Shattered Dreams: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (33 page)

He laughed. “Herbs … chamomile mostly, buchu leaf, I think. Lemongrass. White oak.”

Fatigue pulled at me. It felt like the day had lasted forever, and in a way, it had. The clock beside the bed read 10:26. Only twelve hours before—

I blocked the thought, sipping again, more eagerly this time. The initial bitterness gave way to smoothness as I took a third sip while Jim Fourcade’s son flicked off the lamp and slipped from the room.

It never occurred to me that he was drugging me.

Still wearing only his boxy T-shirt, I slipped between the sheets and released a slow breath, my thoughts drifting from the awareness of sleeping in a stranger’s bed, to the veiled anticipation of—

The thought never finished. Sleep came hard and fast. Consciousness dissolved. And then the long corridor opened before me, wider than the hallway in Dylan’s apartment, grimy but oddly sterile. Abandoned but not empty. Doors lined either side, all closed. Except one.

Yellowy light pooled outside a room on the right, and I felt myself start to walk, even as I told myself to turn away. Go back. But my legs kept moving toward the light, drawn like a magnet, until I stood outside. There I tried to breathe, gagged instead.

“Trinity.”

The voice jolted through me and I turned, saw her. Saw Jessica. Sitting against the wall with her knees to her chest, a stained white gown covering her body. She rocked. Her eyes were wide, dark. Vacant. Her hair was stringy, so far from cheerleader perfect that my chest automatically tightened.

“Please,” she whispered, but it didn’t sound like her. The voice was too thin. “Help me…”

Frozen, I watched her lift an arm and reach for me, tried to make myself step back. But movement would not come. Only Jessica’s frail, pale arm, reaching out with some kind of weird band wrapped around her bicep.

“Please…”
she whispered, but then the light went out and darkness bled in, pulsing, throbbing, all except for the glow of a flashlight that appeared on the other side of the room … where a Mardi Gras mask lay discarded.

I screamed. Or at least I tried. I broke the hold of paralysis and backed away, started to run. Tried to breathe. But the darkness kept closing around me.

“Trinity…”

I spun around as the lights flashed and bright white bathed the corridor. Toward the right, two double doors. To the left, some kind of circular—

The flash killed it all, brought instead a glowing, fragmented window. Hands grabbed me, dragged me. Something heavy pushed against my chest. Gasping, I swung my elbows—and froze.

“Hey … I’m here. You’re okay.”
The words were low, strong, as drugging as—

I made my eyes open, felt the scream stall in my throat. The eyes were electric blue, tilted, and absolutely totally unblinking.

“There you go,” came a quiet, mesmerizing voice, and I turned to find Dylan by my side. “You’re okay.”

I blinked, blinked again. But the weight on my chest remained, the sleek, Siamese cat with its penetrating gaze and sable body. Its ears were black, perfectly pointy.

Through the hazy light I saw Dylan lift a hand to run it along the animal’s muscular back. “It’s okay—he won’t hurt you.”

I tried to breathe, coughed instead. It seemed I’d been doing a lot of that all day, trying to breathe. My whole body burned, as if I’d been running and running—

“Tell me,” Dylan said. “Tell me what you saw.”

Everything swirled. The long corridor and the small room, Jessica on the floor, the mask …

“Hurts so bad,” I whispered, pressing my hands to the throbbing at my temples.

Dylan lifted his hand from the eerily still cat and brought it to rest against the back of mine. “The man with the knife … did you see him again?”

Soft light spilling in from the hallway cast his face in an array of shadows. I watched them play against the faint goatee at his jaw, the hollow of his cheek. “You said there was no one there,” I reminded. Just him. And me.

His expression tightened. “That doesn’t mean you didn’t see him.”

I glanced at the clock, saw the hour approaching midnight. Had I really been asleep for over an hour?

Before, in his kitchen, I’d asked him if his father had sent him to guard my body.

I wish it was just your body.

Questions surged. Answers pierced. Dylan knew that I saw things. And he knew they were real.

Suddenly the cat nudged my chin with his mouth—and nipped. I pulled back, couldn’t stop looking at those unblinking blue eyes. “I … didn’t see him before.”

“He saw you,” Dylan said. “Bakta likes to watch before he comes out.”

