Broken Illusions: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (22 page)

The bike was gone. I’d noticed that the second I emerged from the tunnel of trees to see the brick house waiting in the clearing. Only a pickup sat in the gravel drive, an older one, and instinctively I knew I was safe.

I didn’t want to think about what I would have done if the motorcycle had been parked beside the truck.

I was still standing there when the screen door creaked. “Trinity?”

I twisted toward the wraparound porch, and saw him. He emerged from the house he’d rebuilt after the storm, with his long silver hair pulled into a ponytail, concern sharp in his eyes—and a dish towel in his hands.

Last time, it had been a grease rag.

“Hey.” My smile just kind of happened—unlike his son, Jim Fourcade had that affect on me. Maybe it was because he’d been friends with my mother, or maybe his quiet, steady strength, but the second I saw him, warmth streamed through me.

“God, it’s good to see you,” he said, meeting me halfway and wrapping me in a tight bear hug. “It’s been too long.”

Four months. It had been four months since I’d seen him—or his son.

I’d thought about calling or dropping by, but I’d never known what to say—or who I would run into.

That was probably the biggest reason I’d stayed away. Because of Chase, I’d told myself. The Fourcades made Chase uncomfortable.

But as I hugged Dylan’s father, the low hum vibrating through me had nothing to do with Chase.

“I know,” I said, pulling back to smile up at him. “It’s been crazy.”

“Would you like to come inside—” he started, but stopped, his all-seeing eyes narrowing. “It’s happening again, isn’t it?”

I don’t know why that surprised me. He was, after all, the cop who’d worked alongside my mother. He knew how our abilities worked. He’d been the one she turned to.

And really, why else would I be on his porch on a Friday morning, when I should have been at school?

Pressing my lips together, I nodded.

His frown cut deep, deep into his face. “I was afraid of that,” he said on a rough breath. “Are you okay?”

The wind kept whipping hair into my face. I pushed it back, but no sooner than I lowered my hand, the strands were slapping again. “Yeah.”

His eyes remained sharp, focused. With a hand to my shoulder he led me across the wooden planks to a white porch swing, and together we sat while I told him everything that had happened since Saturday night.

“But what I don’t understand,” I said as wind chimes tinkled, “is how did she know? If what Julian says is true and sometimes what I see is put there as a message … how do I know? How did my mom know when what she saw meant something versus when it was just a dream?”

He looked away, off toward the tall cypress trees in the distance, where dogs barked but could not be seen.

“I mean, usually what I see is familiar—places I’ve been or people I know.” I’d never dreamed of something as random as a stranger in a restaurant. “But the girl last night—”

He swung back toward me. “You said she was painting? A bird with a mouse?”

I nodded.

His eyes went very far away. “Sometimes your mother would dream in symbols like that,” he murmured as a sleek gray tabby cat wandered around the corner—and stretched out in a swath of sunlight. “And it would drive her crazy trying to understand.”

“And did she? Was she usually able to link them to the case she was working on?”

“Sometimes.” He rubbed a hand against the stubble along his jaw. “She would tear herself to shreds trying.”

I looked away, toward the dream catcher twisting in the wind.

“But sometimes,” he said quietly, “when you want something bad enough, your mind tries to give it to you, even when there’s nothing there.”

I swung back toward him. “W-what?”

The silver of his eyes was darker than I’d ever seen it. “Sometimes your mother would dream of you,” he said gruffly. “You were only a little girl, but she’d see you beautiful and grown up, like you are now.”

Somehow, I swallowed.

“Once she saw you riding a bike,” he said, “and once she saw you graduating.”

Everything stilled. I would have sworn it. The breeze stopped, and the dream catcher froze. “Graduating?” I whispered.

“From high school.” His smile was sad. “It ripped me up to see her cry like that.”

“In the dream?” I whispered. “She was crying in the dream?”

“When she told me,” he said. “I didn’t ask about the dream.”

My throat was so tight it hurt to breathe. “I … I had that dream two nights ago.”

Nothing prepared me for the way he swung toward me—or how sharp his eyes got. “You
what
?”

“I had that dream,” I said again, as slowly the dream catcher again began to dance. “That I was wearing a gown with a cap in my hand. That it was my graduation—and she was there.”

