The Fire and the Veil (Veronica Barry Book 2)

by Sophia Martin

  The Fire and the Veil

  Veronica Barry, Book 2

  by Sophia Martin

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright 2012 Sophia Martin

  Many, many thanks to my beta-readers, Kathryn Beerbaum and Jim Clarke-Dawe, the good folks at AbsoluteWrite.com, and the amazingly helpful people at asiafinest.com's Korea Chat forums, particularly Soo Wan Kim. Without their aid, this novel would be rife with errors, misinformation, and inconsistencies. Any remaining mistakes are entirely my own.

  Chapter 1

  Veronica Barry sat in a comfy chair in Penny Coffee, the cafe closest to Daniel Seong’s apartment. He was coming by to pick her up after work, although he had to stop by his apartment and check on his beloved clownfish first. Tonight was their third date, and Veronica was already feeling just slightly jealous of the fish. But she loved animals, and they were very pretty fish. All bright white and orange spots. So she could begrudge them a few moments of Daniel’s time.

  She shifted in the chair and shuffled the papers she was grading, pleased she no longer had a cast on her left arm. Her doctor removed it the week before. She had already seen the physical therapist twice. Overall, her recovery was going quickly.

  It had been seven weeks since she fell down the wooded side of the incline that led to the edge of the American River as she tried to find Angie Dukas, the closest person in her life she had to a daughter. Thoughts of that night chilled her. She shifted in her seat again. Without Veronica’s ability to see and know things—her psychic ability—they would not have found Angie in time.

  Only recently, with the events surrounding Angie’s disappearance, had Veronica begun to embrace her gift. And only during her recovery had certain truths about her past come to light. Her deep rooted unease over her ability stemmed from an event that happened when she was only five years old.

  Sighing, Veronica set aside the portion of the papers she had already graded. She picked up her bag and dug through it for a red pen. She worked as a French teacher at Eleanor Roosevelt High School, and she should have had dozens of red pens, but of course all she could find was a blue one. It would have to do.

  As she read the first paper on the stack, Veronica became aware of someone standing a few feet in front of her. She looked up. She recognized Khalilah Jadeed. Veronica blinked. She hadn’t seen Khalilah since the day Veronica and Daniel had gone in search of Angie. They’d followed Veronica’s visions to find Angie and the young man who’d abducted her, and for most of the time Khalilah believed that Veronica was orchestrating a hoax to exploit Angie’s mother. Khalilah stood there, her arms crossed, looking every bit as skeptical as she had on that day. Veronica wondered why she was there.

  “Um, hi,” Veronica offered.

  “Hello, Veronica,” Khalilah said. Her voice was flat. She seemed irritated.

  “I didn’t notice you come in,” Veronica said. She wanted to add, so I have no idea why you’re acting like I’ve offended you, but she didn’t want to make matters worse.

  Khalilah took a step towards her, then seemed to change her mind. Veronica furrowed her brow.

  “Do you… need something?”

  Khalilah bit her lower lip. Then she shook her head, turned, and left the coffee shop.

  Veronica stared after her. What was that all about?

  She gave her papers a wide-eyed look. What had Khalilah wanted? To confront her? Did she still think Veronica was a con artist? Surely after everything that happened, Khalilah couldn’t believe Veronica had been working with Grant, Angie’s abductor. Khalilah knew Veronica had broken her arm trying to go after Angie. Did she really think Veronica was that twisted?

  There was no sense fretting over it. Maybe Khalilah had wanted to apologize. Maybe she was just too uncomfortable to do it. That might have been it. Or she wanted to say she still didn’t believe in psychics. More power to her. Veronica didn’t believe in them most of the time, either. In fact, she wouldn’t believe in them at all if she wasn’t one herself.