I’m not sure what made me lift my hand, and touch the cat’s wiry fur. “Bakta?”

Dylan … grinned. “Black Tail—that’s what happens when you get named by a two-year-old.” He gave the cat a good hard scratch between its pointy black ears, then nudged the weight from my chest. “Here,” he said, slipping the mug back into my hands. “This will help.”

I stared at the tea, the bitterness that had given way to something smooth and inviting … then sleep.

“I’m scared,” I admitted for the first time, and God help me, the dark glow in Dylan’s eyes touched me as surely as if he’d returned his hand to mine.

“I know you are.”

“I didn’t ask for this.”

“No one does,” he said, and there was a very real sadness to his voice. “Doesn’t change anything.”

For a long moment I watched him, perched there on the edge of his bed, looking as angry as he did … regretful. Then I drew the mug back to my mouth, and sipped.

“Try to get some rest,” he said, standing and backing away, even as I sipped again. “I’m one room away.”

I watched him leave, wanted to feel glad and grateful that he was gone and I was alone. But then the edges of memory slipped closer, and I saw her again. Saw Jessica.

Earlier, I’d fallen off immediately. But this time sleep hovered just out of reach. I don’t know how long I sat there, cross-legged with Dylan’s sheets tangled around my legs, staring at the tea but seeing a kaleidoscope of images. But I do know when I got up: when the phone rang. It was a faint sound, a muted song clip from the front room. If there’d been any other sound, I probably wouldn’t have heard it. And then I would never have known.

Maybe I should have stayed in his bed. That would have been the right thing to do. Dylan was a stranger. I had no right to his phone conversations. And yet something drew me toward the edge of the hall, where I pressed my back to the wall, and listened.

“Didn’t you get my text?”

Slowly, I let out a breath.

“Yeah,” Dylan went on, and with a quick glance I saw that he sat at the far side of the room, at the dark blue milk crates that doubled as a computer desk. The laptop glowed. “She’s still here,” he said, and the words—simple, direct—went straight through me.

“I got her to drink some more,” he said, and immediately my hand found my mouth, and my stomach churned. “No. Not a thing.”

I wanted to gag. I wanted to run. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t move.

“Shit,” he muttered. “That’s messed up.” A moment of silence, then: “I’ll call the aunt.”

The sense of disappointment, of betrayal, cut in hard and fast—and released me from my inability to move. I staggered back to his bedroom, looked around wildly. Blindly. I’d trusted him. I’d believed him. Yet there he was, about to call my aunt, despite the fact I’d asked him not to.

I swallowed, made my thoughts clear. I didn’t have much time. I couldn’t stay there, couldn’t let Aunt Sara take me back to her apartment—to Detective Aaron LaSalle—not after what I’d done. Not after I’d run. She might not let me out again. Detective Bad Ass would no doubt be with her. He would be even more suspicious—

I made it up as I went along. From Dylan’s dresser I grabbed his keys. Then I eased back to the hall and listened for his voice:

“… this is Detective Jim Fourcade’s son…”

I moved quickly, slipping to the cool linoleum floor of the kitchen, to the back door. Quietly I turned the knob and pulled, let myself into the whisper of night air. The patio was small, the iron railing not very high. I wasn’t thrilled about jumping, but I was even less thrilled about my aunt coming to get me. Climbing over, I first lowered myself to crouch on the edge, then jumped. The ground came up hard, sang through my bones.

I didn’t let that stop me.

Adrenaline surging, I hurried along the cobblestone path, toward the gate at the far side. There, I burst into a narrow alley as a voice ripped into the saxophone-infused night. “Trinity—no!”

I ran faster, straight for the car Dylan had parked in a small lot one street over. He was stronger, faster, but I had the advantage of knowing where I was going. And I had his keys.

*   *   *

I drove. My hands clenched the wheel. My gaze darted between the front window and rearview mirror. Lights glared. I refused to slow down, though. Refused to turn back. Dylan couldn’t follow me, but others could.

I didn’t have a map or a GPS, but I did have a memory for detail, and I knew how to read signs. By the time I cruised past the Brad Pitt homes of the Ninth Ward, I knew I was okay.

The night made everything look different, darkness replacing the fast-food restaurants and strip malls I’d noticed the day before, but I watched closely, until I saw the turnoff.

