Broken Illusions: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (15 page)

“That other girl,” she whispered, her eyes dark and desperate. “If you hear her, if you’re dreaming of her—then she needs you, too.”

*   *   *

Jessica’s words stayed with me long after we said good-bye.

Chase drove me home. Normally he cranked Lynyrd Skynyrd or Aerosmith, but as we pulled away from Jessica’s, he switched to Arcade Fire. Neither of us spoke. I don’t think we knew what to say.

I’d hoped. I’d hoped she’d be able to fill in some gaps. I’d been so curious to know if my dreams were one-way streets, or two-way. If what I saw, what I heard, was only in my head, something I created, or if it came from somewhere else.

According to Jessica, it came from somewhere else.

Lifting a hand to the dragonfly at my chest, I closed my fingers around the smooth edges and glanced at Chase. He had one hand draped over the wheel, his eyes straight ahead.

I had no idea where he was, and for some reason I didn’t understand, didn’t want to ask, either.

By the time we reached the Warehouse District and he walked me upstairs, all I wanted was to be alone.

My chest tightened as we stepped inside, until I saw the lights were off and realized Aunt Sara was still at the shop. A quick glance at the grandfather clock showed I still had a few hours before she would be home after closing.

I had no idea what to say to
her,
either.

Dropping my backpack, I turned back as Chase flipped on a light. The second I saw him, the way he was looking at me, I knew something was about to happen. He stepped toward me, coming so close he could have touched me. But he didn’t. Instead he watched me as if he was afraid if he blinked, I wouldn’t be there anymore. It was crazy how his eyes could literally hold me.

The moment stretched. My mouth went dry. I wasn’t sure why. I knew I needed to say something, but the seriousness in his eyes scattered my thoughts. “Chase—” I tried, but he didn’t let me finish.

“You saw the bracelet.”

I looked away, tried to step back, but he moved faster, reaching out to stop me with a hand to each shoulder. “Don’t—it’s not what you think.”

I made myself look up at him, not sure why it hurt so badly. He and Jessica had been friends forever. She’d been through hell. There was absolutely nothing wrong with him extending a gesture of friendship, especially after what she’d been through.

But …
the bracelet.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, trying to smile.

He stepped closer, getting rid of that last little bit of space between us. “Yes, it does.”

I swallowed.

“I didn’t make it,” he said, and the dizzy thrumming of my heart slowed. “I saw it at a store, and she was having a really hard time, and I thought maybe it might help her.”

I stilled.

“And then I started thinking about you,” he said, and now his voice was quieter. “What words would be right for you.”

Mechanically, I glanced down at the band of leather coiled around my wrist.

“Honest,” he murmured, lowering his hand to the bracelet. “Strong. Fearless.” Slowly his thumb rubbed. “Impulsive.”

I looked up. My throat was still tight, but for very different reasons.

“But there were no bracelets like that,” he said when our eyes met, “because you’re you, and no one else is.”

I’m not sure why I wanted to cry.
“So you made it,”
I whispered.

“For you.”

Sometimes, like in that moment, the blue of his eyes totally stopped me. There was so much there, not only the honesty of the moment, but the remnants of all that had gone down since we’d met—and long, long before I’d walked into his life. We moved forward, that was true. But the past wasn’t like a whiteboard that could be erased. Whatever happened,
happened
. And like invisible baggage, it moved forward with us.

The smile started somewhere inside me—I could literally feel the warmth of it slide through me.

“Thank you,” I whispered, as Delphi joined us, weaving between our legs. “Thank you for being
you.
”

The blue of his eyes deepened. He looked at me for a long moment before glancing down, to my chest. At the same moment he lifted a hand to my mother’s dragonfly, and skimmed his thumb along the crystal in the center.

From one breath to the next, I knew something had changed.

“What?” I asked.

He kept rubbing the crystal.

“What?”

He closed the dragonfly in his hand and lifted his eyes to mine. “She was fearless, too.”

