by Eden Maguire
'The concert begins in ten minutes,' Hannah gasped. 'Are you in or out, Darina? Because if you're too shaken up to stand and sing in front of two thousand people, we need to tel Miss Jones right now.'
I joined the tribute, swept along on a wave of love and admiration for my friend, Summer Madison. Her songs helped wash away the sorrow.
'Summer's mom and dad are sitting in the front row,' Jordan whispered to me as Hannah and I stood in the wings ready to sing our
'Red Sky' duet. ' Zoey and her parents are there too.'
'You're sure you can do this?' Hannah checked with me.
I nodded and stepped out under the bright lights. They seemed to burn into my brain and anaesthetize my fears so that I focused on the music and sang as if my life and Summer's eternal future depended on it.
Shoulder to shoulder with Hannah, Jordan, Christian and the others, I stood, chin raised, gathering air into my lungs. Afterwards, we soaked up the applause, bowed and smiled, sang our encore of 'Time to Go'. When
Miss Jones turned to the audience and invited Heather and Jon Madison 145
on the stage to stand among us, our hearts swel ed.
'Thank you,' Jon told us, taking Hannah and Jordan's hands and holding them tight and raising them above their heads. Heather singled me out and stood beside me until the applause final y faded. 'Thank you for being strong,' she told me.
I was sure, as I stood onstage watching the audience leave the theatre,
that there was the sound of wings soaring towards the darkened roof -
endless wings beating and disturbing the stil air. The stage lights died. I was certain that Summer and the Beautiful Dead were present as we said goodbye.
By midday everyone had left the building and I had checked every corner where JakB might be hiding - the empty auditorium, the backstage area, the control room with its banks of sound and lighting equipment.
'Who's there?' a voice asked and someone shone a flashlight in my eyes as I stepped back out on to the darkened stage.
I put my hand up to cut out the glare. ' Is that you, Parker?'
'Darina, how come you're stil here?' He lowered the beam so that a pool of yel ow light shimmered around my feet. 'I'm checking the place is empty. The janitor needs to lock up.'
'OK, I'm coming.' It was past midday, we were inching closer to Summer's departure from the far side and JakB was stil on the loose. 'I'm looking for someone - the guy with the skul T-shirt. I guess you haven't seen him?'
'The weirdo who beat you up?' 'Who told you?'
'Ezra. He said he saved your life.'
'That's Ezra - always bigging himself up. I can take care of myself, thanks.'
'Not the way he told it,' Parker insisted as we walked backstage and made our exit through the side door. 'And if you want my advice, Darina
'Which I don't,' I cut in. Like Ezra, Parker fitted the nerdy image and, 146
like him, lacked a sense of what people needed from him. Plus, everything was always so serious. 'Lighten up,' I told him.
Birdlike, he pul ed his chin back into his neck, creating several folds of skin. 'I'm only trying to warn you,' he complained.
'Thanks, Parker,' I told him, crossing paths with the janitor and his jangling bunch of keys.
I was almost at my car without any idea of my next move. Maybe I'l drive out to Foxton Ridge, I thought in desperation. Then something made me investigate the storeroom where JakB had already sprung me one big surprise.
The door was hanging open - I guess that's what attracted my
attention. I walked over and took hold of the handle, thought maybe I would just push the door closed. I need to get the janitor to lock this before he leaves, I thought.
An obstacle on the inside of the door stopped me from clicking it shut so I slipped my fingers along the inside of the door frame and felt for a light switch. I found it and clicked it on. Light flooded the room, brought me right up against the obstacle - a suspended body in sneakers, jeans and black T-shirt swinging from a noose slung over a horizontal metal bar above my head. JakB's body swung and rotated gently, head to one side, the spinal column snapped at the neck.
JakB had hanged himself in the janitor's storeroom. He left a note, which I found folded and propped against the seat of the grass-cutter.
Not so much a note - more a picture of a heart with an arrow through
and initials at either end: SM and JB. The drawing was intricate, in the
style of a tattoo artist, so that the heart looked 3-D, with a velvety sheen.