Off Judge Perez, streetlights gave way to trees, leaving only the steady beam of headlights to cut through the darkness. I slowed, remembered the road was narrow, with no shoulder and an abundance of potholes. If I were to run off—

I refused to let my mind go there. All I could think was Fourcade. Dylan’s dad. He was the only one. My mother had trusted him. He would understand. He would know. Him I could tell. I could tell him what I saw when I closed my eyes.

With one last curve, the headlights hit the clearing, then the house in the middle of nowhere. I slowed as I neared, acutely conscious of the fact that no light shone from any of the windows.

I parked where Chase had the day before, in the gravel drive next to the old pickup and the motorcycle. My heart slamming, I pushed open the door and stood, hesitating a second to make sure I didn’t hear the dogs.

The wind slapped from all directions, cooler here away from the concrete of the city. Damper. Pushing against it, I headed toward the house, where the statue of the Virgin Mary waited with her arms outstretched, and the dream catcher gyrated.

Then I heard the voice.

“You didn’t say good-bye.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

The silhouette emerged from the camouflage of the porch columns, and stepped into a sliver of moonlight. “Why so shocked, little girl? I told you hiding wasn’t going to work.”

“You…” I backed away, tried to understand. “How—”

Through the darkness, the silver of his eyes glowed. “I followed you.”

“But that’s not possible. I left you—”

“And I took a shortcut,” Jim Fourcade’s son said, coming down the three steps from the elevated porch.

I twisted around, saw the motorcycle beside the car I’d borrowed. My throat burned. Disappointment churned through me. I thought about running, but knew he’d catch me before I could get away.

“You lied to me,” I seethed, spinning back toward him. “You made me think I was safe!” The words tore out of me. “But I heard you! I heard you say you were going to call my aunt—”

Beside the violently twirling dream catcher, he stilled. “I wasn’t going to tell her anything, except that you were safe.” His gaze raked over me. “Because you were.”

Something in his voice—regret, maybe—scraped through me, casting everything I thought, everything I’d believed, into question. “You drugged me.”

“I didn’t drug you.”

“The tea—”

“—was my idea,” came a different voice, quieter, raspier, and from the direction of the front door, pale yellow light broke the darkness as Jim Fourcade stepped from the shadows.

“If you want to be mad, Trinity Rose, be mad at me.”

Shock speared through me. This man, my mother’s friend … he was the one who’d wanted me drugged?

“No,”
I whispered, backing away. Maybe I couldn’t run. Maybe I couldn’t hide. But I couldn’t just stand there, either, not when every time I blinked, my whole world shifted. “I trusted you…”

“And you still can,” Fourcade said, joining his son at the base of the steps. “I’m on your side.”

I took another step back, as somewhere in the distance, the dogs barked. “How can you say that? How can you expect me to believe—”

“Because it’s true,” he said. “You’re seeing things, aren’t you? Just like your mother. You’re seeing things and they’re tearing you apart.”

My mouth moved, but no words came out.

“That’s the way it was for her, too,” he went on, his voice so threadbare it hurt to hear him. “A gift that tortured. Every time she closed her eyes, seeing without knowing, knowing without being able to help.”

The wind blew against my eyes, drying them like sandpaper.

“The tea always helped,” he said. “The herbs cleared the clutter, let her see.”

His son stepped toward me. “And you did, didn’t you?”

I looked at him standing in the shadows of the night, this virtual stranger who I’d thrown myself at only hours before, while high clouds smeared away what little light the stars provided. I was still wearing his T-shirt. My legs were bare. I hadn’t even taken time to grab my clothes—or my shoes.

“I saw it in your eyes,” he said with another step toward me, and deep inside, something uncomfortable shifted. “I heard it in your voice.”

Maybe I should have turned away. It’s what I wanted to do, what the old Trinity, the one who preferred the cautious route, would have done.

But the old Trinity didn’t exist anymore. She’d died with my grandmother. Maybe long before that, with Sunshine. It had taken this, coming to New Orleans and breathing the thick, muggy air that my mother had, walking the centuries-old streets that she’d called home, to convince the new Trinity that she didn’t need to hide anymore. Didn’t need to be scared or ashamed. That it was safe.