  Back to the papers, she told herself. Focus on the grading. But after reading two of them she was ready to throw in the towel. They were dialogues about going to the doctor. She’d had her fill of doctors lately. Why had she assigned that topic? Probably because that’s all she was thinking about, between her arm and Angie’s recovery. The events of the days leading up to Angie’s abduction replayed themselves in her mind any time she stopped rushing around for a minute. All of the visions she had came back, and she often tried to determine whether things might have gone differently if she’d paid closer attention to the details. Would she have realized that Grant was after Angie sooner? Could she have stopped him from snatching Angie? If she had, could she have prevented his death?

  Veronica looked around the coffee shop, trying to find something else to think about. “Why dwell on this?” she muttered. She focused on the first paper in the stack. “Avez-vous un rendez-vous chez le medecin?” it asked. Well, yes, actually, she did have an appointment with the doctor. On Monday. He was going to check on how her arm was healing. He would probably poke and prod and try to make it hurt, just to see if he could. Doctors. They were all sadists at heart.

  It was an ungenerous thought. Her doctor was very nice. But she was still convinced he tried to hurt her. He probably thought he had to, to get a proper sense for her healing, or something.

  “Ugh,” Veronica groaned. Why worry about this? Why couldn’t she think of something nice?

  Like her date tonight with Daniel. She didn’t know what he had planned. For their first date, he’d had her over at his apartment. He made dinner: some variation on his mother’s bulgogi, a Korean recipe for marinated beef. It was delicious. For their second date, he drove her all the way to Pacbell Stadium in San Francisco to see a pre-season game. The Giants lost, but she had a great time, drinking watery beer and laughing at Daniel as he shouted at the players.

  He had yet to kiss her. Their relationship was moving very slowly. It had more to do with his work than anything else. As a homicide detective in Sacramento, Daniel didn’t have loads of free time. And of course, there were the fish.

  Veronica snorted and shook her head at herself. Jealous of fish. At least they aren’t kissing fish.

  Veronica sorted through her bag again and found her lip gloss. She seldom wore make-up, but Daniel would be here soon, and a date was reason enough. She applied a little gloss to her lips and twisted it shut.

  Then she got out her comb and tugged it through her near-black, shoulder-length hair. It was damp out today—almost-April showers—and her hair was threatening to curl. Which was probably all it would ever do. She’d gone through a phase in fifth grade where she’d prayed for curls. Her aunt Cybele flatly refused to allow her to get a perm. The curls never materialized.

  She studied the contents of her purse and considered putting on mascara for the sixth time that day. Her lashes were dark without it, but would it lengthen them? And was it worth having to remove it before bed? Maybe eyeliner?

  Veronica shut the purse with a snap. No. Gloss would do. She was no fashionista, as much as she enjoyed fashion magazines and a good sale on cashmere. Daniel knew that and she wasn’t going to start trying to keep up appearances when finals had just taken place and she was buried in grading. Grades were due in a week. Wearing matching socks was about the best she could do when she had to get through finals grading. No sense giving Daniel the impression he was dating a woman who wore make-up and heels. Even if she could pull that off today, by the end of next week he’d see it was all a show.

  Not that she really cared. Okay, she liked Jimmy Choo’s. But what teacher could afford Jimmy Choo’s?
What teacher could survive a day in Jimmy Choo’s? Arch support ruled the day for Veronica.

  “Ugh!” Veronica groaned again.

  She loved being a teacher. She loved her students. It was just, sometimes, she felt frumpy.

  She searched through the bag again and found her eyeliner pencil and the sharpener. She sharpened it over the little plate from her croissant and opened her compact, drawing a light line on her upper lids. There. She was not a frumpy schoolteacher. Ha.

  Veronica felt better. I should do this more often, she thought. I should go shopping this weekend. I can afford something. Maybe as much as sixty dollars. Well. Forty.

  She taught part-time, which made treating herself that much harder. And with the medical bills… she had insurance, but the deductible was hefty. But she deserved a little shopping trip! She’d been so good these last few weeks. Just a little trip. Maybe Mel would want to go.

  Veronica hit “2” on her cell phone, and it speed-dialed Melanie Dukas, her best friend and Angie’s mother.

  “Hey you,” Mel said.

  “Hey! How’s it going?”

