Veiled (28 page)

As I started to get close
to her, I saw a fast moving figure engulfed in the darkest aura I
had ever seen. I startled and stopped, then the figure flew out and
the hooded woman let out a mirthless laugh.

“
Who are you?” I asked
with a deliberate and stern voice.

The cloaked woman didn’t
answer, though she heard me and was looking right at me.

“
So? Is she here?” the
other mortal woman, the one holding the light, asked.

“
Yes, I dare say she is.
And she’s got herself a friend, a few actually.” The witch answered
in a low hushed voice.

The other woman looked
around with uneasiness. “What does that mean?” she asked, no longer
sure of what she was doing.

I stood my ground hoping to
intimidate the witch who was doing a great job at hiding her own
feelings. I turned to look at Irene and Leo, but Irene was gone.
Only Leo remained…and the hysterical ghost who would not stop
yelling at the woman holding the light was still here as
well.

Usually it was easy to read
the minds of mortals because they are not aware of my presence, but
in this case, the hooded woman could see me and was on her
guard.

To make matters worse the
dark shadowy form that I had seen earlier was back and this time
with a couple of friends.

“
Are those…?” I started to
ask Leo.

“
Yep!” Leo answered. “It
seems we have crashed the best party in town,” he said without
humor.

The forms were Cast-outs,
the ones that had apparently taught the cloaked woman a great deal
of things. The Cast-outs made their smoky circles around the
witch’s head and transferred information to her about Leo and
me.

A wicked smile crossed her
face as she received the information.

“
Out of my way!” she said
to me as she passed her hand through my form, making way for her to
go through. I didn’t move out of her way and as she passed through
me I got a brief but enlightening look at her thoughts.

The amount of information
that I got was astonishing. I wasn’t sure how that happened, but I
got all the thoughts that were in her head at that moment. Not just
what she was thinking about, but the whole picture.

It took me a while to piece
together all the images and thoughts I got from her, in spite of
all the experience I had in sharing thoughts with Alex. It was like
piecing a puzzle together, but eventually I got the whole
picture.

“
She’s the one,” I
motioned to Leo.

He nodded and came closer
to me. “Irene is getting John,” he whispered. “But I don’t think
she has the book with her. We need to find out where she lives and
get the book while she is busy.”

“
I know where the book
is!” I told him, exited. That had been one of her thoughts that I
saw when she walked through me. The book was in image form, sitting
on a stand in the room where she received her clients. I also saw
the whole reason for her visit to the house in the middle of the
night, and I saw the exchange that had taken place between her and
the woman with the lantern.

“
Good! Let’s go get it,”
Leo said, and was turning to leave.

“
What about her?” I
pointed to where I thought the ghost was.

“
That is not part of our
mission, Tess. We have been assigned to find the book and take it
away,” Leo said pleadingly, I could tell that the presence of the
Cast-outs was getting to him. I felt their oppressive natures as
well—their auras were black holes that absorbed any goodness that
happened to be around them. Being around these Cast-outs was
uncomfortable, but not as bad as some of the other encounters I had
had with them in the past, so I still felt strong.

“
Come on, Tess, we have to
act now,” Leo insisted.

I nodded once and Leo was
off. I took one last look at the scene in the nursery. I could hear
the ghost whimpering as the other two women bent over the small
child, chanting something in the First Language.

My heart ached for that
poor ghost who had been so unjustly dealt with. I felt angry for
her, this was so unfair! I couldn’t just let this
happen!

“
What took you so long?”
Leo asked anxiously when I finally appeared outside.

“
I had to do one last
thing,” I said smugly, and began my flight toward Gertrude’s
apartments.

“
What? What did you do?”
Leo asked, now curious.

“
I woke up the ghost’s
husband. He was asleep in the house, and I told him all about his
wife’s death—he seemed to hear me.” I smiled broadly. “Last I saw,
he was running up the stairs with a weapon in his hand, and
catching those two evil women red handed—from where I stood he
sounded mad. And I’m pretty sure the love spell is
broken.”

Leo was quiet for a while,
mulling over the situation. “That was risky, Tess,” he finally
said. “What if he didn’t hear you?”

I shrugged. “I can be
pretty loud when I want to. Besides, it was a chance worth taking.
Remember what Kerubiel said to us? We were the ones that were sent.
What if we were that poor ghost’s only hope?”

Leo nodded and said nothing
more until we got to the door I had seen. It was a small apartment
on the second floor of a building.

“
Call Irene and John, tell
them where we are,” I told Leo in a whisper, as if someone could
hear us.

I glided through the
apartment as Leo called Irene. The place was very small and it was
packed full of shawls, bottles, masks and other curious looking
objects. There was a small fireplace that was the cooking area, a
table, two chairs and on the other end of the room there was a
sitting area. And there was the book we were looking
for.

On the other side of the
door we heard the kind of noise that would be made by someone who
was trying to force the door open.

“
It’s John!” Leo said as
he poked his head through the door. Then the door swung
open.

John looked around the room
taking in the surroundings, and then closed the door behind him.
Irene went to Leo’s side and their arms were soon around each
other.

“
Is this it?” John asked
as he came to my side.

“
I think so.”

“
Well, let’s see…” He took
the book and thumbed through the pages, then closed it tightly.
“Good work, now we need to dispose of it,” he said with a pleased
but tired smile.

Leo, Irene, and I exchanged
looks. This was the part we didn’t know how to handle. John seemed
to understand our reluctance and smiled.

