Bulletproof (Healer) (13 page)

             
“I was just saying Gabe can help Cassie to her room with her things while I make sure everything is running smoothly then I’ll dress her,” Rose says, resting her hand lightly on my shoulder. 

             
Angelica looks at her clipboard, flicks through a few sheets of paper then shakes her head, “No, that’s okay. You take care of the party. I’ll help Cassie get ready.”

             
I shoot Rose a pleading stare while Angelica’s gaze still rests on the paper. I mouth “Please! No!” I would rather spend the evening with Chec than this mutated monster. Even the nasal sound of her voice gives me shivers.

             
Rose shrugs at me, “If you’re sure.”

             
Angelica gives a patronising smile, “Yes, I’m sure.” It is evident   to me that this woman is in charge of affairs at Maurice’s manor. She writes something down on her clipboard and sends Rose into the house. I had only just gotten a hold of her: the one person who I can relax around in Maurice’s crazy world. Gabe was either drunk or brooding. Chec was creepy. Sue didn’t speak and now Angelica was a nightmare. Rose radiated tranquillity and somehow her peacefulness and optimism rubs off on me and stops me freaking out about my situation. 

             
Angelica clicks her fingers and lets out a loud, wet whistle, “Boy! Gabriel! Come here now.”

             
He looks up from beneath his eyebrows and walks slowly to where we are standing, “Yes, Ang?” 

             
“You know I hate when you call me that, Gabriel,” she says, her dark eyes shooting like lasers into Gabe’s translucent skin. There is a similar distaste in the eyes of everyone I’ve seen working for Maurice when they see Gabe. Chec, Sue and Angelica all looked at him as if they were superior. Spoke to him, looked at him like he is beneath them, a lowly, undeserving creature. Apart from Rose but I don’t think she could treat anyone with anything but respect. She could even smile at Angelica, a revolting reptilian woman, like she was her best friend. It makes me wonder what Rose’s real feelings are. She can’t really like everyone as much as her face construes.

             
“Sorry, Ang,” he shrugs and for the first time since Paris, he smirks. 

             
She rolls her eyes and sighs dramatically so the man painting the door turns round to see what is happening. She slaps a key into Gabe’s hand and speaks venomously, “Back door on the west wing. Turn left. Take the spiral staircase. Turn right. Use this key to unlock the door to the Andromeda suite. Last staircase. You’ve arrived. Absolutely no other stops. Straight there. I don‘t have time for your… dillydallying”

             
“Got it, sweetheart,” Gabe laughs softly which makes Angelica screw her small eyes up even further so they are just dark slits in her rigid face.

             
Angelica smiles at me, “Nice meeting you, Cassie, see you at your party.”

             
We walk around the perimeter of the house to a paradisiacal garden with beautiful flowers and shrubs cut and a magnificent fountain which looks like dolphins splashing in the ocean. I could get lost for hours in this garden. Reading books and listening to music. Feeling like the only person in the world. More staff are fiddling with vines and flowers, two are cleaning the fountain so the water is going soapy and overflowing with suds. Maurice’s employees certainly work hard to keep the presentation of his home flawless. But I don’t get to spend much time admiring the landscaping. 

             
Gabe pushes open a wooden slat door and I follow behind. It shuts behind us with a creak then a slam. “This is the west wing,” Gabe explains as if he has taken it upon himself to be a tour guide. Probably an instruction from Angelica or Maurice. But I didn’t think Gabe was one for adhering to the rules. “It has been the last part of the house to be renovated,” he runs his fingers against the grey stone walls of the narrow hallway we stand in. “As you can see.”

             
Canvases with oil paintings of mythological creatures and naked women are hanging on the wall but otherwise it is a desolate cave. There’s a door at the end of the corridor where it splits into two. “This door…” Gabe knocks gently on the wood of the door. “Leads to the Grand Hall, the heart of Maurice’s house, where your party will be.” He presses his ear against the door and urges me to do the same. I hear bustling of people, hundreds of voices, and clattering of dishes. I throw my senses out to search for Rose’s voice, bossing people about so the party reaches the perfection Rose longs for but I can’t hear her. The noise makes me stomach flip. All this for me?

             
We turn left where the dim grey corridor ends with stone, spiralling stairs. The steps are steep and narrow so I almost lose my balance a few times. Make it to your room without injuring yourself, Cassie. I mentally walk myself through the process. I just want to get settled before causing a scene. It has been two weeks since the car crash and nothing terribly bad has happened. Yet. 

             
I’m out of breath by the time we reach the top of the staircase where there is a gold plaque with the words WEST WING. 2nD FLOOR engraved in neat cursive. We turn right. Gabe moves in front of me robotically. In my head, I go through Angelica’s instructions which begins to sound like marching soldiers chanting left, right, left, right, left. 

             
This corridor is not grey and stony and bare like the first floor. There is a thin fuzz of navy blue carpet on the ground and white and grey pinstripe wallpaper creeps up the sides. The same interesting oil paintings hang on the wall, dotted between each door. “Here we are,” Gabe says, stopping outside a door which, like Angelica said, has ‘the Andromeda Suite’ stamped into the white wood. 

