The Veil (11 page)

“Let the veil back down. Cover it up, and look away.”

In my head I pictured a shimmering cloth lowering itself over the front of the frightening scene, like a curtain closing at the end of a performance. The island disappeared, and soon the warm rays of the sun were all around me once again.

But the icy, grim feeling of the island was not gone.

My hands shook. I clenched them together to stop them and looked over at Lucas. “Why did you show me that?” I demanded. My voice shook also.

He took his hand off of my shoulder and looked down at the ground. His expression was hard to decipher, but it looked something like remorse; he hadn’t
wanted
to show me the island.

“What happened there?” I asked him. “What made the island look like that?”

“Actually, the answer to that question begins and ends with your family,” Lucas said matter-of-factly.

“My . . . family?” I repeated, confused. “You mean Gran?”

“No, I mean your
real
family.”

“Gran
is
my real family,” I told him firmly. “I don’t care that we’re not actually related. She’s the only family I know.”

“All right,” Lucas said patiently. “When I said ‘real’ family, I meant your blood family. Your blood relations. Your mother, your father, and your real . . . er, your blood grandmother.”

“I understand.”

He paused for a moment before continuing. “Your blood grandmother’s name was Rosabel Stirling,” he said. “As your Gran told you yesterday, she was a very powerful and well-respected woman. Beloved in our world. She was also, as you may have guessed by now, an Annorasi.”

I
had
somewhat guessed that, given the direction this conversation had been going, but it was a bit of a shock to hear it said out loud nonetheless.

“My grandmother was an Annorasi,” I said. It sounded just as strange when I said it.

“Yes, and so was your mother,” Lucas went on. “Margaret Stirling.”

“And my father?”

Lucas sucked in a breath. “That’s where things get interesting, Addy. Thomas Prescott, your father, was a human.” He paused, watching my reaction.

I stared at him blankly. “So?” When Lucas said nothing in reply, I started to get my back up on my father’s behalf. “Do the Annorasi have a problem with humans?”

Suddenly I wasn’t at all sure the “humans” category included me anymore. Not entirely, anyway. If my mother was an Annorasi, and my father was a human, what did that make me? I gulped.

“It’s not that we have a
problem
with them,” Lucas said carefully. “It’s complicated. Most of the Annorasi are pretty indifferent to humans. They just aren’t a part of our world. But there is one
particular group within the Annorasi who dislike humans. Your Gran mentioned them yesterday. We call them ‘the Others,’ for lack of a better term. It was the Others who killed your parents and your blood grandmother.”

“But
why
? Just because my father was a human?”

“As far as the Annorasi go, the Others are renegades when it comes to what they think about humans,” Lucas said darkly. “They believe humans are inferior to us. In fact, they believe humans were only created in order to serve the Annorasi. They would like nothing more than for our two worlds to merge so they could have a more ‘direct’ role in the running of the human world—more than we do now. To them, an Annorasi deigning to marrying a human is the worst sort of sacrilege imaginable.”

“Oh,” I said, trying to picture a group of sinister super humans intent on taking over the world. I was beginning to wonder if I’d stumbled into some sort of comic book.

“Again, it’s important for you to realize most Annorasi do not think like the Others,” Lucas assured me. “Most of us keep out of the human world all together. The few of us who live here are usually around to help humans in some way. Some of us protect humans from the Others. Some are here to teach things. Not magic, of course—humans are not capable of learning things like that—but we do pass on what knowledge we can.”

I frowned. There was an arrogance to Lucas just then, when he was talking about what humans were capable of, that I found decidedly unattractive. For about two seconds. Then he was quickly back to his charming self again.

“How are you digesting this so far?” he asked, his eyes a bit worried. “Am I making sense, or are you starting to think I’m in need of the institution you mentioned earlier?”

“So far, so good,” I assured him. “But I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with the island.”

I sneaked a peek back at the middle of the lake; the island was
just a barren, sun-drenched rock once again, but the memory of what lay just on the other side of the veil made me shiver.

