Paul walked back to the first room—it was some sort of laundry and utility room. The pile of clothes stank with gasoline. He pulled one soaked piece—it looked like a dark sweatshirt—from the top and dragged it halfway out of the room, so it sat in the carpet stain but the end of one sleeve still touched the pile of laundry. He pulled the matchbox and a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. Shaking the pack, he pulled one cigarette out with his lips and struck a match to light it, sucking in the smoke. Then he angled the cigarette to the side and blew air out of the corner of his mouth, extinguishing the match.
He tucked the matchbox just inside the sleeve of the sweatshirt that lay outside of the laundry room. Then he took the cigarette out of his mouth and trapped the filter in the matchbox so the cigarette was tilted up and away from the sleeve. It would burn down, igniting the matches eventually. Those would light the sleeve, and since the sweatshirt was soaked in fuel, it would blaze up, the fire spreading to the pile of laundry and along the stain in the carpet to the door of the bedroom where his parents no doubt slept.
Paul nodded and looked towards that door. He gave it a jerk of his chin by way of farewell, and turned his back, leaving the house.
Everything spun and then Veronica was lying in bed. She knew she was asleep, but she couldn’t wake up. She was breathing in smoke. It burned as it traveled through her nostrils down her windpipe. Struggling, she willed herself to wake up, but her body remained inert, unresponsive to her panic. A weight beside her on the bed shifted. She heard the springs creak with the movement. Then coughing and retching. It was getting so hot. She had to wake up. Wake up!
~~~
Veronica’s gorge rose when she came back to herself and saw the ruins again. She tried to breathe the nausea away but the smell of all the burnt things only made the queasiness worse. Then in a blink two forms appeared, inches from her face. The overwhelming smell of burnt hamburger assaulted her. Every detail of their ruined, burnt faces was clear. Bone showed through one of their cheeks, and the chin of the other. Their skin peeled back from their mouths, red and blackened—in horrible grins. But the eyes were worse—the eyeballs had collapsed and blackened, but they were still in the widened eye sockets.
And she felt the most appalling, overwhelming rage wash over her.
Veronica screamed. She stumbled out of the house and across the yard to Daniel, who hung up his cell as she approached.
“Veronica?” he said.
She grabbed his arm. “Get me out of here.”
“Are you okay?”
“Just get me out of here!”
After a moment in the car, Veronica burst into tears. Daniel slowed down and she waved a hand in a forward motion. He accelerated again.
She cried until they reached the curb in front of his building. He parked the car and sat still while she got a grip on herself.
“Do you have a tissue?” she whispered.
“No. You want to go up?”
The need for a tissue was urgent. “Okay,” she said, sniffling.
They made their way through the hall, to the elevator, and to his apartment without speaking. Veronica visualized a nice full box of Kleenex. No other images would be allowed to take the place of that one until she’d dealt with her nose.
Daniel let them in and she made a bee-line for the bathroom. No Kleenex, but there was a roll of toilet paper. After a few minutes the situation with her nose was manageable. She still felt teary, though, so she took some toilet paper with her when she joined Daniel in the living room.
“What happened?” he asked gently as she sat beside him on the couch.
Veronica took a deep, halting breath, and when she opened her mouth to answer the tears started again. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought I was done.”
“It was really bad, huh.”
She nodded. She focused on regulating her breathing and after a moment her tears subsided again. “Did I ever tell you about the time I went to the funeral home?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“It was for Sylvia Gomez’s viewing. Afterwards I went and confronted you at the police station—she told me some things there and I tried to tell you but you hadn’t started believing me yet at that point.”
Daniel grimaced. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Veronica said. “It’s just that there were a lot of ghosts there, at the funeral home.”
“It stands to reason.”
“Yes, well, they didn’t try to… connect with me, at first,” she said. “But then they must have realized they could because I was talking to Sylvia’s ghost. And they all started crowding in on me. And then one of them—” Veronica’s voice caught and she put a hand over her mouth, trying to swallow the lump that had reappeared in her throat. After a few breaths, she continued. “One of them jumped right into my face—and it looked awful, like a skull… I was really freaked out.”
“I can imagine,” Daniel said. “Did something like that happen at the Carver house?”
Veronica nodded. “I saw a lot of things. But at the end, they—both Owen and Terri Carver—they did that—except they were burned. Horribly burned.”
Daniel took her hand.
“I don’t know why they would do that,” she said, her voice breaking. “Except… except they were so angry. Oh, god, Daniel. I felt their rage.”
“You think doing that jumping in your face thing was an expression of that rage?”
Veronica closed her eyes, but an image of their ruined faces appeared, and her lids popped open again. “Yes,” she said, feeling like she couldn’t catch her breath. “Yes, that’s it. They’re furious. So angry that they were killed. They—they lashed out at me. God, Daniel. When I close my eyes I see them again.”
“Hey,” he said, pulling her hand to his chest. “It’s okay. You’re safe. We are miles away from that house, and they are not going to follow you here.”
“How do you know?”
He frowned.
“Daniel, I’m sorry. I know this is just more drama. I hate myself for it. But I can’t stand seeing them again. What if they can follow me?”
