The Veil (9 page)

The city was different. Gone were the skyscrapers, the triangle building, and the familiar skyline. In their place were buildings made of very shiny metal, exactly the type of structures I’d seen outside of Ghirardelli Square last night. Except now, we were far enough away that I could look at them without straining my eyes. I saw flashes of gold, but mostly I saw silver—the same color I’d been seeing so often lately, in the strange sights and creatures that had been popping up, uninvited in front of my eyes. The city was surrounded by a massive silver wall that rose right out of the waters of the bay and several stories into the air.

But by far the most spectacular thing I could see right then was the bridge. It was in the same place as the bridge I’d just been looking at, and it also had two pillars holding it up, but
this
bridge was golden. It stretched across the shadowy water like a gold spider’s web, so thin and light that it looked like a strong breeze could have blown it to dust, yet at the same time I could tell—I wasn’t quite sure how I could tell, I just could—that this structure had been here long before the one
we
called the Golden Gate, and that it would be here for a long time afterward. This bridge and the city beside it, both drenched in moonlight, were two of the most breathtaking things I had ever seen.

I looked over at Lucas and then hurriedly turned my eyes back to the view; I was suddenly afraid it would disappear if I looked away for too long. But it was still there, just as real and unwavering as the other view had been, just a few moments ago.

When I managed to tear my eyes away again, I saw Lucas smiling at me. For a moment, I thought I saw . . . something. A glimmer of something in his eyes. But then he blinked and looked away.

“And to think, nobody ever wonders why they call it the
Golden
Gate,” he said with a slight shake of his head.

“
I
always wondered,” I told him, turning my eyes back to it. I dimly recalled a teacher once telling me the bridge had been named after the Golden Gate Strait, or the place where San Francisco Bay meets the Pacific Ocean. But that had never made very much sense to me either. “Is it real?”

“Yes, it’s very real. Just as real as the bridge and the city you’re used to.”

“But how can they
both
be real?” I asked. “How can there be a golden bridge and a red bridge in the exact same place?”

“The two bridges exist together. You might say they overlap.”

I squinted down at the bridge, wishing for the first time that I could creep down off of the bunker, toward the edge, in order to get a closer look.

“What are those things coiled around the bridge supports?”

“Snakes,” Lucas replied, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

My eyes grew wider when I saw he wasn’t joking; there were very clearly two giant serpents, the exact same color as the bridge, each with their lower halves wrapped around one of the bridge supports. Their upper halves stretched up to the sky, and their heads were in the center of the bridge, almost touching.

“They’re guards,” Lucas explained. “Just like them.” He pointed back behind me, to the highest levels of the Headlands. I could just barely make out large circular shapes dotting the very tops of the mountains. Some of the circles had dark shapes inside of them. “Griffins.”

I turned back around; I was pretty sure my mouth was hanging open. “You’re kidding me.”

But I knew he wasn’t. As much as I’d been questioning my sanity lately, there had also been a very strong sense of certainty running alongside my strange visions. A sense that they were not to be questioned, that as alarming and weird as they might seem to me, there was nothing false or tricky about them. They just
were
, exactly as this strange new world in front of me just
was
. I had no more ability to doubt this than I had to doubt my own face in the mirror.

And I recognized the exact same certainty in Lucas’s voice, even as he was telling me things which, logically, only a crazy person would actually believe.

“We call it Fort Francisco,” he told me. “It’s an outpost, one of our more important strongholds. We work very hard to keep it well guarded.”

“And who is ‘we’?” My pulse quickened a bit; this was it. This was the question that was the key to everything.

Lucas opened his mouth to reply, then hastily glanced down at his watch. “Damn, a quarter after nine. We’ve got to move if we’re going to get you home by ten.”

——

I couldn’t believe it when Lucas suddenly jumped down from the bunker and started heading toward the car. I stayed where I was, cross-legged on the edge of the concrete, watching him curiously.

When he realized I wasn’t behind him, he turned around and waved his arm impatiently at me. “Let’s go!” he called. “Don’t worry, we’ll be back. I promise.”

“Gran said you’d answer all of my questions,” I pointed out, still sitting securely on the bunker. “But I have more. Lots more. More than I had this afternoon, in fact.”

