Twisted Heart (25 page)

A crowd of fifteen to twenty people watched Ziegler and Channing jerk Jarrold to his feet. The victim’s lip was swollen, there was a cut oozing blood under his left eye. He raised his head as his captors led him away. He looked right at me.

What did I see in his eyes? What was he trying to tell me as they dragged him into the New Dawn Jeep?

I didn’t have time to decide. They were in the car, reversing into the empty lot, out again on to the highway and speeding away even before the cops arrived.

‘You just missed him,’ Orlando’s mom, Carly, told me when I finally arrived at West Amherst Street. ‘Are you OK, Tania? Would you like a drink of water?’

‘No, I’m cool, thanks.’

‘You look a little pale. Are you sure you don’t need a drink?’

‘Where did Orlando go?’

‘To the mall – the book shop, I think. Tania, you’re shivering.’

‘I’m good.’ Hurrying back to my car, I set off after Orlando. Stay calm, I told myself. Don’t overreact – Ziegler was only doing his job.

I remembered how he’d crunched Jarrold’s Harley against the wall, the cold, cruel look in his blue eyes when he’d stamped on Jarrold’s arm as he lay on the tarmac. Ziegler wasn’t a guy to show mercy, I realized.

And now Jarrold was back at New Dawn, a prisoner again.

‘It’s a good thing,’ Grace insisted when I called her en route to the mall. ‘Your psycho stalker/potential dark angel is safely off the scene.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘No buts, Tania. Forget Jarrold, focus on Holly – OK?’

It was good advice and I tried as usual to follow it, tracking down Orlando’s truck parked outside the book shop and going into the store to find him in the theatre history section. He was standing by the early twentieth-century shelves, thumbing through a book on Diaghilev. I kissed him and tried to act as if nothing had happened.

‘What’s wrong?’ he said straight away. I swear, when it comes to picking up signals about my mindset, he has my kind of super-sensitivity. I guess that’s what having a soul mate is all about.

‘Nothing. I brought your party costume.’

‘Show me.’ Putting down the book, he followed me out of the store.

‘I decided to go down the Navajo route,’ I explained, pulling a striped blue tunic and matching bandanna out of my trunk. ‘We still need a belt, beads, maybe suede boots.’

‘Your hands are shaking,’ Orlando noticed.

‘I figured we’d get beads from the art shop.’ I took a deep breath and walked on down the mall. ‘Fake coral and silver. That would look good with the blue.’

Catching up with me, he took my hand. ‘Chill,’ he told me. ‘I know you’re stressed about tonight, but I’m here. I’ll take care of you.’

‘Thanks.’ I stopped by the door of Artworks, breathed again then smiled. God, how good did that last sentence sound! ‘Tell me again.’

‘I’ll take care of you,’ he promised, whispering in my ear.

So good! ‘What do you say we buy the beads and head back to my place – yeah?’ I asked.

Orlando grinned and nodded.

I was almost over the shock of Jarrold’s recapture, browsing with Orlando through the bead section when we bumped into Aurelie.

‘Hey!’ she said across the stacked units of multi-coloured boxes. ‘Tania, what a pleasant surprise.’

‘Sur-preeze’ was how she said it, to rhyme with ‘breeze’. And she smiled at me with real pleasure, came round to our side of the units and began to chat.

‘I am so bad,’ she sighed, fluttering her dark eyelashes, using lots of delicate hand gestures. ‘My own costume for the party – I left it so late!’

‘Wow!’ In my head I heard Orlando saying this. Any red-blooded guy would, the first time they met Aurelie – so dainty and feminine, so stylish. Today she was dressed in black loafers, narrow black pants and a short red woollen jacket so beautifully cut and tailored that I knew it must have come from Paris and cost a fortune. She wore coordinating silver and red earrings and a cream scarf intricately twisted and wound around her neck.

‘I always do this,’ she confessed. ‘I arrange everything for Papa and Jean-Luc, and never have time for myself.’

‘Costumes – that’s why we’re here too,’ I mumbled. ‘Aurelie, you remember Orlando? Orlando – Aurelie.’

They shook hands but there was no European kissing. The eye contact was direct, the lips were smiling.

‘Orlando came back for the weekend,’ I explained. Is it OK if I bring him along to the party?’

‘Please – you don’t even have to ask!’ she protested with wrist-flicking gestures. ‘Orlando, Tania is a tough cookie – is that how you say it? She volunteered and went wild walking this week with the River Stone band. I expect you already know this. But did she tell you how she helped to rescue her friend Holly.’ Still the eye contact, the lip-gloss smile.

