Revenge (13 page)

DAY 29

2 days to go …

Mrs Ormond took Cal's face gently in her hands. ‘Are you sure you're OK with me and Gab going tomorrow? I feel like you've only just come back from Melba's house and now we're taking off on a glamorous cruise ship and leaving you behind!'

‘Please, Mum,' Cal replied, as though he'd been asked the same question a thousand times, which he probably had. ‘I want you both to go and have fun. I'm fine here, I swear. We can all hang out together when you get back. I promise. These guys will look after me until then.'

Cal smirked at us knowingly. Winter, Ryan and I shuffled on the spot. Miraculously, we'd managed to keep the whole crazy Sligo incident under wraps … so far. Out of the press, and out of the Ormond household.

‘What about the auction tomorrow night—are you sure you're up to it?' Mrs Ormond added, still holding Cal's face in her hands. ‘It sounds
like it's going to be a pretty big event. You don't have to go, you know. They'll understand.'

‘It's cool, Mum. Everyone's coming with me,' he said, looking over at us again.

I grinned and nodded at Mrs Ormond
reassuringly
.

‘OK,' she said, leaning in to kiss him on the forehead. ‘Goodnight guys,' she added, smiling at us. ‘Good luck tomorrow night, if I don't see you before we go.'

‘Have a great trip,' I said.

Gabbi had been busy texting, sitting on the kitchen bench. She tucked her phone into her pocket, slid off the table to her feet and clomped over to us in her ugg boots. She gave each of us a warm, sleepy hug.

‘Night,' she said. ‘Hope you guys enjoy school while I'm off on the cruise!' she laughed.

‘Here we go,' I said, looking at my friends. Cal and Winter were sitting on my left, tucking into a bag of microwave popcorn, and Ryan was on my right, playing with the electric recliner button on his chair. He'd stretched it to its limits and was lying flat, at practically one-eighty degrees, facing the ceiling.

Almost a month had passed since we'd last
attempted our midnight screening in the home theatre. And what a month it had been. But now, here we were, relaxing at last.

‘Finally,' I said, stretching and nuzzling into my deep, plush chair.

‘Ooh yeah,' Ryan commented from flat on his back. ‘Hey Boges,' he said, sitting up a bit, ‘there are more chairs here, you know. Four, in fact. You should have asked Maddy over to join us.'

‘Mmm, yeah, maybe next time,' I said. But I knew that was unlikely. I doubted Maddy would ever want to speak to me again after the weird way I'd been acting. I'd been too scared to talk to her at school.

All of a sudden my chair didn't feel so comfortable.

‘Or maybe I'll ask
four
girls to come over,' I scoffed. ‘Why limit myself to one?'

Ryan and Cal laughed. I glanced over at Winter,
waiting
for her to groan or throw something at me. But she was staring coldly ahead at the wide, blank screen, oblivious. Completely in her own world.

I noticed Cal craning his neck to look at Winter. He waved his hand in her line of sight and she shook her head, turned and smiled at him.

‘You OK?' he asked her softly.

‘Absolutely,' she said enthusiastically. ‘As long as you are,' she added.

Cal tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, then offered her some of his blanket. I
recognised
it as one that had been around for years. A woollen patchwork blanket in blue and white. I think Mrs Ormond had knitted it.

I didn't know whether it was the shock of everything that had gone on in Coffin Bay, or something else, but Winter wasn't herself. She'd been really quiet, not like the feisty Winter Frey I'd come to love
and
hate. I'd given her plenty of golden opportunities to pay me out and she hadn't taken up any of them.

I knew too well what it felt like to think I'd lost Cal, we'd both had to deal with that fear. And I knew Cal had become her family.

But it was none of those things. It was
something
different. Something lingering. Something I'd seen in her all year.

It was like she
still
didn't think it was over. Like she was
still
watching her back.

DAY 30

1 day to go …

‘So what are we waiting for?' I asked, jiggling in my seat and looking at the huge white rectangle of light in front of us. ‘Let's get this vampire show on the road.'

