It was too much – Charlie lost it and hit out at Rocky, who sidestepped so that Charlie swung off balance then stumbled against Weller, who set him back on his feet and mumbled something in his ear. Charlie drew a deep breath then unclenched his fists.
Rocky shook his head and turned back to Jack. ‘Don’t cave in without a fight, buddy. Get the lawyers to read through your contract,’ he said again, loud enough for Ryan to hear. ‘So blacklist me too,’ he told him, staring his all-powerful employer in the face as he strode away.
‘He’s right,’ I told Jack. I walked him out of the bar into the reception lobby, where I sat him down on the big cowhide sofa. His hands were shaking badly and his whole body had slumped. ‘Ryan can’t do this to you.’
‘In this industry Ryan James is God,’ he muttered. ‘He can do anything he wants. Anyway I don’t give a crap about my career. I’m done with all that.’
‘No, don’t talk that way. You’re good. Your fans love you.’
‘Was good,’ he contradicted. ‘Did love me. Past tense. I was as good as the script and the director let me be, back in the day. What is it – eight, nine years since I was offered a role I really wanted to play? Ever since then, I’ve taken any crap they threw my way.’
‘If that’s true, I agree with you – don’t do it any more.’ Talking to Jack, I waited to see his head come up again and his shoulders to go back. After all, there were other things to fight for. ‘Either that, or hold out for a worthwhile project.’
He looked up at me and laughed at my naivety. ‘You’re a good kid, Tania. I really do like you.’
‘Yeah well, just don’t offer me a part in your next blockbuster movie,’ I shot back at him.
‘Why – because your boyfriend would get the wrong idea?’ Seeing my smile fade, he apologized. ‘I forgot – no boyfriend. I guess you hate Gwen Speke as much as I hate her brother.’
‘Which brings me to my point,’ I told Jack. ‘Charlie. I used to really like him. He acted like a guy who would help out in a crisis.’
‘Mister Sensible.’
‘Yeah. And reliable too. I thought his heart was in the right place.’
‘But not any more?’
‘No.’ I’d wavered after the incident in Charlie’s room and finally changed my mind about him over the Adam emergency. ‘It was after Adam got lost,’ I confessed. ‘I kept asking myself, why didn’t Charlie do a better job of taking care of him?’
‘You’re asking me?’ Memory of the incident brought Jack up to a sitting position. ‘You saw – if I could’ve got my hands on the guy I’d have killed him.’
‘So what if he lost Adam on purpose?’ I suggested without really knowing where I was going with this.
Jack shook his head. ‘That doesn’t add up, not after the way Charlie wormed his way into Natalia’s good books. He wouldn’t want to lose face with her.’
‘He’d know she would blame him if anything bad happened to Adam?’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘But did she?’ I reminded him.
‘No. As it turns out, I’m the bad guy and he’s still flavour of the month.’
‘Exactly. So if I gave you one big reason why Charlie would lose your son out there on the ski slope, would you at least hear me out?’ This was it – I was about to break new ground with Jack.
‘Go ahead,’ he muttered, giving me his full attention.
‘There’s a whole world we don’t normally think about,’ I began slowly, expecting a flare up of cynicism from world weary Jack. ‘It’s a spiritual thing – dead souls out there in the ether, trying to communicate with the living. Some of them are good, some evil. No, wait – just give me a chance to explain.’
He’d broken in with a sigh and a grunt then made as if to get up off the couch. But something made him change his mind and he sank back down. ‘This had better be good.’
‘I have a psychic gift,’ I explained. ‘It all happened because I was born in a house where a baby girl died in a fire. She was called Aimee. At the moment my mom gave birth to me, Aimee’s spirit entered my body. We’re twinned souls. I hear and see her whenever I’m in my room. Her mom is called Maia. She was my first good angel, before Zenaida and now your boy, Adam. My gift gives me contact with a reality that most people don’t see.’
‘I should get up and walk away,’ he groaned. ‘Why am I even sitting here?’
