Veiled (31 page)

Yes
, they say.
Yes. We are infinite. You will be too.

They. Demons. What was its name again?

Suddenly the demon stops, a buzz roaring from its body like hostile flies.

What is your name?
I ask, my voice sounding hollow.

My mother holds my hand.

She knows we are running out of time.

It will do you no good to remember
, it says.

Jay.

Jay.

I was seeing his face flash through my head. My heart. I could feel him, feel him tugging at me the way my mother was earlier. Golden rope. Effortlessly strong. Alive and ageless and tying us together.

It is over
, the demons says.

Sickle blades appear in its hands.

And behind its shoulder I see a shadow.

Large, solid.

It comes closer.

Closer still.

The demon doesn’t notice.

Waning candlelight illuminates the sculpted planes of Jay’s face.

Beauty in the darkness.

His eyes lock with mine and I don’t have to question, I just have to trust.

What had Pippa said to me in that cell? That I couldn’t even trust myself.

I had to trust my heart.

My true heart.

My inner compass.

I reach down inside and give it a push.

It spins around, pointing at Jay, glowing truth.

It’s him.

And I know the demon’s name.

“Legion!” I cry out, my voice sharp and unnaturally loud in this tunnel, bouncing off the miles of bones.

The demon stills, surprised. If I could describe its face I’d say it was hearing its name for the first time and trying to figure out who the hell Legion was.

Then it bares its teeth at me, grey gravestones in a row.

But it doesn’t matter.

Jay comes flying at the demon from behind.

Tackles it to the ground.

For a moment Jay is lost in the folds of the demon’s cloak, only his hair poking through, here, there, here, there, shimmery red against black as they roll and tumble.

They fight and it’s enough for me to yell at my mom to move.

She goes up the ladder first, knows there is no time to argue.

She climbs, she’s halfway there, and she’s heading to darkness, a roof we can’t see. But there has to be a way to open the manhole. There has to be.

Hope. Keep the hope.

I grab the rungs to see Jay’s hands on the demon’s throat, covered in black tar, before the demon fights back, waving the sickles. They slice into Jay’s arms, his shoulders, his beautiful face, blood flying in arcs. If he slices off Jay’s head, he might truly be done for. No wonder he never gave me a straight answer on that one. He probably didn’t dream he’d be beheaded anytime soon.

Ada, go!
Jay yells without looking at me.
I’ll see you on the other side.

I pause, only one foot up, not wanting to leave him. My heart wants to stay with him. My instincts want to leave. My instincts believe in putting survival first. My heart believes that you can’t survive without love.

But I do have love. I always have. And one of my loves is above me, making a frantic dash to freedom.

I start climbing, my feet slipping a few times, the ladder growing more and more slippery. Soon the black tar that was on the demon is now coating my hands and it takes everything to lift them up and go to the next rung.

Finally I’m up high enough that Jay and the demon are just two small figures surrounded by bones and I know that only one will survive. I also know that it’s unlikely either will die.

“I’ve got it,” my mother cries out from above. “I feel it!”

“Push!” I yell at her.

“I’m trying! There’s a film, like a gel. But I can put my hands through it.”

The Veil between this world and the next.

“Hurry!” I tell her, feeling like our luck is running out even if Jay is helping. Hell itself will do what it can to ensure we’re bugs under the glass.

“There!” my mother cries out. “I think I got it! I think . . .”

The slide of metal on concrete, so rough and grating I can feel it in my fillings.

Light bathes the both of us, filtered by the portal, and my soul sings. If it had wings, it would fly high into those precious clouds and never ever return. It would live in the stars and eat stardust. To say I’m elated is an understatement.

Then the light is momentarily covered as my mom climbs out of the hole. She disappears. The light comes back. I hear her gulping for air, out of sight.

Her hand appears. Then her face, her blonde hair hanging down.

“Hurry Ada!”

And I do.

Just a few rungs.

Just a few feet.

