Veiled

by Silvina Niccum

  “The point is, that woman is committed to her witchery and has crossed the line. Up until now, she has created a following thanks to her healing potions. She has scared others, and made love potions too.” He rolled his eyes. “But now, she got paid to kill someone—and she did it!” John set the cup on a little side table and leaned forward, instinctively we moved in closer as well. “Apparently a woman, who believes in her greatly and has a lot of money, fell in love with a married man. So she paid the witch to get rid of his young wife. Then with a love potion she got the man to marry her! There is a young child left from that first marriage, and I fear greatly for his safety—he must be saved, he has an important mission to perform in this life.

  “Both women need to be stopped and that book has to be destroyed, hidden or…whatever you Sentinels do with those things,” John said dismissively with a sweep of his hand, and then he leaned back into his chair and picked up his cup again.

  Leo, Irene, and I looked at each other and shared the same thought. “They didn’t tell us what to do with ‘those things’.”

  “Well…we will do our best to stop her,” Leo said to John, and to Irene and me he added, “and we’ll figure out what to do with the book later.”

  John yawned and stretched his arms and legs. “One more thing, before you go looking for her,” he said as he stood up and scratched his head. “The Cast-outs have been getting help.” He eyed us carefully.

  “Help? What kind of help?” I asked.

  “Well…I saw spirits working with her as well.” He paused and looked hesitant for a moment.

  “You mean…” Irene couldn’t finish, and John nodded.

  “Yes. Well…I still need sleep, believe it or not, so I’m going to turn in for a few hours while you look for her,” he said as he walked right through us. “I know I’m close. She should be right around here somewhere, but looking for one hag in London is like looking for a needle in a haystack.” He finished his sentence from his bedroom and we were left in his sitting room alone.

  “OK, Gertrude the witch!” I said, ready for action.

  “Should we split?” Leo suggested, but Irene looked unsure.

  “What are you afraid of?” Leo asked her tenderly while running his fingers through her long dark hair. I noticed that her hair was just like mine, long, black and straight, only her eyes were dark, almost black.

  “Oh…I know…I…Cast-outs,” Irene finally admitted.

  “They can’t hurt us,” Leo soothed.

  “I know. I’ll be fine really. Who is helping her, that’s what I want to know,” Irene said, still apprehensive.

  “John seemed to think they were spirits from our side,” Leo said.

  “We’ll know soon enough,” I said. “Irene, you don’t have to go it alone if you don’t want to. I would love some company.” She seemed to brighten up at the invitation, and she agreed, so Leo went north and we headed east.

  “Don’t hesitate to call me if…you run into trouble,” Leo yelled as we parted.

  We decided to be thorough, so we entered each house starting with the one next door. I felt a little silly barging in on people like this, fortunately they were all asleep, and so it seemed a little less intrusive.

  “How do you suppose we’ll know her?” Irene asked as we exited the first house and went to the next.

  “Hopefully we’ll just be able to discern her…dreams,” I said and we both laughed. Irene was usually so sedate, but now I was starting to see her in a different light…literally. Her aura looked different to me right now, she was not very adventurous by herself. Leo brought that out in her. She was more intellectual, very sensitive, and very cautious.

  The next few blocks yielded no results either, but then we found a house that seemed interesting.

  “Do you feel that?” Irene said cautiously.

  “No…are you sensing something?”

  “Yes…it’s…it’s…” she closed her eyes and focused on whatever she was feeling. “It’s…mourning.”

  “Mourning?” I asked confused, that did not match at all the type of feeling that I was expecting her to have. I thought she would have said evil, cruel, vicious, but not mourning.

  I followed her as she entered one room and stayed there a while, eyes closed, focusing. Then she would enter another room and do the same. Sometimes she would linger longer, and other times she would only step in and step out. She looked like she was on someone’s trail, but whose…I couldn’t tell.

  “Can’t you feel it?” she asked a little annoyed.

  “No, I…” I didn’t finish that sentence because suddenly I heard something unearthly. “Did you hear that?” I asked her.

  She looked at me, her brown eyes wide with fear. “No…” she whispered. “What…what did you hear?”

  “A wail, like a…” I focused much like Irene had been earlier. The noise I heard was faint and sudden, it came and went quickly. “It’s like a moan.”

  “You mean like someone who is mourning?” she said with a sarcastic look.

  Right when she said that, it dawned on me why we were not able to find the source of the feeling, or the wailing. Then the sound passed right by me like a breeze, and Irene and I both turned our heads as it did.

  “Do you suppose we are chasing a ghost?” I said with wonder and excitement. It would only make sense that we were sensing, a spirit from another realm. Since we had found out in Gift’s class that I was Clairaudient, and Irene Clairsentient, and Leo Clairvoyant, we had been eager to see that part of our gift in action—and apparently here was our chance.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Irene said with an eager smile and wasted no time in calling Leo.

  Leo flew through the front door and halted. “Hello!” he said, taken aback a bit. “Who’s she?” he asked, perplexed.

  “A dead spirit, we think,” Irene said, while Leo kept moving out of the ghost’s way, as she apparently moved around the room.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Leo asked grimacing.

