Disharmony (24 page)

As they approached the exit doors of the Ghost Train, Samantha felt like crying. Tamas would have to let her go.

‘Sam, what’s the matter?’ said Tamas. ‘Are you mad at me? You look sad all of a sudden.’

A flash of fake fire, the ride’s last hurrah, lit up his face as she met his eyes, the flame reflected in their inky blackness.

‘You’re going to let me go when those doors open.’

He laughed. ‘You’re crazy,’ he said. ‘But don’t worry. Boyfriends tend to hold their girlfriends more than once.’

Boyfriend!
Her heart leapt. But the red doors loomed ahead like a waiting mouth and the feeling of doom redoubled. She couldn’t help it – for some reason, cheesy and lame as it was, she felt compelled to say it.

‘I’ve loved you my whole life, Tamas,’ she blurted. And then cringed in embarrassment. But she hadn’t been able to keep the anxiety from her voice as disquiet buffeted the cable car, blown in with the wind beyond those red doors.

He smiled and pulled her close, but she caught the worried look in his eyes. Then their cart crashed through the doors.

And the world really went to hell.

The first person she saw was Mirela. And Mirela was screaming.

Tamas pushed Sam down into the cart.

The next person was Boldo, the gypsy king’s bodyguard. He stood by the gates to the ride, his pistol held loosely by his side. He seemed relaxed. In the other arm he gripped Shofranka by the shoulder, her pigtails swinging, mouth trembling, her spectacles reflecting the carnival lights.

Tamas reared up beside Samantha. She could feel the anger fizzing inside him. He reached into his jeans and pulled something from his pocket. She heard a
snick
, and then the attendant coughed.

‘Um, you need to get out,’ the pimply boy said.

Tamas now stood over her, a switchblade knife in his hand. He completely ignored the attendant.

In the queue waiting to board the ride, somebody screeched, adding to Mirela’s screams for help.

A knife versus a gun. This was
not
going to work. From the hard plastic seat underneath Tamas’s straddled legs, Samantha frantically tried to summon the honeyed light to send it out towards Boldo. She didn’t know how the stuff worked, but maybe if she could send some his way he’d decide that the world would be a nicer place if he just packed up his gun and bought a kebab on the way home.

But nothing happened. Instead, Boldo told Tamas, ‘Send your witch over here. You’re making a scene.’

Tamas politely declined the request. ‘She’s not going anywhere with you, you pig,’ he called.

Boldo moved Shofranka a little further in front of him, tightening his grip. She whimpered in pain.

At the sound, Samantha felt fear and love jet into her bloodstream. She began gathering the energy into a ball, just like she had in the back of the van.

‘This will not go well for your family, Tamas, son of Besnik,’ said Boldo. His cowboy hat hid his eyes, his voice was gravel. ‘That little Gaje witch is not even your blood, our blood. She’s filth.’

There was silence for two seconds. Samantha used the time to gather energy.

But then Tamas spoke again.

‘Boldo, you need to listen to me very carefully,’ he said evenly. ‘I promise you, right here and now, that you
will
have to kill me to get her out of this park.’

The anger emanating from Tamas was white hot – Sam felt as though she stood in the centre of a bonfire. Her stomach recoiled at the strength of his emotions, and her focus shifted. The golden sphere in her mind dispersed into dust motes. Panicked, she tried rapidly to re-form it while she waited for Boldo’s reaction.

‘Be careful what you ask for, little boy,’ he said.

The ride attendant was on his radio now, his face milk-white. People had been drawn by the screams. Some held phones to their ears, but most used them to record the show.

‘Looks like you’ll have to shoot a lot of people then, Boldo,’ said Tamas, using his knife to indicate the growing crowd. ‘And the cops will be here soon.’

Boldo was silent for a moment. ‘Yeah,’ he said, finally. ‘I think I’m gonna split.’

He began to walk backwards, gripping Shofranka’s arm. Shofranka began to cry.

‘When you’re ready to swap your sister for the witch, you
know where to find us,’ Boldo yelled over his shoulder.

‘No!’ Tamas leapt from the carriage and bolted after him. Mirela followed, still hollering for help.

Samantha scrambled to her feet, shoving past the ride attendant. She had to stay close enough to Boldo to use the energy. That’s if it was going to work this time. But the crowd had other ideas. They would not get out of the way. Samantha pushed and wriggled through the wall of people, but the Rom among them had recognised the gypsy king’s bodyguard and were not willing to give up their viewing position of the action. And the tourists had their lasting holiday memories to capture – a man dressed like a cowboy with a gun, dragging a little girl, being chased by a gypsy! Half of them would have their video footage uploaded to YouTube before they hit the pillow tonight. And the Gaje? Well, they were not about to step aside for a dirty gypsy girl any time soon.

Samantha almost screamed in frustration. She couldn’t even hear Mirela, Tamas and Shofranka, let alone see them. She shoved at a woman with a back as wide as a bed, but got nothing more than a hate-filled stare for her trouble. This was never going to work. These people would never move.

Except suddenly they did. They began to scatter. She rushed forward, spotting Tamas and Mirela ahead. Somehow, Hanzi and Luca had found them, and they’d surrounded Boldo and Shofranka.

And then Sam registered that the energy around her had changed completely. She felt puzzlement, shock, fear, and now people were yelling and running. She managed to turn around, almost doubled over as the feelings threatened to overwhelm her.

