Broken Illusions: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (35 page)

“I don’t do loose ends,”
he’d said, but never realized he, too, had become one.

“LaSalle’s checking surveillance cameras,” Dylan said.

“He won’t find anything.” I had no doubt. “Whoever did this, they’re smarter than that.” And they were one step ahead, like Grace said. Whatever game we were playing, it had been laid out with phenomenal precision, and executed with sickening ease.

“I-I have to stop him,” I said, backing away from Dylan.

“It has to be me,” I said, and then I was running, down the hall and into my aunt’s room, darting into her bathroom and slamming the door behind me. Hers had a lock. I twisted it.

“Trinity—”

I had to stop him. That’s all I could think.

The clock was ticking. There was no time to wait or be patient, to stretch out in my bed and close my eyes, wait for magic to happen. Because that was impossible. It wasn’t going to happen. There was no way I could close my eyes and let go, start to drift, not when my aunt’s life lay on the line.

“Trinity?”

I hardly recognized the face staring back at me from the antique mirror.

“Trinity. Answer me.”

My rules, I thought.
My rules.
Numbly, robotically, I opened the medicine cabinet and pulled out a small white bottle.

“Damn it, Trinity—”

I reached for a paper cup adorned with puppies and kittens, and filled it with water.

Someone wanted to play.

I could play, too, I thought, opening the bottle. And I knew where I had to start.

Dylan rattled the knob. “Open the door—”

I dumped the nighttime allergy medicine into my hand.

“Trinity—”

There was something in his voice, a rough edge as if he knew what I was going to do.

Shaking, I crammed the handful of pills into my mouth.

My throat rejected them.

“Don’t do this—”

Water sloshed over the side as I dragged the cup to my mouth, and the door crashed open.

I darted toward the tub and tried to make myself swallow, but Dylan caught me and dragged me back, turning me in his arms as his eyes went wild.

“Ah, Christ,” he said, and his voice was so raw I could literally feel it.
“No, no, no…”

My eyes met his, and from one breath to the next, the numbness started to crumble. “I have to,” I whispered. “Please, Dylan. I have to sleep. You have to let me—”

“Not like this,” he said, lifting a hand to my face.

I should have fought him. I knew that. I should have fought him, should not have stood there like an errant child while, with a powerful swipe of his finger, he parted my lips and retrieved the pills.

“How many?” he asked. “How many did you swallow?”

I stared at his palm, counted six. “One, maybe two…”

His eyes got glassy. “God, what were you thinking? You have to be strong,” he said. “Alert. You can’t hurt yourself—”

“But it’s not about me! It’s about her, my aunt. Don’t you understand?
He has her!
And she could die.”

“He’s not going to hurt her.”

“You can’t know that. You can’t know what he’s going to do.”

“She’s more valuable to him alive than dead.”

I shook my head. “Maybe now,” I said. “Maybe today. But what about tomorrow? What if he gets bored? She knows who he is—”

“You have to let LaSalle do his job.”

“Like that’s going to do any good. That’s what my mother tried and—”

I broke off the second I realized what I was saying. But it was too late. His hands fell away and he stepped back, the unspoken truth, the memory, turning the silver of his eyes to black.

It was
his
father my mother had trusted.

His father who’d failed to save her.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, and then I was doing it again, reaching out to him.

He stiffened.

My hand fell away.

“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I just…” It all tangled inside me, the fear and the terror, the sorrow and regret. “She’s all I have,” I whispered, lifting my eyes to his.
“She’s all I have.”

In the hollow of his cheek, a muscle thumped. “No, she’s not.”

I’m not sure how I didn’t lose it right there. “I was horrible to her,” I said, remembering. “Before she left, we fought. I said terrible things.”

“She knew you didn’t mean them.”

“She thought I was gone. She saw me stop breathing and—”

Dylan moved so fast I never saw him coming. “What do you mean you stopped breathing?”

