Veiled (Ada Palomino 1)

“How long have you been in the city?” I ask him. “Watching me,” I add.

“Since your mother died,” he says.

My eyes nearly bug out. “Two years?”

He nods.

“Two years,” I repeat. “The Knightlys just moved.”

“I’ve been around,” he says vaguely. “In dreams you don’t remember. Ever since the night at the wedding. I had to . . . be near you. In person. To really get a hold on you. To know you after that.”

I blink at him, feeling all sorts of violated. “You don’t know me,” I sneer at him, on the defensive in a second.

He shrugs, not seeming to care. “In some ways yes, some ways no. You can learn a lot about a person through their dreams. It’s your subconscious, split open and bare for all to see.”

“You mean for you to see.” I try not to shudder, wondering what he saw over the years. It’s not fair that I couldn’t remember him being there, not fair that I myself can’t interpret my own dreams, discover my own subconscious. “Was it just my dreams you were poking around in?”

He rubs his lips together, hesitating. I don’t like hesitation. “I can go in your dreams, from anywhere I am. It’s like looking through a window, into your head. Sometimes I step through that window.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Yes, it’s just dreams.”

I don’t believe it. “You haven’t just…portaled into my life at some point or another?”

“I haven’t needed to until the other night,” he says, eyes sliding to me. I can read nothing in them. “I won’t do it again, unless I have to.”

“Right.”

“You’re my ward, Ada,” he says gravely. “I’ve been connected to you since the wedding. I can’t read your thoughts. I can’t see into your conscious mind. But I can feel you, from anywhere. Sense your state of mind, what you’re feeling.

“Can you sense what I’m feeling right now?”

He nods. “You don’t like this. You feel violated. Like I’m an intruder. You feel vulnerable. You don’t like me. And yet part of you still does.”

I roll my eyes. “What part?”

Wait, don’t answer that.

“I think you know,” he says, his gaze on me again, scrutinizing. I quickly turn away, feeling like my body has betrayed me and then realizing he probably knows that too. “I don’t mind. It’s important that I be likable to you, Ada.”

I let out a dry laugh. “It’s important you be likeable? Do you realize how much of an android you sound like right now?”

“Sorry,” he says quickly. It’s probably wishful thinking that I see an ounce of shame in his expression. “I don’t mean to sound callous. Impersonal. It’s just . . .”

“The way you are?”

He nods, reaching down to turn the radio knob. The car looks like it only gets AM and crackly blues song comes on. “When you’re immortal, you don’t have a fear of death. If you don’t have a fear of death . . .”

“Then you’re not human.”

“Fear gives people their humanity. Fear of loss. I fear nothing.”

And for the first time in a while, I feel afraid being around him. It’s unsettling, this slightly robotic version of himself. He’s being honest, too honest, lacking the very human fear of judgement.

I look out the window, the properties becoming smaller as we approach the city. “You must fear failure. Otherwise you wouldn’t care what happens to me.”

“I don’t fear failure but I also don’t welcome it. In fact, it’s not about fear at all. It’s about duty. My job comes from deep within my bones. It is to protect you until you can protect yourself.”

Somehow our conversation has gotten even more interesting. “What do you mean until I can protect myself?”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment.

“Jay?” I coax him. “You can’t say that and nothing else.”

He breathes in deeply and I wonder what it’s like to breathe yet have no use for it. “Each Jacob’s job is different for each person. As you know. My job is to guide you through the now and protect you until you are strong enough, smart enough, to protect yourself. Then I move on. Start again as someone else, for someone else.”

“But what am I protecting myself from? I mean, other than demons in the closet.”

“Well that’s precisely it. Because that’s one tiny piece of what’s happening around you.” He chews on his lip, brow furrowed as he thinks. I can tell he wants to tell me something, maybe something he shouldn’t.

“And what’s happening around me?” I ask quietly.

“I haven’t just been in your dreams,” he admits. “I’ve been watching you. In real life. From a distance. Sometimes closer. You’ve never noticed me. Until the other day.”

At Sephora. “Why were you there?”

“To watch over you. To make sure you weren’t harmed.”

My eyes widen as I sit up ramrod straight. “Harmed? What the hell would harm me? The people in the kiosks in the mall, throwing hand cream and cell phones?”