An Uncommon
Truth
of Dying
Broken Veil Book Two
Marie Andreas
Table of Contents
Title Page
An Uncommon truth of dying (Broken Veil, #2)
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty- Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Other books by Marie Andreas
Copyright © 2021 by Marie Andreas
First printing; June 2021
ISBN 978-1-951506-11-7
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Cover art: Aleta Rafton
Acknowledgments
I’M SO LUCKY TO HAVE many wonderful writing companions on this journey—artists, editors, beta readers, and readers.
I’d like to thank everyone who has ever supported me, read chapters, edited, let me cry on their shoulder, read my books, given nice reviews, and/or bought me soothing beverages. I could never have done this without ALL of you. I can’t list you all here, but you mean the world to me.
My awesome editor- Janet Tait—thank you for helping make sense of a lot of twisted ideas. My beta readers: Lisa Andreas, Patti Huber, and Lynne Mayfield. Proof reader extraordinaire- Ilana Schoonover. Any errors or mistakes are completely mine.
And to my very talented artist- Aleta Rafton, thank you for your lovely work.
To all my readers—thank you for enjoying the crazy worlds in my head!
Chapter One
Aisling cut the call and threw her phone across the room. It bounced off the top of the sofa and landed softly on the cushion. Not at all satisfying, but probably cheaper than replacing another phone.
“Damn it.”
“He still won’t take your calls?” Maeve came in from her room in loose sweats with a towel wrapped around her hair. Maeve was taking this enforced temporary vacation much better than Aisling was. Or so she appeared.
Maeve was a semi-former MI-6 agent who had been also working as Aisling’s partner in the L.A. police force for the past ten years. Currently, they were roommates in Aisling’s brother’s house as Aisling had her house explode in front of her, and Maeve’s townhome was still under investigation. Maeve was extremely active, and sitting around for a week watching TV, eating junk food, and washing her hair every other day wasn’t her style.
There had to be a reason for it. Aisling folded her arms and glared. “What have you been doing?”
Maeve had been walking to the kitchen, but she stopped and pointed to her towel. “Washing my hair. A week off and your detective skills go to the shitter, do they?” Her British accent always got heavier when she was being snarky.
“Funny.” Aisling followed her into the kitchen. “You’ve been playing the lady of leisure this last week—what are you really doing?”
Maeve ignored her, went into the kitchen and pulled out a can of beans and a loaf of bread. “Just because Reece won’t return your calls is no reason to get pissy with me.” She waved a piece of bread in the air with an offering gesture as it was headed toward the toaster.
“No, thank you.” Aisling liked beans on toast, but after a week, it was getting old. “I am currently annoyed at Garran, not Reece.” Garran was their boss. Reece was her...she had no idea what they were, and that was part of the issue. He was pissing her off was what he was. A tall, well-built, handsome, super spook with deadly gray eyes. There had been something going on between them. Or so she thought. But he hadn’t returned a single call all week. Like just about everyone else in her life.
“Garran told us to take time off. He was pretty clear about it.” Maeve dropped four pieces of bread in the toaster and got out a plate.
“And it’s been a week. If we were in some way a leak or compromised, he would have found out by now.” Two weeks ago, a criminal fey named Nix tried to spread a deadly drug all over L.A. in his bid for control of the city. Most drugs didn’t work on the fey, but this was iron. It was not only fatal to fey, but it was a horrific and painful way to go. Humans like Maeve would have survived. Elves like Aisling and the other fey would be gone, leaving the city wide open for the elven Nix and his cronies to take over. How he’d become immune to the drug himself was anybody’s guess, and the focus of a lot of think tanks right now.
He had been stopped, but he escaped after they grabbed his massive stockpile of the drug. At the same time, halfway across town, a super-secret headquarters for the super-secret government agency Area 42 blew up. Or rather, it looked like it blew up, but in reality, the entire thing vanished. Luckily many of the people who worked there, including Reece and his spy partner Jones, were dealing with Nix and weren’t in the building. But there were still a few hundred people missing.
Aisling, Maeve, Reece, Jones, and Aisling’s brother, Caradoc, had been working on the clues—of which there were few—for a week. Then Garran, the captain of detectives, called and pulled Aisling and Maeve off the case. And Reece stopped returning her calls.
