, resting his chin on top of my head.

“I should have warned you something like that might happen,” he said after a moment and after my shaking had subsided. “But I didn’t want to scare you if there was no need.”

“I think I needed to be scared,” I surprised myself by saying. “I don’t think I understood exactly how serious this all was until today. I was ignoring it—I was so happy about you and about fixing things with Nate I didn’t want to think about it.”

“It’ll be over soon.”

“Yeah.” One way or another.

We sat quietly for a minute or two. Then I twisted around to look at him.

“How will it happen?” I asked. “I mean, if they decide to—”

“They won’t,” Luc said flatly.

“But if they do,” I persisted. “How do they do it, exactly?”

Luc took my hands and squeezed them between his; for a moment, his deep green eyes were fiercer than I had ever seen them before. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Addy. That’s a promise. You have nothing to worry about.”

“Okay. But
theoretically,
how would it happen?”

Luc gave me an exasperated look, but I took my hands back and crossed my arms over my chest. I was absolutely determined not to let this go. I needed to know—I
deserved
to know—what the worst possible outcome of my situation was.

As I watched him, frowning to himself and inwardly debating whether or not to answer me, I made myself a promise: I was not going to panic. No matter what he said, no matter how bad it was, I was going to remain calm. If only to prove to him that I could.

He sighed. “Burning,” he said finally.

“
Burning!
” I very nearly shrieked, totally forgetting my promise of approximately two seconds ago. “You mean, as in
at the stake
?”

“Yes,” he said.

I couldn’t believe it. “Do you mean,” I began, certain I must have heard him wrong, “when the Annorasi decide to execute someone they
burn them at the stake
? Like in medieval Europe, or some horror film?”

Luc closed for his eyes for a moment, and I could tell he was already deeply regretting having answered my question.

“You have to understand,” he said slowly. “The Annorasi very rarely execute anyone. Most of us don’t believe in the taking of life, human or otherwise. In our world, death is an extremely rare punishment.”

“I would hope so,” I mumbled. I was trying very hard to keep
my thudding heart from bursting right through the front of my chest. “But
burning
?”

Luc shrugged. “Historically, in your world and in mine, execution has always been just as much about making a statement to others as it is about punishing the guilty party. You have to admit, burning someone at the stake makes quite a statement. But execution is only imposed for the most extreme crimes. Things like mass murder, genocide, or the higher forms of treason.”

Or, in my case, just being born.

Luc took my hands again and forced me to look at him. “If I really thought it was something you needed to worry about, I wouldn’t have told you,” he said. “You believe me, don’t you, Addy? Promise me you are not going to worry about this.”

I nodded, numbly.

“Out loud,” he insisted. “Say you promise—”

“I promise,” I said quickly. My voice sounded oddly flat, not like my own at all.

That was the first time I ever lied to Luc.

——

Later, when we came down from the roof, Mr. Stratton showed us all to our bedrooms.

Luc followed me into mine, completely ignoring both his father’s and Gran’s warning glares.

Even though Luc had already seen me in pajamas twice—and both of those times I had been wearing embarrassing PJs that were significantly less flattering than the ones I had on now—I still felt self-conscious wearing my favorite blue-striped cotton bottoms and matching blue tank top in front of him. Even though he too was dressed for sleep, in green plaid bottoms and a fresh white shirt.

“I can sleep on the floor,” he offered. “Or I can leave all together if you’d rather be alone—”

“No!” I said quickly without thinking. Blushing, as the corners of his mouth turned up at my response, I gestured to the giant,
queen-size bed taking up the majority of the room. “We can both sleep here. But I don’t think—I mean, I don’t know if we . . .” I trailed off; I was so flushed by now I felt like my face was going to go up in flames.

He kissed me on the cheek. “I can control myself,” he assured me, climbing into bed and holding one side of the covers open for me.

After we turned the lights off and were silent for a while, I rolled over to face him. The small amount of light coming in from the window over our heads made it so I could just barely see his profile. “What should I think about tomorrow morning?”

He looked over at me in the dark. “When? You mean before we go into the Council?”

“Yes—right as we’re walking in. I need something to think about so I won’t get all shaky and nervous.”

“You can think about what you want to do on our second date,” he suggested.

He sounded so utterly confident we would be having one that for a moment I believed it too. Then the doubt crept back in, and I bit my lip.

“Or,” he continued. “And maybe this is even better, you can think about how only a small fraction of the people in that room tomorrow want anything bad to happen to you. The Council is
not
against you, Addy—they’re being used by the Others, just like you are. Remember that—they would like nothing better than to find a way to rule in your favor tomorrow.”

“And if they can’t?”

“Then we go to Plan B. Gran’s boys are all out there tonight, staking out the Council meeting place, settling in so they’ll be ready for tomorrow. Just in case we need them. But I don’t think we will.”

I nodded. “You know, I think I finally figured out what this situation reminds me of,” I told him.

“What?”

“Do you know the King Arthur story? Arthur and Guinevere?”

I saw him frown slightly.

“Our situation reminds you of the most famous love triangle in all of human literature? I thought you said Nate was gay?”

I laughed. “He is. And it doesn’t remind me of the love story part of the Arthur legend—it reminds me of the end, the part after Arthur finds Guinevere and Lancelot together. Guinevere is captured by Arthur’s guards, but Lancelot gets away.”

“Punk.” Luc snorted his disgust for the knight who had left Guinevere behind.

“And Arthur is forced to put her on trial for treason because he’s so principled, so committed to the laws he created that he can’t make an exception, even for her.”

“Also a punk thing to do,” Luc commented, and I punched him in the arm.

“This was my favorite story when I was little,” I informed him. “You can’t possibly think every character in it is a ‘punk.’”

“Then don’t ask me what I think about Guinevere cheating on her husband with his best friend,” he advised.

I punched him again. “I’m trying to make a point here, and you are ruining it.”