  “She’s sad, and mad, and mourning,” Irene said with more sass than I had ever seen her to have.

  “OK, Tess, it’s all up to you I guess. All I can tell you is that she keeps moving around, shaking her fists in the air, and is yelling something,” Leo said, still trying to get out of her way while Irene and I exchanged eager looks. It would take the three of us to get a clear picture of what was going on here.

  “OK…” I said, trying hard to concentrate. “Try not to think anything.” And I felt their minds wall up and I had less background noise to worry about.

  I closed my eyes and focused. At first all I could hear were zooming noises, and then slurred whispers, then… “Oh…my sweet, sweet boy! What did I do? What did I do? Why can’t you see me? I want to die…nooo…I am dead…what is there left for me? Oh!” and the crying resumed. Then it faded, and then started again. “She did it! That awful woman…I know she did it! I will haunt her forever!” Her voice was now rancorous and mean.

  I told Irene and Leo what I heard, and they remained silent for a moment.

  “Do you think this might be at all related to Gertrude?” Irene asked.

  Leo and I shrugged.

  “Come on, she’s moving!” Leo said exitedly, and we followed him as he made his way up the stairs to a little room. Inside the room was a small child sleeping.

  “Regret, anger, sadness, utter misery, love.” Irene translated the woman’s feelings.

  “Oh!” The ghost wailed. I could hear her clearly now, but all she did was weep for a long time.

  The door to the nursery opened, and a woman in her nightgown peeked in, she was holding a lantern in her hand. A dim ray of light passed through the crack, shining on the boy’s face. He stirred a little and turned away from it.

  “There he is,” said the woman in hushed tones. “Why do we have to do this now?”

  The door creaked open a little more and she passed through it, then another woman in a dark cloak followed behind. Th
e dead woman stopped her wailing suddenly, as if she had just become aware of the intrusion.

  “She’s angry now, very, very angry,” Irene said quietly, as if not wanting to be overheard.

  “You witch!” the ghost shouted with vile. “You get away from my baby! You will not do to him what you did to me! You get away!”

  Like Irene, I too did my part in the translating. And Leo said that she was no longer by the boy’s side, but by the woman who was holding the lantern, as if trying to block her way to the boy.

  I made the comment that it was interesting how the realm of the dead and the realm of the unborn could see the world of the mortals, but could not see each other—unless by special abilities. Furthermore, the mortals could see neither one of us, or so it seemed.

  I was focused on the first woman and had neglected to see what the one who came behind was doing. She was completely covered by the black cloak and I could barely see her face underneath it.

  “Is the woman in the cloak looking at me?” I asked Leo and Irene, who turned their heads up suddenly to see what I was talking about.

  Indeed the woman in the cloak was looking straight at me with curious eyes. She then turned her head slightly and looked at Leo and Irene. I couldn’t see her aura, but I could feel that she was the one for whom we were searching. Her eyes held all the information that her aura could not give us, there was malice and hatred in them—the kind you only see in those who have given their wills to the Second One.

  I was now sure that the cloaked woman was behind the tragedy in this room. The cloaked woman’s piercing eyes made me feel very uncomfortable, and I feared that she might be more skilled than she let on, so I put to use the latest mind blocking technique to hide my own feelings, or rather drown them in my peaceful ocean. This gave me the courage I needed to approach the hooded figure.

  As I started to get close to her, I saw a fast moving figure engulfed in the darkest aura I had ever seen. I startled and stopped, then the figure flew out and the hooded woman let out a mirthless laugh.

  “Who are you?” I asked with a deliberate and stern voice.

  The cloaked woman didn’t answer, though she heard me and was looking right at me.

  “So? Is she here?” the other mortal woman, the one holding the light, asked.

  “Yes, I dare say she is. And she’s got herself a friend, a few actually.” The witch answered in a low hushed voice.

  The other woman looked around with uneasiness. “What does that mean?” she asked, no longer sure of what she was doing.

  I stood my ground hoping to intimidate the witch who was doing a great job at hiding her own feelings. I turned to look at Irene and Leo, but Irene was gone. Only Leo remained…and the hysterical ghost who would not stop yelling at the woman holding the light was still here as well.

  Usually it was easy to read the minds of mortals because they are not aware of my presence, but in this case, the hooded woman could see me and was on her guard.

  To make matters worse the dark shadowy form that I had seen earlier was back and this time with a couple of friends.

  “Are those…?” I started to ask Leo.

  “Yep!” Leo answered. “It seems we have crashed the best party in town,” he said without humor.

  The forms were Cast-outs, the ones that had apparently taught the cloaked woman a great deal of things. The Cast-outs made their smoky circles around the witch’s head and transferred information to her about Leo and me.

  A wicked smile crossed her face as she received the information.

  “Out of my way!” she said to me as she passed her hand through my form, making way for her to go through. I didn’t move out of her way and as she passed through me I got a brief but enlightening look at her thoughts.

  The amount of information that I got was astonishing. I wasn’t sure how that happened, but I got all the thoughts that were in her head at that moment. Not just what she was thinking about, but the whole picture.