“Tomorrow,” he said firmly. “You’ve seen and heard a lot today. Your brain must be overloading. If I try to squeeze anything more in there right now, it might explode.”

“You’re only saying that because you have precalc with me. Other than math, I’m actually very smart.”

“Smart has nothing to do with it. You need to
process
the things you’ve learned today so you can handle what I’m going to tell you tomorrow. Trust me, a good night’s sleep is what you need. Let’s get you home.”

With one last glance down at the bay, I swung myself down from the bunker and followed him reluctantly to the car.

I had a strangely emotional reaction to leaving the Headlands behind, one that distracted me from the windy, curvy drive back down to 101 that ordinarily would have terrified me to my very soul. Instead of feeling fear, I felt an immense, unexpected sadness. As though I’d seen something I would never be allowed to see again.

“It was beautiful, wasn’t it?” Lucas asked when we were back on the freeway and heading for home.

“Yes,” I answered, although privately I was thinking calling that view “beautiful” was very much like calling Lucas “handsome.” A gross, almost unforgivable understatement.

“I almost forget sometimes,” he said slowly. “I suppose I’m just used to it.”

“Do you mean you see that
all the time
?”

He nodded. “Yes. Well, except for when I turn it off.”

“You turn it off?” Why would anybody want to do that?

“Sometimes I have to. It can be really confusing, seeing the two worlds at once. I almost always turn one of them off, but which one depends on who I’m around at the time.”

“You mean whether you’re around normal people, or whether you’re around the ‘we,’” I deduced. “Are you going to tell me who ‘we’ are?”

“Yes. Tomorrow, okay? Right now I’m focusing on having you back home by your curfew.”

“What, are you scared of Gran?” I teased him.

He looked over at me; his emerald eyes were deadly serious. “Yes.”

We were silent for the rest of the ride back to Novato.

It was 9:55 p.m. when he pulled up in front of Gran’s house.

“I’ll pick you up in the morning and we’ll talk some more,” he offered, looking slightly anxious as I made no move to exit the car. The clock crept its way up to 9:56 . . . 9:57 . . .

“Please, Addy?”

“Okay,” I said sulkily, opening my car door. I didn’t remember my manners until I was halfway through the iron gate. “Thank you!” I called to him.

He waved and then waited until I let myself in the front door before driving away. It was only after he’d disappeared around the corner that I realized he was driving
my car
.

That worried me for a moment, before I realized a guy who is used to seeing snakes coiled around the Golden Gate Bridge and who can casually point out griffins as through they were no more interesting than seagulls probably had very little incentive to steal my ancient, rusted Oldsmobile.

And he’d said he would be back tomorrow.

——

I
N THE END
, I
WAS GLAD
Lucas convinced me to try to get some sleep. I had pretty much expected to lie underneath my covers all night, restless and willing the clock to say it was morning. But instead, after only a moment or two of rearranging the pillow beneath my head, I fell into the deepest sleep I ever remember having.

I don’t think I had a single dream that night, which is probably a good thing, because when I woke up I was thinking about Gran.

Gran.
Was I still allowed to call her that? What an incredibly uncomfortable and unwelcome thought. Luckily, it was interrupted by a small but determined beeping sound coming from the corner of my room. I followed the beeps to my school bag and dug around inside until I found my cell phone.

Eight missed calls.

Oh, shoot. I had forgotten all about Nate.

Six of the calls were from him, and the other two were from Olivia. I cringed and hit Nate’s speed dial number.

“Finally!” he barked after only half a ring. “
What happened
to you last night?”

“I’m really, really sorry!” I said frantically.

“I mean, I know you’re all gaga about Lucas Stratton and everything,” he continued, working himself into a frenzied rent, “but you
ditched
me! You actually
ditched
me!”

“I’m sorry—” I tried to cut in, but he was only just getting started.

“I had to get a ride home with Terrance Seaver! You left me totally stranded!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I chanted, to break his momentum. “I really, really am, Nate. I totally suck, okay? It will never happen again.”

“Good,” he said, still a tad huffy. “Did you at least have a good time with Wonder Boy?”

