Broken Illusions: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (23 page)

“With
boudin,
” he was saying as the older man heaped food into a Styrofoam container. “And some cracklins.” Then he glanced at me. “Raymond makes the best cracklins.”

I edged past him. “I’ll remember that.”

“Traveling alone?”

It was an innocent enough question. The farther south you drove, the friendlier people got. In New Orleans, you could know a complete stranger’s life story before you could finish a soda. But something cold and slimy crawled over me.

“Meeting someone.” I sidestepped with a quick glance at the man called Raymond.

He closed up the Styrofoam. “You ready, darlin’?”

I felt my smile tighten. “Yes.”

“You’re not from around here, are you?” he asked, ringing up my drink.

“Of course she’s not,” the guy with biceps bigger than my thighs said. “I’d remember someone this pretty.”

“I’m sorry, I have to go,” I said, grabbing my change and my drink and hurrying outside.

At my car, I fumbled with my keys and unlocked the door, started to slide inside—and saw the feathers.

I stood unnaturally still, staring first at the grease-stained concrete where a black mask lay in a puddle, then lifting my eyes to make sure no one waited inside the car.

I tried to breathe. I tried to think. Be rational. It was February. Mardi Gras was a few weeks away. Masks were everywhere.

But even as I tried to grab onto the logic, the buzz turned to a roar, and a hard slam of my heart destroyed the paralysis. I ripped myself away as the front door opened, and a shadow fell across the pavement.

I didn’t look. I slid into my car and yanked the door shut, locked it, turned the key, and gunned into reverse. It wasn’t until I swung onto the narrow road that I checked the rearview mirror, and saw the gold car sliding out behind me.

The road curved. I took it fast, never slowed. My hands clenched the wheel. My foot jammed the gas.

“Chill, Trin,” I whispered, reminding myself the road only led two directions—north, and south. The fact the guy at the counter was behind me meant nothing other than that he was also traveling south. No big deal, end of story.

But then I glanced at the mirror and saw that he’d zoomed up on my tail.

“No,”
I told myself. No. I was imagining things, being paranoid, letting seeds of the fear everyone else tried to plant take root.

But the headlights zipped closer, and blind instinct took over.

The road was narrow, the faded line down the middle solid and yellow. There was no shoulder, just a blur of gravel dropping to a canal. I chanced a look at my GPS. Nine miles. That’s all that was left. Then I would be in Belle Terre. There’d be people, a sheriff. I could pull into a gas station or a bank, safely reach for my phone. I could—

The road curved sharply to the right.

I went with it, accelerating when I should have braked—and the gold car veered into the oncoming lane.

Relief rushed through me. He was in a hurry, that was all. He was going to pass—

The impact of metal slamming into metal shocked me. Shaken, I twisted toward the car, clenching the wheel to keep control of mine, but darkly tinted windows prevented me from making eye contact. He came at me again, harder, faster, his big car steadily eating up my lane. Adrenaline rushing, I floored the gas pedal—and the side of the road dropped away.

Someone screamed. It had to have been me. But everything happened horrifyingly slow, distorted, as if I was a witness rather than participant.

The canal rushed up. My car veered down. At the moment of impact the airbag exploded against my face.

And everything went black.

TWENTY-ONE

“Get out!”

My eyes opened and I surged forward, felt everything start to spin. Dizzy, I hung there, trying to understand—
remember.

“The door—open the fuckin’ door!”

I swung toward the garbled voice, but something strong and sharp cut into my chest, holding me against—

The seat belt, I realized, and on a vicious rush, the fog cleared—and memory came. The cold water of the canal was spilling into the car, rising up like a bathtub filling.

“Try the window!” someone shouted.

Frantically I reached for the button—and saw the guy from the gold car, his face distorted against the glass. “Hurry!” he shouted.

I reeled back into the rising water—and everything inside me started to scream.

The car shifted, tilting as it slipped deeper into the canal.

Crew-cut guy yanked at the handle. “Unlock it!”

And then it would open, and he would reach for me.

