by Eden Maguire
‘Maybe at the party tomorrow night?’ Holly suggested.
‘Or hopefully before.’ In my mind, the fancy-dress party came right at the end of the lethal game the dark angels were playing. There would be music, costumes and a big confusion of shape-shifting, of monsters and death dealers. I dreaded it and the final ritual that would lead Orlando to give himself over to the dark side for ever. ‘Yeah, definitely before,’ I sighed.
All day we moved round the hotel as if we were treading on eggshells. We expected the worst, fearing to find Daniel and the other dark angel bodyguards lurking round every corner.
‘What do we do if they move in on us?’ Grace wondered. We were in the elevator, responding to a call from Natalia. Apparently, the medics had ordered Adam to stay in bed and he was bored. ‘He wants you to visit,’ she’d told me on the phone in that sweet, confiding voice she uses to make people do whatever she wanted. ‘You know how much he likes you.’
‘If the dark angels try anything, we hold our nerve.’ I tried to sound confident, to put to the back of my mind the panic you feel when a carousel horse morphs and comes to life, or when you fall head first down a lift shaft, lie deep underground and feel earth falling on to your face. ‘We’ll be brave, like our good angel says.’
‘We hold our nerve,’ Holly decided as we arrived at the penthouse and walked in on a scene of domestic disharmony.
Imagine a typical family falling apart. Dad is arguing with Mom and the kids are crying. They’ve been cooped up and nerves are already frayed, then a small thing happens – one of the kids breaks something in a play-fight, someone yells, which makes someone else yell back and soon it’s chaos. Crying and yelling, escalating threats and accusations. This is what was happening when we walked in on Jack and Natalia.
‘You leave right now!’ Natalia shouted. She shepherded Charlie, Phoebe and Adam, all crying, into Adam’s bedroom then closed the door. ‘Jack, you get the hell out of here before I call someone!’
‘Make me.’ He noticed Holly, Grace and me step through the door but he was too angry to care. ‘Go ahead and call. Who’s going to throw me out of my own rooms?’
‘I am,’ Charlie said. He’d come out of the kitchen into the living room. Unlike the other two, he wasn’t shouting, but his body language told you everything – head back, watching Jack through narrowed eyes, stepping right between husband and wife.
‘Yeah well, surprise, surprise! Guess who’s been hiding and listening to what was meant to be a private conversation.’ Jack gave a savage laugh.
Natalia came up beside Charlie. ‘Jack, you’re drunk. It’s bad for the kids to see you like this. That’s why I’m asking you to leave.’
‘That’s a frickin’ lie. I haven’t had a drink in twenty-four hours.’
‘The kids can hear this,’ Charlie warned, indicating that the bedroom door had opened again and three tear-stained faces were watching. ‘And so can your visitors.’
‘OK, girls, you’re witnesses.’ Suddenly Jack broke away from Natalia and Charlie and rushed at us. ‘I’m being accused here. She’s keeping me away from my kids for no reason. I arrive back from a meeting with Larry and they’re all in Adam’s room watching TV. Natalia stands in the doorway and tells me to leave. You’re witnesses, OK?’
‘Because you’re drunk!’ Natalia shouted. ‘I can smell it, I can see it.’
Jack stuck his face in mine and breathed over me. ‘You smell anything?’ he demanded.
I shook my head.
He rounded on Natalia and Charlie. ‘See – not drunk! And don’t think I don’t know what you two are doing. You’re setting me up here in front of witnesses. If you can’t get me on the alcohol charge, you’ll go down the domestic violence route. You’ll drag me in front of a judge and swear I’m an unfit father. You don’t care how you do it, just so long as you can screw me over and keep me away from my kids.’
‘Why would I do that?’ Natalia appealed directly to us. ‘More than anything I wanted Jack to be a good dad. Haven’t I tried everything I know? I’ve kept his drinking away from the media spotlight, I’ve watched him go through rehab God knows how many times!’
‘Yeah, you kept the show on the road,’ Jack agreed. ‘We were big business – the Jack Kane and Natalia Linton bandwagon. You weren’t about to jump off and go into freefall, lose yourself millions of dollars.’
Natalia stared at him like he was something she’d scraped off the sole of her shoe. ‘You’re despicable, Jack.’