‘Oh, the
Nosferatu
DVD. I think I might have taken it upstairs,' said Cal.

Ryan jumped up. ‘Stay there, I'll go get it.'

‘That's OK. I
can
walk,' Cal muttered.

‘Yeah, yeah, I know, but I'm already up. No dramas. Where is it?'

‘Somewhere near my bed, I think. Thanks, man.'

While we waited for Ryan to come back, Cal held his hands up in the projector light, making claw-like shapes scratch across the screen.

I propped my hand up in the shape of a rabbit and made it hop about.

Cal laughed. His shadow claws promptly sliced through my lame rabbit.

‘Arrgghhhh!' I shrieked, sending my rabbit tumbling off screen in slow motion. ‘Nooooo!'

‘Ha, the show's already started,' Ryan joked. He walked back into the room with the DVD and a creamy-coloured envelope in his hand. ‘What's this?' he said to Cal, flinging him the envelope like a frisbee. ‘I found it on your pillow.'

Winter leaned over Cal and snatched the envelope away from him. I hit the button on my chair and zoomed into an upright position.

Cal sat up. ‘Hey! Winter, what are you doing?'

Winter stood up and pulled the envelope clear out of Cal's reach. She stared at the paper intensely, her forehead forcing two perturbed chasms between her eyebrows. She turned the envelope over and gasped. ‘What?' I asked.

She held the back of it up to me, her big, dark eyes searching mine.

A red wax seal.

Pressed with a falling angel.

Another one.

‘How the hell did that get there?' I demanded.

‘Give me that,' snapped Cal. He flung his blanket off, hoisted himself out of his chair and snatched the envelope back from Winter. He went pale in seconds, making the bruises on his arms and legs stand out. The ones he'd
been so careful to hide from his mum and sister. He shook his head as he stuffed the paper into his pocket.

‘Cal,' said Winter, taking his hand firmly.

‘What?' He pulled his hand away. ‘
Everyone's
waiting for us. Come on, let's get the movie started already. It's after midnight. We've waited long enough.'

‘We know that's not the first one,' said Winter, sneaking a glance at me. She grabbed her bag from the floor and began rifling through it. ‘When you disappeared I found this.' From a plastic pocket in her wallet she pulled out a matching red wax seal. ‘Cal, what's in there? What's going on? Please show us.'

‘No.'

‘Cal? You have to!'

‘No,' he insisted, ‘I don't have to do anything. It's nothing. Don't turn this into a big deal, please. We've all been through enough already.'

‘But—'

‘Winter, you're always saying,
it's not over, it's not over
… you need to let it go!'

Fire burned in Winter's eyes. ‘And I've been right every time so far, haven't I?' She snatched the note from his pocket and tore it open.

I ran behind her to see what was inside.

Cal stood frozen on the spot.

‘You OK?' I asked him. ‘Cal?'

He just glared at me, then at Winter, then Ryan. And then he turned and ran, bolting for the front door.

‘Cal?' I called. We ran after him, into the cold night air.

‘What does this mean, Cal?' Winter demanded. ‘What did the other note say?'

Cal stopped at the end of the driveway. His hands were clenched in frustration as he looked up and down the street.

‘Talk to us,' said Winter. ‘Please.'

‘Dude, what's going on?' I said, trying to sound calm.

Cal sat down on the pavers and took a deep breath. I sat beside him and threw my arm around his shoulder. Winter and Ryan stood together nearby, their tall shadows falling across our faces.

‘Whatever it is we can handle it,' I said. ‘But you need to tell us what the other note said.'

Cal exhaled loudly before speaking.

‘It said “30 days”. I found it just before midnight when I was waiting for you guys. Twenty-nine days ago … on the night I disappeared.'

He pulled at a blade of grass and began tearing it perfectly down the middle. ‘At first I thought it was a hoax—a media stunt, but then when I was shot with the tranquilliser dart and poisoned, I figured Sligo was behind it. But now … now I don't know what to think. I don't know why I have this countdown or who's behind it.'

