The Veil (12 page)

I nodded slowly. I often forgot Emily’s parents died when she was four and she was adopted. Like me, she wasn’t one to talk about her real parents.

Lucas continued. “I spent the first couple days of school watching you both very carefully, trying to figure out which one of you was the daughter of Thomas and Margaret Prescott. And, as you’ve probably figured out, I chose wrong.”

“You chose Emily,” I said, stating the obvious.

“Yes, I’m embarrassed to admit I did.”

“Why?” I was dying to know his reason, even though I could hardly blame him for hoping the most beautiful girl in school was the one he’d been sent to protect. Suddenly, I wondered how disappointed he’d been when he realized it had been me all along.

“I had a number of reasons for thinking Emily was the one I was looking for,” he said evasively. “None of those matter now, though. And I was never positive I had the right person.” He bent his head down suddenly, and a grin spread over his face. “And then the cougar jumped though the cheerleader’s Hula-Hoop. Emily didn’t even flinch, but you started screaming bloody murder. That’s when I knew I’d made a mistake.”

“You can’t blame me for screaming. I was totally shocked.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t seen the cougar before. She wanders around the school quite a bit.”

“That’s an interesting question,” I agreed. “Why
haven’t
I seen it—her? Or anything else in the Annorasi world before a couple of days ago?”

He shrugged. “Like I said, you’re the first half human, half
Annorasi on record. Maybe your human half delayed the development of your Annorasi skills. I wasn’t even entirely sure you’d be able to see beyond the veil last night. It’ll be interesting to see what other abilities you develop.”

That thought terrified me for a moment, as though there were a variety of terrible diseases I could possibly contract, and I could do nothing but wait to see which one hit me.

Under the cover of my thoughts, Lucas reached into the picnic basket and pulled out two sandwiches. He offered one to me, but I shook my head. He shrugged, put one away, and began eating the other.

I let him chew for a while before I interrupted him again. “Lucas, doesn’t it seem a little bit weird to you that I’m the first—the only—half human, half Annorasi?”

“No,” he said, his mouth full.

“Why not?” I demanded, sitting forward on the table, my blood suddenly pumping excitedly. For some reason, it felt very important to argue this point. “I find it kind of hard to believe my parents were the first Annorasi-slash-human pair to . . .” I trailed off; my enthusiasm had led me to a very embarrassing place.

“To get busy?” Lucas offered, smiling as I blushed. Then he got serious again, and sat forward as well, setting his half-eaten sandwich on the table. “You only think that because you have
no notion
how seriously the Annorasi take this issue, Addy. Trust me, human and Annorasi relationships are carefully monitored, and even if they weren’t, the Annorasi are very principled people. I’m not wrong about this . . . your mother was the first Annorasi to break the rules in a very, very long time. That’s why it was such a big deal. That’s why there was a war fought over it.”

I nodded, shivering at the reminder of the ruin on the island. The thought continued to nag at me; I couldn’t dismiss it as easily as Lucas had, but I shoved it aside to ponder later. “So, now what? Now that you found me, what happens now?”

Lucas looked over at me for a long moment. “Well, like I said, I’m your Guardian. It’s my job not only to protect you from the Others, but also to teach you how to protect yourself. If you’ll let me.”

“Let you?”

“Yes. I think your Gran has you fairly well protected already, at least at home, but I’d like to make you even safer. From now on, assuming you agree, of course, I’ll be with you whenever you leave the house. You don’t have to change anything about your life. You just have to give me some space in it. And every now and then, let me help you to develop your Annorasi abilities.”

“Like last night?”

“Yes. Only from now on, we can stay at sea level, if you prefer.”

He was waiting for me to say yes. I could tell that he was. But I hesitated, and my hesitation confused him.

“Is this . . . I mean, is this all right with you?” He asked, his beautiful eyes suddenly uncertain.

I was definitely starting to lose it. I mean, here Lucas Stratton was asking me if I would mind spending every waking minute with him from now on, and I was
hesitating
? What was
wrong
with me?

