Chapter 7
Angels and demons
Sitting in the dark graveyard, I half expect to see a zombie rise out of the open grave, eyes staring blindly, flesh rotting, mouth dripping blood and pus. I’m being ridiculous, I know, but when I laugh at myself, the chuckle sounds forced.
Zombies aside, this probably isn’t the safest place to allow Logan Rush to catch some z’s. There’s a real risk of meeting vandals and modern-day grave-robbers here to prise brass plaques off gravestones and memorials to sell for scrap, or to source free flowers for their girlfriends. They might decide that I’m richer prey and turn their attention and screwdrivers on me. Plus, if one of the paparazzi or fan cars spots us from the road and drives up behind, we’ll be trapped. It’s time to move.
The lane is narrow, bordered on either side by raised brick edging, and obviously intended for one-way traffic only. With my luck, if I try to reverse my way out or turn around, I’ll steer us straight into an open grave. So I start the car and drive forwards, looking for an exit sign or a spot to turn.
The place is as creepy as a crypt, and pitch-dark apart from our headlights. Eerie, distorted shadows shift around us. I wish Logan would wake up — I could use some company. Deliberately, I go too fast over a speed bump, but though the car bucks and bounces, Logan’s head just lolls onto his other shoulder. Honestly, if people knew how much of a heroine-protecting action-man he isn’t …
Well, they’d probably still love him.
The lane curves in a loop — surely it’ll spit us out at an exit soon? The headlights illuminate the cold ashes and bits of wood from an old fire built in the hollow of a tree trunk. What if those are the remains of an evil circle of devil worshippers, gathered around a pentagram drawn in blood over a grave, sacrificing a cat? Or a monkey. Or a cat-monkey mutant. I shiver, then I spy gates ahead. The exit!
But the gates are bound shut with a thick chain and sturdy padlock. Crap. We’ll have to go back the way we came, after all. Muttering under my breath, I shift gears and begin the toing and froing and wheel-turning of a three-point turn. Or a twenty-three-point turn, to be more accurate — the lane is extremely narrow.
The difficult manoeuvring distracts me, for a brief minute, from things that creep and pounce and ooze, but once my clammy hands are steering us back to the other gate, my feverish mind shifts to local legends — the restless ghosts of the slaves once housed in wet, slimy tunnels beneath the old parts of the city, and the hairy, evil dwarf Tokoloshe that comes in the night to bewitch, and eat toes, and cart off the unwary. Silly!
When we finally reach the entrance, I see that one side of the gates has swung — or been pushed? — closed. To escape this place, I’ll need to get out of the car and push the gate back open.
Unnerving images flash through my mind — the plot of every horror movie I’d ever seen, the gruesome details of every graveyard urban legend I’d ever heard. There’s that one about a couple making out in their car. They hear a strange noise, and the man gets out to investigate but doesn’t return, and the woman grows frantic with worry. Then she hears a dripping on the car roof. She thinks it’s rain, but it’s really the blood of her boyfriend’s slit-throated corpse, dangling from a tree limb above the vehicle.
I do not want to set foot outside of this car. I cast a hopeful glance at my companion.
“Logan? Logan?”
No response. Unchivalrous git.
I take a good look around for any men or monsters before I unlock the door and climb out, ducking to avoid braining myself on the low-hanging branches of a cedar tree. The angel’s wings now seem more imploring and less protective. And is it my imagination or does the mound of earth beside the empty grave look like it’s grown? I scurry towards the gate, hyper-aware of mysterious rustlings, the sighing of the wind in the trees, and the weird whistling hoots which I hope like heck are just the calls of night birds and not the secret signals of gang members.
I swing the gate back open, jam it in place with a loose brick, and dash back to the car. Once the door is closed and locked, I sigh with relief and laugh a little at my foolishness. Which is when it happens — a long, screeching scrape of sharp claws on the metal roof of the car — and I scream.
It’s a terrific scream, too. Short and sharp, but glass-shatteringly loud and high. It comes from deep inside of me, powered by all the tension and frustrations of the day. Maybe even of the year.