“I’m getting to that,” Lucas said. “First, you have to understand what a big deal it was when your parents got married. It created quite a conflict in our world.”

“Why?” I asked. “I thought only the Others didn’t like humans.”

“That’s true. But even among the Annorasi who don’t think like the Others, there is still a longstanding rule that forbids relationships between the Annorasi and humans. It’s a prohibition that goes hand in hand with the requirement of secrecy. I’m sure you see how difficult it would be for an Annorasi to get involved with a human while still keeping our world a secret from that human.”

“I guess,” I said slowly. I didn’t really understand, not completely. I mean, last I checked, Lucas was dating a human. But I didn’t want to slow down the momentum of the lecture, so I didn’t say anything.

“Our laws—the ones about secrecy and relationships with humans, plus all of the other ones—are enforced by our High Council,” Lucas continued. “All of the Annorasi, even the Others, answer to the Council. The Council is made up of Annorasi who believe in protecting humans. It always has been, and hopefully always will be. But the Others are always looking for a way to weaken them. When your parents got married, it was an opportunity for the Others to cause trouble. And the fact that your grandmother was poised to be elected the next high councilor, the highest position on the Council, made things even more complicated.”

“Oh,” I said, understanding a little bit more at last. “So, it was like a scandal?”

“Yes, exactly. Our world became divided between those who wanted to protect your parents and those who thought the Council should track them down and execute them. There was a war. One of the worst and bloodiest battles was here on this lake.”

He motioned to the island, and again I was very glad I could only see the ruin in my mind’s eye, not with my real eyes; somehow,
knowing that the destruction was connected to my parents made the thought of actually seeing it again unbearable.

“Your parents had many friends in the Annorasi world and in the human world who did their best to keep them safe,” Lucas went on. “Your grandmother tried to help them too but, as you learned yesterday, she was killed by the Others. Your parents managed to stay hidden for more than six years before the Others caught up with them and . . . well, you know what happened then.”

In my head, I pictured the fire. The same one I’d pictured all of my life whenever I thought of my parents and how they had died. Except now, the flames were the same yellow-green as the bonfire at the rally and the tiny threads on the island.

“After that,” Lucas continued, “the main conflict, the war, ended.” He paused.

“But . . .” I encouraged, sensing there was more.

“But,” he went on, “there were rumors Margaret and Thomas had had a child, and the child had somehow survived. The first half human, half Annorasi. You.”

“Me? So I’m . . . only half human?”

“You can also look at it as being half Annorasi, you know.”

I pondered this for a moment, and Lucas started to look worried again. I cut him off before he could suggest my brain was overloading. “I’m just letting it sink in,” I explained. “Processing, like you said last night.”

“Process away.”

Strangely, the idea that I was half human and half something else I didn’t quite understand yet didn’t bother me as much as I would have thought. Certainly it was a much more comfortable explanation for my visions than being a crazy person.

Lucas waited patiently while I sat for a moment longer. Eventually, a pained sort of look came over his face. “I’m not sure I did the best job of explaining some of that,” he admitted. “I hope I didn’t make it sound like your parents were somehow responsible
for what you saw on the island, or that they were the ones who started the war.”

“Didn’t they start it?” I asked. “By getting married?”

“No. They were just the catalyst. They escalated a conflict between the Others and the rest of the Annorasi that had been brewing for centuries. Something would have caused it to blow up eventually. It just so happens it was your parents.”

As I considered this, Lucas started to look worried again. “I hope you don’t think
I
disapprove of your parents, Addy,” he said cautiously. “Because I don’t, seriously—”

I cut him off with a wave of my hand. “You’re forgiven,” I assured him. It was easy enough to do; there hadn’t been a hint of judgment in his voice when he talked about what my parents had done to his world. He’d simply been stating facts.

But I still felt like it was time to move on. “So after my parents were killed and the war ended, that’s when Gran decided to disappear with me?”

