Broken Illusions: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (37 page)

Dylan was a heartbeat behind me.

“They’re wrong,” I said, trying to run as he reached for me. They’d been careless, hadn’t looked close enough. “They have to be!”

He caught me and turned me so that I had to look up to see him. “I’ll check,” he said. “But I want you to wait—”

“Don’t say it,” I said, fighting to breathe. “Don’t even think it.”

“Trinity—”

“Because you can’t make me,” I said, and before I had the chance to finish, I saw the light flicker through his eyes, the memory of the words he’d given me the day before, when I’d asked him why he didn’t try to stop me.

Because I wasn’t the one he was trying to stop.

Because he knew I would only keep trying.

And one time he might not be there.

And it only took a second …

And that left only the truth, no matter how much he hated it: the safest place for me was with him.

On a rough breath his hand slid to mine, and, holding on, we ran toward the windswept silence of the entrance.

It was all there, all waiting, the redbrick path and once-cheerful yellow building with white trim, the green railing and empty turnstiles, the naked mannequin leaning against the edge of a darkened ticket booth. Farther back, the green building that had once welcomed visitors, now with peeling paint and mud-smeared windows.

I slowed. “Oh, God.”

It was almost impossible to process the desolation.

Dylan stopped and slid a hand to my hip. “You don’t have to—”

“Yes, I do,” I said, taking off toward the green building, where a white door hung open. “Maybe the cops are still here,” I said, slipping inside. “Maybe they left their cars out of—”

For the second time in less than ten minutes, the park stole my words.

Nothing prepared me. Nothing could have. Dylan told me the park had been abandoned. He’d told me everyone walked away one day, and never walked back. Like the park was stuck in some bizarre time vacuum, preserved but crumbling, waiting but fading, like a terminally ill woman who got up every morning and put on her makeup and her jewelry, styled her hair, did everything she could to look the way she once had, but all you had to do was see her in the bright glare of the sun to know that it was all just … an illusion.

Furniture still sat, falling apart and rusted. Computers and printers and telephones waited for users that never returned. That never would. Trash cans overflowed. Paper littered every available surface, a horizontal smear along the rotting walls that, after my short time in the city, I knew represented the water line.

It looked to be at least four feet.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered, gagging at a decapitated teddy bear trapped beneath a mud-caked computer monitor.

Dylan came up beside me. “It’s all like this.”

I spun toward him, felt my stomach twist at the sight of the whiteboard behind him, where the names of all the rides were still listed, awaiting assignment.

“Aunt Sara,” I whispered, and without a word, we were moving again, making our way through the maze of boxes and abandoned electronics, and trying not to breathe.

Staggering, I made it across the room, where a door led to the inside of the park, where the sun still shone and a fan swirled in the cool breeze, concrete crumbled and weeds encroached … and the ghost town stretched before me, exactly as it had in my dreams.

“This is it,” I murmured. “This is what I saw.”

Lifting his gun, he stepped in front of me. “We’ll take one at a time,” he said, heading for the first building on our left.

I wanted to run. I wanted to shout for my aunt as loud as I could. But even raw and threadbare, I knew what a mistake that would be.

The element of surprise was our best weapon.

Against the sweep of the wind, we made our way inside what had once been a gift shop, Dylan hugging the mold-smeared walls as he led the way with me tucked in behind him. And again, the moment twisted, and time disintegrated.

Stuffed animals littered the floor. Many had been gutted. I had no doubt rats watched. “Aunt Sara!” I wanted to scream, but bit down against the automatic rise of bile.

“It’s so still,” I whispered.

Dylan edged deeper into the shadows. “Someone’s been here.”

I pressed against his back, staring over his shoulder at the fast-food bags at the base of the counter. The cash register had long since been busted open.

“It’s fresh.” He pointed to a half-eaten po-boy. “By nightfall that’ll be gone.”

Numbly I closed my eyes and called to them through my mind, to my aunt and to Grace, to Delphi.
“We’re here,”
I said without words.
“Just hold on…”

The temperature dropped as we made our way past the unseeing eyes of teddy bears, outside past a photo kiosk where family pictures were little more than smears of color, to the snack shop where fading signs advertised hot dogs and fries and popcorn, but tables and chairs lay on their sides.

