The Veil

Chapter Fifty-Five

I'd not given much thought to the person or persons that had killed my parents. 

I knew that sounded crazy, most people wouldn't stop until they'd found out who had done it, but I hadn't. 

I'd spent my time trying to survive, trying to get through each day without breaking down in pain for them, trying to live. 

So I hadn't thought about who had killed my parents, why they'd killed my parents. 

In my mind they were gone, I wouldn't ever see them again, and so thinking about them, thinking about how and why they died, who would hate my selfless and adoring parents enough to kill them, wasn't something I could have done. 

When the police stopped looking, when they'd run into their last dead end, I'd stopped thinking about it. If trained professionals weren't able to find the person responsible, how would I have found them? 

My parents had been gone, they'd been gone and nobody knew why, I'd never see them again, and to me that was what I'd paid attention to, the reason they were gone and by whom they were taken away, that wouldn't have made a difference to my pain, it wouldn't have hurt less to know any of those details. 

I'd never thought that knowing the details could cause even more pain than before. 

To know your parents were dead and never returning was already too painful to bare. 

To know your parents died on the orders of your only remaining relative? Died trying to protect you from a life you'd known nothing about? Not even a single hint or memory of anything remotely odd to remember to try and make sense of their deaths? How do you even start to try and make sense out of that pain.

I was being pulled under and I was being pulled under fast. 

I hadn't known this type of pain was even possible, it felt like I'd lost my parents for a second time. 

My parents. 

Paul and Lacey Grace, supportive, loving, encouraging, happy, playful, warm. Normal. They were the parents I'd lost the first time. The parents I'd grown up with showed no signs of being witches, believing in magic and ghosts and curses and spells. 

My parents. 

Paul and Lacey Grace. Witches? Spells? Murdered while trying to keep me in the dark? Keep me safe? From the only remaining relative I had. Leaving me alone to find out all this information in the scariest way possible, while running for my life with my ghost friend in the middle of a snow storm after being in a car crash. 

I didn't want those to be my parents. 

Apparently I had no choice in that matter. 

"Miss, can you follow the light." The deep voice of the elderly paramedic pulled me into the present, almost making me jump. 

I blinked twice against the blinding light in my eyes but did as he asked, I followed the light. 

He nodded and said something to his younger colleague. 

I closed my eyes and saw stars. 

Tom had came back to me a few seconds after my parents left, to him it looked like I was hunched on the woodland floor alone but I was wrapped in Lindsay's arms as she tried to get me to stand. 

The police surrounded us very soon after, too soon for me to ask Tom what he heard, what he knew, what he believed. 

They couldn't make much sense out of what I was sobbing at them, I tried to stick to the truth as much as possible, just lied about the reason. 

My elderly grandpa was mad about me selling the house, he wanted it. 

They seemed skeptical that an elderly man would try and chase me through the forrest and kill his granddaughter over anything, let alone a house. 

He cleared all those skeptical thoughts up when he woke up and saw me, he started screaming and lunging for me, trying to break free of the officers arms, "I'm going to finish this, I will see you dead Lillian." Was the last thing I heard him scream before the cops pulled him away and shoved him in the back of the police car. 

When the friendly, red haired officer had finally finished questioning for what felt like hours, I was then pulled into the back of an ambulance and poked and prodded. 

I'd zoned in and out, it was a struggle to listen to the paramedics, I couldn't feel their hands on me or hear them reading numbers off screens.

I wanted to talk to Tom, I needed to talk to him, but they wouldn't let me. 

I needed to know what he knew, I needed him to tell me now that he couldn't handle this so I could start grieving that loss too. Because it was coming. 

What I'd been fearing for months, the reason I'd avoided telling him that night I'd found the hiker in the woods. 

I was too much for him. I was too sick, too much effort. Too much destruction and pain. I was too much drama to handle and I didn't blame him. Who could? 

I'd already thought that months ago when the headaches and the nosebleeds started, now there was absolutely no way to avoid it. He was gone. 

He wouldn't tell Andrew and Jade I knew that much, but I'd have to leave. 

I started to panic, the paramedics noticed when the monitor started beeping quicker and louder, they had no idea about my internal struggle and chalked it up to pain. 

They decided that they couldn't keep treating me in the street and told the officers they had to get me to hospital then and if they needed me to find me there.


I'd spent a few nights in the hospital in the Anchorage, I'd needed stitches in my leg and hand. 

I had three broken ribs, a concussion, a small case of hypothermia, some scrapes and bruises all over my body and the worst, a cracked skull. 

It wasn't too serious, no bleeding on the brain, nothing that needed surgery, just needed to be monitored closely.

It all sounded a lot worse than it looked. 

Once the blood from the car accident was cleaned up, you couldn't even tell I'd been in a car crash and then almost sacrificed for some power I'd had no clue existed within me. 

There was no medical advice however for what was happening inside, I could barely focus on what was happening around me, I had to force myself to listen to what people were saying. 

I knew this however, was not from the concussion. It was from everything I'd learnt about myself that night. 

About what my parents had done for me. 

Knowing why they died made it worse, they thought they were doing what was best, but for me, them living would have been best. 

But to them, I was their world and they had to protect me. 

My heart, which had just started to heal was now broken again. 

I could feel it, the agony in my chest, that I knew this time had no chance of fading or going away. 

I'd not had chance to speak to Tom either for more than a few minutes, when I was awake we didn't seem to be alone, nurses and doctors were in and out and by the time we were alone I'd end up passing out from the drugs. 

He managed to tell me that he hadn't yet told Andrew or Jade, he'd decided to tell them we'd just decided to stay a little longer than planned. 

He said he wanted to wait for better news to give them before telling them the truth. 

I'd managed to smile when I told him to make it perfectly clear, when he did tell them, that it was his plan to lie and not mine. 

He'd rolled his eyes and I'd fallen back to sleep.

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