Broken Illusions: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (9 page)

I reached for it and turned it over, and the last hope I’d had of everything being a simple coincidence quietly fell away.

EIGHT

Three young women, their images little more than bleached-out shadows, stood with their arms around each other, laughing. Two of them were blond—my mother was the only brunette.

“See something?” LaSalle asked.

Quickly I slipped the photo and mask into the book. “Nah, just stuff.” I’m not sure why I lied. It was just instinct.

Secrets, I realized. They were as much a part of me as they were of this town, and of Grace. She had a picture of my mother. And not only had she known my name, she’d scribbled it before she disappeared.

I wanted to know why.

After putting the book down, I turned to the sun streaming through the dragonfly and felt the unmistakable pull of fate and destiny and all those things my grandmother taught me not to believe in all over again.

“Nothing happened here,” I said, not sure where the words came from, but confident they were true. Whatever happened to Grace had happened somewhere else.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” I surveyed the room again, lingering beyond the back window, where ivy thrived in the dead of winter. “I can breathe. When I close my eyes, nothing flashes.”

As if to demonstrate, I did just that.

And saw the black boots.

Abruptly I opened my eyes and twisted around, looked against every wall, beneath the futon, every spot visible on the floor, even at Detective LaSalle’s expensive-looking loafers.

“Trinity?” he said as I blinked hard. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. I just…” There were no boots. “It’s nothing.”

He reached for his phone and tapped the screen. “Why don’t you touch some of her clothes,” he suggested. “That used to help your mother.”

While he texted, I went down on my knees and ran my hands along T-shirts and jeans in hot-pink crates. In another I found gypsy-style maxi dresses. The fourth held underwear. I didn’t touch those.

After checking to make sure Detective LaSalle was still focused on his phone, I wandered back to the front of the apartment and ran my hand along the love seat, careful to keep my back to him.

He never saw me swipe the picture of my mother, and slip it into my back pocket.

*   *   *

Fleurish! was a mess.

Detective LaSalle and I walked in a few minutes before five and found Aunt Sara hurriedly folding T-shirts, while keeping an eye on a group of older women clustered around the jewelry, and two more smelling candles.

We joined her. It took twenty minutes, but by the time the chatty lady from Phoenix left with the turquoise and vintage cross necklace gift wrapped, Detective LaSalle had straightened the front display, and I’d told my aunt about coming up empty at Grace’s apartment.

I wasn’t ready to talk about the picture.

“I’m bummed I couldn’t help,” I said. “I was hoping something would pop.” Like it had at the house on Prytania.

With her hair pulled into a loose ponytail at the base of her neck, Aunt Sara looked up from wrapping pink ribbon back around the spool. “You tried. That’s all you can do.”

“But it’s not enough.” Sparks shot from a votive near the end of its wick. “It’s like this vague scavenger hunt, with clues coming to me that I don’t understand or can’t remember—”

LaSalle looked up from his phone. “What clues?”

“That’s the problem,” I said. “I don’t know. Sometimes I get this feeling that there’s something there, something I’m supposed to understand. Like this morning—I was convinced I wasn’t alone, that someone was there, watching me.”

My aunt dropped the spool to the counter as the memory of Delphi’s ears flat back, her eyes locked onto something unseen, crawled through me.

“But I couldn’t move,” I murmured. “Couldn’t see. It was like I was awake but dreaming at the same time, but I couldn’t make myself go either direction, couldn’t focus.” And I could feel it again, standing right there by the candle display, the paralysis, the way my chest had burned.

“It’s like some kind of clue was
right there,
” I said. “And if I just could have gone back, back into the dream, I could have seen…”

As if in slow motion, LaSalle slid his phone into his pocket and stepped toward me. “What if,” he said, his voice really, really weird, “I can take you?”

Something crazy and fast zipped through me. “Take me—”

“No—” my aunt said, hurrying over. “We talked about this.
No
.”

He was tall and she wasn’t, so even though she stood right up in his space, all he had to do was look past her to make eye contact with me.

“Aaron.”