Then the ladder begins to shake below me.

Something large rushing up it, in hot pursuit.

Oh shit.

My skull buzzes with frantic panic as I shove my hands through the Veil, waving them for my mother on the other side. In these seconds I feel like a hot blade will slice me at the ankles and I’ll fall into a gaping mouth, a feast for Legion and all inside.

“Mom!” I yell.

Nothing. Then I gasp in relief as she grabs my hands and pulls me upward. My feet kick at the rungs, trying to get out, then the manhole is digging into my stomach and I’m bring dragged across hot ground.

“Something is coming,” I yell, trying to get my feet out of the way. “Get the cover on.”

My mother picks it up, about to slide it over when a bloodied hand comes out of the hole, waving at us, trying to grasp the edge.

We both scream.

Then Jay’s head pops up, gulping in air.

With ease he pulls himself out of the manhole and quickly takes the cover from my mom, flashing her an apologetic smile before sliding it on.

There is too much to take in, too much to say. I hold my temples and rock on my heels, trying to put reality back together.

“Are you sure that will hold them?” my mother asks. “They’ve used it before.”

“Reinforcements will be here,” he says. He glances at me but I only stare back blankly. He looks back to my mother and holds out his hand, bloodied and all. “By the way, I’m Jay.”

My mother takes it. “I know,” she says with an approving smile, giving it a shake. “I’m Ingrid.” She looks around her which in turn makes me finally take in my surroundings. The place on the other side of Hell.

It’s downtown Portland. The Pearl district.

Early morning it seems. Not a soul stirring except for us, which is good since the three of us just came out from the sewer.

The smells—the river, the urine, the trees—nothing has never smelled so sweet.

Air has never felt so fucking good.

“I hate to complain,” my mother tells him. “But I don’t quite belong here either.” She gives me a sympathetic look. “Pumpkin, I wish I didn’t have to leave you in the end, especially after all this, but this isn’t home. I have a home. And I have someone waiting for me.”

Pippa.

I nod. I know.

It’s tragic all over again.

But I know.

“Come with me,” Jay says. He takes her a few feet away from me and waves his hand at the air until it wavers. A sight so familiar to me now. So many veils. So many layers. So many worlds.

“We’ll go in together,” he tells her. He looks to me. “You stay there. Jacob is on his way.”

But I want to go too.

I almost say it but I know my mom wouldn’t allow it. It just hurts so much to lose her all over again.

“You saved me, Ada,” she says to me. “Don’t forget that. I won’t.”

I can’t even speak in response. Everything in me is choking in grief. I know it’s best if she leaves right away, that it’s the safest thing for her, but part of me hoped that she could spend some time with me here. Maybe even in the Veil. That we could be with each other, as mother and daughter, as friends, for just a little bit longer. Part of me thinks this is over too soon. Just a few more days, a few more hours, a few more minutes.

Please.

But I should be so grateful that I got any time at all. And I am. Most people don’t get this chance.

But it still kills me all the same.

She’s about to step through with Jay when she comes over, grabs my face and kisses me on the forehead.

“I love you,” she tells me. “And I’ll be back to make sure you remember.”

The tears cloud my vision. She steps into the Veil with Jay—it glows brighter than the sun—and then they are gone and I’m alone.

All alone on an empty Portland street.

With Hell right below me.

And demons at the door.

“Not anymore.”

I spin around and see Jacob standing on top of the manhole.

There’s no point asking where he came from. He sifted in here like the best of them. Probably could have used his help in Hell though.

You did okay, princess
, Jay’s disembodied voice comes through my head, like it’s lifted up a sheet of the Veil. Then it’s gone.

I wave my hand dismissively at Jacob and sit down on the curb. I stare dumbly at the bricks on the street, trying to find some sanity in them.

Jacob sits down beside me. “It will take you time to process what happened. For most people I’d say ignorance is bliss but not you. You’ll take what you saw and you will learn from it. And you will be stronger.”