His eyes closed, and his wide shoulders, the ones I’d cried on, slept on as a little girl, dropped.

“And it was so real,” I whispered, seeing it again. Feeling it. Living it. “Do you think she gave me that?” I asked. “Do you think she projected that image for me to see?”

His jaw tightened as he opened his eyes. “Like I said, sweetheart. When you want something badly enough, your mind tries to give it to you.”

“You don’t need to be afraid anymore…”

Something inside me shifted. I tried to focus on the song of the birds and the echo of the wind chimes—but saw only the small, shadowy room, and a raw, burnished gleam.

“But how do I know the difference?” The question gnawed at me. If I needed to forget, I wanted to. But if I was supposed to remember, to act, I didn’t want to screw up and pretend nothing happened. “Between what’s real and what’s not? I mean, with Mom, it’s obvious. But what about the girl painting? How do I know?”

Jim Fourcade took my hands and squeezed. “You take it one day at a time. That’s all you can do.”

“But that restaurant
exists,
” I said. “And the girl—what if … she’s the next victim?” The thought haunted me. “What if, like Jessica, I visualized this girl
before
something happens to her?”

“Let me make a few calls,” he said. “See if anyone at this Gaston’s Place matches your description. Would that make you feel better?”

“You would do that?” I asked.

“For you, cricket,” he said, with warmth glimmering in eyes that had seen way too much. “Anything.”

Cricket? “Thank you,” I said.

He smiled, but the gleam, as raw and penetrating as his son’s, had me glancing back toward the feathers along the beaded lines of the dream catcher—the exact same pattern inked on Dylan’s arm.

“It’s a fine piece of work,” he said.

It was more than that. “I always wanted one,” I said, remembering the Native American craft store Gran and I had once visited. An old woman had sat weaving while her grandson slept in a basket beside her. After a few minutes she’d lifted her eyes to mine, and smiled.

The night air is filled with dreams, she’d told me. Good dreams are pure and find their way among the feathers to the sleeper.

Bad dreams were trapped, held there in the web, until the light of day destroys them.

“I could get you one like it,” Detective Fourcade offered. “I’m sure the artist would be happy to make you one.”

From the moment I’d arrived, I’d felt the current, subtle, raw, moving through me like low-wattage electricity. But in that moment, the hum started to pulse. “The artist?”

“My boy,” Jim Fourcade said. “Dylan.”

TWENTY

The morning sun caught on the stream of delicate feathers, each meticulously placed …

“Dylan made this?”

“My
shi’cheii
taught him.”

I told myself to look away, look away fast—forever. But couldn’t. “Your what?”

“My mother’s father—Dylan’s great-grandfather.”

Now I did turn, slowly, the wind whipping long strands of hair into my face.

“The Navajo is strong in him,” Jim Fourcade said with the quiet pride of a father. “Far stronger than it is in me.”

I just stared. I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t stop. “Navajo?”

His smile almost looked apologetic. “My mother was Native American, my father Cajun. I’m the result.”

So much hit me at once, as many questions as answers. “That salve,” I murmured, seeing it all over again, the tube Dylan had brought to his father, the gooey substance he’d spread over my palms—the gouges that had been gone within hours. “That was …
Navajo,
wasn’t it?”

The light in his eyes glowed, as if lit from some transcendent place inside him. “It was Navajo that healed you, yes.”

My breath caught.

“For years Dylan spent summers with my
shi’cheii
—they taught each other much.”

I’m not sure what made me stand and cross the porch, reach for the slowly spinning piece of pale driftwood—or why I suddenly felt a breath of warmth whisper through me.

“That’s why I asked Dylan to keep an eye on you last fall,” his father said. “Because the blood in him is strong, and I knew he would keep you safe.”

The feathers were soft against my fingers, delicate, far more delicate than I would have guessed.

I jerked my hand back. “I-I have to go.” To get away from there, away from the mysticism of the dream catcher and the warm voice of the father, the stories of the son who’d given me his breath—then walked away without saying good-bye.

The son who sometimes came to me in my dreams.

“Yes,” Jim Fourcade said, standing and crossing to me. “I’m sure you do.”