Underneath the drawing he had scrawled a spidery, almost il egible
message, as if al his attention had gone into making the drawing and now 147 he was out of time.
Reunited, it read. Then something that sounded biblical: In their deaths they were not divided.
My hand was shaking, I was ready to throw up as I backed out of the store.
The memory of JakB's dead face, mottled and distorted, wil stay with me for ever.
' Darina?' Ezra's voice was impinging through the daze. Three figures came running - Ezra, Parker and the janitor, when Phoenix and Hunter materialized and zapped me out of there, right in front of their eyes.
I felt pain al over my body, as if a heavy weight had pressed and stretched me during long hours of medieval torture. These were the symptoms of being zombie-zapped through space between El erton and Foxton Ridge.
We were in the barn - me and al the Beautiful Dead; Hunter, Dean, Donna, Iceman and Phoenix. Summer was sitting cross-legged in the centre of the circle and there were four hours left before she had to leave for ever.
'So, is the right guy dead?' Dean asked me. 'Did JakB shoot our girl and kil himself?'
'I guess so.' Between Dean's question and my answer there was a universe of doubt. I gazed at Summer's face, trying to work out her reaction to the latest event.
'No signed confession?' Dean checked.
I shook my head. 'But it had to be JakB. Who else is stil in the picture?'
Hunter turned to Dean, who stood outside the circle. 'Are we OK with
this?'
'We need more,' Dean said slowly. 'That's why you brought Darina back here.'
I spread my palms in a gesture of despair. 'There is no more! What can I do?'
'She's right.' When Summer spoke, her voice was slight as a breeze. 'Darina can't do any more. Let it be, Hunter.'
He broke through the circle, swept her up from the ground and carried 148
her to the foot of the loft steps, where he set her down gently against the wal then straightened the hem of her long, dark skirt so that it covered her feet. 'Is this the answer we've been looking for?' he coaxed. 'A lonely guy, a twisted fantasist who couldn't bear to live once he realized what he'd done to the girl he adored?'
'Yes - I don't know.' Summer trembled with the effort of speaking. Her eyes had stink deep into their sockets, though her hair caught in the sunlight and shone like gold.
'You're certain that you want me to let it be?' Hunter asked.
She reached out her hand to me and I went to join her and Hunter. 'Thank you, Darina.'
I closed my eyes. Fichtner not guilty. Thorne and Stone not guilty. JakB - dead. But guilty or not guilty? Without a suicide note confessing what he'd done, the question was unanswered. I opened my eyes to look straight at Hunter. 'We need more,' I agreed.
And now it was Phoenix's turn to stride across the barn, raising dust
motes in the rays of afternoon sunlight. 'Whatever it is, does it have to involve Darina?' he chal enged Hunter, taking my hand as if to lend me some of his strength.
'It's time travel and no way can it include Summer,' the overlord pointed out. 'I've already discussed it with Darina and she understands.'
I nodded at Phoenix. 'It won't work. Summer isn't strong enough.'
'So?' As the tension rose, I felt Phoenix's hold on my hand tighten. ,who gets to time-travel if it's not Summer?' he asked Hunter.
The al -powerful
Beautiful Dead overlord drew himself up and looked cool y from Phoenix to me and back again. 'Darina was there when Summer died,' he reminded us. 'She's the one who gets to go back.'
149
It was me Hunter chose me and me alone to save Summer's eternal soul. She sighed where she sat, surrounded by sunlight and dancing dust, and a slight tremor passed through her body.
'I'm ready,' I told the overlord, feeling Phoenix's grasp loosen as Hunter gave the silent order for him to stand aside.
'This doesn't include you,' Hunter told him. 'It's just me and Darina.'
I saw how hard it was for my Beautiful Dead boyfriend being total y under an overlord's command, stripped of al power to resist. I read it in Phoenix's eyes - they opened with a flicker of stubborn resistance, then immediately closed and his expression faded to passive obedience. I re-took his hand but, for once, he refused to look me in the eye.
'It's part of the deal,' it was my turn to remind him. 'We get to be with each other, but we're not free.'
'If I could choose ...' he whispered.