Behind her stood Scarface, with his sword, his two friends
with Uzis and the tattooed cat-woman chick. Kirra.

They moved towards her.

Fast.

Samantha couldn’t help it. She screamed. More than the weapons carried by the men in black, the look of focus in Kirra’s eyes left her feeling completely helpless. Those eyes told her there was no way she was going to get away this time. Sam swivelled her head, desperately scanning for somewhere to run. To try to hide in the Ghost Train would mean running back towards them. She’d be lucky to make her rubbery legs run the other way, let alone in their direction. And there was only a food tent to her right – no shelter in there. She could run back towards her friends, but that would put them in more danger.

Too late, Tamas had heard her cry.

She felt him coming before she saw him, sprinting across the gravel towards her.

‘No!’ she screamed. ‘They’ve got guns!’

But it wasn’t a bullet that shattered her heart into a million pieces.

Trapped in a slow-motion nightmare, she turned her head towards the sound of a bloodcurdling battle cry. Without breaking stride, Kirra raised her hand and threw something. A whir of metal flashed past Samantha, straight into Tamas’s throat.

His eyes widened, confused; they locked with hers as blood spouted in a red arc from his neck. And then Tamas fell, his big body crashing into the dirt.

She could feel nothing. And everything went silent, even peaceful.

She didn’t see the police cars screeching around the corner,
lights flashing. She didn’t see the people running, nor hear Mirela on her knees, hysterical.

She could see only Tamas, stretched out, waiting for her. She was by his side in an instant. She flopped to the ground next to him, bundled his head into her lap. She smoothed his hair carefully, while his warm blood – his life – pulsed from him.

Shhh, she told him in her mind. His eyelids flickered.

She saw the metal object in his throat. A star.

Tamas had been killed by a star.

She plucked the piece of metal from his neck and blood gushed even faster from the jagged wound.

And her emotions returned, ripping through her body as though she’d swallowed a hurricane. Because it was right then that she felt him leaving her.

She fought the hysteria struggling to claim her. She lowered his head to the ground and stood. Oblivious to everyone and everything around her, Samantha White focused inward. She gathered the internal hurricane into a fluorescent globe. And then, with every cell of her being on fire, she hurled the energy from her body into his.

And the world went white.

Luke squeezed his eyes tighter to block out the light and threw a pillow over his ears to mute the sound of wind and rain buffeting against the windows. He tried everything to remain in dreamland a little longer. But it was the cat that finally woke him.

At first he felt a soft push, a gentle smudge against the side of his nose. He moved to roll over, and a needlepoint of pain snapped his eyes open.

‘Hey!’ he yelled.

Still within paw distance, the sapphire eyes of a Siamese cat regarded him disdainfully. He sat up.

Oh, wow.

It had been too dark last night to see much beyond the windows of Georgia’s house. When he’d climbed between these lush sheets he’d been so exhausted that it hadn’t registered that he was about to fall asleep in a room with one of the most expensive views in Australia.

Carefully negotiating the cat, who was cleaning itself haughtily, watching every move he made, he dropped onto the lush carpet and moved over towards the windows.

Despite, or maybe because of, the rain, he had never seen a more beautiful sight. There was nothing between his bedroom and Elizabeth Bay but a rolling green lawn and a turquoise swimming pool. Perched right on the edge of the harbour, the pool seemed the epitome of excess, as though to prove to the world that the owners of this mansion could have absolutely anything they wanted – a whole ocean to swim in, and a swimming pool, just because.

Super-yachts, moored in the bay, rocked and rolled in the wind, while rain speared into the sea around them. And although last night he’d been aware that this home was on a well-populated street, he could see no other house nearby. The tropical gardens hid the mansion from view, as though this was the only house in the world.

He stretched and wondered where Zac had slept. Wherever it was, it was infinitely better than Dorm Four. This room alone could have held the beds of the whole of Section Six. He walked around, opening drawers, peeking into cupboards. One of the doors opened onto an opulent private bathroom, and when he noticed some super-huge towels he’d at first mistaken for blankets, he decided to take a shower.

Under the double-headed steaming shower jets, he wondered whether Georgia’s father really was in prison. He’s probably just on a business trip somewhere and she figured the gaol story matched better with her piercings and attitude. Either way, Daddy wouldn’t be terribly thrilled that little Georgia had brought home two escapees, one of them a psychopath to boot.

Luke wanted to not care about that label. He’d never cared about the psychiatric pigeonholes they’d tried to shove
him in before. But he still felt weird about what he’d read in his file. Also, being ripped apart from his twin sister and thrown away by his mother pretty much sucked. But why did she have to call him Lucifer on top of that?

The devil. Who would name their baby after the devil? She must have really hated me, he thought. Or else she was insane. He wasn’t sure which would be worse.

He dried himself off and stepped back into his jeans. Having only one set of clothes was going to get old pretty soon. He’d have to do something about that first up. Although he wasn’t particularly worried – money was never too hard to come by.

He wondered whether his sister had grown up in homes similar to his own. Or had she been raised in a place like this? Did she get lucky and have one set of adoptive parents? Or had she been passed around from one whack-job to the next, just like him? Maybe she’d grown up just down the road from him in Campbelltown. They could have gone to school together and not even known it. Not that he ever really went to school very often, but still …

Did she know he existed? Did she know and not care?

Suddenly, he really wanted to know the answer to the second question.

What if he was the way he was because there was a part of him missing? What if she was that missing part?

He knew, suddenly, that he had to find her.