After a week of being ignored, Aisling was ready to start hurting people. To make matters worse, her brother Caradoc had been working on something with Area 42 and had not come home during the last week. Considering the house they were in w
as his safe house and had all of his gizmos and gadgets in it, that was annoying as well. He would answer her calls, but with never more than, “everything is fine”.
“Oh, beans and toast, lovely.” Harlie poked his head in from the living room. Harlie’s full name was Harthinatle, and he was Aisling’s thousand-year-old brother, the eldest of their siblings. He was alarmingly tall and thin, but he loved to eat.
“Harlie, don’t you think it’s odd that Garran has put us on indefinite leave, isn’t returning our calls, and neither is Reece? Even Caradoc is blowing us off, and all of his things are still here.” Not that Aisling thought he’d have noticed. Harlie was a mystic, a talented magic user who was often clueless about the reality around him.
Maeve handed Harlie a full plate and he went out to the dining room. Aisling grabbed a cup of tea and followed.
“I think Caradoc got his things.” Harlie hooked a thumb over his shoulder to Caradoc’s room with its closed door.
Aisling put down her tea, stomped over, and pushed open the door. The bed and dresser were still there, but the piles of tech were gone. “When did he do this? Did you see him? Talk to him? What in the hell is going on?” First her boss, then whatever Reece was doing, now her brother? Who was next? Maeve?
Maeve came out with her plate of beans on toast and another plate with three chocolate-filled croissants. She slid the croissant plate next to Aisling’s teacup on the table. “Eat something, you’re getting cranky.”
“Caradoc snuck in last night to get his things. He thought no one saw him. But he sneaks loudly.” Harlie had already polished off half his plate. “Very loudly.”
“Seriously? That’s it, I’m going to the station.” Aisling came back to the table and ate two of the croissants. She did feel better, but she wasn’t going to admit it. She’d gone to the police station the day they’d been cut off, but Garran had the station still under lockdown. The two cops on guard were apologetic, but they wouldn’t let her in.
They would this time.
“Why do you want to know? Isn’t a bit of rest a nice thing?” Harlie usually appeared to be doing little, but Aisling knew his mind had a million different tasks going on at once.
“I don’t mind rest. I like vacations. This isn’t a vacation but a lockdown. We have a case that hasn’t been solved yet.” She turned to Maeve. “And have you noticed that we’re followed every time we leave?”
Maeve shrugged it off at first, then nodded. “You’re right, but I think they are doing this for a reason. It might not be one we like, but something made Garran and Area 42 cut us off.”
Aisling polished off the last croissant. “You could call your other people.” She hadn’t wanted to bring up MI-6. First of all, she hadn’t known Maeve was still officially an agent until Reece’s connection told her a few weeks ago. And secondly, Maeve clearly hadn’t wanted to discuss her MI-6 involvement when Aisling first found out about it.
“I really don’t want to until we have to.” Maeve held up one hand. “And no, you getting cranky and frustrated is not a ‘have to’ moment. Besides, I know you. You’re as pissed about Reece as you are us being sidelined. You just don’t want to admit it.”
Harlie glanced up but wisely continued to keep eating his beans and toast.
Aisling stalked over to the teapot and poured a refill. She was annoyed at Reece, more so because she wasn’t sure what they were to each other. There had been a serious attraction, but near-death experiences and adrenaline can cause emotions to arise that might be exaggerated. Even the week before everyone dropped them like iron waste, he’d been pulling away. But at that point, she’d believed he was just working night and day trying to find the missing building and all those people. As he completely refused to call back, she began to get pissed. If there was nothing between them, fine. She’d live. But this was an important case, and him cutting her out needed to be addressed.
“Shit. It’s because of our family’s box being left at the building site, isn’t it?” She aimed her glare at Harlie. All of the oldest elven families had boxes made out of the Hewlith tree, also known as part of the enchanted forest. The wood was from their original homeland beyond the veil, although there was a small grove of the trees in northern Wales. Their family’s box was left in the wreckage of the missing Area 42 headquarters. Two others had been brought to Aisling by vallenians, a species of Old Ones left behind when the fey fled to this world. They weren’t supposed to be able to come to this side of the veil. And if they did, anyone who saw them would soon die.
Aisling had seen them on three separate occasions and was still here.
Harlie had found a connection between their mother, the High Council, and attacks on Area 42 personnel. He hadn’t been able to find out how far it went or what the connection was before the building vanished.
“We don’t know that.” But the slow response from Harlie gave her the true answer. That was his theory or his primary one, but he wasn’t ready to announce it yet.