'You would never let me go alone. I know.'
Phoenix raised his gaze. He looked at me steadily, pouring his love over me as if it was a molten, metal ic shield that would protect me in the task ahead.
'Thank you,' I whispered.
'Be safe,' were his last words.
'You know what you have to do?' Hunter asked.
He'd led me out of the barn, across the yard, and halfway tip the hil towards the water tower. He'd zapped my mind so that I couldn't look back.
'I have to identify the kil er,' I said. 'This is what al this has been about.'
'In spite of the risks and the pain. We go back to the mal , to the very spot, the exact moment when it happened. This time you make sure you get a good look at the gunman's face.'
I nodded. My mouth was dry, my throat constricted. 'I'm ready,' I said again.
'And, Darina ...' Hunter wasn't looking at me his gaze was directed 'so
up at the ridge, towards the aspen stand and the spring-green leaves
lfuttering against the blue sky. 'I respect you for this.'
Life was ful of surprises, but none bigger than any compliment from the stern, stone-cold overlord. For a second I thought I hadn't heard right.
'You've grown as a person, since you first came out here to Foxton Ridge with your breaking heart and your despair. You're working through that with courage and loyalty. Now I see strength in your actions.'
'I'd do anything for Summer,' was my explanation.
'And for Phoenix.'
'He means more than life, believe me.'
'I see he does,' Hunter murmured, reading my mind, my heart. 'After Summer, Phoenix wil be next.'
I tried to swal ow but couldn't. Neither could I move one step up the
hil , or look anywhere except at Hunter's strong, impassive features. 'Were you always this way?' I whispered. So stern and suspicious, so unbending.
He ignored my question. 'You'l help Summer through these next,
final hours, then you'l help him. This much I promise.'
'And wil you be here?' Or Dean, or another overlord?
Hunter shrugged. 'That's outside my control. Time wil tel . One more word, Darina - you left off your investigations into my wife's affairs, which shows you are wiser than you were when we first began.'
That's because I was too scared to go there! The corners of my mouth twitched into an almost-smile. 'You sound like my teacher in school, raising my grades from C to B.'
'Less headstrong.' He overrode my attempt to brush the praise aside and carried on digging deep below my surface. 'More generous and thoughtful. You begin to see things from another point of view.'
I smiled, and this time it was genuine. 'I'm sorry if I ever put you in
danger out here. I never planned it that way.' isi
'Not a problem,' he acknowledged. 'I first chose you as our contact with the far side because of who you are, and that includes your rebel iousness, your impatience, your passionate nature.'
'Is that me?' I guess it was. If anyone knew me from the inside out, it had to be the master mind-reader and leader of the Beautiful Dead.
'So,' Hunter said, releasing me from his powerful gaze and striding on up the hil . 'It's time.'
We stood under the aspens. Sunlight turned the green leaves translucent,
the silver trunks stood like sentinels.
Then Hunter brought down the wings from above, made them beat with a fury I'd never felt before, raising a storm, whipping spring leaves from their branches, making them whirl and twist about our heads.
The wings darkened the blue sky, closed in on us, and I felt myself
writhe in terrible pain and fal to the ground as they pressed in on me, beating and beating until they forced entry into my head and my body, with Hunter standing unmoved beside me.
As I raised my arms to cover my head, I felt the stirring of my own angel wings at my shoulders. I crouched. There was a dark tunnel ahead.
We were spinning and weightless like astronauts, dragged into the dark. Not like astronauts - we were divers deep in a black sea, arms flailing, flung about by the cold current, out of oxygen. We were rising to the
surface too fast; our bodies couldn't take the pressure. Every muscle,
every sinew was shot through with pain. We could not breathe. And then there was a light. Hunter took my hand and pul ed me towards it, his own wings beating, an iron look on his face that said he would not be beaten.
The black, whirling force of time resisted him - Go back! Go back! He fought on, kept hold of my hand, took me with him.
I wanted to scream at the power of the black vortex, the agony of the
journey, and now at the death heads, the skul s clattering against each 152
other, cracking and splitting, fal ing away in fragments, while the dark holes of their eye sockets surrounded us. Death was there in that space, driving down on us, trying to claim us.
