Twisted Heart (12 page)

‘Now I’m here in Bitterroot for longer than I thought,’ I admitted. ‘I have a couple of extra weeks just hanging around, visiting the hospital. And I don’t know what it is, but there’s something that makes me want to find out more about New Dawn – and not just the hot guys!’ I added quickly.

‘I didn’t figure it was,’ she said quietly. ‘Seriously though, Tania – I have a lot of questions about the place.’

‘Me too.’ And though I didn’t mean to, I shared with Grace some of the doubts floating in my head. ‘For a start, even Antony Amos’s stepson questions the methods. I found out that the kids who live there are not allowed to form any close relationships. And did you know they isolate you if you break the rules? They stick a label on you, call you an Outsider. You can’t talk or interact until they’re ready to let you back in.’

‘Plus I heard they cut off all contact with your family.’

‘This thing about not building relationships – that’s so tough.’

‘And they send you out without a cell phone or a two-way radio, right?’ Grace helped me build up the case against New Dawn. ‘So why are we even thinking about getting involved?’

‘Because it works?’ I suggested. ‘It really does help people find out who they are. Or, maybe it does – who knows?’

‘And we do want to find out. But I think you –
we
should look at all the angles.’

There it was – the tiny suggestion that I was the one with a particular problem. Grace had quickly corrected herself, glossed over my psychic weirdness, tried to move on. ‘Hey,’ I protested wryly. ‘I thought you were my friend.’

‘I am. And I’m worried.’

‘Me too,’ I admitted, turning towards her, spilling out the details about yesterday’s blackout experience in Amos’s cinema room, sparing her the vision of the wolf man and the snake-headed, winged monster rising from the lake. Instead, I kept it general. ‘Since Conner Steben drowned, I’ve developed this water fixation – nightmares about drowning, about bodies trapped in West Point, the town they flooded to make the lake.’

Grace gathered her long fair hair and pinned it to the nape of her neck in a rough twist. ‘You and your nightmares,’ she breathed. ‘Last time it was fire.’

‘You know how powerful water is? Tsunamis, tidal waves that wreck bridges and roads, smash houses to a pulp. A wall of water is unstoppable. You can’t fight water, you can’t run – it just gets you.’ Ask the spirits drifting in the currents of Turner Lake. Ask Conner Steben.

Now that we were being totally honest, Grace didn’t duck the issue. ‘And is it the same for you as before. Is there a dark angel?’

In our minds we went back together to the Heavenly Bodies fancy dress party – Grace in her Botticelli angel dress, me as a bird of paradise. We saw ourselves at the glitzy gathering, mesmerized by the strutting figure onstage – rock star Zoran Brancusi with his glittering black wings.

‘Yeah, he’s back,’ I shuddered.

‘And how about the good angel? Is she around to help?’

‘Not so far.’

‘Is it Antony Amos? Is he the one?’ Grace asked.

A skull speaks from the depths. ‘Death, darkness, suffering
.’

‘
Who is my enemy?’ I ask. ‘Where is he?
’

There is no answer
.

‘
Help me
.’

There is silence
.

‘No, it’s not Amos,’ I said quietly. Still it didn’t feel right, so I said it louder. ‘No.’

‘Then who?’

‘Grace, I have no idea. And that’s what terrifies me this time around. The first time I knew Zoran was my guy, right from the start. When I understood what was happening with the warring spirits, good versus evil and all that, it was mind-blowingly obvious that he was my dark angel. Now, all I’m really sure of is that he will be back. In fact, he never really left.’

‘What is he doing? What does he want?’ She was so scared that she was gripping my arm harder than she realized. She relived her time on Black Rock – the mind-control games, her falling under Ezra’s spell, being led to the yawning gates of Hell.

‘He’s twisted and bitter and he wants revenge,’ I explained. I didn’t need any good angel to explain his desire to get back at me, the one person who had defied and defeated him. ‘He won’t rest until he gets it.’

‘So you’re running away?’ Grace asked. ‘When you’re in Europe, you’re escaping?’

My lips trembled. Running, always running. Even in London, in Rome, in Paris, I never stopped.

A dark monster rises from the lake, mixture of serpent and lion with snake fangs and glittering claws. The wolf man lurks on the shore. The sky is black. The water rises
.

Angel of death, who are you? Are you travelling through time, from star to glittering star? What nightmare do you have in store?