“Jay should be back,” I say feebly. “He has my mother.”

“He took your mother home, where she belongs, where she’s happy,” he says. “He’s her guide for a short while. We’ll call this a loaner.”

“But he will be back, won’t he?” I pause. “As himself?”

He nods. “One would hope so.” He gets up and pulls me to my feet. “Dawn and Sage are on their way over to take you home. I have to stay here and really make sure this bloody thing is sealed.” He sighs. “Such a thankless job, really.” He gestures to the street, the buildings, the one old man walking in the distance. “If people only knew the trouble we go through to keep the world safe . . .”

“We?” I repeat.

He grins at me. “Ada Palomino—demon slayer.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Two weeks later

“You have one dark, twisted mind, you know that?”

Jorge is leaning over my shoulder, peering down at the sketch I’m furiously trying to finish before class is over.

I ignore him, my tongue sticking out in concentration as I try and get the shading just right. He doesn’t say anything else, just keeps watching me as he always does. I’m starting to think Jorge has taken a non-sexual shine to me. He’d just moved to Portland with his older brother a week ago from San Diego and still has that fish out of water look to him, which dissolves when he’s around me, turning into a whip-smart attitude full of withering commentary.

Finally I’m done, holding the paper up so the both of us can see it properly. “I wouldn’t say it’s dark and twisted,” I muse, inspecting every mark my pencil’s made.

“Honey, there is no point in denying it,” he says. “You’re dark. You’re twisted. If you didn’t have Courtney Love’s hair, you’d fit right in with Wednesday Adams.”

“Oh please,” I say, giving him a look. “You don’t even know who Courtney Love is.”

“I know the bitch shot her husband and has a horrible bleach job,” he says with an exaggerated shrug.

My eyes narrow and for a moment I think he freezes. I think I’ve done it again, the thing that’s only worked on Jay and demons.

But Jorge quickly laughs, swatting at my shoulder. “You know I’m joking, girlfriend. Your hair is preciosa.”

Even so, I see a glimmer of fear in his eyes. I feel bad. I need to be a bit more careful. After spending some time in Hell, I’m not quite sure what I`m capable of anymore.

Case in point: my current sketch is a dark purple evening gown made of sequins, shiny black tar and charred animal bones. A sexy version of a demon cloak if I ever saw one. I’ve been drawing a whole line of designs based on what I saw in Hell. I guess to some it would creepy, not to mention morbid, to fixate on these details I would rather soon forget. But for me it’s more of a coping mechanism. Turning the horrible things I saw into something I understand, even something beautiful.

“What are you doing after this?” I ask him. We’ve only know each other a week really—it’s been ten days since school started—but I feel it’s time I solidified this into a friendship. Jorge is the only guy in our class and the rest of the girls are nice but all local, so they all have their cliques. I may be local too but I’m still like a boat without an anchor. I’ve made peace with the fact that Amy and Tom don’t talk to me anymore (and Jessie’s emails have become distant at best) and the only real tie I have to anyone is Jay, who I haven`t even seen since it all happened.

And believe me, it hurts every fucking day.

“I have to work,” Jorge says. Then he lights up. “But hey, tomorrow night I’m making dinner for Roberto. Come on by. Roberto will get us wine and beer as well.”

So lame. I can go to Hell (not to mention vote) but I can’t buy alcohol. In some ways the past month has made me feel old beyond my years and it’s like the real world is still struggling to catch up.

“That sounds like a date,” I tell him with a wink.

“Easy now,” he says with a discerning shake of his head. He runs his hands seductively down his chest and abs. “You may wish you can have all this but until you grow a penis, we’ll be staying friends.”

I roll my eyes and promise I’ll be there. Also promise I won`t be growing a penis. Then I wrap up my stuff and head for the bus stop, going home.

Yeah, a lot has happened in the last two weeks since I stepped back from the underworld (and yeah, I know I keep mentioning it but it’s a hard thing to just gloss over). Mainly good things. Really only one bad one.

