The Veil (26 page)

Luc shrugged. “I don’t know. Music seems to draw a bit of the Annorasi world into the human one. That’s why I didn’t want you to wear your glasses—I think they would probably filter the light out, the way they filter out the rest of the Annorasi world.”

“Does it only happen with music?”

He shook his head. “It happens at other times too. Mostly with art or things that require great creativity and passion.”

“So humans can do magic too,” I muttered.

“No, magic is intentional. This is not—but that’s really the beauty of it. I told you last night my parents taught me to respect humans, right? Well, this is how they did it. My father took me here when I was nine years old and showed me this—” he gestured down to the stage, where the next song was beginning and the colors were beginning to swirl again—“and he told me that a race of beings capable of creating something so beautiful couldn’t be all bad.”

I sat and thought over Luc’s words, watching the colors climb up into the air again. For all of the Annorasi talk about being superior to humans, there were sure a lot of things they didn’t know. If humans could accidentally do magic just by playing music, was it possible they could do it on purpose too?

When the music finally died away and the last wisps of color disappeared from the air, I felt a bit sad—the same way I’d felt when we drove away from the Headlands that first night.

It was intermission, and Luc was checking his watch. “We have just enough time for the third stop,” he told me.

“We’re leaving?”

“We can stay here if you want,” he said. “But I’m telling you right now, the next stop is pretty spectacular.”

“Better than this?” I couldn’t imagine how that could possibly be true.

“
I
think so,” he said, but shrugged. “It’s entirely up to you.”

I looked longingly back down at the stage. There was nothing I wanted more than to stay and watch the colors for the next hour, but I was intrigued by the possibility of what was coming next and the way Luc’s eyes lit up when he talked about it.

“Let’s go,” I said, throwing one more look at the stage, hoping to see one last burst of color. There wasn’t one—the musicians were all backstage, taking a break.

Luc put an arm around my waist when we stood up from our seats. “We’ll come back here, I promise,” he said.

As long as I live past the meeting with the Council
, I added in my head, as we returned to Luc’s car.

——

Twenty minutes later, I was trying very hard not to have a panic attack.

I have no idea how Luc managed to break inside the heavy door at the bottom of the north pillar of the Golden Gate Bridge, and I have even less of an idea how he convinced me to step into the teeny-tiny, creaky old elevator that brought us to the top. Luc could be mighty persuasive when he put his mind to it. At first, the trip up wasn’t bad—it was very dark inside the pillar and there were no windows, so other than the hum and the occasional (rather alarming) banging sounds from the elevator’s motor, it was hard to tell we were
moving at all. Aside from a jittery feeling in my stomach—which seemed to have a hunch we were climbing higher and higher—my normal fear of heights didn’t materialize until the elevator came to a shuddering halt, and I was suddenly faced with an iron ladder that led up to a metal hatch.

I left my heels at the bottom of the ladder and followed Luc up barefoot, hoping for better traction. He pushed open the hatch, disappeared for a second, then reached a hand down to pull me up. I held onto his arm for all I was worth as he pulled me into the air and set me down again on a thin platform of crisscrossing red metal bars.

I made the mistake of looking down and nearly had a stroke. Through the wispy fog surrounding us, I could see six lanes of bridge traffic passing about a mile beneath my feet (at least, they
looked
that far away).

The platform we stood on was about two feet across and twenty feet long. Rising up on one side of us was the top of the pillar. On the other side there was a thin railing . . . and then a terrifying drop into oblivion.

Okay, I know I said just last night that I was fine with heights as long as Luc was with me, but seriously, this was pushing it. At least the people in the cars down below were too far away to see up my skirt.

Trying to seem casual about it, I backed up until I was pressed up against the pillar, as far away from the railing as I could get. I tried to slow down my breathing so I didn’t hyperventilate—fainting up here would be very, very bad. I felt like the horseshoe charm around my neck had suddenly morphed into a half-ton anchor that wanted to pull me over the side and straight down into the choppy waters of the bay.