Logan levitates. I swear he lifts at least a hand’s height out of his seat. He might not have the Beast’s superpowers, but the boy can fly. Also, he can yell — lower than me, but maybe even louder. His eyes start open and his hair seems to stand on end, although that may be because it’s dried in that position, mashed up against the crumpled towel.
“Wasser?” he yelps.
I’m already feeling much better. The venting, cathartic scream helped, plus I’ve realised that the screechy scrape was probably just a tree branch. Right now, I feel a lot calmer than Logan looks.
“Anything the matter?” I ask, aiming for cool and collected.
Logan looks over at me with wild eyes and recoils in fear. From me! I’ve saved his ass not once, but three times already — more if you count the fact that I’ve protected him from potential robbers, serial killers and the Tokoloshe — and now he stares at me with deep suspicion and a wariness verging on panic.
“Who are you? Where am I?” He peers out of the windows, spots the tombstones, celestial beings and open graves, and glares back at me, clearly horrified. “Where have you brought me? And why?”
“Relax, Braveheart. We’re just in a cemetery.”
“You won’t get away with it!”
“With what?”
“With whatever you’re planning to do to me.” He fiddles with the door, trying to find the lock.
“So this is the thanks I get?” I push my glasses up on my nose, start the car, and drive back out into the road. “You’re welcome, I’m sure.”
“And what have you done with my shoes?” Logan demands, staring down at his bare feet.
“Not that again! Jeez, you’re obsessed with your shoes — you know that?”
A moment later, we’re back on the main road in the deserted industrial area, and this time, undistracted by pursuing cars, I clearly see a road sign ahead pointing the way to the central part of the city.
“Where are you taking me?”
“You tell me — last time we spoke you couldn’t remember the name of your hotel. Any luck now?”
He frowns. Hiccups. “No.”
“Remember what it looks like at all?”
“It’s very big —”
I roll my eyes at him.
“And there’s a silver dolphin in the lobby, if that helps. And —”
“Say no more, it’s the Cape Majesty.”
I navigate a route towards the V&A Waterfront, where the super-exclusive hotel is located. Logan sits quietly for a few minutes, hiccupping every now and then.
When he speaks, he sounds embarrassed. “Um … I’m sorry, I may have been a bit rude back there. I was unnerved — with the graveyard and all. I’m Logan Rush.”
“I know,” I say, smiling at him.
“Yes, but … um?” His eyes look a question.
“Oh, yes, sorry. I’m Rosemary Morgan.”
“Right, right … And, um, why am I in your car?”
“You don’t remember what happened?”
He frowns, narrows his eyes, and cocks his head. Which, for the record, makes him look super cute.
“I remember the party and then … did I go swimming?”
“You could say that.”
“And there were screaming girls —”
“Yup.”
“And a penguin!”
“It’s all coming back to you now.”
“And my sho —”
“Logan,” I interrupt. “I swear, if you mention the sh-word again, I will personally feed you to the lions.”
“What lions?”
“You’re in Africa. Lions are never far away,” I threaten, completely untruthfully. Still, it distracts him from his preoccupation with his missing footwear.
He shakes his head as if trying to clear it, then winces and lifts a hand to his forehead.
“You’ve got a nice egg forming there,” I tell him.
He quickly flips down the visor, lifts his hair off his forehead, and peers worriedly into the small mirror on the back.
“Damn!” He examines the lumpy bruise from different angles and then tries to hide it under a thick lock of hair.
“Yeah, your looks are totally gone,” I say, amused. No other guy I know is this vain. Zeb will laugh his head off when I tell him the story.
“They’re going to kill me.” Logan flips the visor back up and slumps back in his seat.
“Who?” I ask as we drive through the entrance to the massive waterfront tourist complex where trendy restaurants, exclusive hotels, hot nightclubs and high-end stores almost entirely disguise the working docks of Cape Town around which they’re built.
“Make-up, lighting, continuity. Cilla.” He groans the last word.
“Cilla?”
