And how could I warn him now? Now that he was holding Cristal’s hand and he was spellbound once more?
‘So quick bright things come to confusion.’
I stepped aside to let them out of the room, glanced at the Medinas and followed Jude and Cristal down the corridor.
‘Good to see you, Tania,’ Cristal called over her shoulder. ‘Why not join us for a cup of coffee?’
I could only see the back of Jude’s head so I couldn’t tell what he thought about this. And the offer took me by surprise. ‘Oh, no, thanks. I’m good.’
‘No, really,’ she insisted. ‘My car is parked by the exit gate. We’ll wait for you there.’ She gave me no time to object. The parents were marching close behind as she whisked Jude out through the glass doors, and I was sidelined – sandwiched helplessly in between what felt like newly-formed arch-enemies of the Medinas versus Cristal.
So I did look for her by the gate, waved when I saw Jude sitting next to her in the passenger seat and slowly followed Cristal’s car out of the parking lot, thinking maybe somewhere, somehow I could still warn Jude to stay away, not to have anything to do with anyone connected with Zoran and Black Eagle Lodge.
We drank coffee in a small diner on Bitterroot’s Main Street.
Take care. Be aware of what you’re getting into, guardian Maia whispers in my ear. I look round for a woman dressed in dressed in a sky-blue tunic and jeans. The only other person in Starbucks late on a Monday morning is an unshaven, heavy-set guy in a thick plaid shirt and a grey baseball cap that has once been white.
‘So do you still plan on seeing Grace?’ I threw Jude a curve ball, hoping that it would drag his attention away from the green-eyed goddess sitting opposite.
He only shrugged and went on staring.
‘Jude can see Grace any time he likes,’ Cristal said, returning the ball with a curving, spinning, dipping vengeance. ‘I talked with her last night and I reckon she’s over not wanting to meet with him. In fact, she made it plain she’d be happy to.’
I jerked forward in my seat. Grace wanted to see Jude! ‘So what was the problem before now?’
‘The usual stuff that happens just after a relationship breaks down. Unresolved issues like who’s to blame, who said what to whom and in what circumstances. It takes a little time to process that.’
So now Cristal was part relationship counsellor, part goddess. Christ, did this woman bug me! So much so that I temporarily forgot how dangerous she was. ‘It wasn’t that Grace was feeling downright guilty for what she did to Jude?’ I challenged.
She pressed the tip of her tongue against her teeth and made a small tutting sound. ‘We don’t know the details,’ she reminded me. ‘It’s impossible to guess what goes on between couples when we’re only looking from the outside.’
‘That’s true.’ Jude’s hands were wrapped around his mug and his eyes had developed a faraway look. ‘In the first place, I should never have let Grace go to Zoran’s party alone.’
‘But you were sick,’ I pointed out. ‘That was so not your fault!’
‘I let her go without me. I should have said no, stay home with me.’
‘Like, that would’ve worked,’ I muttered, thinking of the old, lively, party-loving Grace.
‘Yeah, then she would have known I didn’t want her going into any situation where a guy could think she was single and hit on her. I should have made it clear that I cared about her too much to let her do that.’
‘Jude, did I hear you right? What century are we living in here?’
‘I wasn’t strong, I wasn’t there for her,’ he insisted, his voice fading as he seemed to lose interest in the topic. ‘Anyway, it’s history.’
‘So you still want to see her, or not?’
‘Sure he does,’ Cristal said for him. And before I spotted the next danger she went straight on. ‘Jude, I think you should drive up to the lodge with me right now, right this minute, so you and Grace can get closure.’
‘No!’ I gasped, standing up and almost spilling my coffee. ‘Your folks are expecting you back home. They’ll be worried.’
‘Send them a text,’ Cristal told him, smiling and honey-sweet. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
‘I’ll come too,’ I said before I had time to think. I was in a panic about what would happen to Jude if I let him out of my sight.
‘Cool. I’ll drive you both,’ Cristal offered, still smiling and sailing serenely on.
