Veiled (44 page)

I looked all around me,
trying to focus on one thing or another, but all my senses seemed
to be out of whack. Robyn I could sense, but every now and again, I
felt the presence of others who were not there. I searched the
sanctuary thoroughly, behind every bush and tree, bench or large
flower, and found no one.

“
Katie…there’s something
wrong,” I said, but Katie ignored me. “Robyn…can you hear
me?”

Robyn turned her head, and
this time she wasn’t smiling at all. A single tear slid down her
cheek. She was crying!

“
How—” I began but
couldn’t finish. How could she be crying, she was a
spirit!

“
Help me, Tess!” Robyn
pleaded as another tear formed in the corner of her eye.

*****

“
Listen, Alex, I tried to
tell her but she was determined to leave,” Dayspring said,
unconcerned.

Alex’s face was hard and
impassive.

“
We do this one by the
book. That means we stay in pairs, no one gets separated, ever,”
Kerubiel said to the small army of Sentinel and Herald spirits.
“Alex, you go with Dorian. Katie you are with Jase and Wes, you are
with Brandy. Any questions?”

No one said anything, so
they were all dismissed.

“
Wait!” Dayspring yelled.
“Alex, you can usually find her. How do you do it?” Her large honey
colored eyes looked expectantly at Alex.

“
I have tried that
already. I can’t seem to get a lock on her.” He shook his head with
dismay. “And I don’t know how it works, it usually just works! This
has never happened before.”

“
Try to think, how does it
work?” Dayspring insisted, betraying the first sign of worry.
Kerubiel put a hand on her back and gently rubbed it. He seemed to
suddenly realize what he was doing, and took his hand away, tucking
it behind his back.

“
Usually it’s quite
effortless, I think about her and…I just start moving toward her,
wherever that might be. It also seems to be attached to strong
feelings, so if she were in danger I would know…at least I have
known… in the past. But now, there’s nothing.”

“
We’ll find her, Alex,
don’t worry.” Katie squeezed his shoulder gently and looked at him
with a pained look. Dorian put his hand on Alex’s shoulder as well,
giving him a reassuring look.

“
Come on, we’ll start at
the last place she was seen.” Dorian nudged Alex. “You can’t blame
Dayspring. She had no way of knowing.”

“
I’m not so sure,” Alex
said under his breath as they turned to leave.

They flew in silence to the
same Gifts building where Tess was last seen. The two stopped and
asked all the same spirits Tess had asked not too long ago. The
professor was sitting behind his desk with the translating stones
attached to his head.

“
No…I’ve never seen anyone
meeting that description,” he said. He looked strangely like an
insect with those glasses attached to his head.

“
Wait a minute…maybe I
have…but I never talked to her. She was standing by the door the
whole time looking up and down the hallway. I spoke with the other
spirit that she was with.”

Alex and Dorian exchanged
puzzled looks.

“
Other spirit?” they asked
at the same time.

“
Yes…a very businesslike
spirit, a female…I forget her name.”

“
Robyn?” Alex asked, his
voice barely above a whisper.

The professor pursed his
lips up and thought about it, then shook his head. “Sorry, I just
don’t remember her name.”

“
But you remember seeing
Tess?”

“
Well…she matches the
description you gave me of her. She had long black hair and
striking gray-green eyes…I remember that because she looked right
at me for a moment…she must be a Discerner, because she was
scrutinizing me with those eyes of hers. It sort of unnerved me a
little, but I tried not to let it bother me. I should actually be
used to it by now. I have been invaded by Discerners who have been
looking for Suy.”

Alex and Dorian looked at
each other, and then thanked the professor. They left his
classroom, but stayed in that building, asking every spirit that
went in and out of it if they had noticed anything, but no one
had.

They stood like the
Sentinels they were by the entrance doors, looking at all the
incoming and outgoing spirits, and if they noticed anyone new, they
were stopped and interrogated.

Alex was too discouraged to
talk much, but after a while, he made his way across the great
entrance toward Dorian’s side.

“
This is ridiculous. How
long do we stand here, wasting time? Someone has to know something.
How can a spirit disappear unnoticed by everyone?”

Dorian shook his head.
“It’s too weird.” Then his face went stone hard, his eyes seemed to
glaze over and stare into something far away.

Alex tried to look in that
direction, but didn’t see whatever Dorian was looking
at.

“
What is…” he was cut
short by Dorian’s hand on his arm. Dorian continued to look at
whatever he was looking at, but said nothing.

After a long pause, Dorian
shook his head as if he were waking up from a deep
sleep.

“
I saw
something.”

“
Tess?” Alex said in a
desperate tone.

“
Maybe…I saw a place…the
entrance is like the entrance to a cave, its dark inside; the only
light is by lanterns and torches. Inside there are…alcoves? They
are made out of the rock, there are spirits standing in them—not
moving. There are other spirits there too. The ones that are not in
the alcoves are hooded.”

“
Cast-outs?”

“
No, it’s here, in
Heaven.”

“
What
continent?”

Dorian shook his head.
“Don’t know, I just saw the cave.”

“
OK, this is better than
nothing. Let’s call the others.”

* * * * *

Chapter 38

Agatha leaned in close to
Tess. “Well…well, isn’t it nice to have you here at last?” she
whispered in Tess’s ear. “I’m not sure how much of this
conversation you can hear, but some of it no doubt will reach you.”
She smiled venomously and stroked Tess’s hair with mock sympathy.
“I will give you the worst nightmares you can—no let me correct
that—I can imagine,” she said, and then began a string of lies and
deceptions.

“
I see you have seen my
new recruit.” Amanda lumbered in the small corridor, surprised to
see Agatha there already.