  It took me a while to piece together all the images and thoughts I got from her, in spite of all the experience I had in sharing thoughts with Alex. It was like piecing a puzzle together, but eventually I got the whole picture.

  “She’s the one,” I motioned to Leo.

  He nodded and came closer to me. “Irene is getting John,” he whispered. “But I don’t think she has the book with her. We need to find out where she lives and get the book while she is busy.”

  “I know where the book is!” I told him, exited. That had been one of her thoughts that I saw when she walked through me. The book was in image form, sitting on a stand in the room where she received her clients. I also saw the whole reason for her visit to the house in the middle of the night, and I saw the exchange that had taken place between her and the woman with the lantern.

  “Good! Let’s go get it,” Leo said, and was turning to leave.

  “What about her?” I pointed to where I thought the ghost was.

  “That is not part of our mission, Tess. We have been assigned to find the book and take it away,” Leo said pleadingly, I could tell that the presence of the Cast-outs was getting to him. I felt their oppressive natures as well—their auras were black holes that absorbed any goodness that happened to be around them. Being around these Cast-outs was uncomfortable, but not as bad as some of the other encounters I had had with them in the past, so I still felt strong.

  “Come on, Tess, we have to act now,” Leo insisted.

  I nodded once and Leo was off. I took one last look at the scene in the nursery. I could hear the ghost whimpering as the other two women bent over the small child, chanting something in the First Language.

  My heart ached for that poor ghost who had been so unjustly dealt with. I felt angry for her, this was so unfair! I couldn’t just let this happen!

  “What took you so long?” Leo asked anxiously when I finally appeared outside.

  “I had to do one last thing,” I said smugly, and began my flight toward Gertrude’s apartments.

  “What? What did you do?” Leo asked, now curious.

  “I woke up the ghost’s husband. He was asleep in the house, and I told him all about his wife’s death—he seemed to hear me.” I smiled broadly. “Last I saw, he was running up the stairs with a weapon in his hand, and catching those two evil women red handed—from where I stood he sounded mad. And I’m pretty sure the love spell is broken.”

  Leo was quiet for a while, mulling over the situation. “That was risky, Tess,” he finally said. “What if he didn’t hear you?”

  I shrugged. “I can be pretty loud when I want to. Besides, it was a chance worth taking. Remember what Kerubiel said to us? We were the ones that were sent. What if we were that poor ghost’s only hope?”

  Leo nodded and said nothing more until we got to the door I had seen. It was a small apartment on the second floor of a building.

  “Call Irene and John, tell them where we are,” I told Leo in a whisper, as if someone could hear us.

  I glided through the apartment as Leo called Irene. The place was very small and it was packed full of shawls, bottles, masks and other curious looking objects. There was a small fireplace that was the cooking area, a table, two chairs and on the other end of the room there was a sitting area. And there was the book we were looking for.

  On the other side of the door we heard the kind of noise that would be made by someone who was trying to force the door open.

  “It’s John!” Leo said as he poked his head through the door. Then the door swung open.

  John looked around the room taking in the surroundings, and then closed the door behind him. Irene went to Leo’s side and their arms were soon around each other.

  “Is this it?” John asked as he came to my side.

  “I think so.”

  “Well, let’s see…” He took the book and thumbed through the pages, then closed it tightly. “Good work, now we need to dispose of it,” he said with a pleased but tired smile.

  Leo, Irene, an
d I exchanged looks. This was the part we didn’t know how to handle. John seemed to understand our reluctance and smiled.

  “OK, OK, first let’s get out of here, and then we’ll figure out what to do with this book.” John walked to the door and went out, making sure to close it behind him.

  We didn’t have to do too much thinking about the book, because as soon as we entered John’s rooms, Dayspring was there waiting for us. She looked enormous in such small quarters, and she looked like she felt caged in by the way she kept pacing back and forth in the little area.

  “I thought you’d never get back!” she said, clearly relieved at seeing us. Then she stretched her hand and made an impatient movement with it.

  John handed the book over, with his mouth agape.

  As soon as the book was entirely in Dayspring’s hand a flame shot up and the book was consumed, literally, in the palm of her hand.

  “Well…that takes care of it, doesn’t it?” Leo said casually.

  Right then Leo’s and Irene’s pendant glowed with new instructions, but mine did not. They said goodbye to John and left, and Dayspring told me she would give me a ride to where I needed to go next.

  “Where is that?” I asked her.

  “Angels Lounge, there is a little…well…you’ll see when we get there.”

  “Angels have a Lounge?” John asked amusedly.

  “You’ve been there before,” I said with a smile, while I climbed on Dayspring’s back. “You just can’t remember!”

  I waved goodbye to John as we rose up through the air and he waved back at us with a wistful smile.

  “You know,” I said to Dayspring, “he wants to blaze out of this world on the back of a Seraph.”

  She chuckled. “Does he now? Fine, I’ll make Daystar do it!”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 24

  I found the lounge to be full of spirits, most of whom I didn’t know, but it just so happened that my clan was there, well…some of them. Luz, Amor, and Paz were out on missions, and so was Katie. Henry was not there and neither was Estelle. Apparently she had just left—as in left for good.