Veiled (Ada Palomino 1)

Then he puts his fingers on my cheek, pressing slightly. His contact both makes me freeze and supress a shiver. “I can feel that,” he says. “Your emotions.”

Oh great. Yet another partial psychic. An empath.

“Do you even know what feelings mean?” I ask him, rather spitefully.

He doesn’t flinch but he does pause before he says, “I do. I know that hurt. Maybe not as much as it should hurt someone, but it was an insult and I’ll take it as one.”

I dare to meet his eyes. He certainly doesn’t look hurt. His expression hasn’t changed at all. “Sorry,” I mumble.

“Don’t be,” he says. “I’m sure that because I’m immortal, you think I’m not quite human. But here’s a secret, Ada,” he leans in until his lips are at my ear, “the longer I’m around you, the more that I’ll feel.” He pauses, his breath tickling my ear. I close my eyes to it, to the warmth that floods down my neck. “That’s something that Jacob never told me. I’m not even sure if it’s supposed to happen. But the more time I spend with you . . . the more like you I become.”

He pulls back and I’m left with that heavy, yet strangely flattering, confession. I’m not sure what I should say.

So I awkwardly mumble, “Well, be prepared to become totally awesome.”

He gives me a small smile. “So I take it your time with Amy didn’t go well, then.”

I shake my head, my heart thumping to a sad little beat. “No. It didn’t. It went pretty much as I thought it would.”

“But you still had hope, deep down. Otherwise you wouldn’t be this hurt.”

I sigh and stare down at the blanket. “Yeah. I had hope. Hope that she would be a friend. That she would at least try to believe me. I didn’t think her first thought would be that I was lying. I didn’t think her second thought would be that I was nuts. If it were the other way around . . .”

“She’s not you, Ada. She’s someone else entirely. Maybe someone you didn’t really know. She couldn’t have known all that much about you, if you were able to keep all of this a secret.”

I shrug, even though I thought it earlier. “She knew that I was fun to be around and I had a successful fashion blog and I wanted to be a designer and I liked tall guys with goatees . . .”

He scratches at the light scruff along his jaw and chin. “Goatees, huh? Perhaps I should give this wee beard a shave.”

At first I’m struck by the fact that he’s almost flirting with me. Then I’m struck by the fact that for that last sentence, his accent came out totally Irish.

I nearly laugh. “What did you say?”

He gives me a puzzled look, which on his stony face means a very subtle frown. “When?”

“Just then. You sounded Irish.”

He purses his lips and gives a half-shrug. “Not sure what to tell you. But listen. Trust me when I say it’s best that you told Amy now. Any later and it could have been trouble. For both of you.”

I exhale loudly through my nose and look up at the ceiling. There are still faint green star stickers from when I was a little kid. Back then I had no idea what course my life would take.

Or did I? I remember very clearly the way that Perry dealt with seeing things. I didn’t think she was crazy. I didn’t think she was lying either. I was jealous. Because she was part of a world I wasn’t. I must have had some feeling though, deep down, that I would be like her. That I would follow in her footsteps. Maybe that’s why I rebelled so hard against her. I wanted to be like her and that scared me.

“I guess,” I tell him. “I know I’m glad she wasn’t with me when that fucking nun came around. Would she have seen it, if they had showed up?”

He nods. “Yes. The closer a demon gets, the more chances that someone like Amy would see them. And then there’s the fact that you’d be reacting. Your reaction and interaction brings apparitions to life. To the demons, they wouldn’t care if she saw them or not because they’d finish her off the same way they would have finished you.”

I try not to shudder. “And if you hadn’t showed up and ripped its head clean off,” I begin, finding the strength to ask, “what would have happened to me?”

“They would have dragged you to Hell,” he says simply. “That’s where they want you. That’s why they’re pretending to be your mother in your dreams. They want you however they can have you.”

“Why?” I whisper.

“Because you’re you,” he says, his eyes turning warm. “You’re a threat to them. They know what you’re capable of, even if you don’t yet. And you’re special. Anyone with power and abilities is even more enticing to them. If they had possession of you . . . they could do a lot of damage to the world.”