“Why is this still here?” I whispered as we made our way into another building, where the only light came through slivers and cracks.

Dylan stopped.

“What is it?”

He used his phone to cast light into a far corner—and found another discarded mannequin. I saw the hair first, tangled, strewn out like mud-caked straw. The clothes were typical New Orleans, a long, gypsy-print maxi dress—

And then she moved.

THIRTY-FIVE

My breath stabbed against my throat.

“Omigod!” I whisper-screamed, because I knew, before I even crossed the room and dropped to my knees, I knew who lay crumpled in the corner.

“Grace!” I reached for her and turned her gently into me, felt everything inside me cringe at the sight of her eyes swollen shut.

“She’s alive,” Dylan said at my side, sliding the hair from her battered face. Dried blood caked her pale cheeks like garish costume makeup. Her lips were dry, busted. “Pulse steady,” he said, easing his hand from her neck to her chest.

“Grace,”
I tried, but only a rasp leaked through. “I’m here—we’re here. Can you hear me?”

Her eyelids fluttered, but did not open. I wasn’t sure they could.

“Oh, God,” I said, looking up at Dylan. “Who would do this?”

His eyes, drenched with the same darkness that twisted through me, met mine. “It’s good that she’s alive.”

Or was it? Was it good that she was alive? Was it good that she would have to live with … this? And immediately my thoughts turned to Jessica.

Sometimes survival could be its own hell.

“My aunt,” I said, twisting around to the boxes and crates and debris behind me. “She’s got to be here—”

Dylan swung around, gun first, eyes sharp.

I lunged after him. “What?”

“Someone’s out there,” he murmured, pushing to his feet and edging toward the front of the snack shop.

I scrambled after him. “We can’t just leave her!”

He kept his gun in front of him. “We have to—for now. She’s stable. She’ll be okay.”

I spun back to her, lying so broken and battered and still, and felt something inside me reach.

“We’ll be back,” I promised. “Just hold on.”

Wordlessly, Dylan made his way to the window, using his free hand to wipe the grime.

I felt him stiffen in that one horrible, fractured heartbeat before the sound of my name ripped through the silence—and we both started to run.

Outside, the bleached-out glow of late afternoon blinded. From the forgotten lake in the center the wind rushed, pushing and distorting, laughing. But above the cruel soundtrack, the voice registered again.

“Trinity!”

Chase.
“Omigod.” Heart slamming, I sprinted past a Southern belle swirling by herself and a forgotten wheelchair on its side, a falling-down gazebo, swings swaying with imaginary riders. “Chase!”

Dylan shot ahead of me, toward the roller coaster hulking against the blood-washed horizon.

Everything was twisting, spinning, as if I was on the broken-down carousel in front of me, and it wouldn’t stop, just kept accelerating …

And then I saw him, emerging from the far side, Chase—with Delphi cradled in his arms.

I stopped hard, slamming into an invisible wall, and almost went to my knees.

He caught me before I could, his hand taking me by the arm and steadying me, as Delphi started to squirm.

“Omigod—omigod…” I didn’t know what else to say. “What’s going on? Where did you find her?”

And then Dylan was there, taking Delphi into his arms, leaving only me and Chase, and the wind whipping frantically around us.

I didn’t understand. Didn’t understand what I saw in his eyes—or felt crushing through me. “Chase,” I whispered. His shirt—his favorite, the gray Affliction one I’d given him for Christmas—was torn, his jeans covered in mud. “What are you doing here?”

His bangs fell against the blue of his eyes, making them look bluer somehow. “I’m here because you are,” he said, his hand sliding down my arm to close around the leather band still circling my wrist.

“I didn’t take it off,” I whispered. “I couldn’t.”

His eyes met mine. “I shouldn’t have walked away last night,” he said, as my throat locked up on me. “I was outside your condo all morning. Trying to figure out what to say. And then I saw you tearing out of the garage…”

With Dylan. “You followed us,” I breathed, shoving at the hair slapping my face.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”

And then I started to cry. So much. So much had happened in the space of less than a day. So much had … broken.