             
Gabe slips the key into the lock but doesn’t turn it, “I want to show you something first.” Angelica’s snide voice pops into my head ‘absolutely no stops… straight there… dillydallying.’ The cogs in her well-oiled machine were beginning to grind. I can understand why she resents Gabe so much. I think of the workers I’d seen outside; Gabe is the only person not cooperating.

             
“Maybe I should just go up to my room,” I say but I’m not doing it for Angelica’s sake, not even for Rose, I say it because I’m afraid Gabe will get into trouble.

             
“No, it’s fine, Angie won’t be up for ages. They have so much to do,” he says, putting the key back into his pocket. “Come on, Bullet.”

             
I turn a bit pink with the mention of his new nickname for me. Nobody ever has cute pet names for me. Well, I suppose Cassie isn’t my real name. I was born Cassandra but I haven’t been called that for as long as I can remember, I’ve always been Cassie.

             
I know I should hold my ground outside the Andromeda Suite. Wait for Gabe to come back, let me in so neither of us will get into trouble from Angelica but when Gabe starts to swagger down the hallway, I can’t help but follow him.

             
“Where are we going?” I ask, catching up with him.

             
I am uneasy about wandering around Maurice's home without permission. The sun was starting to lose its fiery heat when we entered the house and I wouldn't like to bump into a grumpy vampire who has just woken up. Especially since nobody seems to like Gabe very much in the first place, being in his company might not be the most sensible start.

             
“In here,” Gabe says pointing to a door, not too far from the Andromeda Suite which I stare at nervously. This door is unlocked, Gabe pushes it open and walks in, I precede. The room is completely dark except for one or two caverns in the wall where candles flicker and a plush tweed chair.

             
“What is this?” I ask, I screw up my eyes to try and capture some of the faint images in front of me but it's so dark.

             
Gabe's hand hovers behind the small of my back, he is being precise so not to actually touch me. I think about him drunk and slurring on the hotel room floor, repulsed at the thought of me touching him like being a freak was contagious. Most people would love to catch my disease: a mutation that makes you feel immortal, isn't life threatening and involves no crippling pain. Who wouldn't want that? Me? Gabe too apparently.

             
“Over here,” he gently guides me forward. “Have your eyes adjusted yet?”

             
“Yes, sort of,” I say. The back wall of this room is made of glass which reveals another compartment of the house. The glass is thick and cloudy and because it's so dark, I can barely see a thing. “What am I looking at?”

             
“This is the surveillance room,” Gabe says and leans against the wooden handrail which halves the glass wall. He presses his nose against the glass and grabs my hand to pull me closer. The touch of his cool fingers is electrifying and I pull away like I've just been jabbed. He pretends not to notice my reaction and we both sit in silence with our heads squashed against the opaque glass. The only noise is our breathing which weave intricately into each other to creature a soft lullaby.

             
“Can you see anything yet?” Gabe asks.

             
“It's so dark,” I reply.

             
“It was built hundreds of years ago when Maurice requested scientists watch him while he sleeps during the day,” Gabe explains. “If you look you can see where he lies.” I can’t see anything yet. “I think he's awake now...” Gabe traces the shape of the metal bed on the glass. It lies in the middle of the dark room across from us. I shiver. Maurice is awake, will he be looking for me? Or will he wait until the party for my grand entrance?

             
“I see it now,” I say, my voice shaky.

             
The metal bed looks like something I have seen in an operation room. I've only been operated on once. After the first big accident, the doctors shred me open to no avail. I don't even have the scars to prove it. I'm glad. I hated it. The anesthetic which would normally knock somebody out during a operation faded out of my system much quicker than a normal person so I kept waking up with strange alien doctors prodding at my insides, pain that would disappear as quickly as it arrived but still the discomfort of somebody stirring at my organs like a bowl of porridge. The memory that the empty, sterile bed conjures up makes me wince and turn away. “We should head back.”

             
Why did he bring me here? The sight makes me feel sick. I don't know what I anticipated a vampires resting place to look like but this wasn't it. Coffins or luxurious four poster beds seem more apt, maybe some vampires – the ones in America – live like that. There is something too clinical about this, I think, and the idea of the surveillance room is creepy. Imagine watching a sleeping vampire all day. Watching their completely still body, emotionless face. There is nothing human about their hibernation. Why would Gabe want me to see this?

             
“Probably. Ang will lose her mind,” Gabe says but he doesn't seem worried. “There's nothing I could do to make them hate me more anyway.”

             
Words and questions dance on my pursed lips. They're taunting me. Say it. Ask him why he hates working for Maurice so much, ask him why he's so angry all the time, ask him about Claire. Tell him that I think he’s beautiful, that it pains me to watch him on a path of self-destruction? However, no matter how much I want to appear brave, I’m a coward at heart.

TEN

              My eyes sting when we leave the surveillance room and back into the harsh lighting of the hallway. I can see Angelica waiting at the door of the Andromeda Suite at the end of the hall, her skeletal arms folded across her flat chest, her leather boots tapping impatiently.

             
Luckily she doesn't see which room we have left. When we approach her, her head snaps up and she glares, “Where were you, Gabriel?”

             
“Took Cassie on a tour,” Gabe shrugs and shows Angelica a glimpse of his lopsided smile which makes my heart stop involuntarily.

             
“What didn't you understand when I told you to come straight here? We are going to be late for the party now. Thanks a lot,” she dismisses him and Gabe stalks off with his hands shoved into his pockets.