Veiled (Ada Palomino 1)

She sits back, looking mildly embarrassed. “It doesn’t work like that,” she says in a clipped voice. “And you’re right, we did have a deal.”

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.”