Dark Angel by Eden Maguire Read Free Book Online Page B

gathering and in the cinema room I mentioned earlier. ‘Do you believe in miracles, Tania?’
    I assumed I was alone with him until I saw that Ezra had brought Grace along too. ‘I never thought much about it,’ I confessed.
    ‘But you’re a sensitive person – I can tell that.’
    How? How can you tell? Do I have the word “sensitive” tattooed on my forehead? Up went my defences and I turned to Grace for help.
    ‘Tania’s real creative,’ she told Zoran unhelpfully. ‘She’s hoping to travel to Europe to study the history of art. But her big thing is painting. She’s actually a great artist.’
    ‘I see that. It comes through in your costume – you have a strong visual sense, an eye for colour. You’re used to looking beneath the surface; you try to work out reasons.’
    ‘That’s still not the same as believing in miracles,’ I argued.
    ‘Watch this,’ Zoran told me, turning towards the giant screen on the wall at the same time as someone, presumably Ezra, pressed the button for a video to play.
    It was a home-shot sequence, filmed the previous day when the fire on Black Rock was at its height.
    ‘It was shot on a mobile phone so these are not high-quality images. Also it was filmed from the helicopter and the pilot had trouble navigating through the smoke, which is why it’s unsteady,’ Zoran told us. ‘See Turner Lake in the distance? And that’s the old burnout area, and the dirt track you just drove along. The summit of Black Rock is hidden behind the main smoke column.’
    I held my breath as the video played out, hearing the chopper blades churn, seeing the images blur as they flew through smoke clouds.
    ‘So now the pilot is steering upwind of the blaze – you can see the flames sweeping through the trees. That’s Black Eagle Canyon, that’s the house – see!’
    All too clearly I saw the black pall of smoke, the flames racing across grassland and brush, travelling so fast it left trees only scorched but not consumed. And I spotted the one-storey modernist buildings set against the bare rock of the canyon, standing right in the path of the raging fire.
    ‘Watch!’ Zoran said.
    A wave of flame approached the canyon. It ate up scrub and young aspen trees, reached the edge of the gorge and seemed to pause.
    ‘Look at the direction of the wind, see how the flames leap clean over the house,’ he murmured.
    He didn’t need to tell me; I was already hypnotized. Firebrands jumped skywards ahead of the inferno, streaking red and gold through the black smoke, clearing the gorge and landing on the far side, igniting the land beyond. Then the flames themselves leaped and arched, carried by a mighty wind. They left one side of the gorge and landed on the other, danced and raged on as before. Zoran’s house was spared.
    ‘Now do you believe in miracles?’ he said.

    ‘Tania hates fire. She has a kind of phobia,’ Grace explained.
    I must have passed out for a few seconds, gone blank, sunk to my knees, because Ezra was offering me his hand, my head whirled and I had trouble recalling exactly where I was.
    I was so weak that the dreamcatcher guy had to hold me upright and lead me to a chair. Though the screen was blank, I could still hear the chopper blades churning above the whoosh and blast of furious flames.
    Zoran was nowhere to be seen.
    ‘Do you need water?’ Ezra asked, leaning over me.
    I nodded and he went away, leaving me and Grace alone.
    ‘Don’t do that to me, OK!’ she murmured, taking the seat next to mine.
    ‘What did I do?’
    ‘You just dropped to the floor – I thought you’d had a brain seizure or something. One minute you’re standing watching the screen, the next you’re flat out. I thought you’d never open your eyes ever again and wondered how I was gonna go back and tell your folks!’
    ‘Sorry.’
    ‘It’s OK, I understand. I told Ezra how it started – how you most likely connected it with the old fire on Becker Hill. He said Zoran had no idea you