Veiled (3 page)

I eye her warily. She says she can’t just read my mind, though I’m pretty sure that’s how she found out I lost my virginity to Dillon. In the backseat of his 1995 Toyota Tercel. Something I wish could be erased from my memory. Sadly there hasn’t been anyone since him.

“I’m worried about you,” she says after a moment, her voice quiet.

“Why?” I ask, afraid that she’ll have all the good reasons.

She shrugs with one shoulder and looks down at her hands in her lap. “Just a feeling I have.”

Perry and her
feelings
. It’s never good news. She’s never like, “I have a feeling we’re going to win the lottery and you’ll be swept off your feet by a charming billionaire.” It’s always “I have a feeling you’re in danger and everyone around us is going to die.”

Unfortunately, she’s usually right about her feelings. She’s always been intuitive, even when she was all screwed up, and ever since all her incidents—some of which have become my incidents—her intuition has doubled. That, along with her ability to project her thoughts into other’s heads. She says she can’t read minds in the same way but I just don’t believe her. Sometimes I think about investing in a Magneto helmet around her when she starts pulling this Professor Xavier shit.

I sigh, wishing my heart wasn’t starting to kick up a few notches. “What feeling?”

“I don’t know. I’m having dreams,” she says. “You’re in them.”

I swallow hard and look back down at the phone. “Anyone else in them?”

“No.” She puts her hand on my knee until I look at her. Her eyes are rounder than ever as she stares at me. “You’re having them too.”

I quickly tuck my hair behind my ears. “It’s nothing.”

“Tell me about them.”

“Tell me about yours,” I counter. “Perhaps you’d better start from the beginning,” I say, mimicking the opening lines of White Zombie’s “Electric Head Pt. 1.”

She exhales slowly. “Okay. Well I’ve been having them for the last two weeks.”

Me too
, I think.

“It’s pretty much all the same. We’re in the Thin Veil. Remember when we there in New York?”

“You mean remember when I went to another dimension in the middle of Bryant Park to rescue you?” I repeat dryly. “Yeah. I remember, Perry.”

“Right. Well it’s like that, except it’s on an island. It kind of reminds me of this island I was on once with Dex, you know where the lepers were.”

“All your episodes kind of blur together,” I tell her, motioning with my hand for her to speed it up.

“Anyway, you’re standing on a cliff at the edge of the ocean. I’m down in a boat and I’m yelling up at you not to jump.”

A shiver rocks through me.

She goes on. “And you stop just before you’re about to go over. You listen to me. Then someone appears behind you. A shadow, a hand. And they push you.”

“Great.”

“You fall straight into the ocean and sink and I jump off the boat and swim for you.” She pauses, biting her lip for a moment.

“And?” I coax her, knowing this ain’t going to be good.

“You drown. No matter what, I can’t get below the water to get you. I see you sink. And . . . well, you’re not alone.” My heart stills. “Mom is with you too.”

I whistle slowly, breathing out. “Wow. I’m not sure what that means.”

“Neither.”

“Now I’m scared shitless.”

“It’s just a dream Ada, it doesn’t
have
to mean anything. It’s something my psyche is trying to work out.”

I give her a levelling look. “We both know your psyche isn’t normal. Especially if I’m having dreams too. Which, by the way, are nothing like yours. I just . . . well you know my exploding head syndrome?” She nods gravely and to her credit doesn’t laugh at the name this time. “It’s like that. I’m dreaming something is in my closet, then I hear the knocks and wake up. Or I’m with a guy but . . .”

“What guy?”

I shake my head. “I’m not really sure. Like, I have a feeling I know who he is but I don’t really get a good look at him. It’s almost like . . . Do you remember a guy at the wedding named Jay?”

I don’t bother telling her that I thought I saw him today. One crazy thing at a time.

Her groomed brows pull together. “I remember you were drunk and walking around barefoot holding your heels in your hand and looking for a guy called Jay but that’s it.”

