The Veil (23 page)

The only chance for me, for all of us, was to take the gamble that the Council would rule in my favor.

“I’m going to go before the Council,” I announced.

Luc cringed. “Why don’t you take a few minutes to think this over.”

“No,” I said firmly, trying to copy his authoritative tone of a few moments ago but succeeding only in making my voice squeak. “I’ve thought it over and that’s my decision. I won’t listen to anybody who tries to talk me out of it.”

Mr. Stratton nodded in a satisfied sort of way. “Very well then. In three days, we’ll bring Addy before the Council. I offer you my services, young lady. If you agree, I’ll act as your legal representative.” He walked over to me and extended his hand; I took it before Luc could stop me.

“Thank you,” I said. “I accept.”

——

Even though it felt like the end of a very long night, it was actually the beginning of a brand new day. The sun came up not long after we left Mr. Stratton’s house, and my eyelids were heavy.

I fell asleep with my head on Luc’s shoulder as Gran drove us back to Novato in the Oldsmobile. Her boys had stayed behind, saying they’d find their own way home.

I woke up just as we pulled into the parking lot of the Novato Police Department, where Luc’s car was. My phone, jammed into my back pocket, had started beeping. I had a text message from Nate:
Have your stuff from school. @ Sully’s all day.

Apparently my school bag had not been burned to a crisp along with the auditorium. I hadn’t been too worried about it; I was pretty
sure only my precalc book and notebook had been inside, and I wouldn’t have mourned their loss too terribly much. I wondered if Nate’d found my glasses too—I assumed they’d been too close to the fire to survive.

Gran dropped us beside Luc’s car. We both climbed inside.

“Are you tired? Should I take you home?” Luc asked.

“I don’t know—what happens for the next few days?”

“I was thinking of handcuffing you to my wrist,” Luc said, totally straight-faced. “Then you can’t run away from me, and if anyone comes to get you, they’d have to take me too.”

I punched him lightly in the arm. “As if I’d run from you.”

“You’d better not.”

He leaned over the center console and kissed me, holding both my hands in his and pulling me closer. I was shocked at the ease of the whole thing—how many hours had I spent imagining myself kissing him? And now, here we were. My daydreams, by the way, hadn’t come anywhere near the real thing; kissing Luc was an experience the likes of which I never, in a million years, could have imagined.

We had to stop though; we were, after all, in the parking lot of the police department.

“Seriously,” I said, untangling myself from him and sitting back a little bit in my seat. “What’s going to happen?”

“Things will be the same as always,” Luc assured me, somehow managing to start the car and pull out of the parking lot while still keeping a hold of my left hand. “We’ll have to be on the lookout for the Others, of course, but I shouldn’t think they would do anything to prevent you from going before the Council.”

“What about last night?” I asked him. “Is Oran Tighe still going to be hanging around?”

“I doubt we’ll have to worry about him,” Luc said dryly. “He’s already done his job, after all.”

“Yeah.” I pictured the ruined school auditorium in my head. When I looked back over at Luc, his face had a very dark expression
on it. I drew in a breath. “Are you angry that I decided to go before the Council?”

“No,” he said quickly, frowning over the steering wheel and stopping just a little bit too abruptly at a red light. “I respect your decision, Addy. I’m just frustrated by the entire situation—it shouldn’t be happening to you. You shouldn’t have to decide these kinds of things at all. If I could do it all for you, if I could bring the wrath of the Others down on me instead, if I could go before the Council in your place, I would. I’d welcome the chance, actually. Having to sit and watch while
you
do it is . . . intolerable.”

I traced a finger along the back of his hand. I was moved by his words and, what’s more, I knew I’d feel the exact same way if our situations were reversed. I’d want to put myself between him and harm too, and yet here I was, forcing him to walk me straight into it.

The light above us turned green, and Luc accelerated smoothly through the intersection.

“It’s very bad timing,” he remarked, catching my eye and giving me a very soft smile. “The beginning of a romance is supposed to be about roses and walking on air. It shouldn’t be weighed down by serious, depressing things.”