But first the good.

My mother is in heaven. Still. I mean, she’s there permanently. Not in the Veil and definitely not in Hell. When Jay took her off into the light, she stayed in that light.

I know so because I’ve seen her ghost.

Just once.

But it was enough.

It was a few days after and I was lying in bed, doing my usual scroll through Instagram and rolling my eyes at the drama on my feed when she appeared in Pinkie. I felt her before I even saw her, a sugary hit of her lilac perfume, a warm glow to the room.

I turned my head and saw her sitting there in the chair like she used to. She was wearing a long white dress, like a nightgown someone out of the Victorian era would have worn.

She didn’t say anything to me.

She just smiled.

In her eyes she told me everything I needed to know.

She was safe.

She was thankful.

And she loved me.

Naturally I burst into tears, completely overwhelmed by the emotions that had been waiting inside. By the time my eyes stopped being a veil of tears, she was gone.

All that was left was the scent of her perfume and this intense feeling of calm, like the room had been blanketed with morphine.

A half-hour later I got a call from Perry.

She had seen her in her kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee.

Dex saw her too. So did the dog.

She didn’t say anything to Perry either but Perry knew it was the first time she’d really reached out to her, to tell her she was sorry.

It ruined Perry as well, making her collapse into Dex’s arms. More tears.

The next morning my dad had brought it up over breakfast.

He had seen her hovering by his window in the middle of the night.

And then my father broke down in tears.

Three for three.

He’d said that this was the first time he was ever really certain that she was in heaven. I couldn’t believe my father, the theology professor, had carried this unsaid fear inside him all this time. No wonder the grief over her death seemed to destroy him in more ways than one.

So there was that. And in my heart I knew she was safe.

The dreams stopped too, at least the nightmares did.

I didn’t see any more demons.

More importantly, I didn’t feel them.

And school has become a wonderful distraction. It feels good—it feels right—to head there nearly every day and work on something I love. It’s hard, my teachers can be frustrating at times and I know it’s only going to get more intense as the semester goes on, but I’m up for the challenge. After everything I’ve been through, this is a walk in the park.

But I still can’t say I’m happy.

Because there’s still a huge chunk of my heart missing, and the man who has it hasn’t been around lately.

I know Jay is still next door, at least I sense him. But ever since we got back, he’s been gun shy. Avoiding me. Sometimes I think I’ll catch a glimpse of him getting out of the Mercedes, other times I think I spot him through the Knightlys’ windows. I’m too afraid to go after him though.

Besides, Jacob warned me.

He showed up at the door a week ago and asked if I would go for a walk with him. It wasn’t exactly an exciting concept. For as charming as Jacob is, there’s still something about him that keeps me on my toes. He’s not malicious but he’s definitely not to be trusted. I’m pretty sure you can’t be in his position—whatever that position is, King of the Jacobs?—and not be adept at manipulation.

We walked down toward the lake, the September air feeling fresh, even though the heat of summer had yet to wane.

“I want to tell you I’m proud of you,” he’d said, flashing me that crooked smile. Even in the hot sun he was wearing a tacky 70’s suit. “I’ve been to Hell myself and it’s not a pretty place.” He paused. “We’ve been monitoring you from afar, to make sure there’s been no . . . after-affects.”

“What?” I asked. “Monitoring me?”

“Me. Jay. Casually dropping in on your dreams, getting a read.”

“Gee, that’s not totally invasive or anything,” I’d said, though my mind was transfixed on Jay. All this time he’d been watching me. He really was here.

“You should be used to it,” he said. “It’s part of who you are now. We had to make sure you came back alone, that your mind and soul hadn’t been compromised. You’re clean, Ada. And you’re ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“The next step.”

“And what is the next step?”

“You’ll know when you’re ready,” was his cryptic answer.

“Will Jay be there? When I’m ready?”

I feared the truth.

