Dark Angel 03: Broken Dream Read Free Page B

old-fashioned brass room key in my jacket’s inside pocket and turned it in the lock, still secretly hoping that Mrs Waterman was mistaken and that Orlando had made it back to the hotel before me.
    I opened the door on our quaint room with its quilted bed throws and pretty floral drapes. Be here! I silently urged.
    But no, the room was exactly the way it had been when we left it early that morning, with Orlando’s clothes unpacked and laid neatly at the end of the bed and my stuff scattered everywhere. I sighed then turned on the TV.
    I watched Fox News on politics, international unrest, bad weather in Maryland then a showbiz item about the on-location filming of Jack Kane’s next movie. They showed the crowds in Central Park, Jack’s helicopter and the briefest through-the-window glimpse of his wife, Natalia Linton, staring straight ahead as the chopper rose into the sky. Then there was follow-up stuff about the paparazzi harassing Natalia and the kids in the hotel lobby the previous day, footage of her in dark glasses trying to ignore the cameras and the avalanche of questions as they hassled her about rumours of her husband’s latest affair with his current co-star, Angela Taraska.
    I channel-hopped and tried not to look at my watch. If it got to eight p.m. and Orlando still hadn’t showed up, I decided I would use the phone in my room to call home and ask my parents what to do next. Not very adult or independent, I agree. But in an emergency Dad never panics. He has the coolest, most practical of brains. And Mom has travelled all over the world – in her time she’s lost luggage, cell phones, companions, maybe even boyfriends before she met my dad.
    Seven forty-five p.m. I had fifteen long minutes to wait. Seven fifty came and went. At seven fifty-five I heard Orlando’s key turn in the lock.
    Suddenly it was as if all my Christmases had come at once.
    I threw myself at him and clasped my arms round his neck, held him as if I would never let go.
    ‘Hey, Tania,’ he breathed, kissing the top of my head. ‘Take it easy. Nobody died, did they?’
    ‘You idiot!’ I cried, flipping from relief into anger and pummelling his chest. ‘What happened? Where did you go?’
    ‘Where did you go?’
    ‘I was there, in exactly the place you left me. I waited for ever. I didn’t move from the spot.’
    Orlando winced and caught me by the wrists. ‘Ouch, that hurt.’
    ‘Ouch!’ I retaliated. He’d grabbed my sore arm. ‘You didn’t come back,’ I sobbed into his chest.
    ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry!’ he told me when he understood my distress and saw the bruising on my wrist. ‘How did you get this?’
    ‘A guy jumped me. He stole my bag.’
    ‘When? Tania, are you OK?’ Now he held me at arms’ length and looked into my eyes. ‘Jeez, I’m beyond sorry. Sit down, tell me what happened.’
    We sat on the bed and I began at the beginning, telling him everything, including the bad moments with the shape-shifting stallion, which is where he interrupted me.
    ‘The spirit stuff has started over?’ He frowned deeply and let his shoulders sag.
    ‘Yes. No. Maybe. What can I say?’
    Orlando shook his head then took a deep breath. ‘Wait. This guy was attacking you, right?’
    ‘He dragged me into the bushes at the back of the carousel, stomped on my wrist and put his foot in my back, right here.’
    ‘Poor baby. You were scared out of your mind. And that’s when the horse thing happened?’
    I nodded. ‘I just looked up and he – the stallion – came to life. You know how it is.’ Carved masks jump off walls, painted forests are real, men in wolf cloaks are transformed into wild beasts. It’s happened to me so often that I’ve stopped thinking how weird that must sound, written down like this.
    ‘Wait … wait!’ Orlando insisted. ‘Maybe it doesn’t mean what you think it means.’
    ‘It’s not my dark angel?’ I asked in a tiny voice. My bottom lip quivered; I felt five years old.
    ‘No, baby,