“How about we cross that bridge if we come to it?” Daniel said, his tone gentle. He brushed a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Do you want to tell me what else you saw?”
After a moment, Veronica nodded. “Yeah. Okay. Um…let’s see. The first thing was an argument. Uh… Paul Carver was there. It was in the house. It had to be a while after Lola left, I’m guessing.”
“Wait, can you tell me what happened with Lola, first?”
“Oh, yeah. Okay. She—that is, her step-father, he kicked her out. She brought a girlfriend over—”
“Hang on… girlfriend?”
“Yeah, like that. There’s a girl Lola has had a big crush on, and they went to Lola’s room to smoke a joint and make out.”
“And you… saw this?”
Veronica narrowed her eyes. “Yes, and it was like being a peeping tom, if you must know. Very awkward.”
Daniel pursed his lips and nodded. “Alright. Go on.”
“When Owen Carver walked in on them, he went nuts. He was very abusive.”
“Abusive how?”
“Verbally and physically. I made a report to CPS.”
“You did? Did you tell them how you knew about what happened?”
“No,” Veronica said. “Of course not. I said I overheard a conversation. The woman was really… I don’t know. She didn’t sound thrilled to take my call.”
“Yeah, it’s like a game of telephone, when someone says ‘I overheard such and such,’” Daniel said. “I get that from witnesses.”
“Whatever. Anyway, Owen was really rough with Lola and she said she was going to leave, and then she changed her mind when she thought about leaving her sister there. But then Owen refused to let her stay and practically threw her down the stairs.”
“Ouch,” Daniel said.
“So she left, and then she still came to school, an
d I tried to talk to her—”
“Was this in a dream too?”
“No, no. The dream ended when she left the house. The next day, in class, she showed up. I tried to talk to her about it, but she totally freaked out—”
“Did you tell her you overhead something about it?”
“No, I tried to tell her the truth.”
“Ooh.”
“Yeah, it didn’t work out. Anyway, she ran off.” Veronica described the dream of Lola at the motel. “That’s actually how I found Amani Ahmad. She was there. She tried to help Lola.”
“That’s weird.”
“Yeah, I have a theory about it. I think the spirits that hang out around me—”
“Wait, what?”
“You know, there are some that are usually around.”
“You never told me that. Do you see them all the time?”
“No,” Veronica said. She felt tired. She hadn’t even told him about the visions she’d just gotten at the Carver house and with all of these tangents it seemed like she’d never get back to that. But Daniel always had to know all the details about everything. It was the detective in him. “No, I don’t. But sometimes they say stuff. Just like, randomly. I hear them best when I’m just sitting somewhere, relaxed. But I don’t think I see them unless they want me to see them, or then it’s just like a shadow. They have to focus their energies for me to really see them.”
“Like the Carvers did at the house.”
“Yeah, although it doesn’t have to be awful like that. I’ve seen that guy from the Seven Eleven ATM again, for instance. I think maybe he likes materializing for me.”
“The one you talked to when we were looking for Angie?”
“Yeah.”
Daniel nodded. “Okay, so what was your theory?”
“There are spirits that hang around me, like the ATM guy, and my mother, I think, and I’m pretty sure there are several others. I don’t know why they hang around. I take it they choose to—the ATM guy said something like that, about how he decided to follow me. And my theory is that they can also influence things sometimes. So they influenced this john of Lola’s to choose the same motel that Amani was staying in because that way I’d find her.”
“Huh,” Daniel said. “Weird.”
“You think that’s weird?” Veronica said, pulling her hand from his, leaning back into the couch and rubbing her eyes. After a moment she realized the images of the Carvers had not appeared again. She opened her eyes again to be safe. “I also think that sometimes the spirits disagree with each other about what to tell me.”
“They do?”
Veronica shrugged. “Seems like it. I don’t think most of them wanted me to pursue the whole Amani thing at all, but then sometimes I’d still get information. ATM guy is the one who gave me the name of the motel, actually. He as good as told me he was going against what the others wanted.”
Daniel inhaled, then blew the air out noisily. “This is out of my league.”
“Yeah,” Veronica said. It was nice to lean back into the couch and rest her head. She felt so tired.
“Okay, so tell me what you saw today at the house,” Daniel said.
“Right. Paul was arguing with Owen. He was really angry. I guess he came home and realized Lola was gone. Owen said some things about how she was gone for good. Paul didn’t like that. At all. He was furious about it.”
“Do you know anything about Paul? Have you seen him before?”
“No,” Veronica said. “Well, actually, yes. I had this really short vision, of a boy chasing Lola. It was Paul.”
“Chasing how?”
“That’s the thing, I think Lola is really frightened of him.”
“And from what you’ve told me about Lola, that takes some doing.”
“Yes, it does,” Veronica said. “So ever since I saw that, I’ve been thinking there was something bad about him. It seems strange that he was so mad about her going. I don’t completely understand, but in any case, he was super upset. And after the parents went to bed, he poured gasoline on a pile of clothes in the laundry room and down the hall, and threw some of it on the door.”
“Did you see how he lit it?”