‘But Sligo's in a coma,' said Ryan, stating the obvious.

Cal had hardly spoken of his time with Sligo. He said he barely remembered anything after he was shot in the thigh out in the front yard.

Winter was shaking her head.

‘What?' said Cal, reaching up and taking Winter's hand.

‘I just knew this wasn't over,' she murmured.

‘Sligo is in a coma. In a secure hospital ward,' Cal said, now pulling himself together and
trying
to calm the situation.

‘I know,' said Winter defiantly. ‘He's out of action. But it's something else, guys. I mean it. I know you can feel it, too, Cal. This is serious, this note. Sligo said he had someone working for him. What if this person is going to try to finish what he began?'

‘But by doing what?' Cal pleaded.

This warning must have come from Sligo's accomplice.
One day
? I thought to myself. What was happening in the next twenty-four hours? What was this warning about?

‘Tomorrow night!' shrieked Winter. ‘The charity auction!'

‘What about it?' asked Ryan. ‘
Sligo
wanted us to set up the giant screen to show everyone he was back.
He
wanted to show Cal's … death,' he added quietly, nervously looking at his twin. ‘But that's all over now. Ancient history. He can't do any of that.'

My eyes locked onto Cal's. Without speaking, I knew we were both on the same page. Something bad was going down at City Hall tomorrow night. Just what, none of us had figured out yet.

Ryan drove us over to Winter's house, where we didn't have to worry about waking up Mrs Ormond and Gab, and where I could check up on what had happened to my Hummingbird Hawk-moth. In the crazy aftermath of tracking down Cal in Coffin Bay, I hadn't had the chance to recover it. I knew it would have stopped surveillance shortly after we left the bay, but now that I couldn't shake the image of the slight figure—so different from Sligo's bulk—crawling in and out of the
underground
chamber, I wanted to check if we had captured him again.

I scanned the footage at high speed, while Winter, Cal and Ryan watched on. I slowed it up when I recognised the three of us on top of the cliff and saw myself getting my arm caught in that trap. I winced at the memory. Then we saw our small, shadowy selves slip into the
chamber
, followed soon after by Sligo, who seemed to have come down the grassy hill to the north of the lighthouse.

The footage reminded me about the small bible Winter found at the lighthouse. A few times I'd
caught her leafing through it when she thought no-one was looking.

‘Hey, hey, wait,' said Cal excitedly,
interrupting
my thoughts. ‘Who's that, there? That blur.' He pointed to a small greyish figure, slowly approaching the location of the trapdoor. It seemed to dart its head around, making sure the coast was clear.

‘That's Willoughby,' explained Winter, leaning forward and tapping the screen. ‘That's the moment he heard Sligo call out the name of the poison. See,' she said, pointing to Willoughby's slight frame as he fled the scene, off to call Griff Kirby.

‘Who knew Willoughby would save the day,' said Ryan.

‘Yeah, I never thought I'd be thanking that guy for coming into my life,' said Cal. ‘Or Dr Leporello!' he added, with an uncertain laugh.

I sped up the footage again until we saw Willoughby returning, then ourselves leaving, followed soon after by Ben and Griff. The
flashing
red and blue lights of the ambulance and police vehicles arrived not long after, courtesy of the anonymous phone call pinpointing the
location
of the supposedly deceased master criminal, Vulkan Sligo. And then the day emerged and all was still again.

After zipping through a few more hours of footage, the picture cut out. The screen went totally blank.

‘What happened?' said Cal. ‘Dead battery?'

‘Not sure,' I replied, rewinding the footage and slowing it right down to play it again. ‘
Nothing
, nothing, nothing …' The unchanging scene unfolded again in slow motion. ‘There! What was that?'

‘Looks like the hawk-moth flew into trouble,' said Ryan.

I played it again, examining it frame by frame, until something big and black smashed onto the screen and then—blank.