“My nemesis and slave driver. The queen of the underworld. If they have to reshoot, she’ll skin me alive!”
“Who is this woman?”
“My director.” He suddenly sits bolt upright and swears, then casts me a contrite glance. “I apologise. Bad language is one of my vices.”
In person, his accent is more lilting and Southern than it is on-screen, and perfectly charming, though his words are a little blurred around the edges. He’s obviously still slightly buzzed.
“I should let her know that I’m okay. She’ll be really worried.” He pats his pockets. “Well, not worried so much as enraged and on the warpath.”
“You said you left them a note.”
“I did?” He sounds impressed at his own foresight.
“And I think you’ll find that your phone —”
“— doesn’t work, yeah.” He holds up the sleek, black cell phone. A bead of water oozes out of its bottom seam and drips off. “What the hell did I do tonight? Go swimming in my tuxedo?”
“Pretty much. You know, they say memory blackouts are a sign of drinking too much.”
“I don’t do it often,” he says defensively.
“Here we are — the Cape Majesty,” I announce as we pull up to the impressive high-columned entrance of the swanky hotel, where a horde of tourists is disembarking from a luxury coach.
I’ve already turned into the short approach leading to the guest drop-off point, where a pair of doormen in top hats and gold livery wait, when I see them. I reach out my left hand and shove Logan’s head down.
“Get down. Rushers!”
Logan bends over double in the passenger seat of my car, but to be extra sure he isn’t visible to the rabid fans outside, I pull the towel over his back and head. I whizz straight past the surprised hotel doorman, who’s already stepping forward to greet us, squeeze around the luxury bus, and keep going. As one, the waiting girls scan my car quickly, find it lacking in the hot heartthrob department, and return to watching the incoming road.
I’ve got to figure out a way to get Logan inside his hotel without alerting the pack of Rushers.
“Now what?” Logan’s voice is muffled under the towel.
I rack my brain for a few moments. I’m quite enjoying this — today is the most exciting day I’ve had since, well, ever really.
“I have a plan,” I say, zipping into an entrance to the multi-storey, under-cover parking garage that adjoins the back of the Majesty hotel. “You can sit up now.”
“I’m sorry to keep repeating myself, but where are we now?”
“There’s a direct entrance through the mall into the hotel,” I say, driving up the ramp that leads to the upper parking level. “It should be mostly empty at this time of night, provided it’s still open.”
It is. Once I’ve parked the car in a bay right outside the entrance, we get out and I run an appraising eye over Logan. He looks dishevelled in his damp and wrinkled tux. His bow tie is askew, his hair sticks up messily, and his feet, of course, are bare. Unfortunately, he still looks unmistakably like his very famous self.
“Here,” I say, fishing a pair of sunglasses out of my handbag. “Put these on.”
“And? How do I look?” He holds his hands up in a voila! gesture as if presenting me with an excellent disguise.
“You look a little less like Logan Rush.”
Maybe one half of one percent less.
“What about your disguise?” he asks.
“I don’t need a disguise — I’m not famous.”
“I don’t want to be the only one who looks dumb — wearing sunglasses at night.”
“Fine.” I snag a faded baseball cap from my tog bag in the car and pull it on. “Happy now?”
He turns the cap sideways and nods. I have never in my life worn a cap sideways, like some lame wannabee rapper. But we need to get him inside quickly, so I don’t waste time arguing.
“Come on, this way. Once you’re in the hotel, you should be safe.”
“Let’s hold hands,” Logan suggests. “We can pretend to be a honeymoonin’ couple. Or” — he taps the dark glasses — “I could be a blind man, and you my Seeing Eye … guide.”
I sneak a suspicious glance at him and see one end of his mouth is hitched in a grin. Even though he’s treating this as a joke, I don’t object. In another few minutes, we’ll go our separate ways and I’ll never see him again, except at the movies. Future me will cherish the memory that Logan Rush once asked to hold my hand.
“Okay.” I put my hand in his — so big and warm — and my heart gives a fidgety sort of hiccup. “Here we go.”