Veiled (Ada Palomino 1)

I freeze as I open the top of the machine, feeling his eyes at my back, like rays of sunshine. Warm yet probing, leaving me vulnerable. I pop the K-cup in. “You could tell?”

“More walls,” he says.

I press on and as the machine noisily does its thing, I turn around to face him, leaning back against the counter.

“Jay . . . I had dreams about you. As Silas Black.”

He nods, like he was expecting this. “I could read the fear off of you. I’m more closely connected to you than ever before.”

“Which is a pretty good thing since we’ll be going into Hell together.” I pause. “Have you told my sister what we’re doing?”

He shakes his head, coming forward and leaning with elbows on the kitchen island, his hands absently running over a magazine. “It’s not for me to tell,” he says. “And I’m not sure if it would do any good.”

The machine stops hissing. I pick up my coffee and let the warmth flow into my palms. I breathe it in, inhaling the morning. It’s the little things that make me happy sometimes and I’m guessing every little thing will start to stand out when you know you’re heading to Hell.

I take a sip and sigh. Unfortunately the caffeine can’t ward off reality. “I want to tell her. Just in case I don’t come back, you know? I also want her to know I’ve been trying. That . . . I’m more than she thinks I am. That I’m worth something, too.”

“I think she already knows that, Ada,” he says, a wistful quality to his voice. “It radiates from you. An energy you can’t ignore.”

“Regardless,” I go on, “she would worry too much. I mean she wouldn’t let me go to begin with. Obviously. She would tie me down and lock me in the guest bedroom and I’d stay there for weeks, forced to watch Dex work on his music videos.”

“Not only that,” he says gravely, “but she would interfere. She would create portals to try and rescue you and bring you back and we both know things would not end pretty. She can’t know, Ada. You can tell her after, but not now. Not while your mother’s soul is at stake.”

That’s exactly the kind of thing that Silas Black would say in an attempt to thwart off my only means of being rescued if everything goes wrong.

But I brush it off. I can’t think like that.

“Look, Ada.” Jay comes around the island and stops right in front of me. I swear he’s going to kiss me, touch me, and my body immediately pulls toward him. But he puts his hands on my shoulders, holding me at a firm distance. “I know you’ve lost your trust in me. I can’t explain what happened last night. All I know is that there is a soul inside me I haven’t quite shed, though I’ll do everything to bury it. I promise I am here to protect you, to watch over you, to keep you alive. That’s my job and duty and nothing can break that bond.”

“Silas Black was in league with the Devil,” I blurt out. “He was an evil man who did black magic and disappeared without a trace.”

He doesn’t flinch which confirms that he knew.

“You knew?” I hiss at him.

He exhales, nodding. “I knew. Of course I knew. I had to Google myself the moment I found out my name from Jacob. We’re not supposed to, but I had to know.”

“And you didn’t tell me!”

“You would have treated me differently,” he says. “And as I’ve said before, I am not him.”

“But he comes out the more that I spend time with you, let alone sleep with you! Oh my god . . . what have we done? And you knew. You told me that another side would come out of you, a bad side.”

“And you accepted that risk quite well,” he reminds me sharply.

The thing is, even if I had known what sleeping with him really meant, I still would have done it.

“Ada,” he says, gripping my shoulders tight and peering at me. “I can get this under control. I am still me. Silas is dead.”

“But he’s not, he wasn’t, an ordinary human!” I whisper frantically, trying to avoid his eyes. “He’s practically a warlock. A disciple of Satan. He’s . . . magic.”

“I told you that all Jacobs come from people that have abilities. The person can be good. Or bad. It doesn’t matter because it’s just a vessel in the end, one we take over and mold to ourselves. But Jacobs aren’t good or bad either. We are both. You need the balance to live in the world in-between.”

“Sometimes I think there’s a bad batch of them,” I mutter, remembering Perry’s Jacob.

“Look at me,” he says. He grips my chin in his fingers, their heat searing into me, and raises my head to meet his eyes. He’s sincere. He’s pure and powerful and everything Jay.