“So you don’t remember inviting someone there by that name?”

She gives me a wry look. “Ada, I don’t know who half the people there were. Ask dad, he’s the one who went nuts with the guest list. Or Dex. A lot of people from his old work were invited. That whole day was such a blur.”

“Ask me what?” Dex asks as he enters the room. He stops in front of us, folding his arms across his chest. “Am I interrupting girl time?”

“It’s fine,” Perry says. “Ada’s been having strange dreams too.”

Dex nods, sliding his fingers across the stubble on his jaw. “Well, I wouldn’t worry about it. Ada is going off to school and our second wedding anniversary is coming up in October, which is enough to make any woman lose their shit. Two years as Mrs. Foray, it’s a lot to handle.”

“Tell me about it,” Perry says under her breath, though there’s a hint of a smile on her lips as she stares up at him. Lord, the two of them make me so sick sometimes with their love for each other. Sick and, I must admit, jealous.

Perry continues, “Did you know a guy at our wedding called Jay?”

Dex shakes his head, giving her a lopsided grin. “The only thing I knew that day was you, kiddo.”

“Oh, barf,” I say, sinking back into the couch.

He flashes his smile to me as he sits on the edge of the coffee table. “Sorry I’m not of any help. I guess we could go through the wedding photos. What’s this all about? You hook up with him?”

“No,” I say quickly, glaring at him.
I don’t think so
. “I just feel like he’s appearing in my dreams.” I straighten up. “Anyway, weird dreams aside, I’m fine. Just . . .”

“On edge,” Perry supplies.

“Well I am now since you told me you’ve been having feelings about things.”

“Perry is always having feelings,” Dex says. “It’s usually her period’s fault.”

“Dex,” she hisses at him. “Stop blaming everything on PMS.”

He cocks a brow. “Right. Like you don’t turn into a murderous she-devil once a month who plows through an entire cake even when you swear you’re all gluten-free.” He looks at me. “She makes me buy gluten-free bread for us. Have you ever tried that shit? It’s like chewing on dried-out dogshit.”

I raise my palm. “Stop. How would you even know what that tastes like?”

“Someone want to set the table?” Dad hollers from the kitchen.

Both Perry and I look expectantly at Dex. He can use the brownie points.

He sighs and gets up, trudging into the kitchen to get the plates.

I look back at Perry. “He’s probably right you know.”

“About the dried-out dogshit?”

“Yes. And also it being a stressful time of year for us. Me anyway. Maybe I’m just stressing and you’re picking up on it and it’s manifesting itself into dreams.”

“You’re nervous about starting school,” she says sympathetically.

“Actually I’m excited. I just . . . you know. I wish mom was here for it.”

Perry sighs and leans back into the cushions, running her hand over her face. “Yeah. I get it. I think of her during the stupidest times. Like, I’ll pick up a pomegranate at the supermarket and think, would mom know what to do with this? I know I can Google it, but it’s not the same. I just wish I could ask her advice on things, anything. Even though we weren’t close, not like you guys, I thought—I knew—that in time we would grow closer.”

My chest is weighted, the heavy hands of grief starting to climb up from the inside. Sometimes I forget that she and Perry weren’t as close as we were. My mother treated her like the bad seed, the black sheep, because she was too afraid to see Perry for what she really was. When they finally began to reconcile . . . it was too late.

“I’m sorry,” I say quietly, trying to keep my voice strong, even though we’ve talked about it many times before.

Perry’s head lolls to the side and she smiles softly at me. “Don’t be.”

“Also, I don’t want to move,” I add.

“Still?” she asks, looking around the room. “I couldn’t wait to get out of here. Aside from the fact that it’s way too big for you and dad, doesn’t this place scare you?”

“No,” I tell her. Totally lying. Because this house
does
scare me. But at the same time, I feel compelled to stay here. It’s not just because it’s everything I’ve known, that I’m hanging onto memories of my mother. It’s because it
needs
me to stay.

