Veiled (48 page)

“
Don’t look at us, we are
right behind you,” Katie said, pointing to Jase and
herself.

“
We need to warn someone,”
I said.

“
Who?” Alex
asked.

I started pacing again;
trying to think of options.

“
Celeste! She will be
around,” Dorian said calmly.

“
How do you know?” I
asked.

“
I saw her! Hovering over
you,” he said with a knowing look.

“
She’s going to be my
Angel?” I said rushing to his side and hugging him.

“
OK…so we just have to
warn her then,” Alex suggested.

“
How?” both Dorian and I
asked. Celeste couldn’t see us, she would never
understand.

“
Luz!” Alex said a little
too loud, and a group of spirits who were nearby turned to look at
us.

“
What about her?” Dorian
asked with a pang to his aura color.

“
Luz, is her daughter,
right?” Alex began, but Dorian shook his head
emphatically.

“
She’s not the right
person.” his voice was sad and a little protective. Not only had
Luz been born way before Dorian, but she was born with a major
disability, that would no doubt make it hard for her to understand
what we were trying to say to her.

“
I know!” Alex said.
“Estelle, she’s still alive, and should still remember
us!”

“
Perfect! Let’s go, we are
literally running out of time,” I grabbed them both by the arms and
started pulling.

“
Tess…there is the problem
of…how would we find her?” Dorian said as he was being
pulled.

“
Oh, yeah.” I stopped.
“Why does this have to be so hard?” I whined.

“
It doesn’t have to be!”
Katie’s bright voice came from behind me. “I happen to know that
she is with Valerie right now.” Then she looked significantly at
Alex. “She came to see the birth of a child!”

Alex looked ashen, even for
a spirit. We were very much running out of time, but this had to be
done, so we all took off like comets.

The whole clan was behind
me…or what was left of it I should say. The thrill of one last
adventure in Heaven and the fact that we were really pushing our
luck this time made it very exciting. I could see it in their
auras.

Dorian always flew the
fastest; I couldn’t fathom how he did it. He was the first one to
arrive at the Preston residence. Upstairs, we found Valerie, who
was lying down, her stomach swollen to a great mass. Her face was
white as chalk and looked like she was in pain. Dane was sitting on
the floor, his face was leaning on the bed, looking helpless. Nancy
was holding Valerie’s hand with one hand and checking her watch
with the other.

Sitting quietly in one
corner of the room was a very old and dignified looking Estelle,
who was busy knitting a blanket. She looked up at us the moment we
entered the room, she looked alarmed for a moment, but then smiled
broadly. She didn’t say anything, she simply got up and walked out
of the room and, with a quick swift motion, told us to follow
her.

We crowded into the
bathroom, and she closed the door.

“
It’s you again…” she said
in a breezy voice. “I thought…well…”

Meanwhile, Dorian, Katie,
Jase, Alex, and I were all stuffed into the little bathroom with
Estelle, who seemed used to the sight of spirits by now.

“
Estelle? We need to ask a
favor of you. I know this is not the best time to ask this of
you…but I’m running out of time,” Alex said hurriedly.

Estelle looked worried. “Of
course, I would be happy to help you with anything you
ask.”

I pushed my way forward and
stood next to Alex.

“
Well…when you get to the
other side…there will be a spirit there that will be Tess’s
Guardian Angel,” he began and felt silly the moment he started to
speak.

Estelle frowned a
little.

“
I—I’m sorry to have to
ask you this now but…” He tried to explain tactfully, but his
request was not coming out right. “Her name is Celeste. She needs
to know that…that.”

“
That we want to be
together,” I finished for him.

Estelle smiled broadly at
us. “I figured that.”

“
I don’t know how you can
find her, but…” Alex felt ridiculous again, but it had to be
done.

“
I’ll remember,” she said
sweetly. “Celeste,” she added with a nod. “I will look for her the
moment I get to the other side.”

Alex gave her a silly
smile, knowing that what we had just asked her was kind of
crass.

“
Don’t worry…it’s the way
of nature. Here you are, about to come into this life… and I am
about to exit it. I’m not afraid,” she assured him.

“
That’s it!” Nancy
announced from the room. “Five minutes apart, we have to
go.”

“
I better go!” Estelle
said and tried to avoid the rest of us as she walked out of the
bathroom. “And you better go too!” she said as she hurried down the
hall.

Dane rushed out of the room
and nearly knocked Estelle over. After apologizing to her, he ran
down the hall and down the stairs.

“
I’ll get the bag!” he
yelled.

Nancy shook her head.
“Men…” she said as she lifted the bag. “Come on, honey, I’ll help
you up.”

As Valerie maneuvered her
large belly into a sitting position, Katie petted a cat that lay
sleeping on a chair. The cat got spooked and meowed loudly while
all its hairs stood on end.

“
Cutting it close aren’t
we, Alex?” Dorian said.

“
Yes! We better go.” He
turned to leave, but turned back. “Oh…and Estelle…”

“
Yes?” she said out loud,
forgetting herself.

“
Could you tell them to
name the baby, Alex?”

She smiled and pointed to
the bag that Nancy was holding. Embroidered on it was the word
“Alex”.

“
She picked the name
herself. I had nothing to do with it, apparently you get around,”
Estelle whispered. Nancy and Valerie shot Estelle a quizzical look,
then, shook their heads with resignation—the old lady was talking
to herself again.

Alex smiled and waved
goodbye. I did too, and we were off.

“
Where have you been?”
Dayspring said the moment we got back.

