Broken Illusions: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (12 page)

He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to. Sometimes words were necessary, and sometimes they weren’t. Sometimes there simply were none.

I stared at the board, the vibration now a deceptive hum, the last dying breath of a current. “I-I can’t.”

“You don’t have a choice,” he said, and then his finger was there again, side by side with mine. And together we guided the triangular pointer. Victoria joined us as we crossed the U.

Together, we brought the triangle to rest over the word at the lower right corner.

GOODBYE

I sagged like a collapsing balloon, felt the air rush out of me as Chase dragged me into his arms. “Jesus—don’t ever do that again.”

I sank against him. He was so solid, and so warm, but through the cotton of his T-shirt, I could hear his heart pounding a sprinter’s race.

“That didn’t happen Saturday,”
Victoria whispered from somewhere behind me. “I swear to God, Chase, if she’d been doing that I never would have agreed to this.”

I pulled back. “What?” I twisted toward Victoria. “What didn’t happen?”

Her hair was stringy, tangled, as far from perfect as I’d ever seen. Her eyes were dark voids. “The twitching,” she said, looking at me like she was afraid. Of me.

For me.

“Your eyes and mouth—your hands. Your voice wasn’t yours. You couldn’t talk—”

The fog pressed closer. Only a few minutes had passed, but much like a dream that you awaken from only to realize you no longer remember, I couldn’t find the pieces. Only the sensations. “It was like something else was controlling—”

Forceful footsteps killed the rest of my words.

“Shit!”
Chase shot to his feet, pulling me with him. Victoria grabbed the Ouija board.

In the hallway, the footsteps stopped outside the door.

Chase tugged me toward the futon. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

“There’s only the one door,” I said with more breath than voice. “The windows—”

The doorknob jiggled.

“Omigod!” Victoria whisper-shrieked. “It’s too late.”

I lunged toward the Oriental screen separating the front of the apartment from the back. Chase and Victoria dove in after me, the three of us yanking the flimsy structure as close to the wall as we could.

And the door fell open.

ELEVEN

A narrow glow cut through Grace’s small apartment. Standing as still as death, I could feel the rise and fall of Chase’s chest behind me, see Victoria huddled at our feet.

The door closed. Footsteps moved deeper into the small room, light sweeping in a broad arc. And in that one horrible second, I realized our mistake.

The screen was little more than a flimsy silk curtain.

Daylight made it opaque. Night turned the silver into a pale shadow. But with that same darkness, a beam of light would shine straight through, silhouetting whatever was concealed behind.

The footsteps fell quiet.

My chest tightened. Chase’s breath stopped. And the silence started to throb.

I wanted to see. Someone was there. Someone had come into Grace’s apartment, had not turned on the light—

Across the room, one of the crates scraped.

Chase slid a finger to my mouth, pulling me closer.

The light swung our direction. We hung there, frozen as it passed along the wall behind us, slow, seeking …

The room breathed.

We didn’t.

The beam slid along the top of the futon once more, then jerked back to the front and fell to the floor.

I moved fast, tugging Chase’s hand as I sank to the floor next to Victoria. He slid next to me, his body crouched like Delphi.

Relief made me dizzy. If the flashlight swung back toward us, the futon would conceal our outlines.

Seconds crawled into minutes. Shuffling interrupted silence. I tried to keep my breath slow, measured, but every beat of my heart jackhammered more violently than the one before.

And I couldn’t do it any longer, couldn’t sit frozen while a few feet away, someone pawed through Grace’s things. There was no time to text LaSalle. By the time he arrived …

Mime-like, I shifted toward the edge of the futon. Chase tried to stop me, but I kept stretching. He yanked. I resisted.

And through the small crack between silk and wall, the front window came into view, and the brilliant green of the dragonfly glowed.

I froze.

Chase froze.

Silence thickened into a muted heartbeat. I knew there would be warmth, even before I sucked in the breath.

Grace.

The dragonfly shone brighter, fracturing moonlight into a thousand shards of green, revealing the tall figure in the long black trench coat—and the boots.

Everything flashed. I blinked hard, tried to clear the paralyzing web from my mind and bring myself laser sharp into the moment—and away from the dream.