“What about Emily?” I heard myself ask.

Lucas stiffened a little bit. “I’ve already taken care of that.”

“What do you mean?” But then I knew exactly what he meant. Incredulous, I croaked out, “You broke up with her?”

“Yes. Last night, after I dropped you off at your Gran’s house.”

Part of my brain immediately started thinking about what this news would mean when we returned to school tomorrow. I very nearly peeked over Lucas’s shoulder to see if there was a line of girls already forming there, now that he was available. But another part of my brain had a sudden flash of understanding.

“I guess you had to break up with her, right?” I asked. “Since now you know she’s human. Because of the rules? I mean, if humans and the Annorasi can’t have relationships . . .” I couldn’t help but wonder what the rule was regarding relationships between the Annorasi
and
half
humans, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

“Emily and I never truly had much of a relationship,” he said quickly. “I’m pretty sure she thought of me as more of a social conquest than anything else. Trust me, when I spoke to her last night, I hurt her ego more than anything else. She’ll survive.”

“What did you tell her?” I asked, then immediately slapped a hand over my mouth. “I’m sorry,” I said, lowering my hand. “It’s none of my business.”

“I told her I had feelings for someone else. For you.”

I clapped my hand over my mouth again to hide the fact it had just fallen open in utter shock.

“It’s all pretense, of course,” he said quickly.

My heart, which had begun to flutter lightly upward, took a sudden nosedive back down. It crash-landed somewhere in my stomach and left behind a dull, thudding ache.

“I mean, I never intended for anything romantic to happen with Emily,” he continued, oblivious to my pain. “I initially approached her thinking we could be friends, and that way I could keep an eye on her, but she didn’t exactly see things my way. But then I realized dating was the perfect excuse for spending so much time with her. I don’t see any reason why the same thing shouldn’t work for us. If we let people think we’re dating, it won’t seem strange that we’re together a lot. Right?”

I nodded numbly.
Pretense
.
If we let people
think
we
’
re dating.
Funny how none of my daydreams had ever included those little romantic nuggets. Then again, in my daydreams, spending time with Lucas had never been about keeping me alive. It had never been a job for him, either.

And that’s when I realized it. I was a
job
to Lucas. How strange that I found the idea mildly offensive, certainly unsettling, when just days ago I would’ve given my right arm to be
anything at all
to him. Being a job was better than being nothing, I supposed. At least I would get to spend time with him. A lot of time, apparently.

Weird. Of all the things he had just told me, you’d think the news that a group of superhuman, magical beings had killed my family and were now bent on killing me would have been the most troublesome.

“What about you?” he asked, as I shook my head to clear it.

“What?”

“I mean, is there anyone . . .” He trailed off, and I shook my head, blushing, as soon as I figured out what he meant.

“No, that won’t be a problem.”

He raised one eyebrow. “So Emily was wrong about you and Nate Whitting?”

“Oh, yeah. Very wrong. Nate and I have been best friends since first grade. He’s like my brother. I couldn’t imagine thinking of him any other way.”

“And do you think he’ll believe you and I are together?”

“I think I can convince him,” I said mildly. It seemed a distinct possibility, given that he’d been trying to convince
me
of that very thing only this morning. “But I don’t like lying to him.”

“I know,” Lucas said, sounding like he actually did appreciate the dilemma. “But you have to think of this as self preservation, Addy. More than that, actually, because if the Others get wind of you, then you and anyone close to you will be in grave danger. That includes Nate, and your other friend—Olivia, is it? Yes, you are lying to them, but you have to remember it’s for their protection as well.”

I nodded slowly. “Okay then.” I peeked over at him out of the corner of my eye. “My very own guardian angel.”

“If you start calling me that, people are going to think we have a very strange relationship.”

I just sighed. The population of Marin County High was already going to think it very strange indeed that Lucas Stratton would suddenly dump Emily Archer for me. Would they even believe it? I guess there was only one way to find out.

——

L
UCAS DROPPED ME OFF
at home in the late afternoon. We both got out of the car, and he walked me to the front gate.