“You’re gonna fuckin’ drown!”

My throat closed up. Breath wouldn’t come. My body started to shake.

There was only one way out—

The car shifted again.

Cold … I was so cold.

I didn’t have a choice, I realized. I didn’t have a choice. If I wanted out, I had to go to him—

“What the hell are you waiting for?” he shouted, his mouth pressed to the glass.

The canal kept rising.

Oh, God, I thought. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God … It was happening, happening again, the watery grave I’d dreamed of so many times—just like I’d lived last fall when I’d fallen into the river. Then Dylan had come in after me—

But Dylan was gone, and Chase was in New Orleans, and no one knew I was here, and the water—

I lunged across the seat and yanked at the switch, grateful my grandmother’s Buick was so old the locks were manual and not automatic.

“Fuck!” gold car guy shouted as he tore open the door and grabbed for me.

Every instinct I had screamed for me to pull back, pull away, fight—

But the water was so cold—and there was no other way out.

He shot in, one hand fumbling with the seat belt while the other closed around my arm and dragged me from the car.

The second the breeze hit me, I yanked back, twisting—

“You stupid little bitch—” he bit out, hauling me against him.

I kicked and hit, screamed.

He waded from the canal, his big arms locked around me so tightly I couldn’t breathe.

The second we hit land, he threw me to the muddy bank. “That’s a hell of a way to thank me for saving your fuckin’ life,” he muttered.

“Who are you?” I scrambled back. “Why are you—”

Silver flashed—and the words died in my throat.

“Time to say nite-nite, sweet thing.”

I tried to find my feet, but he was on me with the syringe before I could stand, straddling me and driving me back to the mud. “This’ll only hurt for a second.”

“No—oh, my God!” I shouted as my hands came up. I wrenched beneath him, tried to drive my knee.

He pressed harder.

Somewhere in the distance tires screeched.

“Help!” I shouted—or maybe I cried. I didn’t know. “God, please—”

“Get your goddamn hands off her!”

He reared back and his eyes got wide—

My heart slammed. My throat burned. “Help!”

But already he was dragging me, running. I thrashed—but the needle stabbed into my arm. I screamed, twisted. “No—”

The heaviness came fast, a curtain falling, consuming—and my body stopped responding. I tried to call out, but words wouldn’t form, and voice wouldn’t come. And then I couldn’t see—

“Kill you—”

Couldn’t hear.

And then there was nothing but the bleed of yellow into peach, then
orange, purple. Light faded, and the sky glowed.

“Come back!” I shout. “Please—where’d you go?”

The wind laughs, and the trees slip closer.

I spin around—or maybe that’s the ground. I didn’t know—didn’t understand, just knew everything was turning, tilting.

“Please! Answer me!” But darkness falls, and shadows steal detail. Still I run, while around me the world burns. “I’m here!”

The sky cracks, and the concrete buckles. And then I see him lying without moving …

“No!” But already I’m falling.

Drowning.

“Trinity—no!”

Blindly, I reach out, grabbing for the safety of his hand, but find tall grass instead. I pull, try to hang on.

“Trinity!”

But the water rises, and my body slips.

“No—no!”

I struggle toward the voice, and against the shadows, the faded buildings glow.

“Turn around!” someone whisper-shouts. “Now! Go back. Quick!”

“Grace?” My voice is raw.

“Tell me where you are!”

“He knows you’re here! It’s all a game—”

The street narrows. The buildings start to crumble. “Grace—” I cry, running toward the only door that remains. I reach for it, yank—

Something hard tackles me from behind. I go down, the impact singing through my legs as they buckle. “Game over, sweetheart.”

Disoriented, I blink against the shadows. “What game?”

“I win.” His voice is so quiet, so dead, it’s obscene. “I always win.”

“No!” I try to scramble to my feet, but he grabs my arm and yanks, dragging me across the grass.

“Be nice, and I’ll let you say good-bye.”

Frantically I twist, jabbing two fingers into his windpipe.

He staggers—and I run.