The boots remained.

Chase tugged at me, tried to draw me back.

The scent of fresh sage almost made me gag. I couldn’t move. Even when the trench coat swirled toward us, one heavy black boot coming down with breathless quiet beside the purple love seat. Then the other.

Silver flashed
—and I saw the knife.

Chase’s hold on me tightened.

Moonlight glinted off the blade—exactly as I’d seen Sunday, when we’d been playing Clue. I stared at it, at the gloved hand curved around the handle, and for a crazy moment, I felt the slice all the way to my bone.

Soundlessly, Chase slipped a hand to my heart, and spread his fingers wide.

The trench coat swished toward the back of the room. Chase braced. I could feel his body lock up, ready to spring forward.

But he had no weapon.

The blade of the knife angled higher …

Now it was me holding on, me holding back. I dug my fingers into Chase’s arm as the figure shifted, and the ski mask came into view.

The intruder moved fast, boots pounding against the wood floor. The long coat swung around his legs as he crossed—

At the last minute he turned, and with something secured under his arm, yanked open the door and vanished.

I sagged. Chase dragged me back, careful to keep me behind the screen.

His shirt was hot—damp, his heart pounding like he’d been running as fast as he could. “Sh-h-h,” he half said, half breathed.

I clung to him, and in the silence, the darkness, started to count.

At five hundred and twenty-nine, he pushed to his feet and reached for me. “He’s gone.”

Victoria’s sob said it all. She scrambled up and brought her hands to her face, sliding sticky hair back from both sides. “Omigod—omigod,
omigod
…”

But I just kneeled there, staring.

“Trinity?” Chase came back down. “Come on—we gotta go.”

Trancelike, I looked up at him. I was still trying to understand. “Those boots,” I murmured. “I know those boots.”

His eyes went a little wild. “What do you mean you know those boots?”

“I’ve seen them before.” Twice. “Yesterday, when I was here with LaSalle.”

“He was wearing them?”

“No,” I said. “No.” Then I made myself stand and slipped the flashlight from my pocket. Clicking it on, I directed it toward the crates with Grace’s clothes. “I was standing there, and I saw them by the sofa.” For just a flash. A second. Then they were gone.

“Maybe they’re her boyfriend’s or something.” The sheen in Victoria’s eyes told me the shock was starting to fade.

“No,” I said. “They weren’t there.”

“But I thought you said—”

“It was a premonition,” Chase murmured, stepping back.

My heart kinda stopped. And I hated the quick little fissure that went through me. I had no idea what the Ouija board was trying to tell me—or exactly where the warnings were coming from, but lines were starting to turn the dots into a picture.

Or a maze.

A trap, just like the Ouija board had spelled.

Being afraid wasn’t going to help.

“I saw them last night, too,” I said, rubbing my hands along my arms. “In a dream.”

Chase’s jaw tightened.

I moved past him, toward the front of the room, where beside the love seat a crate lay on its side, the one I’d come to find, the one from my dream—the one that had glowed. Around it, scattered on the floor, lay a lifetime of pictures and letters.

“WTF?” Chase muttered, joining me. “What was he looking for?”

That was the ultimate question.

“What if he’s not done?” Victoria gasped from behind us. “I mean, what if he got spooked but comes back—”

Chase took me by the hand and yanked me toward the door. “Come on. She’s right.”

I didn’t want to go. Someone was trying to tell me something, to warn me. The pieces were all there: the boots and the crate, the Ouija board, the word
trap
.

Forever
.

Chase practically dragged me into the hall. We locked up, hurried toward the stairs.

We were halfway down when we saw the man waiting at the bottom.

The thick, shoulder-length dreads threw me.

“Well, well,” he drawled, and with the voice came recognition. The cornrows were gone, but the diamond stud in his ear was the same. So was the
you are so busted
glitter in his unmistakably sultry eyes.

He could blend in anywhere, I remembered thinking once. Be anyone.

Even his smile deceived. “What a surprise.”

*   *   *

Aunt Sara stood by the big window overlooking the glimmer of the city, her boot-cut jeans and charcoal shirt casual, her posture anything but. Her shoulders were stiff, her arms locked around her chest. Dark hair fell softly against her face, framing how firmly pressed her mouth was.