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Addy. Do you mind if we take my car to school?”

“No. Oh, wait—I always pick up Nate in the morning. He works at Sully’s, on Grant.”

“No problem. We can swing by and get him. I’ll pick you up at seven thirty tomorrow. Unless . . .” He hesitated, and I looked at him curiously. “I’m trying to figure out how to ask you if you’re staying in this evening without sounding too much like a stalker,” he told me finally.

I let out a very small laugh; he did sound a bit like a stalker. “I’m in for the night, I think,” I told him. “I’ll call you if I change my mind.”

We had exchanged phone numbers before leaving the lake.

“Okay, I’ll see you in the morning then,” he said.

“Wait.” I fingered my car keys. “Do you need a ride? How are you getting home?”

He raised his eyebrows mysteriously and started walking backward down the street. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

And then he was just . . . gone.

——

Inside, Gran was supervising her boys as they unboarded the east wing of the house; now that I was “in the know,” they no longer needed to live there in secret. Apparently my new identity as the only existing half human, half Annorasi being came not only with a guardian angel, but also with ten, large, male roommates who I knew better as cats than people.

This was definitely going to take some getting used to.

I went up to my room and sat at my desk, automatically pulling out my weekend homework. I flew through an outline of my English essay due on Thursday, and I read the two chapters assigned in Advanced Placement U.S. History without even realizing what topic they were on. I skimmed my chemistry lab and wrote down halfhearted, generic answers to the questions at the end, again without paying any attention to what I was doing. I was usually a very good student; one weekend of work done on autopilot wasn’t going to destroy my G.P.A., even if my answers turned out to be totally incomprehensible (and there was a pretty good chance that would be the case).

Soon there was only precalc left, but I pushed the book aside without opening it. Math required actual concentration, and my brain was already occupied elsewhere.

The things Lucas had told me kept running through my head. Every word from start to finish, over and over again, in his silky, musical voice.

Magic. The Annorasi. Guardian. Emily.

I got up from the desk and lay down on my bed, on top of the covers. When I glanced over at the clock radio to see if it was late enough to justify going to bed (8:30 p.m.—no . . .), I realized with a start that someone had put an antique-looking brass frame on
my nightstand, the kind with a hinge in the middle and room for one picture on either side. The pictures Gran (it had to have been her) had put inside came from the photo album we had looked at yesterday; the photo on the left was my mom, my dad, and me. The one on the right was my grandmother, Rosabel Stirling.

I picked the frame up and held it over my head so I could look up at it as I lay back down. These pictures had a new significance now that I knew more about the people in them. My grandmother—famous, beloved Annorasi. My mother—infamous, misbehaving Annorasi? My father—troublesome human? I still wasn’t quite sure what to think about either of my parents.

I forced the lecture inside my head to rewind, all the way past the beginning and back to yesterday, back to when Gran had first told me the fire that had killed my parents had not been an accident, as I’d always been told it was. I played her words back over and over again as well, searching my insides for the appropriate emotion, for any sort of proper reaction to the news that my parents had been
murdered
.

There was none. No emotion, and no reaction. Just as there hadn’t been any yesterday, and just as there hadn’t been any today, when Lucas had brought the whole thing up again.

Now, before you start thinking horrible thoughts about me, let me rephrase. It wasn’t that I had
no reaction at all
to the news of my parents’ and grandmother’s murder.
Of course
I did. It’s just that my reaction was very similar to the way I’m pretty sure I would have felt upon hearing that an acquaintance’s parents had been murdered. Shock? Yes. Sadness? Certainly. But missing was any sense of
personal
loss, or any feelings of deep-down, anguishing grief. There wasn’t even a good, healthy dose of anger at finding out I’d been intentionally robbed of loving, caring parents and the life I could have had with them.

I wasn’t having any of the kinds of feelings I imagined I should be having.

I stared hard at the faded, somewhat fuzzy picture of my parents in the frame. My mother, with her freckles and her red hair. My father, with his pointy nose and whitish blonde hair. In the picture, they’re both smiling.