‘Because this is to do with Adam and you know that even if there’s a one per cent chance of me not being crazy, you have to stay and listen.’ I felt calm and determined, certain that Jack would have to hear me out. ‘So, there’s good and evil and there’s a universal battle going on out there. Dark angels fight to drag fresh souls into hell. Good angels are on the side of light, offering a route into heaven. And some way, somehow Adam is on this earth as a good angel.’
‘Wait, you were talking about a kid called Aimee?’ Jack seemed not to have heard the last bit and was deeply moved. There were tears in his eyes as he spoke. ‘I’m going to share a secret but swear on your life you won’t let it go any further than this lobby. Adam wasn’t my first son. Before I knew Natalia, before I was famous, something bad happened in my life. I was eighteen years old and living in LA. It was pretty wild. I got my girlfriend pregnant. Eventually she had a baby boy but the kid had something wrong with his heart. He lived two days.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I whispered.
‘We named him Adam,’ Jack whispered. ‘I hoped and prayed non-stop for forty-eight hours for that boy to survive. What the hell for? It didn’t do any good – we lost him anyway. But I never forgot him and how he had a whole life ahead of him but he never got the chance to live it.’
‘It must have been incredibly hard.’
‘Worse for Anna than for me. My girlfriend – she went crazy back there. They kept her in the hospital, put her on anti-depressants then she was in therapy for a whole year. She wasn’t into me any more. Soon after that my career took off and we lost contact.’
‘Then you met Natalia.’
‘She doesn’t know about Anna or the baby,’ Jack said quickly.
‘But in a way, the Adam you have now links you to your first baby and what I’m saying about good angels living on through others could be true – this Adam is twinned with the son who died. He did get a chance of life after all.’ I took a deep breath and thought of the halo of silver light that protected Jack’s oldest son from harm.
Jack bent his head and thought for a long time.
‘And if Adam is a good angel, there will always be dark angels wanting to destroy him,’ I warned.
‘Charlie?’ Jack realized what I was saying and sprang to his feet. ‘Where is he? When I find him this time, I mean it – I’m going to kill him.’
‘But there’s a problem,’ I cautioned. ‘We still can’t be sure that Charlie’s a dark angel. They shape-shift and trick everyone so that you never know who you can trust. What I’ve just told you about Charlie wanting Adam to be lost in the snow and the reason why he would want it to happen – good angel versus bad – it’s only a theory. But what I do know for sure is that Adam didn’t want to be out there with Charlie. He told me so himself.’
‘But Natalia trusts this guy!’ Jack exclaimed angrily. Changing his mind about seeking Charlie out, he strode back across the lobby towards the bar and, as chance would have it, bumped into his wife, who was on her way upstairs. The two almost collided.
‘Yeah, Jack, hurry on back in there,’ she muttered. ‘It’s almost ten whole minutes since you had a drink.’
‘It’s not alcohol I’m looking for, it’s you.’
‘So you found me.’ Natalia seemed tired. She’d dropped the smiley, sparkly act and her face looked drawn and pale under the up-sweep of red hair. ‘Let me by, Jack. Lucy’s child-minding for me. I got a message to say that Charlie woke up crying. He had a nightmare.’
‘So I can babysit,’ Jack offered. ‘You go back and schmooze Ryan.’
She looked with di
sdain at his shaking hands and unshaven face. ‘You – babysit?’ she repeated slowly.
‘They are my kids,’ her reminded her.
‘Yeah, poor babies.’ Drawing herself up tall and haughty, she sidestepped Jack and carried on towards the lift.
Poor babies – two tiny words with giant impact. Jack felt the full force and swayed. ‘They’re my kids!’ he repeated, running after Natalia. ‘You can’t take them away from me.’
She turned – ice queen without a heart. ‘Watch me,’ she said and stepped into the lift.
Jack went nuts. He swore and stormed, cried and swore again until Rocky and Lisette showed up and offered him floor space in their first-floor suite.
‘You and Natalia need some time apart,’ Rocky advised. ‘Give her chance to cool down.’