“I don’t feel depressed,” I told him. I didn’t. Now that my decision was made, I felt more resigned than anything else, like I could put the whole thing up on a shelf somewhere and not worry about it until I had to.

I searched around in my head for a lighter topic, but all I could think of was a question left over from the night before. “How come I was the only one who could see Oran Tighe last night?”

“I told you,” Luc began. “I was distracted—”

“I’m not talking about you, actually,” I interrupted. “I meant the audience—the auditorium full of humans. Not to mention Olivia and Casey—they were right there next to him.”

“Oh that,” Luc waved his hand dismissively. “Oran Tighe can make himself invisible to humans.”

“Just humans?” I asked.

“Yes. For some reason, his ability does not work with other Annorasi. And apparently it doesn’t work with half Annorasi either, since you were able to see him quite clearly.”

“Strange,” I said. “Can you sense him the same way you can sense the other Annorasi?”

I held my breath as Luc frowned; I’d wandered into a sore subject.

“Up until last night,” Luc answered reluctantly, “I would’ve said yes. I’ve had run-ins with Oran Tighe in the past, and I’ve never had a problem sensing him. But something’s different now, and it’s been bothering me since you told me you saw him around school. I never sensed him there. Not once. And I’ve been paying
very
close attention.”

“What about last night, in the auditorium?” I asked.

Luc gritted his teeth in frustration. “I
did
sense an Annorasi in the auditorium—but just one. And I assumed it was Principal Chatsworth. I’ve always assumed the one Annorasi I sensed around the school was Chatsworth.”

“You can’t tell the difference between the Annorasi you sense?”

Luc shook his head. “I can only tell if there is
an
Annorasi in the immediate area—I have no way of knowing which particular one it is unless I actually see them. But I definitely would have been able to tell if there were more than one. And I’ve
never
sensed more than one other Annorasi at the school. Not
once
. And neither has Chatsworth—I spoke to him last night after we were both released from the police station.”

“Did Chatsworth
see
Oran Tighe last night?”

“Yes. That’s how I confirmed who it was you actually saw. And that’s why Chatsworth gave you such a hard time in front of the fire chief. He panicked. He knew you weren’t the one who put the flare into the gun, but he thought he needed to give the authorities a suspect in order to prevent them from thinking
something strange was going on. Don’t worry—I think he did a pretty good job of clearing your name at the station. Once they do an investigation and find no evidence, the police will definitely let you off the hook.”

I bit my lip. I didn’t say anything, but privately I couldn’t bring myself to forgive Chatsworth so easily. Not when I was pretty sure my hours of sitting nervously at the police station could have been avoided if he’d come to my defense from the start, instead of pointing the finger at me in front of the fire chief.

I looked up from my own thoughts and saw Luc still frowning; he was clearly bothered by Oran Tighe’s newfound ability to elude him. I wanted very much to get rid of that frown, so I blurted out the first thing that popped into my head. “I think your invisibility gift is much cooler than Oran’s.”

Luc smiled at my lame attempt to change the subject, but gamefully decided to play along. “I think it’s cool too,” he agreed. “But it’s not something I get to do very often. There’s never been much of a call to make myself invisible.”

“I’m surprised you don’t ever use it to sneak up on people,” I said, realizing the implications of that statement even as it was coming out of my mouth. I gave him a severe look. “You’ve never snuck up on me before, have you?”

“No . . .” The corners of his mouth twitched.

“Luc!”

“I’m kidding!” he kissed my hand, laughing into my knuckles. “I would never do that. Trust me, I’m very well behaved when it comes to that sort of thing. You wouldn’t
believe
the lectures I got as a kid about using my ability in a responsible manner.”

“Uh-huh.” I tried to infuse a note of disbelief in my voice, but it was difficult; I believed him. Luc was nothing if not a gentleman.

“I
did
sneak back into the police department after they released me to see how things were going with you,” he admitted. “But you seemed to be doing just fine.”

“I didn’t know you were there.” I probably would’ve been a lot less nervous had I known my guardian angel had been over my shoulder the whole time.