“
OK, OK, first let’s get
out of here, and then we’ll figure out what to do with this book.”
John walked to the door and went out, making sure to close it
behind him.

We didn’t have to do too
much thinking about the book, because as soon as we entered John’s
rooms, Dayspring was there waiting for us. She looked enormous in
such small quarters, and she looked like she felt caged in by the
way she kept pacing back and forth in the little area.

“
I thought you’d never get
back!” she said, clearly relieved at seeing us. Then she stretched
her hand and made an impatient movement with it.

John handed the book over,
with his mouth agape.

As soon as the book was
entirely in Dayspring’s hand a flame shot up and the book was
consumed, literally, in the palm of her hand.

“
Well…that takes care of
it, doesn’t it?” Leo said casually.

Right then Leo’s and
Irene’s pendant glowed with new instructions, but mine did not.
They said goodbye to John and left, and Dayspring told me she would
give me a ride to where I needed to go next.

“
Where is that?” I asked
her.

“
Angels Lounge, there is a
little…well…you’ll see when we get there.”

“
Angels have a Lounge?”
John asked amusedly.

“
You’ve been there
before,” I said with a smile, while I climbed on Dayspring’s back.
“You just can’t remember!”

I waved goodbye to John as
we rose up through the air and he waved back at us with a wistful
smile.

“
You know,” I said to
Dayspring, “he wants to blaze out of this world on the back of a
Seraph.”

She chuckled. “Does he now?
Fine, I’ll make Daystar do it!”

* * * * *

Chapter 24

I found the lounge to be
full of spirits, most of whom I didn’t know, but it just so
happened that my clan was there, well…some of them. Luz, Amor, and
Paz were out on missions, and so was Katie. Henry was not there and
neither was Estelle. Apparently she had just left—as in left for
good.

“
She sent her love,”
Celeste said. “Oh…she was so sad, Tess, it was
terrible.”

“
Why?” I asked. “Did
something happen or she was just sad to leave and start her life?
Was she scared?” I looked from face to face trying to get a
straight answer, from minds or voices, but got only jumbled bits
and pieces of information.

Then Valerie came forward.
“I’ll explain!” she said, assuming a strong commanding attitude.
“It all comes down to Henry,” she began. “Remember how I told you
about that premonition I had about him?”

“
Yes.”

“
Well…apparently I was
right!” she said haughtily. “While Estelle and I were at the choir,
a spirit came over to tell Estelle that he had seen Henry hanging
out with Eros. Estelle didn’t know who Eros was, so she didn’t
understand what that spirit meant by that comment, but I
understood.”

Instinctively I looked over
at Max and he looked mournfully down, not meeting my
eyes.

“
I’m afraid I don’t
follow,” I said.

“
Eros has been rumored to
be hanging out with a group of spirits who call themselves the
Fallen Angels. The rumor is that Agatha is their new leader and she
has them busy with all kinds of secret work aimed to undermine our
current state of preparation,” Valerie said significantly and
raised one eyebrow high above the other.

“
OK, so Henry was hanging
out with Eros, a presumed Fallen Angel,” I summed up. “They’ve
known each other for a long time, what would make this meeting so
extraordinary?”

“
The fact that it was no
transient meeting,” Russell interjected. “They have been meeting in
secret at a remote area of the Tech district and have been
exchanging things.”

“
Gadgets of some sort,”
Alex added.

“
So?” I said, slightly
annoyed. None of these things seemed that far out of the ordinary
for Henry. He was always playing with gadgets, and doing shady
things with them. Didn’t he get to smuggle an explosive out of a
spirit world, only to save Celeste and Max? I couldn’t understand
why, all of a sudden, we were getting all upset about this
instance, when he had been doing these things all along. I told my
clan this and they all seemed annoyed by my lack of
concern.

“
This is different, Tess,”
Alex began with fresh patience. “He refuses to take any classes and
spends all his preparation time working on some mysterious gadget
that he doesn’t want to show to anyone.”

Now that was odd. Henry
couldn’t keep himself quiet about anything that he was excited
about. If he was working on some new cool toy, he would have come
to us all and bored us to death with every single
detail.

Alex continued, “And to top
it off, Henry has been elusive for a long time. he hasn’t even kept
in touch with Estelle.”

“
Besides, Tess, it’s not
just hearsay. I saw him,” Russell said in a subdued tone. “That’s
where I went when I had to leave Herald training. I shadowed him
for a while, and I can attest to what the rumors say. The only
problem was that I couldn’t get a good look at what they were
exchanging. It was a small device, but that’s all I saw.” Russell
shook his head, angry with himself, and Nancy compassionately
looped her arm around his.

“
And I’ve been having
premonitions about Henry, and they all pointed in one direction.
Trouble,” Valerie added with gloom.

“
Where is Henry now?” I
asked.

“
Gone,” Max spoke up for
the first time. “He left before Estelle, and he didn’t even say
goodbye. In fact, he told no one of his departure, and it was only
by chance that I happened to be passing by the entrance to the Veil
when I saw him step through.”

“
So…” I started to
say.

“
So there is no way to
know exactly what he was doing or why,” Alex finished.

“
He did seem to be a
little edgy when I ran into him last. He told me that he had been
working on something that was secret, and undercover. And when I
asked him for details, he got upset and left,” I told
them.

“
So he did say that he was
working on an undercover mission?” Russell asked with sudden
interest.

“
Yeah…he said that we were
not the only ones who got to do undercover missions.” And as I said
that I also remembered how his aura looked—he was definitely having
an internal struggle about something.