Vain (The Seven Deadly #1)

“Sophie,” Pembrook smiled, “here are all your necessary papers. An emergency card, as well as cash. Keep these close to your body. You’re flying to Germany first, then Dubai, staying the night. The hotel arrangements are in your travel documents. A car has been arranged to pick you up there. From Dubai you will fly to Nairobi, Kenya, where a small plane has been chartered to take you to Kampala, Uganda. Look for a boy named Dingane to pick you up. I’ve taken the liberty of outfitting your case with a satellite phone for...”

“Emergencies?” I asked, smiling back.

Pembrook’s shoulders visibly relaxed and he wrapped his long, lanky arms around my shoulders.

“Do be careful, my dear,” he whispered against my hair before speeding off down the hall.

I sighed as I watched him make way for the kitchens. I turned to Spencer and smiled again.

He held his hand out to me and I took it. He squeezed it softly. “It’ll be okay,” he reassured, but I didn’t believe him.

I looked around me, at how empty the foyer was and felt a little disappointed that Sav and the rest of my friends hadn’t shown up. I’d texted them the night before, but I suppose there was no reason to say goodbye to someone they cared very little for.

I met Spencer’s eyes once more. “They didn’t come,” I told him matter-of-factly.

“No, they didn’t,” he stated.

“No need to dwell. I’ll just be a moment,” I told him and headed toward my father’s office.

I knocked on his door and heard a faint “enter.” I obeyed and turned the handle. Billowing cigar smoke enveloped me before dissipating behind me. The cleared smoke revealed my father, busy as usual, and on his phone.

“No! No! I never agreed to that!” My father turned my direction. “Just a minute, will you?” he asked the receiver. “What is it?” he asked me.

“I’m-I’m off.”

“Good luck.”

And just like that he was immersed in his phone conversation and I closed the heavy wooden door behind me. On the way back to the foyer, I passed one of our maidservants Margarite carrying folded towels to one of the guest suites.

“Have you seen Mrs. Price this morning, Margarite?”

“Yes, she has gone to town for a morning of shopping.”

“Ah, I see. Tell her that you saw me?”

“Of course, miss.” Margarite’s eyes softened. “Is there anything else you’d like me to convey, miss?”

“No.”

“As you wish, miss,” Margarite said before going about her business again.

I followed suit but could feel her eyes look back at me as if she pitied me. I cringed at the thought that my maid felt sorry for me.

“I’m ready,” I told Spencer.

“I’ve loaded your bags already.”

“Thank you, Spence.”

The ride to the airport was eerily quiet. I contemplated the almost twenty hours of flying I had in my future, not including my overnight stay in Dubai. My hands began to visibly shake and Spencer stilled them with his own. Regina Spektor’s All the Rowboats began to play and I couldn’t help but let the haunting melody seep into my skin. The words felt prophetic, although the subjects of her song were entirely objects, but when I really defined myself, that’s what I was, a mere object and it was all by my own doing. I was those breathing objects, desperately aching to escape, to live, and suddenly a calm washed over me.

All the talk of danger, disease and devastation frightened me, but I was ready for a change, just as desperate and just as aching to escape, to live, really live, as the songs and paintings in her words.

We pulled up to the unloading zone and Spencer opened my door for me. He looked deflated.

“No worries, my very good friend.”

He smiled but the grin never touched his eyes. His hands dug into his pockets. “And that’s all I’ll ever be to you, I think.”

My shoulders sank into the car door a bit. “Spencer, please...”

“Shh,” he said, pressing the pad of his thumb at my lips. His fingers grazed my cheek slightly when he pulled away. “Absolutely no worries, Sophie Price.” He smiled in sincerity then and my heart dropped a tad for him.

“I’ll miss you very much,” I admitted to the only real friend I’d ever really had but only very recently realized.

“As I’ll miss you. I’ve just discovered you’re as lost as I am and now you leave.”

“By court order,” I jested, making his grin wider.

“I’ll give you that.” He sighed. “We were supposed to find our way together though.”

“I’ll still be as lost when I come back. We can pick up from there, Spence.”

Spencer grabbed my bags and laid them on the cart the porter had brought over.

“I’ll see you in six months,” I told him.

“I’ll be right here,” he said, pointing toward the pavement. “Waiting.”

I grazed his cheek and squeezed my eyes painfully. “Don’t wait for me, Spencer,” I whisper ordered.

Spencer pulled me from him. “I’ll do as I damn well please, Price. Now get.”

I smiled at him and followed the porter. When I turned back around for a final wave he’d already gone.

Twenty hours of flight, despite a night of sleep in The Palm in Dubai still feels like twenty hours of flight. When I arrived in Africa by way of Nairobi, I didn’t get a chance to absorb the continent as I only had twenty minutes to catch my Cessna, but when my little chartered plane landed, barely, and the stairs were brought out, the door opened, I looked out onto a most wonderful sight, a breathtaking sight. A sight of green lush vegetation, dirt red with iron and the expansive blue and breathtaking Lake Victoria. My breath sucked into my chest as I took it all in. It was incredibly beautiful.