‘Yeah, we’re kind of worried about Holly,’ Orlando replied. I was glad that he hadn’t totally fallen under Aurelie’s spell – he seemed cagey, as if he was testing her out. ‘Hypothermia is bad. People can die.’

‘But of course at New Dawn we have a professional back-up team,’ she assured him. ‘Mountain rescue, paramedics – everything is in place. Holly is fine, believe me. In fact, she had such a good time with her band that she stayed on in one of the cabins. She’ll be at the party tonight.’

‘Cool. So will Aaron – he’ll be there,’ Orlando said extra slowly, waiting for a reaction from Aurelie but giving none himself.

‘Aaron?’ She repeated the name with a puzzled pout.

Orlando helped her out. ‘Holly’s boyfriend.’

‘Ah!’ Aurelie turned to me. ‘The ex. So he will need a costume.’

I nodded. ‘No problem – we already fixed that.’ At least, I hoped Grace had thought of it.

Aurelie’s brow creased into a small frown as she took me by the arm and led me a little way down the aisle. ‘Tania, do Holly a favour. Tell this boy – Aaron – that she met somebody on her wilderness walk, that maybe things are not the same between her and him.’

I stared back at her. ‘You want me to warn Aaron about Channing?’

She nodded then sighed. ‘It’s so important to avoid a scene at the party, don’t you think? For Papa’s sake. For Jean-Luc.’

‘Aaron will want to be there,’ I insisted quietly.

‘Jean-Luc,’ she repeated, switching back to a smile, but this time a sad one. ‘I will miss my brother so much,
n’est ce pas
?’

End of conversation. We said our goodbyes, made our air kisses, went our separate ways.

‘What did you think?’ I asked Orlando when I was sure Aurelie was out of range. ‘Did you see how she smoothed over the whole Holly accident thing like it was nothing? And now she wants Aaron out of the picture to make it easier for Channing.’

‘Yeah,’ he said thoughtfully.

‘Don’t tell me – you fell for it,’ I groaned. The accent, the haircut, the gorgeous perfume.

‘I don’t know. I haven’t figured her out.’

‘But she makes a big impression, huh?’

‘Sssh!’ He nudged me and pointed to Aurelie catwalk-gliding back down the aisle, this time with Antony Amos in tow.

‘Tania, Papa wished to meet Orlando before the party tonight,’ she called, loud enough for heads to turn, for people to recognize the local celeb and be drawn towards us.

I felt myself shiver, waited for the vision of dark wings spreading over me, of the creature emerging from the lake.

Amos smiled at everyone in the store, shook hands, kept on coming. ‘Hey, Tania,’ he said, greeting me with a warm smile. ‘Why don’t you introduce me to your boyfriend and let me tell him more about our volunteer programme?’

Come on, wings!
I thought. I never thought I would say this, but I actually wanted the monster to appear, to prove my dark angel theory. And if not the creature from the lake, at least wolf man lurking in the forest, bursting out from behind a tree, jaws snapping.
Where are you, demons?

Nothing as Orlando shook hands with Antony Amos, even though my psychic sensors were on red alert.

I’ve said before, Amos has a way about him that you didn’t say no to – a lifetime as a movie director created that, I guess. And a natural confidence in the way he walks up to you and shakes you by the hand, an acceptance that people will stare and admire, be drawn in to his point of view.

For the first time I pictured him as a young guy without the wrinkles and the white hair, when he could have had any beautiful girl he wanted, with his intelligent brown eyes staring at you, somehow asking you to share a joke that you didn’t quite understand, but soon would if you got to know him.

Here in Artworks, amongst the tubes of paint, brushes and canvases I was still waiting for my dark angel to descend and for a warning from Zenaida. What happened? Really – where were they?

Orlando shook Amos by the hand, called him ‘sir’ and said how much he admired his movies.

The great man accepted the praise then turned to me, stooping slightly to confide something. ‘We have news. Aurelie received the autopsy report and it finally confirmed that Conner died of natural causes. He had an undeclared cardiac condition. No further investigation is necessary.’

I frowned at the word ‘undeclared’. If the kids in the camp had known about Conner’s heart problem, how could Ziegler, Amos and the rest claim that it was not on his medical record?

‘That’s good, Tania,’ Aurelie pointed out sweetly. ‘Jarrold was not to blame.’

Noticing Orlando’s knee-jerk react to the mention of Jarrold’s name, I cleared my throat and tried to think of a neutral comment.