All the way along the highway and up the dirt road to Black Eagle Lodge my heart hammered at my ribs. Cristal’s car jolted and rattled over the washboard surface, the tyres kicked up gravel and I stared out of the back seat at a near-vertical drop into the dry gorge below. When a deer leaped out from behind a rock and stood on the track in front of us, that was it – my pounding heart broke free of its cage.
What am I doing? I asked myself. If … no, not if but when … things go wrong, how do I get out of this?
Cristal braked hard to avoid the deer, which finally took off into some bushes. I was thrown forward against the back of Jude’s seat but I didn’t care. At least the squealing tyres masked the sound of my hammering heart.
Now I know how gladiators felt way back, I thought. And at least they had a shield and a sword to protect themselves. What do I have? Nothing!
You have me, Maia whispers. You have me and the cosmic force for good to tap into. I’m here. Don’t forget.
Jude turned to me still with that distant, dreamy look. ‘Don’t you just love this ride?’ he asked. ‘This mountain, Prayer River and Turner Lake below, the big sky above? I mean, can’t you see exactly why Zoran built Black Eagle Lodge where he did?’
I stared back at him, wondering why he’d suddenly begun to talk like a realtor. No, not like he was selling the place, but like he was in love with it, like it was paradise. And this was because it was where Cristal lived, I realized. All I could do was try and drag his mind back to the reality of visiting Grace. ‘Will Ezra be around when Jude and Grace have their talk?’ I asked Cristal. ‘Or will he stay away?’
‘I’m sure Grace has nothing to hide from Ezra,’ she said calmly.
‘No but maybe Jude would feel more comfortable if—’
‘I don’t care who’s there,’ he interrupted. ‘As a matter of fact, Cristal, I want you to be there too.’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘And, Tania, I know Daniel will be around. We should all six of us get together, have this talk out in the open so everyone is clear about what’s going on.’
I went along with the plan because I had no choice. I mean, I’d accepted a ride in Cristal’s car; we were driving across the cattle guard into Black Eagle Lodge. The clang of metal as the tyres hit the bars sounded like the cell of a prison door closing.
And Zoran was standing in the yard to greet us, dressed in his usual black T- and jeans, the dome of his skull looking barer than ever though his chin had two days’ stubble. Here comes the devil, I reminded myself with a shudder. His two grey lurchers bounded towards us then straight past into the thorn bushes and sage brush.
‘Chasing rabbits,’ Cristal explained.
I heard the dogs rustle and snuffle unseen.
‘Hey, good to see you!’ Zoran extended his hand to Jude as we stepped out of the car. Then he looked my way. ‘You too, Tania. How’s your dad?’
‘Good. He’s in Utah.’ Damn – the question caught me off guard and I gave away a fact when I didn’t need to. Be more careful. Don’t let him know that I’m home alone.
‘My compadre, my Bucharest buddy,’ Zoran grinned, shaking my hand and exposing the angel tattoo.
It was a wolfish grin – lean and sharp. I did my best to put aside what Maia had told me and to smile back.
Zoran led the way over to the arena where six or seven mustangs were gathered in a huddle around a feed stall. The horses’ heads were down; you could hear their teeth munching and grinding the alfalfa. ‘You know they broke free?’ he asked me.
‘I was here,’ I
reminded him as I looked around, expecting, maybe hoping for Daniel to walk out of the barn any moment.
‘It was definitely the fire they set high on the mountain. The smoke drifted down and panicked the horses.’ Zoran was smooth and relaxed, leaning on the fence rail watching the mustangs eat. His dogs emerged from the brush, one with a rabbit hanging limp from its jaws. ‘And you, Jude – how are you feeling?’
‘Good, thanks.’ Jude stuck close to Cristal as if on an invisible leash. He gave her a shy, embarrassed grin – the characteristic smile I’d known from junior school that made him who he was, but it was reserved now for Cristal and no one else.
‘We were worried for you. But Callum was here. He always knows what to do.’ Bringing the subject to a close, Zoran turned away from the arena, put a hand on my shoulder and walked me towards the house. ‘How often does your dad take a trip back home?’ he asked me.
‘To Bucharest?’ I asked. Stay on guard. This time resist the urge to tell too much of the truth.
‘Yes. Does he still have family there?’