‘There’s nowhere to hide,’ I whispered. ‘When he wants me, he’ll come for me.’

‘Tania, don’t say that!’

‘It’s true.’ I was never more certain. ‘He’ll be there and I won’t even recognize him. He’ll be a new shape – nothing like he was before. That’s how he is – he’ll catch me off guard.’

‘Tell someone, Tania. Find help.’

I stared at Grace. ‘I’m telling you,’ I whispered.

Because I knew she’d been there herself with Ezra, and because sharing might help me bear the burden. Only, it sounded so crazy that even Grace might not understand.

‘What can I do?’ she asked, taking both my hands.

‘Believe what I say,’ I told her. ‘My dark angel is close, getting closer. He’ll shape-shift and deceive me, he’ll travel through time, make fire and flood, create monsters to drive me crazy, there’s no limit to what he can do.’

‘Then keep safe,’ Grace begged. ‘Go to Dallas. Be with Orlando.’

I let out a long, despairing breath. ‘Then what?’

She knew what I meant. There was no point running – the dark angel would follow me wherever I went. ‘So?’ she whispered.

‘So I have to be ready,’ I told her, grasping at the only answer there was. ‘I have to be strong. In the end, there’s no escape. I have to stand and fight.’

Grab my devil by the throat.

I went from Grace’s house to the hospital and was back home again when Orlando called on my cell phone.

He
called
me
!

‘Hey.’

‘Hey.’ I was trembling so hard I had to sit on the bench under the aspens and take deep breaths before I could say any more. The sun was shining, melting the snow.

‘How are you doing?’

‘Good. I went to see Mom.’

‘How is she?’

‘Good. The therapist started her on a programme to get back the use of her left hand. They scanned her brain again to make sure all the blood clots dispersed.’

She’d been quieter than normal, said she was determined to follow the recovery programme and be the ideal patient.

‘It’s tough for her, lying in bed all day,’ I told Orlando.

She’d quizzed me – was I taking care of Dad, was I eating right, when was I going back to Europe? Was I following my star?

Yes, I’d said to the first question. Yes/ don’t know/ hope so to questions two, three and four. I told her Dad was now the world expert on rock pigeons and Eurasian collared doves. He could even tell the difference between the common ground dove and the band-tailed pigeon.

This had made her laugh and say, ‘I love that man!’ But why only ‘hope so’ on following my star?

I’d told her about the Dallas versus Europe dilemma. We’d talked it through.

‘Dad says Orlando wants me there for the right reason, because he loves me.’

‘So love is a prison?’ Mom had turned down the corners of her mouth. ‘ “Love me. Stay in your cage.” ’

‘It sounds bad when you say it like that, doesn’t it? I’m sure that’s not the way Orlando sees it. More like, “I miss you, I need you, I want you.” ’

Mom had sat up in her hospital bed, had stroked my cheek with her good right hand. ‘You can love someone without being tied,’ she’d insisted. ‘Love doesn’t depend on being there twenty-four/seven.’

‘Don’t worry, she’ll be back to normal before you know it,’ Orlando told me now, caring and sympathetic as if we’d never had a fight and he hadn’t stormed out. ‘And listen, Tania – what you decided about not coming to Dallas—’

‘I don’t want talk about it.’ I cut him off. Please don’t give me a hard time, not right now.

‘I’m sorry I walked out on you the other day. I was out of line.’

I pictured him in his new room, still surrounded by boxes, not bothering to unpack. ‘No, I didn’t tell you in a good way. It was my fault.’

‘I understand why it was hard for you, especially with your mom being ill. I shouldn’t have pressured you. I know you have to get Europe out of your system.’

‘I love you,’ I said over him. My cage door was open, I was taking flight. ‘Orlando, I love you so much it hurts.’

Which is when Holly walked in on me. She came through the gate that divides her back garden from mine.

‘I need batteries,’ she said, wielding her flashlight, trying to ignore the ring tone on her cell phone. ‘No time to go down to the store. Do you have any the right size?’

‘Answer your phone,’ I told her. It gave me time to finish my conversation with Orlando.

‘You know Ryan, my new roommate?’ he asked.

‘I know who he is, but I don’t
know
him,’ pointed out.

‘His family lives in Boulder.’

‘And?’ Boulder was a hundred miles north of Bitterroot. Holly was talking in the background. Her conversation seemed important.