“You still haven’t found the connection for the boxes?” Maeve jumped in, changing the subject from why they were being sidelined so quickly that Aisling almost got whiplash.
“No.” Harlie scowled. “The other two families are connected to ours, well, to mother at any rate. They’re First families too. But why their boxes were stolen and given to us, or rather to Aisling, I don’t know.” That admission cost him dearly. Harlie prided himself on his ability to figure out anything—that he wasn’t able to on this was clearly annoying him.
“And they might not have been for me...” Aisling dropped her comment when both of them looked up with raised eyebrows. “Fine. Maeve brought me one and the vallenians dropped the other at my feet. But ours...was brought to me by Reece when they found it where the building had been. I don’t know if that one counts.” She leaned back and closed her eyes. “I would simply like to get back to being a detective. And doing detective things. Catching bad people. Solving this damn case.”
“And what’s stopping you?” Caradoc’s voice came from behind her. He snuck into his own house most likely just to make her jump. And it worked. Teasing his baby sister would never get old for him.
“You took all of your things out, have been blowing off my calls, and now you come back?” Aisling narrowed her eyes at him. Why sneak his belongings out just to come back the next day?
Maeve laughed at the expression on his face. “They booted you too?”
Caradoc folded his arms and scowled, then dropped a large duffle and himself into the sofa. “It appears so. I moved my things to one of my other houses so they wouldn’t think about them being here. Didn’t work—they kicked me out anyway.” Caradoc was taller than Aisling, but still a good seven inches shorter than Harlie’s almost seven-foot stature. His blond hair, sharp blue eyes, and killer smile looked great on magazines—but he was also a savvy business owner and tech inventor. And extremely used to getting his way.
“Are you pouting?” Aisling stood and walked to the chair nearest the sofa and leaned forward. “Yup, pouting.”
“I am not. I’m annoyed, frustrated, and put out. I do not pout.”
Both Aisling and Harlie laughed at that one. Maeve looked ready to, but held back.
“And? What happened? Your sister is getting ready to storm the castle,” Maeve said.
“Which castle? Eh, either one will kick you out right now. Garran isn’t even letting Stella in. As for Area 42, they wanted my help at first. I thought it was because I was so gifted. Nope, it was just because I was part of this family and was less of a risk than Aisling because I wasn’t attached to the police. When they figured that I couldn’t help them with the family issues about our box, they politely escorted me out.” He got off the sofa, got some tea, and came back. “And no, I can’t tell you where they are. They had someone pick me up each day and kept me blindfolded. That should have been the first hint about their goals.”
“Are we all suspects? The only connection really is our mother. And I was te
chnically on loan to Area 42.” A loan that ended when everyone else cut her off as well.
“I couldn’t even be sure of that,” Caradoc said. “I wasn’t allowed to ask questions unless they were directly related to the project I was assigned to. They think the missing building might be trapped out of sync with our reality.”
Harlie perked up at that one. “That was one of my theories. However, I still haven’t been able to connect mother and her cronies to something on that level. None of the people she works with, that I know of, have the gifts for something like that.”
“What if the vallenians were helping them?” Caradoc asked.
Aisling shook her head. “It sounds odd, but I think the vallenians were trying to warn us about something—I don’t think they would be working with her or her gang.” That was a weird thought that Aisling hadn’t let surface much. By definition, vallenians were the bad guys—all of the Old Ones were. That was why they stayed stuck on the other side of the veil with the other dangerous and unstable beings thousands of years ago when the elves and the rest of the fey fled here. “The trio of them that found me when we blew up Old Town, for instance. It felt like they were trying to help.”
Harlie nodded slowly. “Not much is known of the Old Ones, any of them. And look where the information that we do have came from.”
“The High Council,” Caradoc said. “The same people who formed a secret cabal intent on destroying who knows what.”
Aisling hadn’t been a fan of her mother for decades; this new possibly-trying-to-take over-the-world situation was making it worse. “So where does that leave us? I seem to be the only one willing to fight to get involved on this case. I know we can make a difference if they would just let us in.”
Caradoc watched her and Maeve for a few pointed moments, then shrugged. “Which brings me back to my original question, why aren’t you two great detectives out detecting? Yes, as free agents you won’t have the access you had before. But you’re both pretty damn good.”
Maeve looked over to her, head tilted in question.
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