“With Julian.” I shoved at the memory before it could form. That was one place I didn’t need to return. “When he tried to send me to the astral, to help me find Grace. I was okay, but Aunt Sara freaked. She said I’m all she has.” And in turn, I’d told her she wasn’t my mother. “She said she loved me.”

More relaxed now, more normal, Dylan slid the hair from my face.

It was odd how naked that made me feel.

“I didn’t say it back.” In that moment I would have given anything to run back and do things differently, live the moment all over again. To say the words that had been trapped inside me. “I didn’t even let her finish.”

“Why not?”

“Because it was the first time,” I whispered. “It was the first time someone said those words to me, and I didn’t know how to give them back.”

With a finger beneath my chin, he tilted my face. “No,” he said. “It wasn’t.”

“What?”

“It wasn’t the first time someone said they loved you,” he said quietly. “And it wasn’t the last, either.”

I looked away, down at the fluffy ivory rug by my aunt’s bathtub, where a pair of fuzzy pink slippers sat. I had to, because I couldn’t look at him one second longer, couldn’t let him see inside me like that.

Couldn’t let myself see inside of him.

“What about Chase?”

The question, the tightness of Dylan’s voice, locked around me. The answer hurt. All Chase had to do was look at me, and my heart sang. He’d taught me so much, about benign things like New Orleans, but deeper things, too, like what it was to share your life with someone, to want and to dream, how your whole world could rise and fall on a smile.

And, I realized, rubbing my thumb along the leather still wrapped around my wrist, how easily a heart could break.

“Shouldn’t you call him?”

I looked up, back into the burn of Dylan’s eyes. His hair had again fallen into his face.

“Shouldn’t he be here?” he asked.

He should. But Chase didn’t know how to hear me, or to quiet the doubt inside him. Over twelve hours had passed with not one call, one text …

This time hurt five thousand times worse than the last.

“No,”
I managed. Little voice came. “That’s what you do.”

Something dark flashed in his eyes.

“Over and over and over again,” I said through the fragile swell inside me. “You’re here. You don’t turn. You don’t run. You don’t judge. You’re just …
here
.”

The bathroom was small. I had him against the wall. There was nowhere for him to go, no way for him to move without, first, moving me.

He didn’t try.

“You were
there,
too,” I stunned myself by admitting, and with the words, my eyes stung. “When I stopped breathing and Aunt Sara freaked, when I was in my dreams … You were with me.”

His eyes blazed, but he just stood there, so totally and completely still.

“And I need to go back,” I said, lifting my hand to his chest, where, through the soft gray cotton of his shirt, I could feel the beat of his heart, fast, erratic.

“Aunt Sara begged me not to, but I have to,” I said as the fog cleared and his hand joined mine. I didn’t need pills to find sleep. I needed Julian. “It’s the only way.”

*   *   *

“Here, drink this.”

Standing beside the bed, Dylan intercepted the mug before I could take it. “She took some allergy medicine—”

“Not a problem,” Julian said. He’d been running when we called. It had been over an hour before we reached him.

The second he’d heard about my aunt, he’d gone quiet.

“It’s just an herbal tea,” he said now. “To help her relax.”

Before, I needed that help. Now, courtesy of the pills I’d foolishly popped, I could barely hold my eyes open.

“Try it without,” Dylan said, propping a hip against the edge of the mattress. He hadn’t said anything, hadn’t tried to stop me, but I could tell he wasn’t thrilled. “She’s barely hanging on as it is.”

I forced my eyes wider, didn’t want him to know how right he was. For two hours I’d been fighting the pull. “Okay.”

As usual Julian was dressed in black, his shoulder-length hair fastened behind his neck. His closed expression was impossible to read.

“Try to relax,” he said, but that was impossible. Detective Jackson had called right before Julian arrived. The news had not been good. There was nothing. Absolutely not a single trace of my aunt beyond the time she’d walked through airport security. She’d never reached the gate. No one remembered seeing her. The security feeds showed nothing.

It was like looking for a ghost.

“Do you think it will work?” My voice was slurred, thick.