I descended the stairs and was met with my luggage at my feet and a happy African young man with dark mocha face and gleaming white teeth.

“Welcome to Africa, miss,” he greeted me with cheer. “I understand this is your first visit?”

“Yes, thank you.”

He smiled the largest smile I’d ever seen and I wondered what had made this guy so happy. “Follow me, miss.”

I fished around in my pouch for a ten-dollar bill. A guy in Dubai had told me they prefer American currency so I never exchanged the hundreds Pembrook had given me. We approached the airport itself and all I could think when I looked upon it was the nineteen-seventies had died and gone to heaven on this little inlet. My skin went cold when I thought on that. Before I’d left, I’d read up on Uganda and discovered the very airport I’d flown into was also the site of a most dangerous hostage situation involving terrorists in that same era. I shivered thinking on the details and the very close call it was. It reminded me where I was and what my real purpose for visiting entailed.

When the enthusiastic porter set my bags down inside, he beamed at me and I almost laughed at his optimism.

I couldn’t help myself. “You’re quite animated, and why are you so happy today?”

“I am happy every day, Miss. I am alive and working. I have a roof. I can feed my brothers and sisters. I am very, very happy.”

My heart clenched and I dug in my pouch for another ten, thought twice, and grabbed a fifty before settling the cash in his hand. His eyes blew to impossible proportions and I shook my head at him, silencing the protest forming on his lips.

“Think nothing of it,” I snapped and cleared my throat. “Excuse me,” I told him and grabbed my bags hurriedly before walking with purpose down the corridor toward what I assumed was the front entrance.

I tried not to think of what fifty dollars meant to that boy and his family. I also tried not to think about the silly bracelet tied around my wrist that cost five hundred. I stopped where I was and gathered myself, remembering my notebook and sliding it out of my pack. I flipped through the pages and looked for the name Pembrook told me not to forget but did anyway because it was such an unusual name.

“Dingane,” I repeated out loud. “What kind of name is that?”

“It’s Din-John-E,” a deep voice interrupted and my head shot up.

Struck. Speechless.

A deep, punching sensation washed over my entire body and I almost fell to my knees at the powerful impression. My breaths became labored and I fought for a clear head. A balmy, scorching but unbelievably ecstasy-ridden awareness swam through my body. An exhilarating, pleasant haze settled over me and it...Burned. So. Good. This was a feeling of realization. I stood there, relishing the effects.

I remember Sarah Pringle telling me once about a boy she had met while on holiday in Europe. The way she painted him made me doubt her sanity.

“I can’t describe him, Sophie,” she’d said, her hands covering her cheeks in desperation. “It was like my body knew instantly that he was mine and that I was his.”

“Awfully primitive of you to admit that, Sarah,” I’d mocked, making everyone around us laugh.

But now I knew what she meant. Now I understood what she was trying to convey to me.

The boy who stood before me was on the cusp of becoming a man. All taut, lean muscle, narrow where a boy needed to be and broad where a man should always be. I’d never known a person could be this drawn to another human being, especially a complete stranger. His face captivated me without the ability to speak. I felt my chest grasp for air but was unable to accommodate its feverish demand, so I stupidly sat panting there like a dog after a brisk run. He leaned over me, hands tucked into the front pockets of his jeans, pulling the fabric of his shirt stiff against the muscles of his arms and shoulders and sending me deeper into immediate obsession.

I gulped down my lack of breath and studied him. He was the complete opposite of what I’d always imagined I’d be the most attracted to. Straight black hair met his chin but was tucked behind his ears, cerulean blue eyes stared at me strangely, his full bottom lip separated from his upper lip in question. He was looking down a straight Roman nose at me and his square jaw was clenched.

“Are you the one they call Sophie?” he asked stiffly, already exasperated with me it seemed.

“I am.”

“I am Dingane,” his thick accent repeated.

When he spoke, my eyes involuntarily rolled to the back of my head. His deep silky voice washed over me like warm water on a cold afternoon and I willingly leaned closer to him. The proximity was like fuel to my already out of control flame. I bent away from him to gain rational thought and shook my head.

“But you’re white,” I stupidly blurted, making me want to crawl underneath something.

“You are incredibly astute,” he said tightly.

“I’m sorry, I was-I was just expecting an African,” I stammered.

“My name is Ian. Dingane is a nickname, but I am African. My ancestors came to South Africa in the seventeen-hundreds from England,” he explained although he seemed annoyed to be doing so, as if I deserved no such courtesy.

His accent sounded like a mix of formal English, Australian and Dutch. That’s the only way I could describe it. I’d never heard its equal. It was so incredibly beautiful and unique. Every film I’d ever watched that featured the South African accent completely butchered it. Listening to him was like listening to velvet.