Broken Illusions: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (13 page)

“Maybe Grace and I were even friends.” I rushed to fill the silence, except the second I said the words, I knew how silly they were. I’d been two the last time I lived in New Orleans. “Or maybe last fall she realized who I was. Maybe she knew about my mother and assumed I could see things, too. I think that’s why she scribbled my name.” As a clue. “She’s reaching out to me.”

“Sounds like you’ve got this all figured out,” Detective Jackson drawled.

When Jessica had gone missing, he’d been the skeptic. He’d doubted me far longer than Detective LaSalle had.

Obviously he still did. “I’m
trying.
”

We wound down from there. Victoria’s father arrived, exchanging a few quick words with Jackson before putting a hand to Victoria’s back and steering her to the door. She glanced back before leaving, and the quick stab of guilt made me blurt out, “I’m sorry!”

Detective Jackson left a few minutes later, leaving me alone with Chase and Aunt Sara, and LaSalle. The four of us had been alone in the condo so many times before. We’d had dinner and played poker, even strung necklaces. It had always been lighthearted, even if I sometimes caught LaSalle watching me, as if he knew,
just knew,
I was hiding something. That was the cop in him, the job he was trained to do. I didn’t like it, but I tried to understand.

He walked across the room now, to where my aunt still stood. Somewhere along the line she’d turned to stare at the night.

“Hey.” He put a hand to the curve of her shoulder. “You okay?”

She stiffened.

And I knew what I had to do. On a deep breath I started toward her. “Aunt Sara—”

She twisted toward me. “I can’t talk to you right now.” Then before I could even process what was happening, she was across the room and grabbing her purse.

“Sara—” Detective LaSalle called, but she turned the dead bolt, opened the door, and walked out.

*   *   *

The clock slipped past ten. I kept glancing from it to the door, but while the second hand ticked from number to number, the knob never turned.

“You know she’s coming back,” Chase said, turning me to face him. We still sat on the sofa. He’d flipped on the TV, but neither of us were paying attention. “Give her time.”

I knew that. She had to come back. She lived here.

But I had no idea what would happen when she did. “I’ve never seen her all closed up like that, like she didn’t even want to look at me.”

“She’s scared,” he said, feathering his finger along my cheekbone. “She knows what could have happened tonight.”

I looked up. “Nothing happened—”

“Don’t.” Just one word, that’s all it was, but the force behind it, the naked emotion, obliterated whatever I’d been about to say.

“I was there,” he said. “I saw what went down.”

The blue, blue of his eyes quickened through me—maybe that’s why I tried to pull away.

But his hold tightened. “It was like that old house all over again,” he said. “But worse. Amber nailed it yesterday—you didn’t even look alive.”

“Chase—”

“You didn’t
feel
alive, either,” he said. “You were like ice.”

I tried to remember. I tried to go back to those bizarre moments when the pointer had spelled out word after word, and I’d started to twitch.

“It was like it wasn’t you anymore,” he said. “Almost like someone else—” The glow in his eyes went dark.
“Someone else,”
he repeated, his voice eerily quiet. “Someone else was there.”

Everything inside me stilled. “What? What are you talking about?”

“The board,” he said, and I could tell he was living it again, every second, every breath. “Right after it spelled out
love won’t die
—everything changed.”

I looked away, found Delphi watching me through those unblinking eyes of hers. And I wanted to ask her
What?
What did she know?

Because I knew that she did.

“The temperature dropped,” Chase said. “And the triangle started jerking instead of gliding—”

I twisted back toward him. “Too late,” I whispered.

The pointer had spelled out
too late
.

God, what had we done?

He pulled me back to him. I held on, held on tight, tried to concentrate on the rhythm of his heart. But it wasn’t steady. It was frenetic—just like the pointer had been when it spelled out
never let go.

“You have to stop,” he said, easing back so that his eyes burned into mine. His hands found my face, sliding the hair back, exposing me in every way imaginable. “You’ve done enough. You don’t even know Grace. Let the cops—”

“Did you talk to Jessica?” The question shot out of me. One second I’d been thinking about Grace, and the dream, and the Ouija board, and in the next I saw Jessica alone in that small dark room, hunched on the floor, rocking.