“Sure,” was all I could think to say.

“‘Sure’?” he repeated. “What does that mean?”

“It means—I don’t know what it means yet. I’m supposed to see him again today, so maybe I’ll know more later.”

Yeah, I’d definitely know more. More stuff I couldn’t possibly tell Nate. He’d have me hauled off in a straight jacket if I ever told him about the things I’d seen the night before. Now, in the light of day, I was beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t be hauling
myself
off to an institution somewhere.

No. It had all been real. Maybe more real than anything else I’d ever seen.

“What about
Emily
?” Nate was saying. “Is this finally the big Emily payback? She ditches us, and you lay low so three years later you can rise up and steal Wonder Boy from her? Excellent. I just love how your mind works sometimes—”

“It’s not like that,” I interrupted him swiftly. “Emily has nothing to worry about. Lucas isn’t interested in me that way.” Unfortunately.

“Uh-huh, sure,” Nate clearly did not believe me. “What are you two lovebirds doing today?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “But I should probably go. I just got up.”

“Okay, but I expect a full report. I won’t accept this coyness from you later.”

“Okay,” I lied, hanging up. I would have to think of some way to deal with Nate. Preferably some way that didn’t involve lying to him. Not too much, at least.

I jumped into the shower and then concentrated on blow-drying my hair straight as quickly as possible. I was torn between wanting to take the time to look perfect (well, “perfect” in the relative sense of what
I
could pull off) and a very strong desire to simply throw on a hat and some random clothes so I could run downstairs and make the day begin as soon as possible.

I settled for in between. I fooled with my hair until it was dry enough to put back in a ponytail and slipped into my second favorite pair of jeans and a blue sweater thick enough to keep me warm, but not so heavy I’d get hot if we spent the day indoors. Lucas had not told me where we’d be going that day.

I was all the way down the stairs before I realized something was missing.

Cats. For the first time in eleven years, there had been no cats outside my door that morning.

And there was something else strange. I heard voices coming from the kitchen, and the sound of silverware scraping against dishes. These were not the kind of noises that could be explained by the television.

There were
people
in the house.

I tiptoed toward the kitchen and opened the door a crack. Gran’s kitchen table, which seated four, had been pushed up against another table someone had dragged in from the dining room. There was a crowd of large, loud men occupying all but one of the chairs, and there was enough food spread out in front of them to feed a small army.

“Good morning, Addy.” Gran’s voice startled me so completely that I both let go of the door and kicked it, causing it to swing back and smack me in the forehead.

I rubbed my head and saw stars as she reopened the door.

“I’m sorry about all of this,” she whispered. “But now that the secret is out, I just couldn’t expect them to eat cat food this morning.”

As I was trying to figure out a way in which Gran’s words made any kind of sense at all, she drew me into the kitchen. The eleven heads sitting around the table all turned in my direction.

“Addy!” ten of them yelled in unison.

I gave a start, then another one when I realized the one person at the table who hadn’t yelled was Lucas. He nodded at me from his place on the far left-hand side of the table.

I slowly looked back around to Gran. Ten men appearing out of nowhere. Cat food. “But you have eleven cats,” was all I could manage to get out.

Gran smiled at me as she set a fresh plate of scrambled eggs on the table.

“I knew you’d catch on quickly,” she said, looking around behind me and glaring sharply at a large pot on the stove—a pot that, I suddenly realized, had been stirring itself. The large wooden spoon had been making lazy, halfhearted laps around the pot’s surface, but it jumped slightly at Gran’s stare and began to stir faster.

She nodded smartly at it and opened the refrigerator. She removed a large pitcher of orange juice and turned back to me. “Even all of those years ago, I wasn’t vain enough to think I could protect you by myself. So after you and I left England, and once we had had a chance to settle in here, I recruited a bit of help. I didn’t want to alarm you, so one of the terms of their employment was that they would always appear before you as cats, at least until you were old enough to know the truth. Now that you know, I see no reason why they should have to continue changing back and forth the way they have been. Although,” she said, tapping one finger thoughtfully against her cheek, “I suppose we’ll have to send them out into the garden every so often—as cats, I mean. Just so the neighbors don’t suspect.”