‘Not me, baby,’ he argued. ‘This time it’s you – you’re way out of line. Tania’s my witness: I’m stone-cold sober and you’re stopping me from being with the kids. And that’s not all. You and Charlie. God knows what you two get up to, and no, don’t tell me because if I knew every dirty little detail I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off him. He’d be through this window, there’d be glass and teeth and blood on the carpet and Charlie Speke would be lying outside in the snow with a busted skull.’
‘You see!’ This time Natalia focused on Grace, who nodded.
‘Wait. That’s enough.’ Trust Holly to take charge. She skirted around Charlie and Natalia and went to pick up Phoebe. ‘Hey, baby, everything’s going to be OK,’ she murmured. ‘Your mommy and daddy and Uncle Charlie will stop shouting. It’s cool.’
Little Charlie put his arms around Holly’s leg and clung tight. Adam shook his head and retreated into his room. ‘No,’ he said, walking to the window and staring out at the snow. ‘No, it’s not.’
Out of the mouths of babes. Adam seemed to sense that Jack was losing the fight for his career and family, while Natalia, for whatever reason, was dead set on snatching everything from him, with guard dog Charlie on duty.
Holly took baby Charlie and Phoebe into Adam’s room then closed the door. Jack had finished the busted skull tirade and hung his head. He’d gone too far. He’d shown his kids the side of him that wasn’t good to know.
Charlie strode past him and held open the door into the elevator lobby. There was no expression on his face as he waited for Jack to slowly turn and walk away.
I felt the only thing to do when you’ve witnessed raw hatred between a man and his wife is to concentrate on the kids.
Grace and Holly played a hide-and-seek game with Phoebe and Charlie while I sat cross-legged with Adam on his bed.
‘How do you feel?’ I asked him. ‘Did you get hurt when you crashed your skis into the tree?’
‘No.’
‘Were you scared?’
‘No.’
‘Jeez, I would’ve been,’ I admitted. ‘I hate getting lost.’
‘I wasn’t lost,’ Adam said calmly. ‘I just didn’t want to be with Charlie.’
‘Sshh!’ Putting my finger to my lips, I looked towards the closed door. ‘How come? Isn’t Charlie your buddy? Don’t you like him?’
Adam shook his head. ‘Not any more.’ He looked so serious and alone that I put an arm around his shoulder and squeezed him. ‘He’s not my friend. He just pretends.’
‘Eighteen – nineteen – twenty, coming ready or not!’ Holly called as Phoebe and little Charlie wriggled out of sight under Adam’s duvet. Grace was hiding behind the curtains with her feet poking out.
‘I hear you,’ I told Adam. ‘I’m sorry you don’t like him.’
‘I wish Mommy wasn’t Charlie’s friend. I wish she didn’t fight with Daddy.’ There were unshed tears in his big brown eyes and his bottom lip trembled.
‘Me too,’ I sighed and squeezed his hand.
Holly the seeker lifted up a corner of the duvet, making Phoebe giggle. She revealed the two hiders, who rolled off the bed with glee.
‘Maybe they won’t always fight,’ I told Adam. ‘Maybe one day it’ll all work out.’
Charlie was still with Natalia when we left the suite. They’d been deep in conversation in the living room, with Charlie holding Natalia’s hand and Natalia hiding her face from us as we walked by.
‘This is unbelievably tough for
Natalia,’ Charlie explained quietly. ‘She’s desperate to meet with her attorney and sort out this mess, and she’s relying on you three girls to keep everything under wraps.’
‘We won’t say a thing,’ I promised, eager to get out. ‘I’ll be busy choosing a costume for the party tomorrow. After that, maybe the snow will have let up and Holly and Grace can make it back to Bitterroot.’
‘Neat.’ Grace praised me as we took the elevator. ‘Let Charlie think we’re leaving you all alone.’
‘We’re not though,’ Holly insisted. ‘We’re seeing this thing through with you.’
It was my turn to blink back the tears. ‘That means a lot to me,’ I whispered.
We hit the ground floor and the door opened. ‘So let’s pick a costume,’ Holly declared, striding ahead down the corridor.
There was a large room on the ground floor of the hotel that was used as a conference room, but today it was stacked high with cardboard boxes containing costumes used in the Starlite production of Carnival dating way back to the nineteen seventies. Gwen and Lucy were in charge.
