Shattered Dreams: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (31 page)

“Lost?” she asked, and my throat got totally tight on me.

Was I lost?

Oh, yeah.

I had been for a long, long time.

“No,” I said. “I was … looking for someone.”

We reached the other side and most of her group moved toward the left, in the direction of Café du Monde. But along the Moonwalk that separated the Quarter from the river, the woman with the heartbreakingly kind smile hesitated. “Would you like to join us while you wait?”

She was worried about me. I could tell from the way she looked at me. I could only imagine what I looked like with my hair tangled and stringy, having dried naturally after getting rained on. And my jeans and T-shirt—I’d been in the rain, in that disgusting room, in the police station, and on Bourbon Street.

“No,” I said forcing a smile—
making
a smile. All the while I looked around, watching groups and couples and loners coming and going on both sides of the street. “I’m fine.”

She so did not believe me. “Okay, well if you change your mind, we’ll be over there getting beignets,” she said. Then she flashed a deck of cards.

Not tarot. The playing kind.

“And we’ll probably be a while,” she said.

I swallowed, nodded. “Thank you,” I said, and then I had the stupidest urge to hug her.

But I didn’t. Instead I edged closer to the old Civil War cannon in the heart of Artillery Park, which afforded the absolute best view of Jackson Square. There I again lost myself in a group of tourists busy with cameras and cell phones, while I watched.

I don’t know how long I stood on the platform, while a barge inched its way upriver and cars zoomed past on Decatur. But eventually the ship vanished around the bend and my breath evened out and I started to move again. No one followed me. No one paid much attention. I’m not even sure anyone noticed. I kicked a rock across the railroad tracks and made my way to the brick walkway toward the park frequented by national reporters shooting in New Orleans, with its benches and statues and picture-perfect view of the river. I wanted to sit. And think. To let myself go back to that room on Prytania, if not in body then in mind, and remember.

From somewhere unseen, the wail of a saxophone infiltrated the serenity of the riverfront. Up above high thin clouds skittered across a nearly full moon. I walked along the levee, soaking it all in, the rhythm of the river and the call of the tugboat, the wharf and the glow of the riverboat
Natchez
up ahead, the couple making out in the shadow of a monument. I probably watched them longer than I should have.

Chase.

Thinking about him hurt.

I looked away, toward sharp gray rocks sloping and crowding down to the moon-dappled river. I kicked a small one, watched it bump down to the edge, then vanish beneath the murky water.

Closing my eyes, I invited the memories to come to me here, where no one else would see or witness or judge. To give me detail—answers. To show me the truth. It was the only way I’d ever find out what really happened to Jessica.

But even as the thought formed, another truth cut in. I could let myself see. I could find Jessica, lead the police straight to her. But in the process, I’d only succeed in making myself look even more guilty.

Frustrated, I looked downriver, toward the massive Crescent City Connection bridge twinkling like fallen stars. My mother had known the risks, and she’d taken them. And look where it had gotten her.

I went to kick another rock, but stilled, knowing—
knowing
—that I was no longer alone. I hung there frozen, absolutely unable to move, even as the panic choked off my breath. I could feel him behind me. Feel him … watching.

No,
I told myself.
No! Not like this.

Abruptly the moment released me and I twisted around, saw the shadowed figure not ten yards behind me. It was a public place, frequented by locals and tourists. But I would have recognized the distinctive mask covering his eyes anywhere, the tilted edges and deceptively beautiful black feathers fanning up from the center.

The knife in his hand was new.

On a silent scream I turned and took off. The truth chased closed behind. On Bourbon Street he’d been just one among many. There, alcohol flowed, inhibitions crumbled, and anonymity ruled. Strangers came on to strangers every hour of every day.

The fact he’d followed when I’d been so deliberately careful shattered the illusion of insignificance.

Music from the
Natchez
grew louder. The boat wasn’t far. There would be people there, security guards. If I could just reach the wharf—

A jerky glance over my shoulder told me I’d never make it. He was gaining on me, only a few steps behind. With another hard burst of adrenaline I lunged forward, but against the uneven bricks, my ankle went out from under me, and my feet tangled. I staggered, trying to catch myself. But momentum was stronger, and I went down. My hands and knees hit first. The sharp edges of rocks placed to protect sliced. My elbow buckled, and my head smashed against granite.