She was the missing piece. She was the only one who could tell me what, exactly, it meant to be on the other side of my dreams.

His long bangs were falling into his eyes, but Chase made no move to push them back. “She texted me this afternoon.”

She texted him every afternoon. And every evening, every night …

“Did you ask her?” I said, sliding my hand to squeeze his. “Did you ask if she’d talk to me?”

TWELVE

Chase pulled back.

“Trinity,”
he said, and before he said anything else, I knew what was coming. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Chase,
please.
” I kept my eyes on his, using them to communicate how important this was. “I know you’re trying to protect her, but I have to know. I have to know if she consciously reached out to me. I have to know if she could feel me—”

“No, you don’t.” He stood so fast I never saw him move. One second he was there with me, the next he was gone. “You can’t ask her to go back like that, to live it again.”

I just stared at him. My throat burned. My heart hurt. “What if it’s the only way for me to go forward?” I asked quietly. And then I did what I should have done all those months before, when he’d pulled away, and instead of going after him, I’d let him go.

I stood, and went to him. “What if it’s the only way for
us
to go forward?”

His eyes flashed. The line of his jaw went really tight. Those were the only warnings I got. He pulled me to him, crushing me against him and tangling his hands in my hair, his mouth slanting against mine in a mindless rush that made my knees wobble.

It was a long moment before he pulled back to frame my face with his hands. I concentrated on that, the warmth of his palms, the strength of his fingers. Then the blue of his eyes found mine, and I couldn’t breathe.

“Trust me.” His thumb skimmed my bottom lip. “What happens with us has nothing to do with what happens with her.”

But the screaming inside wouldn’t stop. “Chase—”

“You have to step back,” he said. “Before it’s too late.”

“What if I can’t?”

He tensed.

I curled my fingers into the soft cotton of his shirt. “Don’t you think I’m scared, too?” I hated how hard the words were to say. “I
know
what you saw,” I said. “I know how freaky it was.”

My grandmother had warned me people wouldn’t understand, that they’d be afraid. That they’d walk away.

But I was coming to realize that holding everything in could be just as devastating as putting it out there, and trusting.

“And I’m so scared,” I said, “that when you look at me, you won’t see my hair or my eyes, you won’t see
me
. That you’ll see
that
—”

His eyes went dark as he pulled me against him and tilted my mouth to his. There was nothing slow or gentle about the kiss, nothing tender or tentative. It was all fire and urgency, a volatility I’d never felt from him. I kissed him back, wishing we could be like that forever—

Forever
.

The word jarred me, took me back to Victoria’s words from Saturday night.

“Flowers die. Trees die. People die. Love dies…”

I pushed that aside, refused to dwell on what came before, or what came after. Aunt Sara was right.

The moment you were in was all that mattered.

*   *   *

I run. Tangled vines swirl along the ground like snakes, trying to stop me. But I won’t let them, can’t let them. Can’t let anything stop me.

“Come back!” I shout, but the figure ahead vanishes behind a tree.

Sprinting, I hurdle a fallen trunk, my foot twisting on something unseen. I stagger, falling forward as moonlight glints off the silver blade …

I came awake hard, fighting to breathe as the green of Delphi’s eyes glowed. I tried to remember. I tried to go back, needed to see …

Grace had been there. At first. And the fading buildings. They’d been there, lining both sides of the empty street. The toppled planters.

But there’d been more.

Swallowing, I closed my eyes and concentrated. Running. I’d been running—

The breath lodged in my throat.

Not running—I’d been chasing. There’d been someone ahead of me—
they’d
been running. I’d been in pursuit.

I opened my eyes, looked at my hand.

I could feel it there, could feel it still, the knife, the overwhelming surge of adrenaline. The hot kiss of …
anticipation.

Sickly, I became aware of other things, like Delphi’s unblinking eyes, her ears flat back, my jeans still on my body.

And memory started to return.

