Veiled (22 page)

He has a spoonful of chowder, then gives me the slightest of grins. “How do you know I wasn’t a caveman to start out with?”

“Well I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“What I meant to say is that women are more emotional. That’s what I get from it anyway. They attach to more things. For example, their children. That’s a difficult bond to break, even when you die.”

I swallow down the pang of sadness, feeling it saturate me. My mother. No wonder I dream about her still, no wonder my subconscious wants to see her, no wonder the demons use her to trick me. They know about that bond just as anyone does. How, even in death, I sometimes feel my mother is as attached to me as always, an invisible thread that links us and will never break.

“Anyway,” Jay goes on, eyes flicking to mine, softer now, and I know he can feel the sorrow coming off of me, “that must be one of the reasons. I don’t know for sure but I bet that’s part of it. It’s harder for some people to let go of love.”

“That still sounds a bit sexist,” I mutter before I shove the toast in my mouth.

He shrugs, not bothered.

“So, since you don’t really have answers but seem to have opinions, when do you think I’ll be able to, um, begin my training?”

He flags down the waitress and gestures for more coffee for the both of us. He turns back to me. “You’ve already started.”

“What I mean is, when do you stop being some guy hanging around me and start turning into Mr. Miyagi?”

He cocks a perfect brow. “Some guy?” he repeats. “I am not
some guy
.”

Testy, testy. The more time I spend with Jay, the more I get under his skin. I kind of like it.

“You know what I mean,” I tell him. “When will it all . . . begin?” I quickly add, “And don’t tell me it’s already started.”

“I’m not going to tell you anything because I don’t know anything. To be honest, I’m not even sure how I’ll know. Maybe I’ll just wake up one day and it will be clear. Maybe Jacob has to pull me aside. I have no idea. But I know you shouldn’t worry about it. Things like this don’t happen overnight.”

“So we’re just supposed to just sit around and wait?”

“No. You go live your life. Go to school. Design. Study. Take selfies. I’ll be the giant weirdo lurking in the background and occasionally taking your picture.”

And you’re my giant weirdo
, I think to myself.

“And then one day,” he goes on. “I’ll tap you on the shoulder and tell you it’s time. Throw you right into a pit of demons with nothing but a bible and the sword of destiny and you’ll have to fight them all until you’re the only one standing. If you live, then you’ve passed. If you die and go to hell, then you’ve failed.”

The coffee is spilling out of my cup I’m shaking so hard.

“Oh my god,” I squeak softly. “Oh my god.”

Then he grins at me. It lights up his whole face, turning him into a rugged handsome man into something boyish.

And
dickish
.

“What the fuck?” I cry out. “Are you joking?”

Now he’s sitting back in his seat and laughing. A full-on belly laugh that’s both beautiful and aggravating.

“You asshole!” I seethe at him. “You are such a fucking jerk. I’m going to get you back for this so bad, I swear to God.”

Jay tries to say something but his laughter won’t subside. There are even faint tears at the corner of his eyes. “Your face,” he eventually says between laughs. “Oh, you should have seen your face.”

“Is joking and laughing at my expense now a consequence of hanging around me too much?” I snipe. “Because I think I liked it better when you were a humorless robot.”

He wipes underneath his eyes and lets out an amused sigh, still grinning.

“You’re lucky you’re hot,” I tell him, sliding out of the booth. “I’m going to the washroom. Don’t try anything funny.”

“You think I’m hot?” he asks as I walk away but I don’t give him the satisfaction of looking back.

Once in the bathroom, just as tacky as the rest of the place with plastic clamshells adorned around the mirror, I take a good look at myself. I’m scowly, that’s for sure, but there’s a glow to my cheeks that wasn’t there before. I’m not sure if that’s the glow of being embarrassed or the glow of something more pleasant than that.

I turn around, making sure the three bathroom stalls are empty before turning back to the mirror and saying to my reflection, “Suck it up, princess.”

Then I take the middle stall and do my business, grateful for the privacy.

I’m just about to get up and flush when suddenly the toilet in the stall next to me flushes.

What the fuck?

I glance back at the flush handle on my toilet. Manual. But maybe the stall next door has an automatic flush that malfunctioned because I know there wasn’t anyone in that stall—it was wide open—and I know no one else came in.

Suddenly the terrible sensation of ants crawling inside my skin swarms through me.

No. Not a good sign.

I hold my breath and listen, needing assurance that I’m all alone, that it’s me being paranoid.

There’s no one there
, Ada, I tell myself.

But there is.

I can hear something…

Breathing.

Very faint. But raspy, gurgling, b
reathing.

The blood-beat in my ears gets louder. I need to get out of here. I need to just get out the door and go. Just rip open that stall and run.

The crawling sensation intensifies and I absently itch my arm.

The whole bathroom seems to pause, as if holding its breath.

A sniffing sound.

Like something testing the air.

Oh god.

The image of the Splitter demon flashes through my mind.

Not again. Not on my fucking watch. I’m not going to have Jay rush into the bathroom to rescue me, even if I should be so lucky.

I take a deep breath, my body moving so slowly, like I’m in a dream but I know I’m not because now I can smell something too.

Something rotten, earthy, putrid. It stings my nostrils, like blood and malt vinegar, something that’s been unearthed when it should remain buried.

I open the stall door, limbs sluggish and step out into the bathroom. The mirror is in front of me, reflecting my own image, my pale face and the stalls, their doors half-open. Nothing more. Nothing less.