My vision blurred. Stars danced. Shock muted the feel of the foot to my back. But even as darkness came, there was no mistaking the terrifying sensation of rolling.

TWENTY-SIX

The cold shocked me. It was like a thousand splinters hitting all at once, then nothing. Just nothing. No pinpricks. No pain. No anything.

I tried to open my eyes, but they wouldn’t work.

I tried to use my arms, my legs, but they were heavy, motionless.

There was only the sensation of sinking, of breath leaving, and tightness.

I told myself to fight—begged myself to fight.

But there was no fight in me, only a sweet lethargy, a numbness that made everything else go away.

Except Jessica. Through a swirl of shimmering blue and white light I saw her as she’d been before, when I’d kneeled in that disgusting closet. She’d had her arms around her knees, and she’d been rocking. Now she sat cross-legged, twirling ratty hair around her index finger. Over and over again. There was something dark smeared around her mouth. Blood, I thought at first. But then she lifted her left hand, and I saw the chocolate bar. She took a small bite and again started to rock, staring off into nothingness.

And through the silence, a tugboat cried.

Where are you,
I thought, but she just looked at me, and cried.

The cold came again, sharper, endless needles of it. I felt myself reach for her, felt my arm stretch out—and touch. She grabbed my hand and pulled, drew me to her—and held on.

I don’t know why I fought. I’ll never know why I fought. But I did. I jerked back and tried to pull her with me, away from the darkness. But then the heaviness seeped back into my limbs, and I stopped moving altogether.

Warmth then. Cozy, secure. Complete. Instead of sinking I drifted, as if carried. Cradled. Safe, was all I could think. Finally, at last, safe. There I lingered, like an infant nestled in a blanket, letting go totally and completely.

Time lost meaning. Fear lost substance. Secure there, I floated in the unexpectedly warm embrace for a long time. It was all I’d wanted. All I’d wanted when I was a little girl and I’d seen Sunshine dead days before she’d died, when years later I’d found my grandmother on the kitchen floor. All I’d wanted only a few hours before, when Detective DeMarcus Jackson had confronted me—and Chase had backed away.

Arms around me. Holding on. Cradling.

It was all I’d wanted.

That’s why I didn’t try to open my eyes. Because I didn’t want the dream to end, or the warmth to fade away.

But even that fear faded, replaced by a growing curiosity to explore the promise of what came next. Already, I could feel it spreading through me like sunshine.

Would Heaven be sparkling and shimmering white? Would there be angels flying around? Would I hear harps?

Would I see my parents?

My eyes opened, slowly at first, tentatively, bracing against the rush of air.

Nothing prepared me for the darkness—or the feel of flesh, of strong arms around my body. Soft lips against the top of my head.

“Chase…” I whispered, and abruptly he pulled back, scorched me with the burning glow of silver.
“You.”

Jim Fourcade’s son stared down at me, his face a sharp collection of lines and angles, his hair damp and slicked back to reveal his eyes, narrow, concentrated, as if he didn’t trust himself to so much as blink, much less look away.

It all came back on a violent rush, the guy on Bourbon Street, with the mask and the voice like liquid sin, the feeling in the bar, the awareness only a few minutes before, on the river’s edge, when I’d spun around to see the knife.

“You were following me,”
I whispered, as awareness zipped like an overdose of adrenaline. I surged against him, pushed and shoved and—

He held me steady, tight.
“Easy there,”
he said, much as he had before when he’d asked if I was lost, all low and warm and hypnotic. I felt myself still, felt myself force a breath.

And that’s when I noticed the blood. It was on his hands, his T-shirt, a thin streak vanishing at the whiskers along his jaw. “You’re bleeding—”

He stayed steady, unaffected. Nonblinking. Just holding me. Watching. “Rocks are sharp.”

“Omigod, the knife…” My mind raced. Questions splintered. Answers refused to form. Jim Fourcade was my mother’s friend. She’d trusted him with her life. This guy was his son … “That was you.”