“I’m not the biggest fan of our third stop,” I admitted to Luc.

Instead of answering, he walked over to the railing and leaned over. My stomach lurched as I watched his feet come off of the ground so, for a moment, only his arms held his weight.

I gasped, immediately covering the sound with my hand. I didn’t want to startle him and make him lose his grip.

Luc lowered himself back to his feet, his movements fluid as usual, and turned to face me. He wore a giant, slightly mocking, grin. “There’s a better view from over here.” He held out his hand.

I backed away from him, or at least I tried to; I couldn’t push myself back any further against the pillar without climbing up it. “I’m good here.”

“Suit yourself.” He swung one leg up and over the railing.

“
Luc!
” I shrieked, torn between a desire to leap forward to drag him to safety and my total inability to move away from the safety of the pillar.

“What?” he asked innocently.

“Don’t do that!”

“It’s perfectly safe, Addy,” he said, continuing to straddle the railing.

I took a very deep breath. “If you die on our first date, I will never forgive you,” I said, trying hard to make my voice sound menacing.

“I’m not going to die. And neither are you. Now take another breath.”

“
Why
?”

“Because you look a little shaky, and I don’t want you to keel over when I do this.”

“Do
what
?”

He gave me one last grin, swung his other leg over the balcony, and jumped off of the bridge into the foggy night.

——

“Luc!”

I threw myself at the railing, completely forgetting my own fear and intending to grab him before he could fall too far.

Instead, I nearly head-butted him in the stomach. He was right there, on the other side of the railing, hanging in the air. There was
nothing beneath him except for a blanket of fog and approximately seven hundred feet of air.

He told me many of the Annorasi could fly—he just hadn’t mentioned he was one of the many.

“See? I told you, perfectly safe,” he said, leaning over the railing to kiss my startled lips.

When I still said nothing, he frowned slightly.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, bobbing up and down with the light wind.

“How I’m going to kill you once we get down from here,” I told him, quite seriously. “Obviously, throwing you off of anything tall is out.”

“You just said you didn’t want me to die on our first date,” he pointed out.

“I am rapidly changing my mind.”

He folded his arms and made a
tsk
sound. “Now now, this is no way to start your first flying lesson.”

“My
what
?”

“Your. First. Flying. Lesson.” He pronounced the words very carefully, then reconsidered. “Well, your second, actually. The first one was an accident—but a rather fortunate one, I think. Since now we know you can fly—”

“We don’t know that, actually,” I interrupted him, thinking about my tumble off of the ladder. “We only know I can float.”

“Po-tay-to, po-tah-to,” he sing-songed. “It’s time for you to take the next step.”

Still gripping the railing, I looked down. The cars on the deck of the bridge looked like matchbox cars, and the water was even farther away than that.

I pulled my head back up; it was easier if I just looked straight at Luc. “I don’t think I want to know what the next step is,” I said.

He spread his arms. “You’re looking at it. Come join me.”

He looked more glorious right then than I’d ever seen him—
dashing, I believe is the word. His hair was windblown and his eyes shone with excitement. He looked eager for me to come and share in the fun. A part of me wanted to throw myself into his arms, despite the fact that he floated hundreds of feet above the ground, but the rest of me shook violently at the very thought.

I took a half step back from the railing, stalling for time. “Are you seriously telling me there’s no intermediate step between a ten-foot ladder and the top of the Golden Gate Bridge?”

“There probably is,” he admitted. “But we’re here now, so . . .”

“Won’t people be able to see me?” I asked, desperate to find a reason I couldn’t do this—a reason that didn’t include me giving in to complete terror.

“With all of this fog? No way.”

“What if I fall?”

“You won’t.”

“What if I do anyway?”

“Then I’ll catch you. I’m very quick.”

He was smirking; he knew he had me now. I had no more excuses.