‘Cool down? She’s already so bloody freezing she can kill me with a single look,’ Jack complained.
‘I mean, give her time to think things through. She’ll have to recognize it’s not good for the kids to lose their dad out of their lives.’
‘She’s got Charlie Speke all trained up as a surrogate, hasn’t she? That’s been her plan all along – to replace me with that lousy lookalike. Bottom line – this is where I’m at. No job, no wife, no kids.’
‘Come with us,’ Rocky insisted. He thanked me for being there for Jack when no one else was.
‘You were there too,’ I pointed out. ‘He needs friends like you. So take care of him, OK.’
‘You too – take care.’
The three of them walked to the elevator while I decided to head for my room using the stairs, wondering all the while about ice-queen Natalia and Charlie’s ever increasing influence.
What was Natalia – victim or accomplice? Was she sleepwalking out of her own life, being sucked into the dark angel vortex without realizing or did she know what she was doing every step of the way? Nothing, I repeat, nothing was impossible.
I climbed the stairs two at a time, stopped at a first-floor window to look out over Carlsbad. Twenty-four hours from now it’ll be over, I thought.
I see my reflection in the glass and another figure standing behind me – wolf man Jarrold with amber eyes. His pupils are dark slits, his jaws snap and he smells of sweat and blood. A wolf on hind legs, panting at my shoulder.
I climbed the stairs and reached the window on the second-floor landing.
My reflection – there it is again. And this time it is Weller with a knife in his raised hand – behind me, beside me, morphing and multiplying. He’s not extraordinary. He’s any punk you would see on every city street, in a multi-storey car park, springing out from behind a civic statue, pursuing you over a bridge, through a dark colonnade. His face is blank. He will strike you dead for your cell phone and the twenty dollars you carry in your purse. There are a thousand Wellers waiting for me round every corner, up every flight of stairs.
I drew a deep breath, held my nerve and went on, came to the third floor and opened the fire door into the corridor leading to my room. Dark angels were everywhere, in each shadowed stretch of carpet between the wall lights, behind each numbered door.
I opened my door with my key card.
Daniel sat in a chair by the window. He acted like it was the most natural thing in the world for him to be sitting there, smiling at me, saying, ‘Hey, Tania – I was wondering how long it would be before I finally got you all to myself.’
Like Jarrold before him, he caught me off guard and in desperate need of someone to take care of me.
‘You got me all wrong last time around,’ Daniel continued smoothly. ‘I know it’s hard to work out which side people are on. That’s the game they play.’
‘Who do you mean?’
‘The dark angels. You have me nailed down as Zoran’s right-hand man, and I don’t blame you for that.’
‘Are you telling me that wasn’t true?’ I asked warily. Here he was in my room, handsome and powerfully persuasive. ‘You were on my side all along?’
‘I’m here now, aren’t I? And why else, except to watch your back?’ He stood up, one hand in his pocket, leaning against the wall. ‘It seems like you need a friend.’
‘But not you.’ I’d been through this already with Jarrold. No way would I trust Daniel.
‘Why not me? Think about it, Tania. Run through everything I did for you back there on Black Rock. When did I ever let you down?’
As he came towards me, I backed away. ‘You tried to seduce me, to draw me onto the dark side!’
‘Not true,’ he insisted.
‘Why am I even bothering to argue with you?’ I cried. ‘We both know exactly what you did!’
‘But don’t you see? It was all a pretence.’ He was close now – near enough for me to feel the heat of his body, to see from close up the clean line of his jaw, the softness of his lips. ‘I faked all that dark angel stuff to fool Zoran. All the time I was working to protect you.’
‘An angel of light?’ I gasped. For a split second it seemed possible, and with all my bruised and battered heart I wanted it to be true.
‘Now you get it,’ he murmured as he put his arms around me.
Almost surrendering to his embrace, I glanced over his shoulder and through the window. A silver cloud passed across the face of the moon. A thousand warning voices whispered, ‘Nothing is what it seems.’
I felt Daniel’s kiss cold on my lips. I shuddered and broke free.