Something odd flashed in his eyes. “Sara—”

“I said no.”

I’d never heard them raise their voices at each other. I wasn’t even sure they’d had anything as basic as a disagreement.

“No to what?” I asked, stepping toward them. I could tell that it was big.

But it was like I wasn’t even there. While my heart was about to pound out of my chest, they stood locked in a silent battle of wills.

“Um, hello?” I tried again. “One of you needs to talk.”

Detective LaSalle looked away first, toward me. “Your dreams,” he said gently. “What if I can take you back into your dreams?”

I felt my mouth drop open. “That’s possible?”

“With hypnosis, yes,” he said as my aunt glared at him.

I made myself swallow—but so didn’t understand, not what he was talking about—not why she was so edgy. “Hypnosis?”

He stepped closer, reaching for her hand.

She yanked it back.

“It’s called dream regression therapy,” he said. “It’s still experimental.”

“Which is why she’s not doing it.” Aunt Sara breathed. “It’s too dangerous.”

But a new door swung open inside me, revealing a world of possibility I’d never imagined. But I’d hoped. I’d … obsessed. What if I
could
get back into my dreams? What if I could explore what I saw, see
more
? That would have made a huge difference with finding Jessie.

“What’s dangerous about it? How soon can we start?”

“As soon as you want,” Detective LaSalle said as if my aunt was the one no longer present. And I could tell that really pissed her off.

Aunt Sara was many things, but willing to be taken lightly was not one of them.

“There’s no proof that it’s dangerous,” he said, answering my first question second. “I would be right there with you—”

Aunt Sara grabbed his wrist. “You don’t know that. Julian said it’s all hypothetical.”

Julian?

Fascinated, I glanced out the window, to the sign glowing across the street.

“He doesn’t know what will happen,” Aunt Sara said, as something inside me hummed.

“It’s not natural. It’s not
normal
. You put her under and lower her into a dream—what if she finds something she doesn’t know how to handle? What if she can’t wake up?”

Shadows fell from the narrow building, darkness gaping from the second-story window.

“She could go into the wrong dream,” Aunt Sara kept on. “Unlock something that can’t be put back—”

“Wait a minute.” I shifted my attention back to her. “Let’s start over—you can actually put me back into my dreams?”

“Not me,” LaSalle said. “Julian.”

Aunt Sara brought her hands together, as if in prayer. “Trinity.” Her voice was beyond strained. “Please. This isn’t a good idea.”

“But Julian has a ton of clients.” And he was right across the street. “If he can help—”

“Dreams are supposed to be natural,” she said as the bell on the door jingled and several men in business suits stepped inside.

“Especially
your
dreams.” She lowered her voice. “And your mother’s. They come to you when they’re supposed to. It’s not something you can force.”

Scared, I realized. My aunt was scared.

“You can’t start fooling around with stuff you don’t understand.”

God, she would have freaked if she knew about the Ouija board.

I looked at her, and felt my heart twist. From day one, she’d been supportive, taking me into her home, her life. Listening when I talked and answering questions no one else would. She’d been my constant, the one person I could rely on when everything else blew up in my face.

Seeing her like this, pale, rattled, unnerved me.

“You mean I’m supposed to
understand
this?” I asked with a quick little smile. And then she smiled, kind of, and as I reached for her hand and squeezed, the awful tension of the moment released.

“It’s almost six,” Detective LaSalle said, and he offered up a smile of his own, the slow, lazy kind that guys used when trying to wiggle out of trouble. “Am I in the doghouse, or can we still go to eat?”

*   *   *

Customers kept streaming in.

Normally Mondays were dead, but with Mardi Gras a few weeks away, every time I turned around, the door was opening. Aunt Sara had warned me that was going to happen, but I’d thought she meant on the weekends.

“I think I need an eight,” a sweet schoolteacher from Wisconsin said. While a few of her friends tried on necklaces, she sat on a velvet ottoman, trying on a pair of fleur-de-lis rain boots. We’d only had them for a week, but with funky colors and a cute two-inch heel, they were flying out the door.