“
We had one last thing to
do,” I said while trying to figure out why she looked
different.

“
You left me no time to
say goodbye! You have to go…there’s no time! Too bad I had some
news…” she pointed with her eyes toward Kerubiel, who was shaking
hands with Alex and Dorian. He too looked slightly different, but I
couldn’t figure out exactly how.

“
What news?” I
asked.

“
The story is long you
know…but you left me no choice but to narrow it down to the
basics.”

I raised my eyebrows with
anticipation. “OK, so tell me!”

“
After you left me feeling
like an idiot, he snuck up on me and told me that he loved me. He
was so quiet I almost thought I had imagined it. But I turned and
he was standing there looking a little embarrassed,” she said with
a mocking smile.

I looked at her
eagerly.

“
We had a long talk as you
can imagine, and it turns out he fell in love with me on that same
day—you know the day we met to sign the peace treaty. Can you
believe it, Tess? This whole time…we really are idiots!”

“
I knew that!” I said, and
Dayspring gave me one of her more menacing looks. “The part about
you two being in love all along,” I corrected, and she relaxed her
features.

“
Well we decided to take
our plight up to the Eternals. We weren’t sure what they were going
to say. I was so embarrassed, Kerubiel did all the
talking.”

“
So…what did they
say?”

“
They asked us what we
wanted to do. And Kerubiel said that he wanted to marry me. He
hadn’t even asked me yet! I would have said yes of course, but
that’s beside the point.”

“
And did they say you
could?”

“
Yes, they did! And they
were kind of laughing at us too, as if this whole thing was
humorous to them. They said they weren’t surprised and in fact were
wondering how long it would take us to get together.”

“
Really, so they
knew?”

“
Yes, they knew, they
always know.”

“
So what about the…you
know…the compatibility issue?”

“
Well that’s the really
embarrassing part. We just stood there, neither one of us wanted to
ask. So they saved us the trouble and answered through the link. It
was better that way.”

“
So…there are no problems
then?”

She looked uncomfortable
for a moment and shifted her weight. “We had some minor changes
done…but they are all done and we are good to go,” she said with
dignity.

I chuckled. “You two were
born to be legends weren’t you?”

“
I guess so,” Kerubiel
said. He was now standing behind Dayspring and both Alex and Dorian
had a confused look on their faces, but that soon changed when they
saw Kerubiel wrapping his arms around Dayspring’s
shoulders.

They were stunned actually,
staring open mouthed at the unlikely couple.

“
We better get used to
this reaction,” Dayspring said to Kerubiel, who didn’t seem to be
bothered by the looks they were getting.

“
I actually like it!”
Kerubiel said as he gave Dayspring a kiss on the cheek. “Did she
say yes?”

“
I haven’t asked her yet,”
Dayspring mumbled.

“
Asked what?”

“
I wanted you to be my
Issa’ahot at my wedding.”

“
What’s a
Issa’ahot?”

“
Well our wedding will be
a mix between the two worlds—so you’ll have to help me find a
dress, then walk in front of me at the wedding ceremony while
throwing white feathers into the air, so that I will be thoroughly
covered in white feathers before I get to the altar—there are more
duties too…but I’ll tell you about it later.”

“
That’s beautiful
Dayspring, I would love to do it! But…” Now I realized why she was
so annoyed at my delay, there was no time now for me to attend her
wedding and I was pretty sure I should be walking into the Veil
right now.

“
Don’t worry about it,
Tess, I wasn’t planning on getting married so soon. I mean…I want
to....” she smiled at Kerubiel. “But we have waited this long…and I
want to have a big wedding. We want all our loved ones to be there,
and it will take a while to get them used to the idea of us being
together. Besides, your life will not take that long—I’ll wait
until you die. It might even take us longer than that!” she said
brightly as if it was all so simple.

“
But…I won’t remember
you.”

“
Bah!” she said
dismissively. “We’ll be friends again, this won’t get between us.”
She pointed to the Veil. “I’ll bring you up to speed after you
die.”

“
OK…if you say so,” I
said. Her casual approach to my mortality was somewhat unsettling,
but I couldn’t blame her. She was in love, for the first time in
the many thousands of conscious years of existence.

I leaned over and gave her
a big hug. I wished her good luck in her wedding preparations and
told her she only had eighty to ninety years to do it.

“
You take care of her
Alex,” she said as she released me. “We can’t have her back until
this wedding is perfect and I’ll need at least that long, maybe
longer.”

“
You’ll have me back,
before you have her,” he promised.

“
It’s time.”
I must not have been the only one to hear it,
because Alex and Dorian both stiffened at the same time.

Alex extended his hand and
I took it. I looked back for one last time. Dayspring was still in
Kerubiel’s arms and she was waving to me goodbye. Katie and Jase
were also by the Veil, holding hands.

“
We are right behind you,”
Katie said as she waved at us with her free hand.

I waved back, I felt as if
I were in a trance. Dorian was next to us, I extended my free hand
and he took it.

We gave each other one last
look.

Dorian smiled. “On
three!”

* * * * *

Chapter 43

Being inside the Veil was
like nothing I had ever experienced. We were engulfed in whiteness.
It wasn’t bright like looking into a sun, it was just plain white.
I turned to look at Alex and he seemed to be a lot further out than
arm’s length, same with Dorian.

There were ripples of
thicker whiteness that seemed to float all around me. They gave the
impression that we were moving forward.

“
Are we moving?” I asked,
and my voice sounded strange.

“
I’m not making myself
move,” Dorian said. His voice also sounded strange.