I looked at him, at a strand of silver that had worked free of his ponytail and scraggled against the hollow of his cheek, and would have sworn he’d aged a few years in the few minutes we’d spoken.

My own hair kept blowing into my face—I made no move to push it away.

“I’ll make those calls this morning,” he said, lifting a hand to curve around my shoulder. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

*   *   *

I drove slowly. I turned the radio off. I kept my BlackBerry on my thigh. Realistically, I knew it was too soon to hear back from Jim Fourcade—it wasn’t even nine thirty. Most people were just getting to work.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling something big was about to go down. Because of the dream, I knew. There was something in the dream—a message or a clue, something about the girl or the restaurant. Belle Terre wasn’t far—

It hit me without warning, what should have hit me all along.

Belle Terre.

Enduring Grace loomed ahead, but the tree-shrouded entrance barely registered. From one breath to the next I was back in Grace’s apartment, kneeling in front of the crate from my dream, lifting envelopes addressed to Grace—all with a return address of …

Belle Terre.

Everything blurred for one wobbly heartbeat, and then I was turning, turning fast, not into the parking lot, but toward the Interstate.

Jim Fourcade could make calls. And maybe someone would recognize his description of the girl—maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe she existed, maybe she didn’t. But I’d been shown her—or the restaurant or the town—for a reason.

And I needed to know why—if it was a clue, a warning, or, if as Jim Fourcade suggested, my mind was trying to give me what I wanted by filling in the blanks.

I didn’t stop to think. I didn’t stop to consider or plan. I didn’t stop … period. No way could I go to school and pretend to pay attention, not while the image kept playing in my mind. Not until I saw for myself.

*   *   *

“I wish you were there,” I said, zipping along the narrow state highway. But it was the middle of second period—there was no way Chase could have answered.

After last night, I really needed to hear his voice.

“I wish you were
here,
” I said more quietly. “We might have our first real break about Grace. I’m headed to check it out now. Not sure when I’ll be back, but I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”

Throat tight, I squeezed the phone tighter. “I-I’m sorry about last night.”

I didn’t know what else to say.

Ending the call, I tossed my BlackBerry onto the seat beside me and concentrated on the substandard road. Trees, some living, some dead, some trapped in that fragile place in between, crowded in from both sides. Only a few streaks of sunshine leaked through to the blacktop. There was no shoulder, the lines of yellow and white majorly faded. There was nothing behind me, and nothing in front of me.

It was like driving off the end of the earth.

The GPS said I had twenty miles and thirty minutes to go. Eyeing the remains of my mocha, I knew I shouldn’t drink anymore until
after
I found a bathroom. So I cranked Lady Gaga and accelerated as the world around me blurred, until just beyond a drawbridge, cypress trees gave way to a clearing, and a gravel drive led to
RAYMOND’S END OF THE ROAD.

The name fit. The run-down building sat back from the road, with precisely one gas pump out front. It didn’t even take a credit card. Next to it, two old ladies who looked ready for church—or a funeral—stood with the hose stretched toward their shiny white Cadillac.

Three pickups, two beaten up, one new, occupied the spaces closest to the door. Parking to the side, I grabbed my phone and slipped from the car, shivering. I’d slipped on my hoodie, but this close to the Gulf, a cool dampness permeated everything.

Inside, heat blasted, and grease mingled with cigarette smoke.

“Mornin’,” the ancient man behind the counter greeted.

I glanced at him and smiled, when all I really wanted was to hold my breath and run to the bathroom. “Hi.”

His face was long and lean, scruffy. “Bathroom’s dat way.” He pointed beyond the display of fried everything, toward a doorway between two coolers.

“Thank you!” I turned as a gorgeous gold car with dark windows pulled into the parking lot.

As far as bathrooms went, the small room wasn’t bad. Finishing up, I used a paper towel to open the door, then braced myself for the onslaught of grease and smoke.

The guy looked like a football player. That was my first thought as I grabbed a Red Bull and headed for the counter. My second was maybe he really was, because his clothes were obviously expensive. He stood at an angle, revealing a thick gold chain around his neck and a big gold nugget ring on his right hand, an equally big diamond in his ear. His light brown hair was military short.