Orlando took a while to get to the point. ‘He plans to visit there soon for his sister’s twenty-first birthday. He’ll drive from Texas. So I was thinking maybe I’ll take a ride, drive up with him.’

‘When? I gasped.

‘Actually, a week from now,’ he told me. ‘Does that sound good?’

I closed my eyes, felt my whole body relax into a smile. ‘That sounds perfect!’

‘Friday,’ he confirmed. ‘I can’t wait to see you, Tania, but I’ll call you every day as well. I’ll Skype you at midday tomorrow, OK?’

‘Perfect,’ I said again. The call ended on a total high.

‘That was Aurelie Laurent,’ Holly told me as she too came off the phone. Something had put her off her energetic stride, she was looking puzzled.

‘Weird.’

‘What’s weird?’

‘This Conner Steben thing,’ Holly explained. ‘Aurelie says they have to write a detailed report.’

‘For the cops?’ This didn’t surprise me. You expect an autopsy, an investigation when a seventeen-year-old kid drowns during a triathlon.

‘Yeah, and for the Steben family.’

For the parents with their faces blasted by grief, for the angry, devastated sister. ‘So what does Aurelie’s report have to do with you?’ I wanted to know.

‘She saw I was close to where it happened so she wants me to write a witness statement.’

Again, no surprises, though I agreed it was a little weird that Aurelie had got to Holly before the cops. ‘OK,’ I said steadily, suspecting that there was more.

‘Aurelie is asking me to make it clear that Conner’s death was a pure accident,’ Holly told me with a frown.

‘Why? What exactly did she say?’

‘Word for word? “Write down what you saw, Holly. Say no one was anywhere near Conner when he drowned. He just went under for no reason that you could see.”’

‘But—’

‘I know, so don’t say it,’ she snapped back before I could form a sentence about Jarrold and the killer kick. She rushed on regardless. ‘Look, it’s cool. I’ll do it. I’ll make a statement.’

‘So Jarrold wasn’t involved?’

Holly shook her head. ‘No, I must have totally made that up. I guess I was too shocked to think straight.’

‘You’re sure about this?’

‘You know me – always shooting off my big mouth!’ She brushed off my question then she held up the yellow flashlight. ‘Batteries, Tania! Do you have any or not?’

Mom’s right. When love works, it’s not a trap – it’s freedom. I went to bed happy under my dreamcatcher, thinking about Orlando, feeling myself float into a vision of our future together.

He’ll be a costume designer for major Broadway productions, the best in the business. I’ll be involved in low-budget indie cinema, travelling the world to search for locations. In my head, there was a movie I already wanted to make about a girl who has visions and has to convince the world that she’s not crazy, just connected to a spiritual dimension that others can’t tune into. She has something important to communicate – a message from the world of spirits, a piece of information that will help save the world, if only the world will listen.

You can’t fail to spot the autobiographical element in the initial phase.

It’ll be a big technical challenge – her 3D visions will be of falling, flying, spinning through time. There will be monsters, perhaps a dark angel – but remember, I can’t identify him yet, I don’t know who he is. There’s a mystery at the heart of my storyboard.

I was up at dawn, before Dad was awake, ready to drive Holly down to New Dawn.

‘Don’t be late,’ she’d warned. ‘The Hawk Above Our Heads band leaves the community parking lot at seven thirty.’

‘You’re telling me don’t be late!’ I’d mocked. ‘Why didn’t you ask Aaron to drive you there?’

Holly had made a scornful popping sound with her lips.

‘You two had another fight?’ I’d guessed.

‘Aaron’s dad says no way should we be walking in the mountains. There’s a severe weather warning and the National Park are telling people to stay off Melrose and Carlsbad – all the high peaks.’

‘Aaron tried to stop you volunteering?’ After what Orlando had told me, I can’t say I was surprised, though I hadn’t spoken to Aaron myself.

Holly had nodded. ‘Sometimes he doesn’t know when to back off.’

Here we were again – the old question. How much do you compromise your freedom to please the guy you love? Because Holly did love Aaron, I was sure. She’d fight like a tigress for him if he was in danger, but she still held on to her right to do her own thing.

They say opposites attract. Well, Holly and Aaron fit that model like no other couple I know. Her – black and white, no compromise. Him – take a back seat, don’t speak two words where one will do. But always there for each other, no question.