‘Owen, look at this!’ Macy was in her fire-eater’s costume, holding up a weird mask in the shape of a bird’s head. ‘This is the one I told you about. The mask comes over your head and hides the whole of your face. You wear it with this hat and cloak.’
The black hat was broad-brimmed and decorated with a swirl of white ostrich feathers. Owen took the outfit and tried on the mask with its long curved beak. As he turned his head in our direction, his eyes glittered through the black eye holes.
‘Wow, he looks evil!’ Holly whispered, while Grace picked up a beautiful silver mask. The face had slanting, almond-shaped holes for the eyes and was painted with elaborate scrolls. A matching headdress rose like a fan to frame the wearer’s face.
‘You should definitely wear that,’ Lucy told her, searching in the box for a stiff lace ruff and a tight-waisted, full-skirted dress to match the mask.
‘Maybe. But we’re planning not to be at the party tomorrow night,’ Grace replied. ‘As soon as the snow stops and the graders clear the roads, Holly and I are out of here.’
‘No – stay!’ Macy cried, dancing across the room. ‘It’s going to be the best party ever. How can you miss it?’
‘We’re not exactly flavour of the month around here,’ Holly pointed out. ‘Even before we went into Gwen’s room and she made us public enemy number one.’
‘Yeah, that was dumb.’ Macy tilted her mask back from her face and frowned. ‘I can’t work out why you did that. Even if Tania is still feeling sore about Orlando and Gwen, where does breaking into her room get you?’
‘You’d be surprised,’ Holly muttered.
Seizing my arm and dragging me into a corner for a private conversation, Macy piled on the pressure. ‘So tell me. What did Holly mean: “You’d be surprised”? Did you find something in Gwen’s room that you weren’t supposed to know about? Come on, Tania, you’re my buddy – you can tell me!’
What does it reveal about my personality type (gullible, naive to the point of stupidity?) that I was about to share our latest discovery with Macy? ‘Gwen isn’t really Gwen. She’s a dark angel who’s possessed the body of a dead girl named Carrie Hall, blah-blah …’
But then I caught sight of Owen standing by the door in his cruel bird mask, his head turned towards us. I looked again at Macy and noted that her forehead was beaded with sweat and her eyes darted everywhere as if she was scared.
‘No, forget it,’ I told her. ‘You really don’t want to know.’
‘But I do!’ She sounded desperate and it struck me that it was Owen who’d sent her on the mission to get me to talk.
I had a sickening, split-second tectonic flash – a vision of him in his black costume towering over Macy and pulling her strings. She was his puppet; he was the evil puppet master. He was a dark angel; she was his victim.
I couldn’t believe how slow I’d been. Why hadn’t I seen it earlier – the infatuation, the manic behaviour, the total submission?
I stared at Owen with an ice-cold shiver running down my spine. Though I tried to disguise my terror with a fake smile, I was sure it didn’t fool him and he straight away made his way towards Macy and me, his face still concealed behind the bird mask.
‘Come to my room in an hour,’ I managed to whisper to her. I was thinking on my feet, working out a desperate plan to get Macy away from Owen and out of his control. ‘Come alone and I’ll tell you all about what we found in Gwen’s bag.’
‘We have to pray that it’s not too late.’ I shared my latest discovery with Grace and Holly as soon as we’d each quickly chosen a costume and hightailed it back to my room.
‘You’ll still be here for the party,’ Lucy had convinced Grace and Holly. ‘The snow’s so bad no one will leave before Monday.’
So they’d picked their costumes and now the bed was piled high with silver and gold dresses, stiff petticoats, big headdresses, masks and matching shoes.
‘You’re sure?’ Grace quizzed. ‘You’re certain it wasn’t just Macy being Macy?’
‘Yeah, manic is Macy’s natural mode,’ Holly agreed.
‘Not this time,’ I argued.
‘So you had one of your visions?’
‘I saw Owen literally pulling her strings – you know, like she was a little puppet dangling. Just for a moment, but it was enough. He’s definitely on their side—’
‘The dark angels?’ Holly interrupted.
‘Yes, and he’d sent her on a mission to get information out of me. She was scared that if she didn’t get it she’d be punished.’