‘Some. He hardly ever goes back though.’ We lost the dogs and went through the sliding doors, which opened as if by magic. They closed behind us and we were sealed in.
Zoran looked closely at me and I had the uncomfortable feeling that he knew about today’s emails to Stefan. But how could he? Unless he’d hacked into my Facebook messages. But then, why would he?
‘I’d like to meet your dad,’ Zoran said. ‘We have a lot in common. Why not let me know when he gets back from the desert?’
We crossed the mirrored, marble hallway, took the elevator and headed down the corridor past the rooms to left and right, walking underground past the row of ethnic masks on the wall. I was developing the uneasy sensation that any second now these walls and ceilings could collapse and bury us alive. I felt a new anxiety, a feeling of ribs being crushed by rock, of lungs emptying. Steady yourself; breathe easy. I glanced round at Jude and Cristal walking silently behind.
‘He and I can talk about the old country,’ Zoran said pleasantly. ‘Does he share your interest in art, Tania? Tell him I have two Brancusi sculptures to show him if he would like.’
And so he chatted, and every step we took I felt more pressurized, more trapped.
‘Tania!’ We’d reached the big room where Zoran had first received the chosen ones during his party and Daniel was there, standing up from a couch to greet me.
I took a sharp breath, tried to stop my pulse from racing. He was walking towards me, leaning forward and doing the double European kiss, first one cheek then the other. I felt the scratchiness of his stubble, felt myself melt under his bright-blue gaze.
‘Long time, no see.’
I blushed then nodded and tried to picture Maia at my shoulder clothed in her mystical light.
Don’t fall for it, I told myself – those dazzling eyes, the clean lines of jaw and cheekbones, the perfect proportions of nose and mouth. But equally, don’t let him know that your defences are up. Smile back, play the game.
I remembered what Maia said about the forces of good and evil and devils in torment and tried to bring to mind a picture of Daniel, Zoran, Cristal and the rest fighting their way back from the spirit world, finding their links, claiming innocent souls. But today, right now, they looked so normal, so human in their jeans and Ts, and so beautiful. As I looked at Daniel, my heart fluttered and I felt myself falter.
‘Jude decided he still wanted to talk with Grace,’ I told him. ‘I happened to be there, so I came along too.’
‘I understand,’ he said quietly. But there was amusement in his eyes, as if we were sharing a joke and he and I both knew I was really here to see him – that I simply couldn’t resist.
He shouldn’t have done that; the flicker of arrogance annoyed me. I rebuilt my defences.
And then, as Zoran bowed out and left us to it, Grace walked into the room with Ezra.
I was shocked all over again. Wearing a shapeless grey sweater and jeans, with her fair hair hanging limp, she was like the shell of Grace but not Grace. Her face was pale, her eyes big and blank and she moved slowly and stiffly, as if she had to consciously remind her body what to do. I noticed a bruise on her right forearm and a small one on her face, just under her left eye. Ezra shadowed her as she drifted towards Jude.
‘You came,’ she breathed.
Jude stared at her uncertainly. He glanced at Cristal, who reassured him with her smile, and turned back to Grace. ‘You’re ready to talk?’
Her eyes widened then flickered shut, opened again. Her pupils were dark and huge, leaving just a rim of grey iris. ‘I’m glad you’re OK,’ she murmured to Jude.
Ezra stood at her shoulder, a dark figure with long, black hair curling against his neck – Grace’s dreamcatcher, her jailer.
‘I’m fine.’ Jude gave a ghost of his usual smile. ‘I came to see how you were.’
‘Cool,’ she whispered.
He checked with Cristal. Was this it? Was there anything left to say?
‘It’s good that you two can still be friends,’ she said easily – too easily. ‘No jealousy, no regrets.’
Slowly they both nodded.
‘It makes you free to move on. The door opens.’
Daniel took up this piece of wisdom and ran with it, bringing his arm around my shoulder as he spoke. ‘Regrets are what hold us back,’ he agreed. ‘We have to learn that what is past is past. There’s no sadness in that, only peace.’