  “Oh, you know. Waiting for Ange. I might actually roast a chicken tonight. Can you believe it?”

  “How is Angie?”

  “You probably see more of her than I do.”

  Angie had been attending Saint Patrick’s, a private Catholic school, when she met Grant Slecterson, the boy who tried to kill her—twice. After the second attempt—the one that landed her and Veronica in the hospital—Angie begged her mother to let her leave Saint Pat’s and enroll at Eleanor Roosevelt. Angie was still traumatized by her experiences, and being close to Veronica helped her feel safer. Mel agreed to let her switch schools, but it was an adjustment for both mother and daughter. Eleanor Roosevelt wasn’t a bad school, but it was three times the size of Saint Patrick’s, and it had all of the challenges of a public school. Veronica didn’t know who was having a harder time with the change, Mel or Angie.

  “Well, she seemed to be getting along with her dialogue partner in class today,” Veronica offered.

  “She was doing well with her?”

  “Yeah. They even got off task for a few minutes.”

  “Really? Good!” Mel gasped. “Oh, no. I mean, bad. Oh, it’s weird that you’re her teacher.”

  “It’s okay, Mellie. I want to see her go back to being a normal fifteen-year-old, too,” Veronica said, pushing the eyeliner shavings around the croissant plate with her pen.

  “She won’t talk to anyone from Saint Pat’s,” Melanie said.

  “Still?”

  “Yeah. And I can’t be sure who was friends with that… that…”

  “With Grant,” Veronica said gently.

  Mel was silent for a moment. Then Veronica heard her let out her breath. “Yes. With Grant. So I don’t push her, you know?”

  “I think that’s the right thing, not to push her,” Veronica said, lining the shavings into a V.

  “You do? You don’t think she needs to be pushed?”

  “What? Have you been talking to your mother again?”

  Mel made whimpering noise.

  “Mellie,” Veronica said, setting down the pen with a light clatter. “You know I love your mom, but your mom is—well—she’s pushy by nature, sweetie. So of course she thinks Angie needs to be pushed, that’s all she knows how to do. But you and I both know that Angie’s been through too much. She’s going to come out of her shell in her own time.”

  “You’re right,” Melanie said. “I know you’re right. It’s good to hear it, though. Sometimes, I let my mother get into my head, you know?”

  “Yeah, Cybele can still get into my head, too.”

  “No fun, is it?”

  “So, anyway, Mel,” Veronica said, smoothing her skirt over her thighs with her free hand, “I was calling because I have decided that I need retail therapy this weekend. Nothing too extravagant, you know. Definitely of the ‘sale rack’ variety.”

  “Ooh. You know I love sale racks.”

  “So you’re free?”

  “Well… Sunday afternoon would be good. I’m working Saturday morning again this week. The DA’s been all over Darnell for the last two weeks about one of his cases.” Melanie worked as clerk part-time for Assistant District Attorney Darnell James.

  “Sucks you have to go in on the weekend so much lately,” Veronica said.

  “Yeah, getting up early and dressing for success on a Saturday morning isn’t my first instinct. But the extra money is nice. Actually, if Ange decides she likes it at Eleanor Roosevelt, that’ll be a huge savings for my mom and me. As long as her dad keeps up the child support payments, I could maybe consider not working at all.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Well, I want to be sure she’s going to keep her grades up, too. One thing I can say for private school, the kids don’t fall through the cracks. No offense.”

  “None taken. And if you stayed home, you’d have time to keep up with how she’s doing in all her classes.”

  “The thought had crossed my mind.”

  Veronica frowned. “But then again, you might get bored. It’s not like you hate your job.”

  “Yeah, and I like working for Darnell. And I’ve heard plenty of horror stories about women who take time off for family and then can’t get hired anywhere anymore when they want to go back to work.” Melanie sighed. “I just wish I could keep my hours down to twenty or less. It’s nice, you know, Darnell relying on me, wanting me to come in more than Denise. It’s a compliment. I don’t really know how to tell him I don’t want the hours.”

  “And he might take it wrong and get in a snit.”