No breath. No air in my lungs. I was suffocating and the distant light was too far away. For an instant I knew I would die.
It wasn't so bad - after al , I wasn't afraid. Death could have me, I
wouldn't fight it. Then maybe Phoenix and I would be together.
A hurricane of skul s and wings, Hunter dragging me on towards the light, the whole world spinning, me tumbling and beginning to spread my own angel wings, leaving Death behind.
A surprise - I fought against the dark at last. Together Hunter and I
lfew towards the light.
It grew bigger, brighter. It surrounded us and overcame the darkness. Bright white light, shining, cold. Hunter and I left the darkness behind and welcomed the stil ness, the silence of that light. I thought I heard Phoenix's soft voice saying, 'You're safe, my love.' And when I looked around again, I saw a shiny glass-and-metal escalator silently ascending into a huge atrium and beneath it, an expanse of white marble floor.
There was I, sitting reading a book in Starbucks. I wore my short plaid skirt and black, cropped jacket, my hair a little shorter than I wear it now.
Shoppers came and went across the mal floor, ascended the escalator, disappeared into the atrium.
Angel-me saw that I was restless, turning the pages of the book without real y reading, looking at my watch, and angel-me remembered that I was due to meet Phoenix later that day when Summer was shot. I was kil ing time in Starbucks, waiting, longing to be with him.
There was hardly anyone else in the coffee shop, I noticed. A woman with a smal kid - a boy maybe three years old, a man with a newspaper at the counter ordering skinny latte.
Invisible with Hunter at the base of the escalator, angel-me scanned 1S3
the shops opposite Starbucks. There was a high-end shoe store, another
coffee place and the music shop. Sinuous guitars gleamed in the window,
automatic doors slid open and Summer walked out. 'Stop!' I wanted to yel . 'Don't move. Stay right wher
e you are!'
She was carrying a smal yel ow bag containing CDs. She turned to say something to someone inside the store. Then she waved and walked towards coffee-shop-me.
Angel-me turned to Hunter. 'Please!' I begged. I don't know what I meant.
He got inside my panicking head and redirected my gaze back to Summer.
She was walking towards me in Starbucks, smiling. 'Hi, Darina!' she cal ed. She wore a long, dark-green skirt with a sheen like a raven's wing. Her golden hair tumbled over her shoulders. My angel-pity for her overwhelmed me.
A guy came out of the music store after her. He was cal ing her name.
Stil smiling, she turned to speak with him.
The shots sounded like they were fake - a high cracking sound, not a boom. I heard three shots in quick succession, maybe four.
Summer stood until he fired the third bul et. At the fourth, she fel to her knees. She looked up towards the light shed by the glass roof of the tal atrium. The fifth shot, the fatal one, hit her in the heart.
I saw Summer's look of bewilderment, imagined but could not hear
her gasp as people began to scream and run. Then she was lying on the
lfoor in a pool of her own blood.
More screams. Coffee-shop-me sat where I was, shock delaying my gut reaction, which was to run to where Summer lay. Angel-me saw the mother grab her three-year-old and the man with the newspaper beat a retreat behind the counter. Out in the mal , the crowd split and fled, the reverse of iron filings to a magnet. The gunman in the black T-shirt and
white cap stil aimed his gun directly at Summer.
Why was the sun shining down through the roof? Why didn't God or 1S4
someone, something strike the guy dead where he stood?
I got up from my Starbucks chair and ran towards Summer. She was stil alive, her breathing shal ow, looking up at me with what I can only cal wonderment.
'You'l be OK,' I promised, cradling her head, watching her eyelids flutter closed. I so longed for her to be, pressing my hand against her chest to stem the flow of blood because I knew that's what you had to do.
The look of wonder passed. She didn't open her eyes again.
A uniformed security guard ran the wrong way down the up-escalator. The gunman saw him and re-aimed his weapon. He missed the guard but the guy lost his balance and rol ed down the moving steps, giving the kil er time to choose which way to run.