“Yes,” he said, looking relieved to be off the subject of my parents. “She was scared, and with good reason. You were—are—something entirely new, something different. And most people, even the Annorasi, find that sort of thing very frightening. No one knew what to expect from you, Addy. For a long time after your parents’ death, almost everyone in the Annorasi world was searching for you. In keeping you safe, your Gran pulled off something very like a miracle.”

I gulped. “And now?”

“Now?” He thought for a moment before answering. “Well, the good news is most people, even the Annorasi, have rather short attention spans. When a few years went by after your parents’ death and you still hadn’t surfaced, most of the Annorasi began to lose interest. Nowadays, there aren’t very many left who actually believe you exist. For the most part you’re a myth, a sort of Annorasi urban legend, if you will.”

“Oh,” I said. I wasn’t quite sure how to take that. “But you seem to believe in me.”

“I have insider information.”

As he said that, a frightening thought occurred to me. I looked over at Lucas in horror. “You weren’t . . . I mean, you weren’t actually
there
when all of this happened, were you?”

He looked at me strangely for a minute and then started to grin. “Are you asking me if I am older than I look? Immortal, perhaps?”

“Maybe,” I grumbled, feeling stupid. He was clearly enjoying himself.

“How old do you think I am?”

“I don’t know,” I grumbled again. “Seventeen? Eighteen? One hundred and ten?”

“Close. I’m nineteen.”

“Nineteen? I thought the Annorasi were supposed to be smart. What are you still doing in high school?”

“I’ll get to that, I promise. But just to clarify, the Annorasi are most definitely mortal. Our lifespans are comparable to human ones. We age, we get sick, and we die—just not quite as easily as humans. Otherwise, how could you explain the graveyard on the island? Or how the Others killed your mother and your grandmother?”

I grimaced; he was right. I probably should have figured that one out on my own.

“The insider information I was referring to comes from my father. He was a good friend of your parents. He never stopped looking for you after Gran took you away. Even though he knew you were in good hands, he also knew there were some Annorasi who would never stop looking for you.”

“So your father, he was the one who found me?”

“Sort of,” Lucas said. “He has agents all over the world who keep an eye out for you. And this past June, one of them spotted Gran at the emergency room of Marin General Hospital and recognized her. He notified my father, and my father sent me.”

“And you both work for this Council?”

“We work for the good guys,” he assured me with a grin. It wasn’t until later I realized he hadn’t really answered my question.

“So, are you here as a favor to your father?”

“Not exactly. We have certain rules inside the Annorasi, rules to prevent the harming of humans. Generally those rules are followed. But every once in awhile, there is a human who, for one reason or another, is of some sort of special interest to the Others. So much so, we can’t rely on the Others to follow the rules. So our side, the good Annorasi, I guess you could say, appoint one of our own to look after that human. The Annorasi who do this are called Guardians.”

“Gran called you that yesterday,” I remembered.

“Yes. I’m
your
Guardian, Addy.”

“Really? Even though I’m only half human, I still get a Guardian?”

“You’re very lucky,” he teased. “Seriously though, it’s my job to keep you safe from the Others. I’ve been your Guardian for some time, actually, although up until recently I was in the rather awkward position of having no idea who it was I was supposed to be guarding.”

“Until your father’s agent spotted Gran,” I deduced. “Yes. Everything changed then. I went to the hospital immediately, but you were gone by the time I arrived, and the agent had lost Gran’s trail. But at least then I had a pretty good idea of where you must live, so I enrolled in the local high school.

“I still had no idea who I was looking for, though. I knew you were female and approximately seventeen, but I had no idea what you looked like, what your name was—nothing. Not even my father knew what your parents had named you, and he hadn’t seen you since you were very young. So I broke into the school office and examined the records of every girl at Marin County High School until I narrowed it down to two.”

“Two?”

“Yes,” he paused for a moment. “You and Emily Archer.”

“Emily? You thought I might be
Emily
?”

“Well, I knew the girl I was looking for was either you or Emily. You were both the right age and you were the only two girls in the school who didn’t have at least one living biological parent.”