“Trinity—”

The shimmering tear appears from nowhere. I lunge for it and vault through, collapsing the second—

He catches me, holds me. “I’m here—I’ve got you.”

Run! I have to run. I know that. I have to get away. But his words drift through me like the softest of feathers, and the part of me that’s been afraid, running, wants to hold on. But I’m so tired, and as my breath slows, I can no longer remember why I’m supposed to be afraid.

Warmth blankets me. I sink into it, letting it surround me, fill me. For a long time I allow myself to simply exist there, blissful, safe, wishing I could feel this way … forever.

Gradually other sensations register, something brushing the side of my face, a voice so phenomenally quiet it can only have come from the deepest place within me, that place where no one can touch.

“
Don’t fight—just rest for me.
”

But I don’t want to rest, not until I’ve seen.

Streaks of sunlight sting my eyes, but I see him, see him cradling me, one hand against my face, the other holding one of my own.

“Hey.” It is the same voice, the same drugging voice that called me back when I was lost—and caught me when I fell. “Welcome back.”

I blink against the blur, trying to bring everything into focus. Clouds drift, and trees stand guard. “Where am I?”

“With me,” he murmurs, running a hand along my hair. “You don’t need to be afraid anymore.”

“I don’t understand—”

“Sh-h-h.” He pulls me closer. “Rest.”

Silver. I stare up into it, burnished, mesmerizing, and feel something inside me stir. And with it, reality nudges against illusion.

“None of this is real,” I realize against the slow bleed somewhere inside me. I know what is about to happen—what always happens when the hazy dots of consciousness reconnect, and the dream falls away. “You’re not here.”

A ghost of a smile plays with his mouth. “Then where am I?”

“You’re … gone.”

His thumb strokes along my palm so, so gently. “Then how are you talking to me?”

“The way I always do.” This time it is me who smiles. Me who remembers. “Hold me first,” I whisper. “Please just … hold me.” And with the words, my eyes drift shut, and I once again drift through the sanctuary of my dreams.

*   *   *

They say history cannot be rewritten.

The past is the past, what’s done is done. We can only live within the existing constructs of our life, and move forward.

But that’s not true. Facts
are
rewritten, every single day. We all do it. With time, the edges of memory fade, and fiction creeps in. Colors dim, love fades, devastation dulls. We all do it, softening, adjusting details to make them easier to live with. It’s how we survive.

Even my gran. She took the earliest years of my life and whitewashed them, sanitizing the murder of my parents into a random accident and glossing over my abilities, doing everything she could to scrub away my birthright.

I did it, too. When I was a little girl, sometimes I would go to bed early, lay there beneath a quilt but surrounded by daylight, squeezing my eyes shut, waiting, just waiting, for that magic moment when consciousness fell away, and my parents came back.

There broken pieces fused, and we were together again, long after they’d been taken from me. There my mother would hold me and promise everything would be okay, and my father would smile. There, we were a family. Nothing could touch us.

There, we were safe.

Maybe we move forward, but the sum of our experiences stays with us, and makes us who we are. We can return over and over again. We can relive every moment, make them last longer, turn out better. If only behind closed eyes.

I drifted there now, in the asylum of my pretend past. And while a vague sense of unease pulled at me, I wasn’t ready to leave. I wanted to linger, to wrap myself in the illusion that everything was okay.

His hand was warm, soft. I could feel his fingers along my face, the way they stroked, hesitating before sliding lower, his thumb against my bottom lip. Gentle. Tentative. I wanted to stay like that, to make the moment last, and then last some more.

But curiosity nudged me to open my eyes.

He wasn’t wearing a shirt. That was the first thing I noticed. His chest was bare save for a sprinkle of dark hair. And even though my whole body ached, I wanted to lift a hand and touch.

He sat on the edge of a small bed, next to where I lay. That was the second thing that registered. Shadows fell against his face, making his cheekbones look sharper than I remembered. His mouth was full, his nose strong. But it was his eyes that made my breath catch, the steady glow that made so many promises.