‘Oh, speaking of Jarrold,’ Amos jumped in before me, twisting the knife in Orlando’s gut. ‘One hundred per cent good news as far as he goes.’

‘Why? What happened?’ Again Orlando was over-quick to react, shooting a glance at me as he stepped in between us.

‘We got him back!’ Amos exclaimed. ‘Richard found him hiding out and sleeping rough in a disused building. He and Channing took him home to New Dawn. Jarrold will re-sign his contract and stay with us a little longer than we originally planned.’

‘You already knew that!’ Orlando and I sat in his truck after Amos and Aurelie had left. He was back to being my judge and jury. ‘I can tell by the way you reacted – you knew they’d got the guy!’

‘So what if I did? I guessed how you’d be if you found out I was there.’ Exactly like this – suspicious and jealous again, ready to blame me for something I hadn’t done, as if we’d never had the talk at his house.

My last comment slowed Orlando down. ‘You were there?’ he echoed.

‘Freak coincidence,’ I shrugged. ‘On my way to your house. Ziegler and Channing – they were pretty rough with Jarrold.’

‘He’s a dangerous guy. They wouldn’t want to take any chances.’

‘No, for sure.’

‘And Amos and Aurelie – they said it all worked out.’

‘Meaning, they’re happy he’s signed up with them for more wild-walking.’

Amos had said there would be an extension to Jarrold’s stay at New Dawn, but he didn’t say by how much. ‘Jarrold will be ecstatic,’ I added with a frown.

‘Yeah well, don’t sound so sarcastic,’ Orlando told me. ‘Actually I was surprised back there. He wasn’t how I expected.’

‘Who – Amos?’ No way as surprised as I was, I thought. I still couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t getting my visions when my vengeful dark angel was around. No shape-shifting, no levitating, no animation of objects – none of the things I’d grown to expect. ‘He’s clever,’ I conceded. Probably skilful enough to block the visions once he realized that I’d pinned him down as my dark angel.

‘Yeah. He was impressive, actually.’

‘On the surface,’ I muttered.

‘I’m still not saying I approve the methods they use at New Dawn. You hear too many bad things about boot camps.’

‘This isn’t a boot camp.’

‘Did you hear about the place in Florida – Bay County? They were doing some kind of military drill and a fourteen-year-old kid died.’

‘New Dawn is not a boot camp,’ I repeated.

‘No, but look what happened to Connor Steben. I don’t care about exact types of camp – a kid dying is a kid dying.’

‘Even so, you were impressed by Amos?’

‘Hmm.’ Orlando shrugged. ‘Interesting, huh?’

We sat without talking, each thinking our own thoughts. Personally, I was still troubled by the lack of monsters, trying to work out exactly how Amos had thrown me off track, getting more and more scared by the power of his mind-control games.

‘They predicted more snow,’ Orlando said at last, ‘coming in from the north west. Winds of 70mph.’

‘Well, thanks, Mister Weatherman.’

‘I’m only saying. Let’s use my truck later.’

‘Not my car?’

‘In case we get stuck in snow. And I’ll tell Jude to drive his Jeep.’

‘Cool.’ I nodded, kissed his cheek and climbed out of the truck. ‘6.30, my place,’ I said.

It turned out the costumes were fun.

‘Check this out!’ Grace cried in the living room at her place. She twirled around in a long red skirt gathered in tiny pleats at the waist and a red flower-patterned shirt. Her long strings of beads and her sash belt were cream, her blonde hair braided down her back with red ribbon running through. ‘Apache – based on a picture taken of one of Geronimo’s wives.’

She’d stuck with the Apache theme for Jude and Aaron. Aaron wore a loose white shirt open almost to the waist and a black vest. Silver beads hung down his chest, his unruly brown hair was covered with a zig-zag-patterned bandanna in red and black. Jude meanwhile was looking mean and moody in a tan leather vest over his bare torso, worn with tight-fitting fringed pants and nothing on his head.

‘Jude, are you sure you won’t catch a cold?’ Grace’s mom looked concerned as we all paraded in their living room.

This mom-speak broke the tension and cracked us up. We laughed and fooled around, tossed Jude a throw from the back of the couch to wear as a poncho and fell out through the Montroses’ front door, still laughing even though the predicted snow had already begun to fall.

We drove out to New Dawn with our windows open, yelling from car to car.

‘Jeez, Mom was right – it’s c-c-cold!’ Grace called when we stopped side by side at the lights on Main Street. Dusk had fallen and the street lights were on, neon signs shone over entrances to restaurants and bars.