Agatha was slightly
irritated by the intrusion, but couldn’t afford to upset Amanda.
She had been working out very well lately.

“
Well done Amanda, you got
the best one yet!” Agatha praised Amanda with a winning smile. She
had actually grown to like Amanda, she was rough, dumb, and
obedient—all the things she liked in her subjects.

“
There’s a group of
Sentinels looking for this cave,” Eugenia announced as she came in
through the small opening.

“
They’ll never find this
place,” Agatha said with certainty, and moved out of the corridor.
She was starting to feel caged in, and she didn’t want be hooked up
to one of those devices again. When she tried one of those things
on, she didn’t like what she saw. She also knew very well that her
current status could change at any time. Amanda might be persuaded
to start taking orders from Eugenia again.

“
There are hundreds of
other cave openings just like this one in this canyon alone,
hundreds more in the nearby canyons. They will give up,” Agatha
said haughtily as she hurried out of the corridors where the
alcoves were. Once she was almost to the main chamber she felt
better, but annoyed by the fact that she couldn’t continue with her
torture.

“
I wouldn’t be so
confident if I were you,” Eugenia said, through gritted
teeth.

“
But you are not me!”
Agatha snarled, and then smiled. “As much as you would like to
be.”

Eugenia narrowed her eyes
and looked at Agatha through her snake-like slits. “Why would you
endanger the whole operation just for her?” Eugenia said, pointing
to the corridor, her voice filled with suspicion.

“
And how would having her
endanger the whole operation?” Eros said, coming to Agatha’s
rescue. He had been feeling particularly protective of Agatha
lately, but wasn’t sure what it all meant.

“
I’ve been tagging these
spirits. They didn’t start getting suspicious until she went
missing.” Eugenia pointed to where Tess’s form was. “We agreed when
we started doing this that we would keep a low profile, and that
holding spirits like her would attract too much
attention.”

“
You thought that, I
didn’t,” Agatha said defiantly. Amanda moved to stand in front of
Agatha, ready to shield her from Eugenia.

Agatha moved her roughly
out of the way, and added defiantly, “Bringing spirits like her
down is exactly our plan. They pose the most threat to us in life,
and so they need to stay inert here for as long as possible. We
went over this already, why can’t you understand it?”

“
I understand perfectly,
but why her, out of all the Heralds and Sentinels you could have
taken, why this particular one? You’ve been after her from the
beginning. Is it that she almost convinced you to be good, so you
want to keep her quiet?” Eugenia asked with a self-satisfied smile
and walked closer to Tess’s unconscious form.

Amanda walked closer to
Eugenia as if ready to snap her in two. Eros, too, moved closer to
Agatha, but she moved them both out of her way and came to face
Eugenia.

“
I don’t owe you any
explanations but I will give you this much. I hate Tess, and I love
to see her suffer, or at the very least see her here inert, wasting
her time—which happens to be one of the things she hates the
most.”

“
The question still
stands—why?” Eugenia said in a deep low voice.

Agatha knew that engaging
Eugenia was dangerous, so she simply smiled, turned around and
left. Eugenia was right of course. Tess had the ability to reach
Agatha, an ability that she hoped would go both ways.
Tess knows me so well…she knew just what to say to
me at that vulnerable time,
Agatha thought
with bitterness.
Well…maybe I know just
what to say to her. I am much more experienced at this type of
thing. And if I could turn her, we could act in one accord—we could
be unstoppable. I remember now, we used to be one, she got part of
our gift and I got the other. She can read minds and I can persuade
them, persuasion can be a powerful tool…We were meant to exist
together, and that is just what we’ll do,
Agatha thought with resolve as she glided away from
Eugenia.

The others followed her out
of the room and Eugenia stood alone facing the alcoves. She studied
Tess’s face, and she seemed to be at peace and wondered what games
Tess’s mind was playing on her.

Eugenia was certain that
her assessment was correct. Tess had somehow convinced Agatha to
turn on her master. She must have also had her convinced to be
good, or at least try to be good, because for a while there, both
Agatha and Eros were going to Earth prep classes and they were not
going there as spies. She didn’t care what they were saying now,
they were trying to be good back then. She couldn’t blame them. She
had been tempted for a while to try it their way, but it didn’t
last long. After one do-gooder Earth prep class Eugenia had had
enough. She had not been chosen as a spy, she volunteered herself
as one, and was going to prove to the Second One her
usefulness.

Eugenia touched Tess’s hair
and studied her for a while. Regardless of what Tess meant to
Agatha, she and the other Sentinels were too conspicuous to snatch.
Soon there would be a lot of Angels searching for them, and whoever
was responsible for this operation was going to be in big trouble
with the Eternals. Eugenia didn’t want to be here when that went
down, but she couldn’t just walk away. The rest of the Fallen
Angels would put all the blame on her if she did.

Then it occurred to her. In
fact, Agatha had done something earlier that gave her the idea now.
It was perfect! Eugenia would not only manage to get herself off
the hook, but also have Agatha dethroned and humiliated in the
process.

*****

“
I don’t know how!” I said
to Robyn, and then looked back down at Katie, who got up and walked
toward me indignantly.

“
Why are you trying to
take her away, she should stay here and so should you!” she yelled,
and her face was contorted beyond recognition.

I sensed her anger, it was
definitely there, but it was odd at the same time. It wasn’t her
anger. It was someone else’s.

I didn’t want to stay here
any longer. I looked at Robyn and begged her to get up and come
with me. But she just laid there, tears streaming down her
cheeks.

“
I’m sorry, Tess, it’s my
fault, I brought you here,” she cried silently.