Jacob sighed, his chest rattling like it was something he’d been keeping inside for a long time. “I don’t know,” he said reluctantly. “To be honest with you Ada, I’m disappointed in the boy. There was a lot riding on this, on you, and he could have easily made a bloody mess of it all.”

“Then you know about Silas. About us.”

“Yes. I know. And I’d warned him about it, repeatedly. Some good that did. I guess there’s just enough human still in him to succumb to temptation. That’s the thing about Jacobs. We aren’t perfect. But we sure as hell should be.”

“But is he still . . . mine?”

Jacob gave me an odd look. “He’ll always be yours so as long as you need him. I’m not transferring him, if that’s what you’re wondering about.”

“You can do that?”

He flashed me a grin. “I can do a lot of things, love.”

“Then why is he staying away from me?” I asked.

“Because he needs to for the time being, to go back to the way he was, to forget you in . . . that kind of way. You don’t need him right now anyway, you’ve got the rest of your life to attend to. You can’t just sit around and wait for demons to pop on through, you have to go on with your future, day by day.”

To forget you in that kind of way.

His words slammed into me like a sledgehammer.

And today, on the bus ride home, it’s all I can think about.

Jacob had said I couldn’t sit around and wait for demons to pop up.

But I was waiting for Jay.

Waiting for him to come back to me.

Waiting for him to act like I’m nothing more to him than some pupil he has to watch over and train. A glorified babysitter.

I’m both dying to see him again, to be near him, and absolutely terrified that I won’t survive it. That it will hurt too much to mean nothing at all.

I get home to an empty house—my dad’s gone to visit his brother on the coast for the weekend—and sneak a bit of his wine before heading up to my room.

I step inside.

Nearly drop the glass.

Jay is standing in the corner, idly flipping through some of the books on my shelf.

The very sight of him knocks the breath from my lungs, like I’ve been winded by a blow.

He raises his head to look at me. His eyes reach mine, burning with a familiarity I thought I’d never see again. I’m immediately engulfed in his gaze, fevered with heat, my heart lurching heavily against my rib cage, as if trying to go straight to him, where it belongs.

Every part of me aches, not just with a hunger of the body, but a yearning of the soul. I feel pulled toward him, compelled, and it takes all my strength to stay planted where I am. If he has to stay strong, then I have to too. The last thing I want to be is some lovesick, sex-starved psychopath throwing myself at him, no matter how right it feels.

“Hey,” he says, voice so low and gravely that I feel it inside me. He nods at the wine. “Am I interrupting something?”

“Only my happy hour,” I manage to say, amazed how calm my voice is.

He smiles sourly. “Sorry to make it unhappy then. I didn’t mean to just show up…”

“No,” I quickly say, crossing an arm across my chest, not daring to come closer, not trusting myself. “It’s okay. I’m . . . I’m really glad to see you.”

He nods impassively. I can’t tell if I’m having an impact on him or not. If this is hard on him at all, he’s not showing it. He’s back to looking stern and borderline surly, like a sculpture of marble or ice, his jawbones and brow chiseled, his eyes cold and empty.

But they aren’t, are they? The more I stare at him, the more he starts to fidget, his composure slowly unraveling until he has to look away.

He clears his throat, running is fingers along the tops of my hardcovers. “I heard you talked to Jacob. He told you why I’ve been away.”

“He did. Can’t say I was happy about it.”

He licks his lips, tapping his fingers against one book. It has his rapt attention. “I failed you when I shouldn’t have. The one place I should have never brought you to to begin with. I let what I felt for you, what I shared with you, complicate everything. And that’s on me. If something had happened to you, I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.”

“You would have gotten your memory erased, I’m sure.”

“No. I would have lived with it, as punishment.”

The gravity to his voice tells me he’s not kidding around. I sigh. “Look, stop beating yourself up over it. You saved us in the end. Without you, I’d be dead and damned, as would my mother.”

I’m not sure if he’s taking it in or not. His eyes are still focused on the book, blazing with contempt for himself.