Here is Daniel. Daniel my god of the underworld, dressed to kill. He is in the costume he wore to Zoran’s Heavenly Bodies party. A bird mask hides his face and a cloak of black feathers hangs like wings behind him. He is naked to the waist, perfectly proportioned, beautiful and strong – my dark lord.
I smell smoke. Flames of a forest fire flicker in the reflection I see in the window. I choke and try to run. Jarrold and Weller stand in my way.
‘Death, darkness, suffering.’ Daniel speaks through the smoke and flames. ‘The more the worms suffer, the more powerful we become.’ The flames rise and engulf him.
In his place a huge figure emerges from the smoke. He is hunched over, half beast, crawling out from the mouth of a tunnel, stinking of decay. He stands and fills the room. His face morphs. It is Charlie.
Now at last I am certain. Rocks fall, earth clogs my lungs. Breathe, I tell myself.
In the distance there is the sound of dripping water, muffled, despairing voices and more rocks falling.
‘I will survive,’ I swear. Charlie appears with the claws and dull, matted hair of a bear, the face of a man. ‘This is the third and final test. You won’t beat me.’
He smiles. His teeth are yellow, his eyes hollow. ‘Too late,’ he whispers.
‘No. I already know that Gwen isn’t your sister. She stepped into a dead girl’s body so that she could come back from the dark side and walk in this world and seduce her victim. I’ll find Orlando and tell him the truth. He’ll have to listen.’
Charlie laughs. ‘If only it was that simple.’
‘And now I know you!’ I protest. ‘What you are, what you do.’
He fills the room with the smell of wet earth and decay. Bones lie strewn across the bed; there is a row of skulls on my pillow. ‘Who am I?’
‘You’re a dark angel. You can’t hide from me or trick me any more. I know you.’
The smile broadens. ‘Name me,’ he taunts.
My heart thumps. I search frantically for the exact word I need to destroy my enemy. No sound passes to my lips.
Charlie smiles. The rocks above my head grind together then slide. The tunnel props splinter, the roof collapses. Death.
Breathe. Believe.
‘Hey, Tania, what the hell happened to you?’ Holly demanded, shoving at the door and turning on the light.
17
‘A name – that’s all I need!’
All night I racked my brains, sifted through every past conversation with Charlie to find the one word I needed to destroy him. At midnight I stood at my window gazing
up at the night sky, recollecting the first time I met him in Central Park – my amazed double-take, his calm reassurance, ‘No, I’m not Jack Kane.’
For a while I hadn’t believed him.
‘Nope, I’m not him,’ he’d repeated to the seen-it-all-before carousel worker.
Grace and Holly were also awake, trying to help me work it out. ‘I’ve always wondered how Charlie was in the right place at the right time to save you.’ Grace said.
‘I don’t know. I never asked.’
‘But it was Charlie who found you a cab and sent you back to the B&B, right?’
I nodded. ‘Which meant he had my Hubert Street address so he could hand over the security passes next day.’
‘So he organized for Orlando to meet Gwen and the rest is history,’ Grace murmured.
‘I should’ve seen it coming,’ I sighed. The stars twinkled harmlessly; the moon cast its serene silver light. Who would believe there was planetary chaos, stars imploding and burning, infinite armies of angels at war?
‘Tania, this is not the time to beat yourself up,’ Holly warned. She was sitting on a chair, her bare feet resting on the bed. ‘Focus on Charlie. He’s got to have said something that could give us the clue we need.’
‘I’m trying. All I remember about New York is that Charlie was always there for Natalia and the kids. It didn’t seem weird at the time. I figured everyone in Jack and Natalia’s situation has someone like Charlie – someone they can trust to handle life’s daily routine.’
‘“Trust” – ha! So the only weirdness was that you couldn’t tell one from the other; Jack could’ve been Charlie and the other way around. Charlie could fool everyone into thinking that he’s Jack.’
‘Yeah, even Macy made the usual mistake and she was the biggest Jack Kane fan you could find.’