“No.”

“Yes, it was! I saw—” Or had I? Had I seen? Had I seen anything? Anything real? Or had it all been something else altogether, like the nonexistent Victorian room off the courtyard in the Quarter, something with neither form nor shape, left over from the images of Jessica in the darkness?

“Easy … don’t try to talk.”

But that was impossible. “Did you see anyone? A man? With a knife?”

His hand lifted to my face and eased a strand of wet hair from my eyes. “There was no man.”

“W-what?”

“No knife.”

Just like there’d been no cat that evening in the Quarter, when I’d turned and Chase had vanished.

But there had been. I knew that. Maybe not for Chase, and maybe not for Jim Fourcade’s son, but the cat had been as real as the man with the knife.

But only for me.

A wave of cold swept through me, bringing a shiver. Instinctively I turned toward the warmth, and he held me tighter, cradling me against his body. And finally little things began to register, like the way he held me sprawled in his lap, our legs tangled, his arms anchored around me. Before, at his father’s house, he’d seemed lanky, maybe even thin. But the proximity of my body to his told a different story.

“What happened?” Fragments of memory drifted, but none of them fit together. “Why are you holding me?”

“You asked me to.”

We were both wet. The night air was cool, the breeze slipping against my damp clothes. But I didn’t feel … any of it. Only heat, as if, like his father, his body burned from the inside out. “When?”

“After you started breathing again. You were cold.”

I stilled. “Started breathing again?” And then it all came back to me, hard and fast and without mercy, the fall, rolling over the rocks toward the river, the startling slap of cold. Sinking. The leadenness of my body. The weight dragging at me—like it had less than a week before, in the dream Aunt Sara had pulled me from. I’d woken before finding out what came next.

Him, I now realized. This guy I’d seen for the first time only the day before had gone into the river after me, pulled me back.

Given me breath.

His breath.

“… I don’t even know your name,” I whispered.

His eyes met mine. “Dylan,” he said, shifting me away from him as he stood and extended a hand. “Come on … you need to get out of those clothes.”

Dylan. I stared at his hand, the wide square palm and blunt-tipped fingers. Open. Waiting. Then at the rocky slope on which we sat, the river beyond, with the play of moonlight and stars against the dark blanket of water. Everything looked exactly as it had before I’d fallen.

But that was the thing about one moment to the next. No two were ever the same. With every exhale life shifted, moved forward.

You could never go back.

Slowly, I put my palm to his, and stood. “I don’t want to go home.”

*   *   *

In the river, the water had claimed me. Now the cascade cleansed. In the small white bathtub I stood with my eyes closed and my head tilted, letting warmth stream against me. All the while memories taunted, and thoughts teased. I tried to separate reality from fantasy from … nightmare.

But clarity evaded me.

I’d seen Jessica. That was real. I’d returned to the house on Prytania and invited the images to return. That had happened. I’d seen her—and Pitre.

That’s where the uncertainty began.

Someone had spoken to me on Bourbon Street—
You lost, little girl?

Jim Fourcade’s son?

Or my imagination.

Someone had followed me—or had they?

Now,
the young psychic, Grace, had asked,
or all your life?

With the cooling of the water, I tried to make sense of the jumbled images. There’d been a long dark corridor and some kind of horn—or siren.

Vision—or memory?

And the man, the one with the mask and the knife. The one I’d run from. Had he been there? Had he been real? Or had he simply been part of the same vision … the same memory?

Dylan Fourcade
had
been there. He was real. And he was in the next room, doing God only knew what, while I stood in his shower. Naked. Separated only by a closed door—without a lock.

It was an odd feeling. I probably should have been frightened. But he, this complete stranger, had gone into the murky waters of the river after me. He’d dragged me out, brought me back.

When I looked into the silver of his eyes …

I don’t know how long I stood there before the water cooled—
before I even noticed that it had gone from hot to cold
—but finally I stepped out and toweled off. I pulled on the huge black T-shirt he’d given me, hesitating at the scent of soap and leather and something else, something vague and spicy.