I take peek around at the neighboring stall anyway, tepidly pushing the door open.

I hold my breath as it gently swings against the siding, hitting it with a soft
clunk
.

Empty.

I exhale in relief, feeling the blood in my veins run warm again, and turn back to the face the mirror.

There’s someone right behind me.

A tall figure made of shadows.

No face.

Just red eyes.

And now, a slowly spreading smile showing off rows of shiny sharp teeth.

“Ada,” it whispers, a voice that makes me want to drop to my knees and beg for mercy.

Instead I run.

I burst out of the bathroom and run into the restaurant, coming to a walk when I realize people are looking at me strange.

I round the corner and see Jay in our booth at the end, his back to me, and I’m so ready to grab his arm and make him leave with me.

Then I realize he’s not alone.

I stop where I am, the waitress nearly slamming into me with a muttering of annoyance.

I don’t care.

My
mother
is sitting where I was sitting in the booth.

She’s leaning forward, panic in her eyes, saying something to Jay.

He nods but if he’s saying something back, I can’t tell.

After what happened in the bathroom, I know this can’t be a coincidence. It has to be a demon’s trick. But why is Jay indulging it?

And why do I know in my heart, the core of all I am, that this isn’t a trick at all?

This is the first time seeing my mother outside of a dream.

She’s made her way into my world this time.

I’m torn between wanting to run over to her and stay where I am, give her time to say whatever she’s saying to Jay. God I wish I could just talk to her about him, about everything.
Hey mom, a lot’s happened since you’ve passed on . . .

Then she looks up and sees me. Her face falls.

She quickly gets out of the booth with preternatural grace and exits the restaurant faster than I could have predicted.

“What?” I say to myself and then start running down the restaurant after her.

I pass by Jay but don’t even look in his direction, I just keep going until I’m swinging open the door and running out into the sunshine, nearly run over by an old man in a scooter as he putters down the sidewalk.

“Watch it,” he grumbles but I pay no attention.

My mother is nowhere to be found.

I whirl around, out of breath, but all I see are tourists and storefronts, a car rolling past.

“Mom?” I cry out, disoriented as I keep spinning around in vain.

“Ada!”

Jay is bursting through the doors, grabbing my arm.

“Ada,” he says again, his grip tightening as he pulls me to him.

“My mother,” I whisper, eyes searching the street. “I saw her inside, talking to you. She just left. Why would she leave?”

“What are you talking about?” he asks.

I can only shake my head. How could she run from me?

“Ada, please, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jay continues and I finally meet his eyes. They are icebergs laced with disbelief.

“It was my mother’s ghost!”

“There was no one there,” he says calmly, putting his hands on my shoulders. “I was alone the whole time you were in the washroom.”

I shrug him off, refusing to be coddled. “Then it was a demon.”

“Ada, I would have seen her if it was either one. It’s in your head, okay. You said in the car you used to come here with your family when you were young—”

“No!” I cry out, squinting in the sunshine. “It was her. I saw her. You talked to her.”

“Then what was I saying?”

I shrug helplessly. “I don’t know. I couldn’t see.”

“Then how do know I was talking to her?”

“You nodded,” I say feebly. “She was talking to you, she was scared, and you nodded like you understood.”

“I could have just been moving my head to take a sip off coffee,” he says. “Please. Ada. This is only doing you harm.”

Tears are starting to well in my eyes. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I don’t want to be the girl who can’t get over her grief, the one who breaks down all the time.

“Hey,” he says gently, brushing his thumb underneath my eyes, as if to clear the tears before they start. “Look at me, princess.”

The way he says princess is disarming. Not sarcastic, not belittling. It’s more than a term of endearment. In this moment, he’s whispering it with tenderness that makes my heart feel soft and pliable. Warm. Full.

“Let me go pay,” he says, keeping his eyes glued to mine. “We’ll go back to the hotel. I’m sure the room is ready. We’ll get some wine. Order some room service. Have a party.”

I can’t help but let out a weak laugh. “It’s, like, two p.m.”

“It’s always five o’clock somewhere,” he says. “Didn’t a President say that?”

“I think that was Jimmy Buffet.”

“The Margaritaville guy? I guess that makes sense.” He gives me a kind smile. “Come on.”

For a moment I’m terrified that he’s going to leave me on the sidewalk, that he’ll disappear into the restaurant and never come back out and I’ll be forever lost. Not a rational thought but a terrifying one all the same.

But he grabs my hand, holding it in a vice-like grip, then leads me inside. He pays the bill, throwing down one more twenty than he should, and then we go back out into the ocean air.

We’re only around the block when I mention to him what I saw—or think I saw—in the bathroom.

He sucks in his breath, giving my hand another squeeze. “Screw room service,” he says and pulls me into a store selling liquor. He grabs a bottle of white wine from the fridge and a couple of packets of salt water taffy, pays at the register, and then leads me toward the sand.

We find a place among the small dunes, a stiffer mound of sand in between reedy grass, and hunker down. He hands me a salt water taffy and deftly unscrews the bottle, handing it to me.

“Drink up, buttercup,” he says. “You need it.”

I take it from him, our fingers brushing against each other, sending more shockwaves through my system. Even though the breeze is fresh, the pounding surf sounds like a lullaby, and the sound of squealing children nearby should be comforting, I need this wine more than anything. If not for what I’m seeing, for what I’m feeling.

Everything Jay.