Dark Angel

by Eden Maguire

  www.hodderchildrens.co.uk

  Also by Eden Maguire:

  BEAUTIFUL DEAD

  1. Jonas

  2. Arizona

  3. Summer

  4. Phoenix

  Also by Hodder Children’s Books

  Dark Heart Forever

  Dark Heart Rising

  Lee Monroe

  Sisters Red

  Sweetly

  Jackson Pearce

  Copyright © 2011 Eden Maguire

  First published in Great Britain in 2011

  by Hodder Children’s Books

  This ebook edition published in 2011

  The right of Eden Maguire to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form, or by any means with prior permission in writing from the publishers or in the case of reprographic production in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency and may not be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A Catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9781444905304

  Typeset in Berkeley Book by Avon DataSet Ltd, Bidford on Avon, Warwickshire

  Hodder Children’s Books

  A Division of Hachette Children’s Books

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  An Hachette UK company

  www.hachette.co.uk

  For Caroline, for all the years of support and friendship.

  So farewell Hope, and with Hope farewell Fear,

  Farewell Remorse: all good to me is lost;

  Evil, be thou my good.

  John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 4

  1

  Out here, fire eats up the forest. Tongues of flame lick the trees and dance like devils across the land. They swirl through valleys and jump rivers, carried by the wind. We’re talking total inferno.

  Bobby Mackey, a smokejumper for twenty years, tells us how it is. ‘We bring in air tankers to drop the retardant, three thousand gallons at a time, plus Sikorsky Sky Cranes. They can douse a hotspot with two thousand gallons. Then the ground crews form fire lines to contain the blaze. If that doesn’t work, they drop more guys from choppers. That’s where I come in.’

  A smokejumper makes a living by parachuting from a plane into forest fires. How crazy is that?

  Sure, I’ve seen the tree canopy catch alight, watched the wind shift and send a wall of flame roaring down the valley – all from a safe distance. But jumpers get caught in the thick of it without shelter and in a sudden blowup it can all be over in the space of five minutes.

  Bobby says, ‘Those guys about to die – I know what they’re thinking. You can’t breathe, it’s so hot. The fire is sucking in the air around you, there’s no oxygen. Your clothes and hair vibrate with the air rushing by you. Breathe, breathe, breathe. At the last moment you’re not thinking about fire, you’re thinking about air.’

  What can you say? Men die. Rocks stay red hot for days. They slide down the mountains in clouds of ash. Burned branches fall on your head. You hear them thump to the ground and you don’t know which way to run.

  Red, orange, yellow – I’ve watched a night-time finger of fire race down from Black Rock, small spurts of flame sneaking out of underground lairs days later. That’s wildfire. That’s how it is in the mountains where I live.

  I tell you this because my house is built in the middle of a burnout. Eighteen years ago, the year I was born, fire ate up this place. That’s why there are no trees taller than the roof of a single-storey building, why all the homes are contemporary design and open plan, with clear views of Prayer River and Turner Lake out beyond the old historic centre of Bitterroot.

  Smokejumper Bobby wore his yellow firefighter’s jacket, helmet and goggles to shock-jock us high-school leavers into seeing the dangers of setting fires during the dry season, telling us he never wanted to experience a repeat of August 2000 when blazes burned out of control in sixteen states. His skin looked like flames had creased and singed it, like smoke was ingrained in the lines under his eyes and down either side of his mouth. ‘Next time you kids camp out by the lake, observe to the letter those Red Flag fire hazard warnings – no campfires, no smoking cigarettes. Remember those pinon pines and junipers may take hundreds of years to regenerate.’

  I was listening but my mind was drifting off. Personally I didn’t care too much about trees burning; more about the million rabbits, raccoons and porcupines too slow to take cover, and anyway where would they run?

  And I was still picturing air being sucked out of my lungs – a whoosh, a wall, a swirl of flames engulfing me.

  ‘Tania?’ Grace pulled me to my feet at the end of the lecture.

  Bobby was sitting in his yellow jacket at the front of the room, signing copies of Smokejumper, his recently reprinted autobiography, for a line of maybe fifteen or twenty students, mostly guys. If the girls were anything like me, they were too freaked out to invest the necessary twelve dollars.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Grace asked.

  I nodded and stood up. Why did getting air into my lungs suddenly seem problematic? I took short, shallow breaths; could almost feel flames scorch my skin.

  I should tell you. On the plot of burnout land where my dad built our house there was once a home where three people died – a husband, wife and baby girl. On the neighbouring plot, the fire cornered a widow in her sixties. She never made it through the smoke and flames.

  In the three decades he’d been on this earth, Dad’s family had already been through so many hard times, both back home in Romania and here in the land of the free, that he claimed he didn’t ever feel queasy about building our house there on that plot – like a phoenix rising from the ashes, he said.

  I didn’t learn about the fatalities until I was eight, when I was already having regular nightmares. The facts on the forest fire hit me hard. I was eight years old and having bad dreams about suffocating, struggling to draw breath and waking up in a cold sweat, screaming for my mom.

  ‘Who told Tania about the wildfire?’ she demanded, ready to blame Dad.