‘Did he say anything?’ Grace wanted to know.
‘Not a word. He came straight over and snatched her away from me. I just had time to tell her to meet me here.’
‘What did he do then?’
‘He raised his mask and stared at Macy. I guess he was mind-reading to find out if she’d carried out his orders. She kind of crumbled – her face looked white and terrified. Then he grabbed her and dragged her away.’
‘So what if he locks her up or doesn’t let her out of his sight?’ Holly ran through some options. ‘Or maybe he’ll zombify her, just zap her willpower so she has to do everything he tells her.’
‘That’s already happened,’ I pointed out. ‘Owen is in total control.’
‘So why are we sitting here waiting for her to show up?’ For once it was Grace who wanted to spring into action. ‘I think we should go look for her.’
‘Then we have the same problem as we have with Gwen and Orlando.’ My instinct was to agree with Grace, but my head told me no. ‘We can’t free Macy from the dark angels by using force. We have to figure out a smarter way.’
‘But from what you said we don’t have time,’ Holly argued. ‘Owen was using her as a pawn in his game – trying to find out what we knew about Gwen. You didn’t give her the information he wanted so in his eyes Macy failed to carry out orders.’
‘He was angry,’ I admitted. ‘When he pulled off his mask his eyes were intense – burning with anger. She was more scared than I can tell you.’
Trembling, white-faced with terror, weak-kneed with fear, breathless, out of her mind as he dragged her away. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘Let’s go find her!’
Our feet made no sound on the thick hotel carpets. We trod the corridors without any firm plan in mind – only that we knew it was vital to track Macy down before her dark angel exacted his revenge.
We turned a corner and – whoosh! – the wall lights suddenly broke out in flames, like burning torches on castle walls.
Two worlds clash. Reality melts.
The torches cast dark shadows along the corridor; footsteps ring out on stone floors. We flee from the footsteps and come to some steps – a spiral staircase with cold stone treads, taking us down, down into a dripping cellar, a dungeon with a vaulted roof, where the torches flicker and die. A single, weak shaft of light falls from on overhead grille.
&nbs
p; We grope our way across the dungeon until we reach the far side. My fingers grasp an unseen metal handle, which I pull. A door opens on to a dark tunnel, nothing like the hotel corridors we have left behind. The floor is cold, hard and uneven. The walls are of rough-hewn rock, with narrow niches containing kerosene lamps. The lights come at regular intervals – I count my steps as we stumble forward up a gradual incline, twenty-five paces between them. We pass five before faint voices start to whisper.
‘The way ahead is blocked.’
‘Rockfall in front and behind.’
‘What now?’
Then silence except for the soft popping of flames as the lamps go out. Soon we are in total darkness.
‘Did you hear that?’ Holly whispers. Her voice echoes down the tunnel. ‘The voices – who’s down here with us?’
‘We’re trapped. We’ll never get out of here.’
‘Dear Lord Jesus, help us!’
‘Nobody,’ I told Holly. ‘Ghosts. Dead miners, workers on the subway. Anybody, everybody in this whole world who was ever buried in a rockfall, an earthquake – whatever.
The voices multiply. They wail and cry for help. We’re suffocated by the lost souls around us.
‘You mean this isn’t real?’ Grace asks in a small, scared voice. ‘We’re imagining all this?’
‘Not real?’ The idea offers bold, gutsy Holly our lifeline.
‘Help!’
‘Help us get out of here!’
‘Dear Lord, I don’t want to die!’
‘Ignore them,’ Holly orders us. She focuses and forges ahead through the tunnel. ‘Concentrate on what we have to do, which is to claw our way back to reality. Come on, Grace, and you too, Tania. I can see daylight!’
We scramble and fight – the three of us together are strong. All for one. We stumble and cough the dust from our lungs as we break out of the tunnel – Holly first, then Grace, then me. By the force of our combined wills we overcome the nightmare.
‘Fire Exit.’ We were back in the muffled corridor, confronted by a green sign over a door leading out into the parking lot. I took over from Holly, pressed a metal bar and heard the door click open. We stepped out into the snow. A hard crust had formed over the drifts, thick enough to support our weight. Gingerly, with the snow creaking under our feet with every step we took, we made our way past the rows of buried cars towards the avenue of pine trees lining the driveway.