Delphi kept weaving, rubbing her pointy face against my legs, but the low buzz only I heard warned me not to move.

“T, I saw you at Jessica’s.”

And there in the silence, all that talk about leather bands and special words disintegrated into something very different.

“And I saw you last night with that stupid board—it was like you were someone else.”

I braced myself, but already it was too late.

“And I know why,” he kept on. “Because you want to be like her.” His hand opened, and the yellow-green crystal glowed. “And it scares me.”

The words were so quiet I almost didn’t hear them. I stood there, so completely and totally blown away I had no idea what to say. We’d talked about my mother—we’d talked about both my parents. The fact that neither of us had known those who gave us life was one of the many things that drew us together. But I’d never seen him look like this, and I’d never felt the threadbare wall slowly sliding between us.

“Chase, nothing’s going to happen to me—”

“You don’t know that,” he said, letting the dragonfly fall back to my chest. “You
can’t
know that.”

The buzz turned to more of a drone. I stepped back, had to step back. Blinked. Tried to understand how things could shift so dramatically from one breath to the next, without even a hint of a warning.

“No one knows what I see,” I said, trying to make him understand.

His eyes darkened. “That doesn’t mean they don’t see you.”

I blinked.

“Whoever has Grace—what if they’re watching? What if they saw you at her apartment with LaSalle? What if they keep watching, if they find out who you are, about how you found Jessica?”

I took a quick step back.

“It’s not a big leap to figure out what you’re doing,” he said. “What you
can
do.”

We still stood in the entryway, but the walls pushed in on me, forming a tight little box. Delphi was still there, at my feet. I could feel her, but couldn’t look away from Chase. “No one’s watching me.”

But with the words the band around my chest pulled tighter, and the cold returned, the visceral awareness that someone
was
watching.

“What if they try to stop you?”

No.
My mouth formed the word, but no sound came out.

He reached for me, his hand closing around the bracelet at my wrist, his thumb sliding to cover one word:
FEARLESS
. “Silence you just like your mother—”

I didn’t let him finish.
I couldn’t.
I went up on my toes and lifted my hands to the sides of his face, bringing my mouth to his. The kiss was supposed to be soft, reassuring, but suddenly I couldn’t get close enough.

Wasn’t sure I ever could.

“Trust me,”
I murmured as a guttural sound ripped from somewhere inside him. “Please just trust me.”

*   *   *

The blue stone glowed like an ocean lit from within.

Long after Chase left, I sat on my bed with Delphi in my lap and my mother’s larimar stone in my palm.

Sometimes called the Atlantis stone, the rare, recently discovered gemstone had been my mother’s favorite. It comes only from one location, in a mountainous area of the Dominican Republic near the Caribbean Sea.

My mom had mined this one herself.

I held it, much as she would have, and felt the warmth stream through me. My grandmother had talked about my father, but not my mother. For so long she’d been a big blank in my life. Being here, with her dragonfly at my chest and her larimar in my hand, made me feel like I’d finally gotten her back.

Once Gran read a book about what would happen if you could have someone you loved back for just one more day. What would you say? What would you do?

For me, there were so, so many questions.

“Would you tell me to step back?” I whispered above the gentle rumble of Delphi’s purr. “Or that it’s my destiny to step forward?”

I was still holding the stone when Aunt Sara got home around ten. Normally if I didn’t come out to say hi, she’d come to my room. But her footsteps never came down the hall.

This was the longest we’d gone without talking since I’d come to live with her.

Knowing I should get up and go tell her how sorry I was about the Ouija board, I sunk down in my bed and closed my fingers around the larimar. Delphi rearranged herself, curling up on top of the covers next to me.

I wasn’t aware of closing my eyes.

“Sweet, sweet girl…”
The voice was soft, quiet, drifting in from somewhere unseen.
“You break my heart.”

I became aware of the darkness then, the web pushing down on me, holding me.

“I would take it all away if I could.”