  Nobody. I’d learned it from Bobby Mackey’s book in the town library, straying one Saturday afternoon from kids’ fiction into the adult section, where I’d found the smokejumper’s autobiography in the new book display. Glossy pictures of orange flames and black plumes of smoke rising above the green tree canopy drew me in, leading me to read details about the people who had died. Mrs Dorothy Earle, Karl and Maia Witney and their baby girl.

  ‘You’re sure you’re OK?’ Grace checked.

  A branch falls among smouldering embers. Sparks leap into choking, smoke-grey air. Burned trunks rise like black pillars as far as the eye can see.

  ‘I need some air,’ I told her, walking quickly from the building.

  ‘Lighten up.’ Holly Randle’s advice had mixed motives. On the one hand she has genuine worries about my obvious mood dips, on the other she judges me for being way too thin-skinned and hypersensitive, which was what was behind her ‘lighten up’ lecture on this occasion.

  We were driving home in her car after Bobby’s lecture. Holly lives in the house next door to me, in Mrs Earle’s plot on Becker Hill. She claims she has no dreams about the widow who lived there before the fire.

  ‘That guy really got to me,’ I explained. ‘Did he have to go into g
raphic detail?’

  ‘I guess. Shock tactics and all.’

  ‘I’m shocked,’ I conceded, leaning out of the car to gaze up at the clear blue sky. ‘I was there, living every last moment of those trapped firefighters.’

  ‘You looked awful, believe me – like you were going to pass out. If Grace hadn’t hauled you out of there, I’d have stepped in and done it myself.’

  ‘Thanks – I think.’

  ‘No, really. Your face turned whiter than my bedsheets; your breathing was bad. I’ve seen you do this a hundred times – someone paints a picture and your imagination goes into overdrive.’

  ‘My imagination,’ I echoed. ‘And thanks again.’ I sighed, shifting so that I sat upright in my seat. ‘But I already have a mother.’

  ‘Sorry for caring,’ Holly muttered, climbing the hill between the baby pine trees lining the sides of the road. ‘Anyhow, where’s the hottest guy on the planet when you really need him?’ Holly is also jealous of my relationship with Orlando and so always refers to him with lashings of sarcasm – did I mention that? Orlando, the hottest boy in Bitterroot, no contest. He looks like he works out daily but actually not true. Plus he can turn on that wide Irish smile and kill with a glance.

  My boyfriend’s parents had flown with him to Dallas to check out the college campus. He would be away for three days and I was already experiencing withdrawal symptoms. It happened before when they took him to Chicago and left me for an entire weekend in a tactile desert – no touching, no kissing. ‘He’s in Dallas,’ I muttered as Holly stopped the car and I got out.

  ‘But he’ll be back Friday?’ she checked.

  ‘What’s Friday?’

  ‘The party, stupid!’

  ‘Yeah, the party – he’ll be back.’

  ‘Does he have his costume?’

  ‘No. Does Aaron?’

  ‘Yeah. My mom made it. And mine too. Do you even have yours?’

  ‘Not yet.’ I’d been thinking about the costume but not doing anything, which was normal for me. Think, think, think – no action. I mean, how hard could throwing together a party costume be?

  ‘No costume – no entrance through heaven’s gates,’ Holly warned.

  What she meant was, I wouldn’t get to meet the living god, the rock legend that was Zoran Brancusi. He was our party host. The invites, sent out to every teen in Bitterroot, stipulated a theme – ‘Heavenly Bodies’. It was wide open to interpretation, but Holly had already settled on a fittingly divine outfit for her and Aaron. Likewise Grace and Jude.

  ‘No problem,’ I called after Holly as she swung into her own driveway. ‘My costume will be spectacular. It’s in my head – every last detail.’

  ‘Liar!’ she yelled back. The garage door rolled open and her car disappeared inside.

  ‘You know me so well,’ I muttered, taking out my phone, hoping for a message from Orlando – Missing u. Can’t w8 4 Friday. xox type of thing. No new messages, my phone told me.

  Sometimes I sit inside my house and wonder, what was the baby’s name – Katie? Jordan? Mollie? Which room did she sleep in? Bobby Mackey’s book tells you only that she died in the fire on her first birthday and that her parents ran back into the house to try and save her – first the mom then the dad, both in vain.

  I sit in my room and listen. The breath of a sleeping baby is silent, eyes closed, lashes curled, its tiny chest rising and falling.

  ‘Hey, Tania. How’s the costume coming along?’ It was Grace on the phone, checking up on me.

  ‘I made a few sketches,’ I lied.

  ‘I need details. Are you doing the angel thing – wings and all?’

  ‘Seriously, I’m not that into the Heavenly Bodies theme.’

  ‘So I heard. What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Angels are all played out.’ Gauze and sequins, plumage, shimmery silver body paint. Been there, done that.

  ‘So surprise us – come up with something original. Paint yourself red all over, show up as a Martian.’

  ‘Thanks for that suggestion, best buddy of mine. Very attractive.’

  There was a pause while I heard Grace turn on the shower. ‘You and Orlando will be there Friday?’ she checked.

  ‘You betcha.’

  ‘Cool. Gotta go now, hon. I’m meeting Jude in five.’