“Yeah. He had a box of matches. He wanted to have time to get out of the house, so he lit a cigarette, stuck it in the matchbox, and put the matchbox on the sleeve of one of the shirts that he’d soaked in gasoline—”
“I knew it!” Daniel said. “Or actually, Jerry knew it. I can’t believe this.”
“What?”
Daniel groaned. “It’s complicated.” He stood up and put his hands on his hips, looking around his living room. “To simplify: there is a power struggle going on between some detectives and some of the arson guys. Jerry Cohen has been an arson investigator for almost forty years. Can you imagine? But these young guys want him to retire and they’re in such a rush…” Daniel rolled his eyes. “Jerry said the guy used a delay device. He said it! He was pretty sure it was exactly the kind of thing you described. But those yahoos were in such a rush, so convinced it had to be Lola because of the clothes—”
“You lost me.”
Daniel sighed. “Sorry. See, the young guys—there are two of them—they’ve been arson investigators for maybe five years between them. They figured out that the arsonist doused some clothes with gasoline. The detectives assigned to the case had already seen Lola’s rap sheet. Between the four of them they figured it had to be her. Females are more often the ones that burn things that belong to the people they want to hurt.”
“And the—what did you call it? Delay thing?”
“Delay device. Jerry figured that out, I’m not sure how. Looking at tiny little bits of things. The guy’s a genius. And girls don’t use devices as much. Guys do, and guys like to use gasoline, too, according to Jerry. Jerry said he didn’t think it was Lola.”
“I thought it might be her,” Veronica said. She gazed at her hands. “I saw her burning matches in a dream a while back, and when you told me what had happened… I thought maybe I could have prevented it.”
Daniel sat back down next to her and took her hand again, squeezing it. “I don’t think so.”
She breathed in. “Maybe not. But then again, who knows what I might have seen if I hadn’t been so distracted by the Amani disappearance.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. Khalilah asked you for help. You were just trying to do the right thing.”
“I have learned from this, though. I have to just go by what the spirits give me. I can’t go seeking stuff out.”
“Maybe not,” Daniel said. “Or maybe sometimes if you seek something out, they’ll be happy to give you information. You gave me the name of the man who murdered the guy at the ATM, remember?”
Veronica blinked. “I did,” she said. “That’s right.”
“And we weren’t looking for that information at the time. You were following what the spirits were showing you about Angie.”
Veronica nodded slowly. “True.”
After a moment, Daniel squeezed her hand again. “Did you see anything else today?”
“Not a whole lot that’s useful. I got to experience breathing in the smoke and hearing Owen choking and not being able to move.”
“How nice for you,” Daniel said.
“Yeah. And then when I came out of it is when the ghosts came at me.”
“Like you said. Angry.”
“Yes,” Veronica said. “Very.”
Daniel brought her hand to his lips and kissed the backs of her fingers. “I’m sorry, Ronnie. I wish you never had to go through any of that.”
Veronica smiled a little. “It’s over now.”
Daniel met her eyes with a searching look. “I can’t decide if it was wrong to take you there. You wouldn’t have had to deal with those ghosts. But you gave me what I needed—confirmation that Jerry was right.”
“For all the good it does. It’s not like anyone else is going to care what I have to say.”
“But
now I can back him up—I can be confident he’s right.”
“You wouldn’t have, before?”
Daniel kissed her fingers again. “I still would have, but I’d have wondered… and that would make me less assertive.”
Veronica gazed at her fingers in his hand, raised up near his mouth. The kisses were so nice, and she was starting to feel less upset. The dread of the enraged ghosts was starting to fade. She felt safe here with Daniel. And it seemed that all her concern over him being fed up with her was groundless after all.
“Do you ever get sick of all of my drama?” she asked before she could stop herself. It was one of those questions he couldn’t answer truthfully if the truth was yes. Why even ask it? For empty reassurance? “Never mind.”
Daniel frowned and gripped her fingers tightly. “Ronnie, I’ve told you, I like your drama.”
Veronica smiled and looked down at the floor. “It’s not like you could say anything right now if you were sick of it.”
“But I’m not. Please listen. Ronnie, I think you’re amazing. When are you going to realize that?”
“I was pretty bitchy to you the last time—when you drove me home…”
“And I was being overprotective. I’ve fought with myself over it,” Daniel said. He caught her eyes. “After I dropped you off it took me a while to even understand why you were pissed, and then I thought about it. How Detective Pushkin would feel if I told her to stay out of a case because it was too dangerous… I mean, don’t get me wrong, I still think you would have gotten hurt if you’d tried to go after that Ahmad character on your own. But I have to trust you to make smart choices for yourself, not wait for me to tell you to back off from something.”
Veronica pulled her hand away and wrapped her arms around her middle. “The only reason I decided not to go after him is because Khalilah and I found Amani and she’s fine. If he had been keeping her prisoner, or if someone else had, I would have tried to help her.”
“You just said you learned your lesson about that.”
“Only that if the spirits don’t seem to want me to pursue something I should just let it go.”
“So it’s fine for them to tell you something’s too dangerous, but not for me to?”
The Fire and the Veil (Veronica Barry Book 2) Page 19