I looked down between the metal rods of the platform. I imagined seeing the lanes of traffic coming at me faster and faster as I fell toward them. I pictured myself hitting them with a sickening smack and splattering across—

I backed up to the pillar again. “I can’t do it,” I said pleadingly, breathing a sigh of relief when I felt the solid metal against my back once more. “I just can’t.”

The excited light faded from his eyes. He looked down, past his feet and to the ground, and nodded in understanding. “Okay.” He grabbed the railing and vaulted back over, landing lightly on the platform.

I slumped against the pillar. He looked
so
disappointed. I could not, for the life of me, even begin to understand how my doing this could possibly mean so much to him, but clearly it did.

I couldn’t be the cause of that look on his face. I had to fix it somehow, even if that meant doing the unthinkable.

Very slowly, I stepped away from the pillar. Without its support I could actually feel gravity taking a hold of me again, trying to pull me down. I shook off the feeling and took a shaky step toward the railing.

“Atta girl,” Luc encouraged.

I forced my eyes to remain on the dark horizon. If I looked down, I knew I would chicken out.

This is just like the ladder
, I tried telling myself.
I will not fall
—
at least not all the way to the ground. Something will catch me, just like last time.

Still not looking down, I put one of my bare feet onto the lower rung of the railing.

Luc stepped up behind me and steadied me. I tried to concentrate on him—him and only him—as I swung one leg over, then the other, and turned around until I was standing, facing him, with the railing between us.

I could only imagine the look on my face. Luc saw it, and suddenly he was unsure.

“Maybe we should start smaller,” he said, gripping my shoulders as the breeze caused me to sway a little bit.

“I thought you said there was nothing to worry about—that you could catch me if you had to.”

“I did, and I will. I know nothing’s going to happen to you, Addy. I just don’t think
you
know that.”

I looked directly into his eyes. When you really boiled this down, it was all about trust. Did I trust Luc enough to jump off of a bridge?

Suddenly, Gran’s face popped into my head. Seven years ago, when I was ten, I told her I wanted pink high tops because all of the other girls at school had them.
Her reply?
“If all of the other girls at school jumped off of a bridge, would you do that too?”

No. But I might if Luc asked me to.

“If you tell me everything is going to be okay, I’ll believe you,” I told him, meaning every word of it.

He cupped my chin in one hand and leaned in toward me until our noses were almost touching. “Everything is going to be okay.”

“Okay,” I echoed him weakly.

Then I stepped back and let go of the railing.

——

At first, I was completely disoriented. Everything around me was gray, and the wind ripped through my hair, shrieking so loudly in my ears I couldn’t hear anything else.

Or possibly that was me shrieking—it was sort of hard to tell.

I couldn’t see the bridge pillar, or Luc, but suddenly I felt okay about that. It was tough to get a sense of motion—I had no reference point in the sea of gray all around me, but somehow I felt like I was moving too slowly to be plummeting to my death. Unlike my many, many nightmares of falling from various heights, I didn’t have that sickening feeling of dread, the cringing thoughts of what part of my body would hit the ground first and what sound it would make when it did.

Amazingly, I didn’t feel any fear at all. Instead, I felt . . . exhilarated. Really, really exhilarated. Similar to when I kissed Luc, but at the same time totally different.

No more than a second or two elapsed between the time I let go of the railing and when I came to that realization. As soon as I did, I could feel the wind hitting my back, and I realized I was facing upward, toward the sky.

I rolled over, expecting to see an idyllic view of San Francisco Bay from the air.

Instead, all I saw were the six lanes of traffic on the bridge rushing up at me, just as I had pictured them doing.

I wasn’t flying anymore—I was
falling.

The feeling I recognized from my nightmares—that horrified,
helpless feeling—quickly replaced my exhilaration. The ground continued to come at me, but my mind was going so fast I might as well have been falling in slow motion. I screamed, knowing it didn’t matter if any humans saw or heard me now because soon I’d be splattered across the bridge in plain view anyway. Would they wonder how I managed to fall from such a height? Would there be enough left of me for them to even figure out who I had been?