I tried to break free, knew I had to wake up. I could feel her, feel her
right
there, the hand at the side of my face, so soft, sliding back a strand of hair, the soft press of her mouth to my forehead.

“Sleep well,
cher
.”

I kept fighting long after the silence started to throb. I needed to go across the hall and tell her—

The feel of her arms closing around me gave me strength. She hadn’t gone. She was still there, holding me close to her body—crying.

Reaching, straining, I finally made my eyes open—

—and saw my mother.

FOURTEEN

She was beautiful.

She leaned over me, long, dark hair streaming against me. I could feel it—feel her.

“Mama?”

The sky was so red, only a few gray clouds streaking like shadows across the horizon as a cool breeze blew, and somewhere in the distance, a bird cried.

I squeezed my eyes shut, opened them a heartbeat later, and this time the sky was gone. I was in a room, I realized, a small sterile room with white walls and fluorescent light.

But she was still there, her head bowed as if in prayer.

Slowly she looked up, and I saw her eyes—my eyes. They were wide and dark, drenched with pain and wisdom, an awareness that cut through me. Her lashes were wet. Tears ran down her face.

“Mama … why are you crying?”

Her hand found my face, and cradled. “I never wanted to leave you.”

My throat closed up. “I know that.”

“But I couldn’t stop it,” she said, and then she was reaching for me, pulling me close. “I had no choice.”

I closed my eyes and held on, held on so very, very tightly. She smelled of vanilla and gardenia, and together like that, body to body, I could feel her heart beating with mine.

“Mama,” I said, pulling back—but the bright brilliant blue of the sky blinded me.

“You’re so beautiful,” she said, once again touching the side of my face.

I squinted at the sharp pinpricks of light stinging my eyes, and found her standing in front of me, smiling. A warm breeze sent hair whipping into both of our faces.

Neither of us brushed it back.

“I’m so proud of you,” she said, and then the tears were there again, glistening like raw diamonds. “You’ve got such a great future ahead of you.”

Happiness swelled from deep within me. I smiled and stepped into her, hugged her tight.

When we pulled back, I noticed the gown fluttering around my legs—and the cap in my hand.

“He’s waiting,” she said, and from one breath to the next, my eyes met hers, and awareness flowed.

I wanted to turn. I wanted to run. I wanted to run without stopping, not until I reached him and his arms locked around me. Until I held on, held on as tightly as I could—forever.

Instead I hesitated. “I don’t deserve him,” I whispered.

Her hands found my face again, her touch devastatingly soft. “Yes, you do.”

“I hurt him—”

“He loves you,” she said in that voice of hers, the soft, gentle one that touched me in so many fragile places. “He’s always loved you.”

I wanted to believe her. I wanted so very much to believe her.

Taking a deep breath, I lifted my hands to hers and squeezed, then turned and—

The first light of dawn whispered through the window.
“No.”
Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to go back. “Not yet,” I whispered.
“Please.”
I wasn’t ready. I didn’t want it to end.

I hadn’t felt his arms.

“I want to go back,” I said into the silence as Delphi rubbed her face to mine.
“Please, please, please let me go back.”
I could still feel it, all of it, the warmth and the happiness, the awareness that forever was real, and it was beautiful.

But I didn’t know how to go back.

Slowly I opened my eyes to find Delphi watching me, the embers of something amazing burning through me—and the smooth blue larimar glowing like a forgotten sea in the palm of my hand.

*   *   *

“I’ve been wondering when you would ask,” Julian Delacroix said that afternoon, after I filled him in on everything that had happened since Saturday night, including the Ouija board, and my dreams.

“Then, why didn’t you say anything?” I’d spent my first few classes debating whether I should go see him—and the last few counting down the minutes until I could. “If you knew I had questions…”

“You weren’t ready.”

“And now?”

Dressed in black as he always was, he leaned against an antique armoire filled with glittering geodes in all colors and sizes. Between us, votives flickered, and crystals glowed. “The questions you’re asking suggest that you are.”