“All right ladies,” Dex says poking his head around the corner. “Let’s eat before your feelings turn to
hangriness
.”

Dad made roast chicken and vegetables with mashed potatoes that he calls “special potatoes” even though the only thing that makes them special is the fact that there’s bacon bits and truffle salt sprinkled in it. Well, that and they are damn good.

We gather around the table, helping ourselves to the food and conversation that doesn’t involve feelings and dreams and death.

“Hey I saw you have new neighbors now,” Dex says between mouthfuls of chicken. “Poor people don’t know who they’ve moved next door to.” His brows raise at Perry. “Had they moved in a few years ago, they wouldn’t have lasted long with all the shenanigans and whatnot.”

Shenanigans. What a simple way to describe everything that went down here.

“Actually,” I tell him, “I met the woman today. She’s really nice. They’re old though.” My dad coughs on purpose and I shrug. “Sorry,
older
. Retired. And apparently the husband was in a ‘70s rock band.”

Dex cocks his head. “What band?”

“Hybrid?” my father says before taking a sip of wine.

“Holy fuck!” Dex exclaims, pressing his hands down onto the table, his dark brown eyes looking half-crazed. “Are you shitting me?”

“Who is Hybrid?” I ask, looking between him and Perry.

“They were massive back in the day,” Perry explains. “Totally influenced Kyuss, Melvins, and Queens of the Stone Age. Sounds a bit like Black Sabbath. Weird shit went down with that band.”

“Who is the guy, do you know?” Dex asks eagerly.

My dad shrugs while I say, “I didn’t get his name. But the woman’s name is Dawn. Dawn Knightly.”

Now he’s even more impressed. “Holy shit.”

“Dex,” my dad warns him.

“Look
, dad
,” Dex says. “I’m thirty-five years old and I can say holy fucking shit if I want to.”

My dad glares at him.

I can tell Perry is trying to kick Dex under the table. “That might be true but don’t forget my dad—
our
dad—is a theology professor.”

“Who is Dawn Knightly?” I ask, attempting to breakup their showdown which happens every time we all get together. “Was she in the band?”

Dex tears his eyes away from my dad’s death stare and looks at me in such a way that I know I’m about to get an earful. “No. She was the music journalist who Sage Knightly, the guitarist, fell in love with. Documented the rise and fall of the band on their last tour before everything went to hell in a handbasket. You want to talk about infamous tours, that one is for the books. There’s a whole mythology built around it, which now I wonder if it could have been real after all.” He leans back in his chair, taking off his cap and running his hand through his thick black hair, eyes going to the door. “Damn. I wonder if I should go over and introduce myself.”

“And say what?” I ask. “Ask him for his autograph?”

He gives me a withering glance. “Sage Knightly had a bunch of solo albums after Hybrid. I wonder if he could give me permission to use some of his music in my documentary. Fuck knows the Deftones will never respond to me.”

“Will you ever tell us what the documentary is about?” my father asks gruffly. “You’ve been talking about it for ages now.”

After Dex and Perry called it quits with their Experiment in Terror YouTube show (
they
were the original YouTubers), they were both at a loss of what to do with themselves. Luckily it didn’t take them long to figure it out. I thought that they might go the paranormal investigator route much like the Warrens (you know, the real life couple
The Conjuring
was based on), but they seem to have put everything scary behind them. For now, anyway. Can’t say I blame them.

Instead they opened up a company together, Haunted Media. Dex uses his prowess as an editor, cameraman, and musician to make music videos for some major artists. I never thought you could turn making music videos into a career, especially in the age where MTV plays nothing but the Kardashians, but Dex has a dark and creepy tone to his work that goes over well with so many bands and artists. Perry is the manager of the company, the brains and the beauty. She keeps Dex in line, which he needs badly, and is the key liaison between the business and the customers. The saying
behind every man is a great woman
, is totally true in this case.