“We’re going to try something different,” Julian said. He’d suggested we project from the condo. He said that by surrounding myself with my aunt’s energy, I’d have a better chance of connecting with her—and not slipping into my past. “I’ll guide you. Tell me what you see, and I’ll tell you what to do.”

Numbly, I nodded.

“And no matter what happens, stay away from the Abyss.”

I blinked as Dylan moved closer. “The Abyss?”

“The portal between dimensions—the tear you slipped through last time, when you found your past.”

And so much more
. “But what if—”

“The past isn’t important right now,” he said. “Only the future.”

“I’m going with her,” Dylan said.

My breath stopped.

“That’s possible, right?” he asked.

Julian said nothing, but he must have nodded, because Dylan shifted beside me, sliding until the length of his leg pressed against mine. “Don’t be afraid. You won’t be alone.”

My voice was little more than a scrape. “I don’t understand…”

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Then give me your hand.”

The moment locked around me. I looked at his palm, wide and square, and slowly placed mine against it.

“It’s okay to let go,” he said, curling his fingers around my hand. “I’ve got you.”

With New Age music echoing and the allergy medicine thickening my blood, I settled against the pillows and let go.

“You’re on an elevator,” I heard Julian saying, but the faraway voice had no edges or texture.

“You’re safe.”

Something enveloped me, wrapping around, holding me tight.

“Just push a button, and let yourself go.”

With amazing lightness, I shifted toward the buttons and feathered my hand along one, saw the yellow glow and felt the elevator start to move. Down. Down.

Down …

“You’re going home. You’re going back to where you came from…”

Down.

“I want you to count backward.”

“Ten,” I whispered, drawn by the warmth, even as my fingers loosened. “Nine…”

Down …

“Eight.” Vaguely I realized Dylan was counting, too. “Seven—” His hold tightened, and the door slid open.

The glare is so bright it blinds.

I step forward: it’s all the same, the empty street with weeds overtaking crumbling concrete, puddles and trash and—

A buzz sounds, like an insect by my ear.

“Tell me what you see.”

Turning toward the voice, I see him standing there, right beside me, his hand still holding mine. “Dylan…”

“I’m here.”

He is. He’s there. Right there with me in the corners of my mind … “The buildings, do they mean anything to you?” I ask breathlessly. “Have you seen them before?”

A breeze sweeps hair against his face. “I can’t see them.”

“W-what?” Frantically I twist around. “They’re right there—”

“I know they are,” he says, his voice there, but somehow far away. “But they’re projections of
your
mind, not mine.”

I didn’t understand. “Is … is that what you are, too?”

He steps closer. “No, I’m as real as you are. But what I see is different, from my mind, not yours.”

And he didn’t like it. I can see that, can see that in the way he’s looking at me, can feel it in the way his hand almost crushes mine.

What? What could he see, what could be that bad?

But before I can ask he’s tugging me to follow him.

“Be my eyes,” he says. “Tell me what you see.”

Beyond him purple and pink stain the sky, darkening toward the horizon. But I know that’s not what he means. I head toward an overturned urn, where something small protrudes from a nearby puddle.

“A … dolphin,” I whisper, going down on a knee to touch.

“You see water?”

“No, a stuffed animal.” Dirty and torn. “An eye’s missing.”

“What else?”

Clenching the forgotten toy, I glance down the length of the street. “I think it rained.” Just like in New Orleans a few days before. “Everything’s dirty and dreary, sad.”

“Are the buildings there?”

“Yes.” I step toward them—and he follows. “They’re on both sides of the street.” Left over from that long-ago time and place, with porches and shutters, windows broken and smeared …

“Hurry! You have to hurry!”

Jerkily I twist back toward Dylan. “She’s here—I hear her!”

He looks beyond me, where the buildings stretch but he doesn’t see. “Then go,” he commands softly. “I’m right behind you.”

“Hurry! He’ll find you!”

I start to run. “Tell me where you are!”

“He has her!”
she shouts, but the swirl of the wind carries her voice from all directions.