“And,” he continued, giving me a sly smile that made my insides turn over in a very pleasant way, “it did occur to me, the other morning when I was in the kitchen with Gran and you went to take a shower, that it wouldn’t hurt to take a quick peek—”

He raised his left arm to defend himself as I snatched my hand away from him and started beating him on the shoulder.

“I
didn’t
,” he assured me, catching my hand again and trapping it beneath his on the center console. “Truly, I didn’t.”

“I believe you,” I told him. As much as I wanted to glare at him, I could only grin. “I’m not sure you deserve the benefit of my doubt, but you have it anyway.”

He raised my hand to his lips and kissed it again. “I will never spy on you,” he promised, his eyes suddenly serious. “You have my word.”

We were driving down Grant; he signaled to turn left on Seventh, but I stopped him.

“Can we stop by Sully’s? Nate has my stuff—he texted me a few minutes ago.”

“Of course.” He went straight instead. “Are you going to tell him about us?”

“He already thinks we’re dating, remember?”

“Oh, yeah. This is going to get confusing.”

“Nope,” I said, as he parked right in front of Sully’s. “That’s the best part—it’s not confusing anymore. Now we don’t have to pretend.”

He squeezed my hand. “I’ll wait here. I can see inside pretty well.”

I kissed him before I left the car, thinking it was going to be a long, long time before I got over how fun it was that I got to do that now whenever I wanted.

It was seven o’clock and Sully’s was unusually empty for that time of day. In fact, Sully himself was nowhere to be seen, and Nate was not in his usual place behind the espresso machine; instead, he was sitting at one of the small café tables with my book bag in front of him, reading something.

I smiled as I approached him, but my grin faded when I saw what he was reading; it was my brown leather journal, the one I’d gotten for my birthday.

The one I’d filled up with the whole story of the Annorasi. I totally forgot I put it into my book bag after I finished writing in it last night.

“What are you doing?” I demanded, diving for the book.

He moved it easily out of my reach. “Just going back over the highlights. It kept me up all night; quite a page turner, if you ask me.”

My mind raced as I glared down at him. Law Thirty-Seven, and its penalty, swam in front of my eyes. He couldn’t know. If anyone ever discovered that he did . . .

Nate looked at me with a cruel smile I’d never seen before; like he knew he’d done something hurtful and was happy about it. It was very unlike him.

He waved the book in front of me, but I didn’t try reaching for it again. The damage had already been done.

“Do you want to explain this?” he asked.

I shrugged, trying to force myself to appear nonchalant. I had to act like it was no big deal. “What? I thought I’d try a little bit of creative writing.”

“It read like a journal to me.”

“Good. That’s what I was going for.”

“Come off it, Addy.”

Furious, I reached over and snatched the book away from him. “
You
come off it. I didn’t give you permission to read this! You invaded my privacy! How can you be mad at
me
right now?”

He jumped to his feet. “I only did it because I was worried about
you! The police gave me your bag last night after they’d gone through it. I went through it too, just to see if there was anything you’d need before morning. I found the book, and I know how you are about your journals—you write
everything
down—so I read it. I just wanted to know what has been going on with you. I’m not sorry I did it!”

“Well, you should be. And I told you, it’s not a journal. It’s a writing project.”

“It’s worrying, is what it is. Addy, some of the stuff in there is just plain
crazy
.”

“Creative,” I corrected him.

“No, nuts. I’m worried about you.”

“Well, don’t be,” I grabbed my book bag off of the table and shoved the journal inside—I couldn’t stand the sight of it anymore. “Anyway, you’re one to talk. You’ve been keeping stuff from me too, you know.”

“If you knew me the least little bit, I think you would’ve figured out my thing already.”

I opened my mouth to tell him
he
was the crazy one when it hit me like I’d just run headfirst into a brick wall. All this time, Luc had had feelings for me and I’d been clueless about it. Clearly I was not very good at reading guys. Was it possible I’d made the same mistake with Nate?

“Is it . . .” I set the book bag down and faced him; we were so close in height I was able to look right into his eyes. “Nate do you—do you have feelings for me?”

He guffawed, and I felt like I’d just been hit in the stomach. I felt my cheeks turn a deep shade of red as he collapsed in his chair, laughing as though I had just said the funniest thing he’d ever heard.