I’d never seen her pulled so deeply inside herself.

She hadn’t said a single word. Not since Detective DeMarcus Jackson showed up with me and Chase and Victoria. (By some miracle we’d convinced him to take us to my aunt’s, instead of the station.)

Detective LaSalle was already here. I could only imagine what he’d told my aunt. Jackson, his partner, had made it sound really bad. Sitting in the back of his SUV, I’d heard him, the words he used: kids broke in, messing around, caught them red-handed, look guilty as hell, claim someone else was there.

Now LaSalle kept shaking his head, as if he was my father, and I’d totally let him down.

“Why didn’t you call me?” he asked. I’d had no choice but to tell him about the ghost town dream—and the Ouija board. “I would have taken you back to Grace’s. You didn’t need to break the law.”

I winced. On the sofa next to me, Chase squeezed my hand.

“I didn’t think about it like that.” It had seemed harmless, like following clues on a scavenger hunt. “I wasn’t even sure the dream meant anything. That’s why I went to her apartment, to see if I could put the pieces together. I didn’t think anything bad would happen—”

“You didn’t think period.” With his hands steepled together, he kept tapping them against his mouth. “If you had, you would have realized putting the pieces together is my job, not yours. What if this other person discovered you were there? What if he saw you or came after you—tried to silence you?”

“I would have stopped him,” Chase said.

“But that’s just it,” I said, pulling away. I stood, while on the other side of me, Victoria sat quietly. She’d begged the cops not to call her parents—

Of course, they had.

Mr. and Mrs. Crochet were on their way.

“Don’t you see? I was
supposed
to be there. If I hadn’t been—or if we’d been there all official with you and the lights on—that guy would never have come in, and we still wouldn’t know anything.”

“And what do you think we know now?” Detective Jackson asked. Like last fall, he stood off to the side, watching. Just watching. That was what he did. “What have you learned that we didn’t know before?”

“Boots,” I said. “I saw boots.”

“Boots?” he repeated.

I nodded, my gaze slipping to his expensive-looking loafers. Combined with his silky purple shirt and pressed black pants, I was pretty sure the call he’d received from Grace’s downstairs neighbor, reporting footsteps above, had interrupted something a lot more enjoyable.

“Cowboylike,” I said. “Black, a little scuffed.”

“You have any idea how many black cowboy boots there are in this city?”

I sighed. “It’s a start.”

“Why didn’t you mention the Ouija board?” Detective LaSalle took over, as I’d known he would, sooner or later.

Across the room, if it was even possible, Aunt Sara went even more statuelike. There was something in her eyes, though, a dark, vacant glow that told me she was acutely aware of what was being said.

“Like maybe Sunday night?” LaSalle said. “When I first asked you about Grace?”

I stared at my aunt, really wished she’d look back.
“I’m sorry,”
I whispered. This was not the outcome I’d envisioned. “I didn’t know what was going on. I’d thought it was just some freaky game,” I said. “That my subconscious made the pointer move.”

Aunt Sara closed her eyes.

“And now?” LaSalle’s voice was suddenly gentle.

I looked back at Chase. This time he’d been there. He’d seen. The residue lingered in the way he looked at me, the way he’d held my hand on the way back to the condo, but never quite looked me in the eye.

“I think,” I said very slowly, “there’s more to it.”

Detectives LaSalle and Jackson exchanged a quick, unreadable look.

“Let’s go back to the beginning,” LaSalle said, picking up a small notebook. “To Saturday night. I want to know everything.”

Realizing I no longer had a choice, I looked to the bar, where a small, framed picture sat, of me and my aunt taken the day Fleurish! opened, and told them everything. I even showed them the picture I’d found of my mother.

“I think she must have known her,” I said, handing the faded photograph to Detective Jackson. “Maybe our moms were friends or something. Maybe they both worked in the Quarter.” It made sense. Psychic abilities often ran in families.

Detective Jackson looked up from the image. It was wild how different the dreads made him look. They were thick and gnarled, hanging past his shoulders and gathered into a low ponytail, making him look more like a hot musician than a cop.