  Beep went the phone. End of conversation. I sat on my bed and doodled a couple of sketches, but my angels came out as devils, with horns and forked tails. ‘Hmmm …’ I said.

  ‘Interesting,’ Mom said when I went downstairs and showed her the fruits of my labours. She was taking laundry from the machine, breathing in the scent of meadow flowers. ‘I can definitely see Orlando as a devil.’

  ‘Nice. I’ll tell him.’

  Mom folded towels, hung shirts on hangers. ‘How’s Dallas? Did he text you?’

  ‘No. I guess he’s busy.’

  ‘When does he get back?’

  ‘Thursday. These costumes are driving me nuts. I think we won’t go.’

  Mom smoothed the neat pile of towels. ‘Go,’ she urged. ‘It’s a big event. Maybe you’ll even get to meet the man himself.’

  Eighteen months back, Zoran Brancusi had quit the rock scene at the height of his fame. His last album, entitled Heavenly Bodies – so no surprise about the party theme – went global. He did the world tour then got badly injured in a car crash and dropped out of sight. A year later he turned up in Bitterroot. Not in town exactly. To be clear, he bought twenty thousand acres of land, including half a mountain covered in pine forest. He built a house out there, in Black Eagle Canyon. The upcoming party looked like his way of saying hi to a thousand new neighbours – the entire teen population of Bitterroot.

  ‘He’s planning a comeback,’ Mom predicted as she carried the towels into the bathroom. ‘There’ll be a host of celebs at the party, a deal with a gossip magazine – photographs, a full-length feature. You wait and see.’

  Orlando called me at midnight from Dallas. I pictured him hunched over his phone, long legs resting on a coffee table, dark hair flopping forward. I totally wished I was there.

  ‘Bird of paradise,’ he suggested for my costume.

  ‘Really?’ Technically it wasn’t a heavenly body; it actually existed. I explained the subtle difference to my absent boyfriend.

  ‘Why so literal all of a sudden? The clue’s in the name – bird of paradise. Garden of Eden, all that stuff.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘It’ll be cool, Tania. I see you as a bird, a delicate, exotic bird – turquoise plumage, orange and gold.’ He’s applying for fashion design courses at college so he says stuff like this without blushing. ‘Make a mask, a headdress with feathers. You’re creative – you can do it.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ I said again. Say you miss me, tell me you can’t wait to hold me in your arms. Insecurity was seeping out of every pore.

  ‘I went to a seminar, got introduced to two potential course tutors – Julian Sellars and Mimi Rossi. They were both amazing,’ he tells me, fast and enthusiastic. ‘Oh, and by the way, I won’t be there.’

  ‘What do you mean, you won’t be here?’ Explosion into uncontrolled panic; I can’t keep it out of my voice.

  ‘I won’t make it back in time,’ he explained calmly. ‘Mom plans to visit a cousin here in Dallas. The trip is extended till Sunday.’

  I go into freefall and Orlando puts up a barrier. He plays it deliberately cool, doesn’t give the needy version of me any space. It’s a pattern we’ve gotten into.

  What he likes is me when I’m creative – sketching, painting. This bit he understands and admires.

  ‘You’re so gifted,’ he tells me. ‘You don’t know how talented you are.’

  Me and a million other wannabe Warhols, I think, standing back from my latest canvas – a silkscreen portrait of a rainbow-coloured woman with the eyes blanked out, no window into the soul.

  ‘And beautiful,’ he insists, loosening my long black hair and watching it sl
ide down my back. I’m his trophy girl, up there on a pedestal.

  ‘I don’t feel it,’ I sigh, knocking back each and every compliment. It’s a plea for him to understand what goes on beneath the surface, how I feel inside my so-called beautiful skin.

  Up goes the wall. Orlando rolls his eyes and talks basketball, which he knows I hate.

  This sounds like the perfect relationship, right?

  I was in school the next day, still dark and moody, sitting between Grace and Jude after classes had ended.

  ‘So come with us.’ Grace took in the latest news from Orlando and jumped in with her offer. ‘This doesn’t mean you’re off the party hook,’ she warned.

  Take Grace and Jude as a more finished version of me and Orlando. Jude of the perfect teeth, jaw line and long neck, the Afro-American shaved head and curling lashes. Flawless, blonde Grace Montrose with long, slim fingers and wide blue eyes. She has no insecurities for Jude to ignore.

  ‘We’ll call for you,’ he told me. ‘We’ll drive out to Black Eagle together.’

  I was still hurting from last night’s argument. ‘Did you forget the party?’ I’d asked Orlando, trying not to load my tone with accusation and failing.

  ‘No I didn’t forget,’ he’d replied. By now his feet would have been off the table, his eyelids would be half shut and his oh-so-kissable mouth wouldn’t be smiling. ‘Like I said, Mom plans to visit her cousin. What do you want me to do – sprout wings and fly home on an air current?’

  ‘Try a conventional airplane,’ I’d suggested.

  ‘Ha-ha. Where will I find the cash?’ There was a pause filled by a sigh, followed by an attempt to soften the blow. ‘Listen, Tania, it’s only three extra days.’