“Be right back.” Turning, I widened my eyes at Chase before heading to the back room. We’d been trying to talk for half an hour, but never got more than a few minutes before someone else came in.

With each interruption, he got quieter.

He said nothing as he went back to folding the
FLEUREVER
T-shirts for the second time since he arrived. I didn’t get why people couldn’t leave things the way they found them.

“Here you go,” I said a few minutes later, returning with a big box.

The woman shoved aside the size 7s and reached for the 8s. “Thank you.” Sliding her feet in, she stood and headed toward her friends, more dancing than walking. “Char! What do you think? Aren’t these great?”

With a necklace around her neck and one dangling from each hand, the taller woman turned. “Oh … those are so
cute
!”

That’s the way it had been all evening.

By the time I handed them their bags—with two pairs of boots and five necklaces—the Mardi Gras CD had run through three more songs, and Chase had finished the T-shirts.

“Maybe we should lock the door,” I said with a quick glance toward the front of the shop.

Through the glass, from across the street, the sign for
HORIZONS
glowed—and something inside me pulled.

Chase didn’t answer.

Turning toward the register, I found him not three feet away, standing real still. He looked all casual in his jeans and tight, retro Aerosmith shirt, but I knew he was anything but. And I knew exactly what he was staring at.

The door to the back room.

Crossing to him, I lifted my hands to his shoulders, but dropped them without touching. The bruise, partially hidden by the sweep of bangs, still discolored his temple. If possible, the scrapes along his cheekbone looked worse. “You okay?”

“I wish you’d told me all this last night.”

“I know.” I should have. But a lifetime of being warned not to share my secrets—or my fears—made it hard to open up. It was that old habits thing. Even bad ones could be hard to break.

“I just didn’t think the gory details mattered.” Big mistake.

“What matters is you telling me, versus Amber telling me.”

And it was a big difference, I got that.

Stepping into him, I lifted my hands to his chest. “She can’t stand that we’re together.”

“Then don’t give her ammo.”

I smiled, trying to lighten the moment. “I don’t know, the kind that blows up in her face doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.”

His lips quirked—just enough to tug at a scab and cause a trickle of blood.

I lifted my hand to wipe it away, but he turned before I could, stepping toward the door. This time he pushed it open and walked through.

With a quick glance toward the front windows, I made sure no one was about to come in, and followed.

The warmth stopped me. Saturday night it had almost been cold enough to see my breath.

“Your mom,” he said, skimming a hand along the worktable. It was cluttered again, full of Mardi Gras beads ready to be tagged and put out front.

“You think she was trying to warn you?”

I looked away, toward the walls that had looked to bleed. Now, with the bright light overhead, they looked cheerful and red.

“I don’t know.” That was the problem. I had an ability—a gift. But no one could tell me exactly where it came from (other than my mother’s side of the family), and how it worked. “I can’t say she wasn’t, but I can’t say she was, either. Maybe it was my subconscious or some kind of psychic SOS.”

Chase turned to look at me.

“But,” I made myself continue, “I keep thinking no matter where the message came from, maybe the Ouija board is like another channel for information to come through.” It was hard to put it into words, but to me, it was starting to make sense.

“With Jessica,” I said, my hand automatically lifting to the leather bracelet around my wrist. “I
saw
her.” Two nights before she went missing.

“But with Grace, it’s just her name and maybe her voice. I haven’t actually
seen
anything.” Just the darkness and the cold—

Another wave swept through me, so fast I winced.

Chase lunged toward me. “Trinity—”

“No, I’m okay,” I said, but he reached for me anyway.

I looked up at him, and hated what I had to ask. But I had so many questions—and knew only one person who could answer them.

“Does she ever talk about it?” I asked quietly. “Jessica?”

The change in him was subtle, like a door slowly closing, but the result was impossible to miss. “Not much.”

I made myself continue. “In the hospital, she told me she could feel me, when she was alone in that room. Do you think you could get her to talk to me? To tell me what it was she felt—”

The way his mouth tightened made the bleeding start all over again. “T … you know she’s not comfortable around people yet.”