We’d been on the sofa. Chase had been holding me. I’d felt … safe. I must have fallen asleep.

Shifting, I swung toward the grandfather clock—but found the small digital on my nightstand. The green numbers glowed 5:21.

I had no memory of Chase leaving.

*   *   *

“So your aunt didn’t say anything?” Victoria asked as we got out of her car and made our way toward the angel at the entrance to Enduring Grace, with her arms outstretched in welcome.

Or surrender.

“She was asleep.” After showering and getting dressed, I’d quietly opened the door to Aunt Sara’s room and found her still in bed.

I had no idea when she’d come home.

“Maybe she’s going to let it blow over—”

Victoria’s words broke off so abruptly I twisted toward her, only to find her peeking around one of the gigantic oaks. “What are you doing?”

She flashed me a nervous smile. “Making sure I don’t see Lucas.”

Rolling my eyes, I turned back to the fountain—and felt my heart thud hard against my chest. Chase stood there, with the white shirt stretched across his chest and the dark blue of his pants making his thighs look more muscular.

“We had it out last night,” Victoria said. “After I got home. He was pissed that I’d gone somewhere with you and Chase without telling him—can you believe that?”

Actually, I could.

“I don’t see him,” I said as Chase started toward me.

“He actually
forbid
me from hanging out with you again.”

I swung back toward her. “Forbid?”

Her eyeliner was darker than usual, her eye shadow even smokier. “Forbid,” she repeated.

And all I could think was … please. Please let this be it for them. “What’d you say?”

Her shoulders went gymnast-square. “I told him forever just ended,” she huffed out, then, as Chase came up beside me, she slipped from behind the tree and took off toward the buildings. “Wish me luck.”

“Luck!” I said, because she was totally going to need it.

“Hey.”

My heart gave a familiar little kick. “Hey.”

He didn’t step toward me. “You … okay?”

I watched him, didn’t understand how closed up he looked. “I’m good.”

“Good.” Then his eyes found mine, and even before he spoke, everything else fell away. “I talked to Jessica.”

*   *   *

The sprawling house sat back from the street, all stucco and red roof tiles, a series of strategically placed courtyards as inviting as they were secretive. With its dark wood trim and arched windows, the series of balconies protected by wrought iron, the place could have been lifted straight from Spain.

I’m not sure why that surprised me.

At the heavy door, Jessica’s younger sister answered. Four months had passed since I’d last seen her. That morning, in the hospital waiting room, Bethany had been pale and robotic, shell-shocked.

Now, with long, side-swept bangs and hair that skimmed her shoulders, she glowed as she looked up at Chase.

That, at least, hadn’t changed.

“Hey,” she said.

His eyes crinkled. He drew her in for a quick brotherly hug, much as I’d seen him do the fall before, when Bethany had still attended Enduring Grace. While Jessica recovered, the Morgenthals had hired a private tutor so Bethany didn’t have to face daily questions and whispers.

“It’s good to see you,” I said as they pulled apart.

She glanced at me, and I could see the veil of caution slide back over her. “Trinity.”

We’d never been friends, but there’d been nothing bad there, either. I’d always felt kind of sorry for her, and I’d always thought she was a little embarrassed by her sister’s stunts.

Bethany, as Victoria had once said, was the anti-Jessica.

“She’s upstairs,” she said, widening the door so we could step inside.

The house, with its strong Spanish influence, was beautiful. Arched doorways branched off in three directions, revealing a series of rooms with gold walls and slate floors and bold dark furniture. Pillar candles and votives and ornate picture frames covered almost every surface.

“She’s quiet today,” Bethany said as I turned to find her sweeping the hair from her face as she exchanged a worried look with Chase. And while there was no way Jessica could have heard her—the music from what sounded like a cartoon was way too loud—Bethany more whispered than talked. “She was really up this morning, but for the past hour she’s hardly said a word.”

He glanced up the stairs. “You sure she’s up to this?”

Bethany lifted a shoulder, let it drop. “IDK.”

I’m not sure what I’d been expecting, but the swirl of anticipation reminded me of the only time I’d stepped on a roller coaster.