Veiled (38 page)

“
Well…what does it say?” I
asked impatiently.

“
I’m Dane’s Guardian
Angel,” Katie said with a giddy smile.

“
And I’m Valerie’s,” Alex
said, astonished.

As they celebrated the fact
that they would get to watch over Dane and Valerie, I looked back
toward the Veil. That thick wall of whiteness before me looked so
harmless, yet I was very much afraid of it. The moment I stepped
through it, I would lose everything I knew—every memory, every
thought, every ounce of knowledge. What was I if not a compilation
of my knowledge? What would be left of me once the Veil took it
all? Who was I really?

I’ve never professed to
have premonitions, but at that moment I knew with certainty that
the next time I came to the Veil it would be for my own
departure.

* * * * *

Chapter 33

Between classes I snuck off
to see Alex, but once I was done taking all of them, I got assigned
to work as a Sentinel with another spirit, so my escapades to Earth
had to stop. My partner’s name was Robyn and she reminded me a lot
of Valerie for some reason. She wasn’t quite as cynical as Valerie
was, but…there was something about her that just reminded me of
her.

We had been assigned to
find the missing Sentinel named Suy I’d heard about earlier. Robyn
took this mission very seriously because some of her clan members
had disappeared mysteriously as well, and I hated the thought that
one of my own clan members might have been responsible for
this.

Ever since I paired up with
her, the minions that Agatha sent to follow me were nowhere to be
found. Robyn suggested that perhaps they knew we were coming after
them, so they were laying low.

Being a Sentinel was great!
We had great freedom, and we could follow our own leads and to go
anywhere—here in this spirit world, Earth, or anywhere else for
that matter. We started our investigation at the Gift of
Interpretations building from where the Sentinel had disappeared,
not long ago.

“
Tess! Tess! Please answer!
I can’t leave my post, you have to come here I need your
help!”
Alex’s voice sounded strained and
pleading through the calling stone.

“
What’s wrong Alex?”
I linked with him right away.

“
It’s Valerie. She…”
he paused, unable to continue with words, but I
saw what his mind was showing me. It was Valerie, passed out on the
floor of her bathroom, and blood all over.

“
I have to go,” I told
Robyn as I started flying toward the first window or door that
would get me to Earth. “It’s an emergency…I’ll tell you later,” I
told her as I flew away.

“
Take all the time you
need,” she responded. “You know where I’ll be.”

“
I’m on my way,”
I told Alex, afraid to ask the next
question.

Since Alex had been called
as a Guardian Angel to Valerie, and Katie was over Dane, we had
been able to put a pretty good generation line together. Russell
and Nancy were Valerie’s parents, and that meant that Alex would be
Valerie’s son. So now the stakes of his job had gotten a lot
higher. He saw Valerie in a whole new light and seeing her safe
through adulthood was a task he took very seriously.

Valerie had been a spirited
child. She felt things too intensely and she always seemed to be
either one extreme or the other. If she was happy she was
exuberant, if she was sad, the world was coming to an end. But
this…what could this mean?

“
She did sign up for a
special mission,”
Alex said, his voice
hollow.

“
That’s right! I wonder if
this has something to do with that.”

“
It seems unlikely. She
hasn’t displayed any signs of…major problems,”
he said, dismayed.

“
That we know of. Do you
remember the Special Missions class? Remember the long list of
mental illnesses that were hard—almost impossible to detect? What
if she has one of those? What if she’s always suffered from
something silently and now it got too hard for her. What if she is
tired of fighting on her own?”
I said as I
made my way to them.

“
You have a point. We are
at the hospital, Tess. I’ll follow the doctors around. You stay
with Russell and Nancy, they are freaking out.”

I told him I would and we
disconnected.

Once I got to the hospital
the sight of Nancy was too much to bear. Her beautiful blue eyes
were bloodshot, puffy and red.

Hovering next to a pillar
was a Cast-out. It was odd to see one so still. Usually they moved
around so fast, wreaking havoc as they went. Her dark gray, wispy,
fog-like tendrils floated out of her like newly extinguished
flames. She looked exultant and daring as she fixed her gaze on me.
As soon as she made sure she had my attention, she disappeared into
thin air.

I watched the spot where
she had been. I had recognized her, her name was Joanna and I was
sure that she was behind Valerie’s problems, that’s what she meant
by having me look at her—she was bragging.

I felt something vicious
and sneering pass by me, and I knew she was still
around.

“
What did you say to her?”
I demanded. She paused for an instant right in front of me and
looked like a cobra ready to strike.

“
What do you want from me,
Tess?” she hissed in my ear. “You can’t stop me from roaming these
halls.”

“
What did you say to her?”
I repeated, my voice was low and steady with an edge to
it.

“
What, to Valerie?” she
sneered.

“
Yes, to Valerie,” I said,
holding my ground as the shadow twisted around my form.

“
Nothing, just the usual.
It was easy really…too easy. It was boring,” she said
nonchalantly.

I turned around and left
her, and she didn’t pursue. She was telling the truth. Even with
all the darkness that surrounded Joanna I could still discern the
truth in her statement.

Back at the waiting room,
Russell held Nancy tightly against his chest, making it impossible
for her to move or yell. She struggled against his grip for a
while, and then finally gave up, and she began to sob.

I hurried to their side and
put my arms around them. I assured them that everything would be
OK, that Valerie had an important mission to fulfill in her life
and that she would finish it. I could tell that they felt
something, because Nancy’s sobs slowed and Russell’s hard
expression softened.

