Dark Vision by Debbie Johnson Read Free Book Online Page A

the gleaming glass of the park’s Palm House.
    The Palm House was built in the nineteenth century, a magnificent dome made of a cast-iron frame and hundreds of panes of glass. It houses exotic plants and statues, like an especially big, especially beautiful, greenhouse full of art and flowers.
    It was also, I realised as we ran inside, currently being used as a wedding venue. Luckily, your average Scouse wedding party is a raucous crowd, and nobody seemed to even notice as three wild-eyed strangers covered in dust, brick and soil appeared.
    Gabriel scanned the room, ignoring the fancy frocks and the band playing the opening chords of ‘Brown Eyed Girl’, and headed for a statue. Typical nineteenth-century, mock-Classical woman leaning over an infant, as though about to kiss its forehead. ‘Mother and Child’, said the plaque in front of it.
    ‘Hold my hands!’ said Gabriel, gesturing to both Carmel and me. She looked at me, eyebrows raised, and I nodded. I didn’t know who he was, and I didn’t trust him, but he’d gotten me this far. And I’d never been a big fan of Van Morrison.
    We grabbed hold of his hands, and the world went black.

Chapter Six
    We were standing in a large room, in what appeared to be the top floor of one of the huge towers that had sprung up on the Liverpool waterfront in recent years. The floor-to-ceiling windows offered stunning views of the river, and put us almost at beady-eye level with the Liver Birds.
    We were also, I realised, still holding hands. I snatched mine away, which Gabriel took as his cue to laugh. Irritating pig.
    Carmel laughed too, but hers was tinged with hysteria as she glanced around. I can’t say that I blamed her; I was feeling less than grounded myself. A natural enough reaction to our whole Beam Me Up, Scotty experience, I suppose.
    The room was vast, decorated in modern block colours, furnished with black leather couches and dark wood. On one wall was a huge flat-screen TV, surrounded by fancy-looking speakers and a kitted-out games console. A bar area was home to a beer fridge and a full set of optics, with gleaming glasses in neat rows. Everything your off-duty mystical warrior would need for a spot of R&R.
    ‘Sorry about the mess,’ said Gabriel, picking up a lone magazine from the glass-topped coffee table. ‘I wasn’t expecting guests.’
    Carmel stared at him, stared at me, then did what comes naturally to her: walked to the bar and poured herself a very stiff vodka.
    She gulped it down, poured another one straight away, then handed me a bottle of Peroni. The journalists’ creed: if in doubt, get drunk.
    I pulled off my backpack and coat, dropped them to the floor, and slumped on the sofa. God, it was comfortable, and God, I was exhausted. If this was one of my hallucinations, it was a real humdinger.
    Carmel joined me, and I felt instantly better for the warmth of her body next to mine. Close enough to comfort, not too close to crowd. I may have got the shitty end of the stick when it came to my childhood, but, I was starting to realise, I’d won the friend jackpot.
    ‘Gabriel,’ I said, after a few minutes of silence. ‘I hate to break it to you, but the charm of your international man of mystery act has officially worn off. We need answers. And we need them now.’
    He nodded, and pulled up a leather footstool, perched himself in front of us. His face was still speckled with dust, the dark waves of his hair matted with cobwebs and clumps of masonry.
    ‘All right, Lily. No more games. What do you want to know?’
    ‘We’ll start with how we got here. One minute we’re wedding crashers. The next we’re here in your shag pad. How?’
    ‘Shag pad?’ he replied, the corner of his mouth quirking up in amusement. Carmel made what I can only describe as a growl, and he dropped the attitude. He had more common sense than I thought.
    ‘Would you settle for “it was magic”?’ he asked.
    ‘No,’ Carmel and I replied in unison.
    ‘Thought not.