  Melanie snorted. “Yeah. And I’ve seen Darnell in a snit. It’s not pretty.”

  “Really? I was just throwing that out there.”

  “Oh my god, I never told you about the Sherman motion-to-strike-testimony deadline fiasco?”

  “No,” Veronica said.

  “Oh boy. Well, suffice to say that there’s a reason Denise isn’t in Darnell’s good graces. I’ve never seen him so pissed.”

  “Maybe you should go back to school, get a degree as a paralegal. Seems like you do Denise’s job better than she does already.”

  Melanie paused. “That is a thought.”

  “You’d be taking time off without losing momentum in your career. You’d come back to it with better qualifications than when you left.”

  “Okay, Mrs. Forsythe.”

  “Mrs. Forsythe?”

  “My high school guidance counselor.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “Yeah,” Melanie said. “You have a point. I’m definitely going to give it some thought.”

  “See that you do,” Veronica said in her best imitation of a snotty school counselor voice. Not that any of the school counselors at Eleanor Roosevelt were snotty, but it got a chuckle out of Mel.

  “Hey, hon, do you mind if I call you back tomorrow? Angie just got home.”

  “Sure thing. Tentative retail therapy date for Sunday afternoon?”

  “Wild horses couldn’t tear me away.”

  “Tell Angie she’s my favorite student.”

  “Teacher’s pet!”

  “Yep.”

  “As she should be. I’ll tell her. Talk to you soon.”

  Veronica put the phone back in her bag and smiled. She checked it again a moment later for the time. Six-thirty. Daniel was meeting her at seven. Should she order another cup of tea? She stared at the pile of dialogues and considered whether she could face them without more tea. She had just made up her mind to order another cup when Daniel came through the glass door of the coffee shop.

  Chapter 2

  When he saw her, his eyes turned up at the corners like a cat’s, preceding his smile by a split second. Veronica returned his smile and waved at him, appreciating the opportunity to admire him as he approached. His face was all planes and facets, like a diamond. His hair was getting a little long, and the damp had given it
a bit of a curl. More than her own, she realized with amused envy. As he approached, his trench coat swung around his legs. He loosened his tie as he collapsed into the comfy chair nearest her. “What a day.”

  “Long one?” Veronica asked.

  “The longest. Well, no. There’s definitely been worse. But it feels like the longest right now. Especially my feet. Can feet howl? Because right now my feet are howling. Dogs in Roseville are covering their ears with their paws because of the racket my feet are kicking up.”

  “Oh, very punny,” Veronica said with a grimace.

  Daniel chuckled. “How are you?”

  “Fine. The arm doesn’t hurt at the moment. And I got through… oh, about a quarter of my grading.”

  Daniel glanced at the stack. “A whole quarter?”

  “Don’t mock. That’s almost forty papers. Well, closer to thirty. But that’s a lot.” Veronica pushed the papers into a more tidy pile.

  “If you say so. Looks to me like you’ve done more damage to the tea and pastries.”

  “Nice. Want a donut, Officer Snotty?”

  “That’s Detective Snotty to you.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her. She’d agonized over eyeliner for this? He was so infuriating.

  She gave him her best withering glare and sat back in the armchair, crossing her arms.

  “Ooh, turn off the laser beams, Mr. Spock, I take it back, okay? What am I taking back again?”

  “First of all, if you’re going to make a Star Trek reference, get it right. They used phasers, not lasers—”

  “Hang on, no one told me I was dating a trekkie—”

  “I’m not a trekkie, I just like old movies and TV shows and you knew that weeks before we went out on our first date—”

  “You used the word ‘phasers’ in a sentence, Ronnie—”

  “Secondly, Detective Snarkface, I have never given you permission to call me Ronnie—”

  “Oh come on, as a connasewer of all things old and dusty, surely you appreciate that Ronnie Specter was the coolest thing to hit the airwaves in 1963—”

  “I am not a connoisseur of ‘all things old and dusty,’ as you put it. It’s not like I go antiquing. And my name is Veronica, not Ronnie.”