I saw Alex coming around
the corner, following a grave looking Doctor. “They think that she
needs psychiatric help. That she is suicidal and needs to be
institutionalized until they can be sure that she will be of no
threat to herself or others.” Alex’s voice sounded heavy with
dread. “Tess, this is horrible! And I thought that watching Henry
slowly numb his brains to death was bad! Valerie! Valerie, Tess! Of
all people, Valerie ends up being suicidal? I never saw it coming,
not for a second!” He dropped his head on my shoulder and held me
tightly.

“
No one did,” I added,
trying to soothe him.

We glided back to Valerie’s
room. She was attached to all kinds of tubes and her left wrist had
a thick bandage over it. His guilt over letting this happen to
Valerie on his watch was more than he could stand, and we silently
stayed linked while we watched the course of events
unfold.

A week later, Valerie was
being admitted to a Psychiatric Hospital. Still we watched, as a
grief stricken Russell and a frail looking Nancy settled their only
daughter into her new room.

No one spoke much those
days, so I indulged Alex in what everyone was feeling and not
sharing. Valerie’s thoughts were a bit groggy from the medication
they had her on; but now and then a thought would escape and I was
able to piece together a general feeling—sorrow. Sorrow for the
heartache she caused her parents and sorrow for her unexplainable
thoughts. She tried hard not to think of that day, her feelings
were too fresh and she knew that there was no way to fix that now.
All she knew was that she would hurt her parents with her death,
and she would be miserable for ever if she stayed as she was. She
searched for answers in her head, but none came, she felt
trapped.

Something had to give,
something had to happen and she hoped that she would find these
answers here. But these hopes were shattered the minute she stepped
through that door and saw who she would be spending the summer
with. Panic choked her as she walked the white halls and the other
residents looked back at her with long stares.

“
What if I turn out just
like them? What if they say I am crazy and leave me here to
rot?”
she thought, and her thoughts
started to race so fast that I couldn’t keep up. She wouldn’t
finish one thought before another one would begin. Her feelings,
mood and thoughts made no sense at all after that.

Alex shook his
head.
“Why did the Eternals have to assign
me to her? They should have sent you instead. This would have never
happened if you had been there. You would have known that there was
something wrong with her and they would have been able to do
something about it sooner.”

“
That’s not true. I have
been here off and on, and I never saw this,”
I corrected.

Valerie’s long dark hair
hung limply on either side of her pale face. She had dark circles
under her eyes and the bandage underneath her shirt bulged enough
to be noticed by all there. It was the dead giveaway of the
suicidal patients.

Alex was in no mood to talk
to any of the other spirits who roamed the halls, much like we did.
They must have gotten the hint from the scowl on his face because
they all glided around us, leaving us undisturbed. We hovered close
to Valerie following her every step, until she finally sat down and
slouched in an overstuffed chair that overlooked the
gardens.

“
Hard to believe this is
the same girl who not too long ago was an Angel, helping other
mortals sort out their own sordid lives,” Alex said out loud, his
voice grave.

“
She’s in there somewhere,
she just needs to find that Valerie,” I added with
confidence.

We watched and followed
Valerie for another week. She talked to no one, made no comments
during group sessions and only gave monosyllabic answers to her
psychiatrist during their one-on-one meetings. I told Alex that she
wasn’t being stubborn. She was just afraid to say the wrong thing
and be made to stay there longer. Her emotions were a range of
highs and lows in such a short period of time that she never really
knew how she felt half the time.

On Sunday, she grew anxious
over the impending visit of her parents. This anxiety caused her to
fidget quite a bit. Suddenly an itch developed on her thumb, right
next to the nail. She attacked that itch until her thumb bled. Then
the itch moved on to the other thumb and she started on that one as
well, and before too long all her fingers were bleeding.

She had been pacing in the
common area back and forth, looking at the grounds in front of the
facility. Her thoughts were racing, yet she didn’t finish any of
them. Suddenly she realized that her fingers felt moist and sticky.
She looked down and with horror saw that her hands were
bloody.

Oh crap!
she thought.
This looks
great! If they ever doubted I was a nut job—this will prove
it.
Valerie hurried to the bathroom and
rinsed her hands under the tap. She pulled a fresh napkin from the
dispenser and patted her hands dry, taking special care to absorb
the blood from her fingertips.

She put pressure on them to
stop the bleeding and then hurried down the hall to catch a nurse
for a bandage. But she stopped half way down; realizing that if all
her fingers were bandaged it would look too conspicuous. So she
settled on air drying them, hoping that the offense would look
minor and no one would notice.

However, when Nancy came to
greet her, the first thing she noticed were the fingers. Her
training as a nurse gave her an edge that most mothers might not
possess. She had quickly scanned her daughter for signs of any
outward danger, and noticed the fresh wounds on her
hands.

Nancy said nothing though.
Instead she greeted her warmly and walked her to the gardens where
Russell was spreading a blanket under a willow.

“
We thought it was a good
day for a picnic, so we brought tons of junk food,” Nancy explained
with a smirk. Valerie said nothing, she had gotten used to being
quiet.

Russell gave her his
customary bear hug, lifting her off the ground and dangling her a
bit, and for a moment she forgot where she was.

This visit did her good,
and Valerie started to feel like herself again. They didn’t avoid
the dreaded subject. They talked about it, deciding that being open
would be the best thing, even if it was painful. Russell assured
his daughter that he had heard and seen it all—in the Navy and at
war—and that her problems were nothing new to him. Nancy stroked
her hair and reassured her of her love.