“My aunt,” I managed, swallowing hard. “She’s gone and the guy who took Jessica has her and he has Grace, too, but we found her and she’s okay—”

“Wait, wait—the guy who took Jessica is dead—”

“No,” I said, and then I was the one holding on, my hand finding his arm and squeezing so, so tight. “He’s not. We were wrong. It’s all some sick game. The wrong person died.”

He dragged me closer. “What are you talking about?”

“I-I can see him,” I said, looking around me, to where Dylan stood a few feet away with Delphi in his arms—and the gun in his hand. “I can see through his eyes—his dreams and his memories—and he did it,” I said as Chase pulled me to him.

“He did it all,” I said, holding on even as I kept looking—looking, past the kids’ play area with the twisting tube slides, past a rotting stage and huge carnival mask tilted on its side.
She was here.
“He took Jessica and those other girls and—”

My words died the second I saw the ice cream cone. It swirled up from the corner of the light blue building, with dark red letters along the top:
BARBE’S ICE CREAM SHOP.

And everything inside me stopped. “Oh, my God,” I whispered—or maybe I screamed. “This is it—this is what she was painting.” And I could feel, I could feel Chase’s fingers digging into me as I tried to pull away. “This is where I die.”

He held on tighter, wouldn’t let me go. “What are you talking about?”

The wind kept blowing, I knew that it did. I saw the flags flapping, and my own hair slapping my face. But I could feel nothing except the cold bleed of shock.

“The girl in my dream,” I murmured, and then Dylan was there, too, Dylan and Chase, one on each side of me. Each holding on. “This is what she was painting—this ice cream shop.” Two years before. Two years before, a girl I’d never met had painted a snapshot from my future …

Numbly I looked up and saw the hawk soaring against the crimson glow of late afternoon—and the mouse dangling from its claws. “Oh, God. I should never have said anything. I should have kept watching, then I would have seen…”

Chase stepped closer, blocking my view. “Seen what?”

And I could hear it in his deceptively quiet voice, the tight coil of horror. “Me,” I whispered, dry-eyed now. Calm. Amazingly, horribly calm. “I would have seen me.”

“You don’t know that—”

“But I do,” I said. “Because that’s what she did. There were other pictures, pictures of me…” Dying.

“No.” This time it was Dylan who spoke, Dylan’s voice that broke. “You’re not going to die here.”

I swung toward him, oddly disconnected.

“But it does end,” he vowed. “It stops here.”

“You have to get out of here,” Chase said as I whipped back toward him. “Before anything—”

“Not without my aunt—”

“I’ll look.” It was all there in his eyes, all that was unspoken between us, the apology and the regret, the fear.
The love.
“But you need to get out of here.”

Stepping into him, I shook my head. “No, I can’t…”

He looked beyond me, to Dylan. “Get her out of here,” he said. “There’s a warehouse by the employee entrance where I came in. There was a door open…”

I grabbed for him, tried to stop him.

“Stay with Dylan,” he gritted out. “He has the gun.”

The wind slowed, started to whisper. “Chase, no—”

He pulled me to him for a quick hard kiss, a kiss that promised all that I’d seen glowing in his eyes.

Twisting away, he took off toward the roller coaster.

I lunged for him—but Dylan caught me, held me. “Come on.” His voice was as gentle as his hold. “He’s right. We’ve got to get out of here.” And then he was lifting Delphi toward me, and she was in my arms, and together we were running past the Mardi Gras Madness ride, with its forgotten cars empty and waiting in a line along the rusted track, darkness ready to swallow them, with beads scattered against cracked concrete, and a jester hanging upside down. Waiting.

*   *   *

Gift shops and cafes and restrooms, they were all there, just as they’d been before the storm. Waiting. Still.

And every one we passed, we searched. Broken glass crunched beneath our feet, graffiti swirled against the walls. We weren’t the only ones who’d been there. That was clear. Trash lay strewn everywhere, abandoned like the gutted, water-sogged remains of stuffed animals.

“God, where is she?” I cried as we ran toward the triple loops of another roller coaster. “Aunt Sara has to be here—” I broke off and listened, grabbing the BlackBerry the second I heard another ring.

“Chase,” I breathed as Dylan swung back toward me. “Omigod, where are you? Did you find her?”