Jude and Grace nodded again. I was fixated on the bruise under her eye, obsessing about how she got it. Had she grown dizzy and fallen? Had she bumped into something? Or had she been hit, by Ezra or someone else? But then I told myself that she didn’t look afraid – only vacant.
Empty, not even there any more. I asked myself yet again – where, for Christ’s sake, was the sunny, vibrant Grace, the Grace with the touch of vanity, the love of dressing up and partying, my outgoing, golden Grace?
My attention switched from the bruise to her dark, expressionless eyes. Drugs! Briefly I thought again about Rohypnol, cocaine, heroin and, though I was way too scared to ever go near those mind-altering substances, I wished I had at least tuned into the heroin-chic subculture thing. Now I needed an expert to confirm that, yes, over time this was the effect – weight loss, lack of energy, absence of will. For a moment I was in denial and actually wished with all my heart that this was the plain, straightforward chemical answer.
‘Are you ready to move on?’ Grace asked Jude. Slowly she bent her arm then extended it in a gesture that suggested opening a door.
He turned to Cristal for an answer.
She smiled and nodded. ‘That’s why he came.’
And I knew with a pitter-pattering, sinking heart that really it wasn’t drugs, it was the force of evil hiding behind those smiles and glances, strong spirits growing stronger as Maia had told me, dark angels bursting through hell’s barriers back into the material world.
Could I do it? Did I have the guts to stay here and fight for Grace and Jude?
After Ezra had taken Grace away and Zoran had reappeared to send Jude off with Cristal and Daniel to get something to eat, he and I were left alone in a vast room close to the original party room.
Here the theme was medieval. The stone walls were decorated with spears and pieces of medieval armour and a stuffed stag’s head hung over a big open fireplace. Opposite it was a huge tapestry featuring a forest with huntsmen on horseback.
‘So, Tania, tell me your dreams,’ Zoran invited, patting the place beside him on the crimson couch. ‘Where are you at in your life?’
I sat next to him, totally afraid. Surely he could feel me shake and tremble.
‘Relax,’ he smiled. ‘Try to forget who I am, who I was – you know what I mean, all the rock-star shit.’
Swallowing hard, I nodded, determined to keep the barriers up. Man becomes beast, beast becomes devil. Remember!
An image leaps from the medieval tapestry opposite the
fireplace. It’s the enormously enlarged face of a grey lurcher, fangs bared, mouth dripping blood, snarling and drooling. It explodes out of the picture, whooshes in on me with a loud roar then it retreats, vanishes back within the frame.
‘So what’s next for you, after your boyfriend gets his college place in Dallas?’
The dog snarls again. It bursts out and comes within centimetres of my face.
‘Catch the devil by the throat, fight him down.’ It’s Maia’s voice I hear, crystal clear, and the words get etched in my brain. Catch the devil by the throat.
‘I take a year out,’ I reminded Zoran as coolly as I could. If he already knew every detail of my life, then surely he must know this.
‘And will you join Orlando in Dallas?’
‘I guess not. I don’t know.’
‘But he would like for you to be there with him?’
‘Maybe.’ I tried my hardest to deflect the ongoing, uncomfortable interest in my love life. But when I met Zoran’s gaze, it was fixed on my face, reading every nuance. His pupils were huge under those heavy, straight brows.
‘It’s tough being in love,’ he empathized, unconsciously taking up Holly’s riff at the country club. ‘Especially at your age, when everything is so intense.’
Why the interest? How did it link in with what Zoran was doing here? I stared back without speaking, letting certain things slot together in my mind.
OK – this guy’s mission was to step over from the spirit world on to the material side to claim souls. Maia had told me that as plain as anything. He aimed to snatch young victims and draw them on to the dark side – and Holly and I had already decided that the more unspoiled and innocent, the more in love they were the better.
The more in love! I reworked the evidence. Hadn’t Zoran specifically checked via Ezra that I was in love when he first met me at the Heavenly Bodies party? Ditto with Grace. And hadn’t he allowed Aaron to slip through the net when he’d learned they had had a fight? After that he was no longer suitable. I felt my eyes widen with shock. That’s it! He has to steal his victims from the arms of people they love. He is the love thief! He feeds off their love.