Broken Illusions: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (26 page)

Dylan watched her, but didn’t say a word as she set them in front of us.

She didn’t say a word, either.

“Has this happened before?” he asked after she left.

I nodded. “A few times this week.”

He glanced toward the door, back at me. “We need to get you home,” he said, frowning. “There’s nothing here—”

“Not yet.” It wasn’t time. That was all I could think. It wasn’t time.

Stalling, I dragged the frappuccino close and brought the straw to my mouth, took a long, shivery sip—and saw the deck of tarot cards.

And I knew why I wasn’t ready to leave.

Stillness fell around me as I reached for the cards in colors of black and purple, dark teal and cranberry. And the second I touched, a low current streaked through me.

I closed my fingers and my eyes, but when I inhaled, I no longer smelled espresso. Only … sage.

“My mother used to read these,” I said, opening my eyes to look at Dylan. He sat very still, watching. “But you know that, don’t you?”

His hand closed around his glass of water. “You’ve never touched them before, have you?”

I separated the deck into three small stacks and placed them facedown on the bar. “No.” I had no idea why. I could have. Any evening I could have walked to Jackson Square and sat at a table, touched the cards, had a reading.

I could have gone to see
Grace.

The current became more of a vibration. Robotically, I returned the cards to one stack, then fanned them out. The same pattern adorned the back of each, a swirl of teal with glowing stars and moons, vibrant flowers—and two jokers.

“Do you remember her?” My voice was soft—the question like a stone on my heart.

“Yes.”

Because he’d been there.

“What about me?” I asked, watching my index finger skim the cards. “Do you remember me?”

“Yes.”

The moment locked, held. For so many years my past had been a black hole, a gaping void without memory, or image. Without feeling.

But since coming to New Orleans, light had begun to flicker in the darkness. And from the moment I’d opened my eyes to find myself in Dylan’s arms on the bank of the river, sensation had stirred.

I didn’t understand how I could want something and deny it at the same time.

But he’d been there. He was part of it, part of the matrix. He knew things I didn’t. He remembered. I could see it in the glitter of his eyes, just as I could see something had happened since we’d last been together. It was written all over him in soft dull colors, more than shadows but not solid enough to touch.

Swallowing, I realized I’d quit caressing the cards, instead my finger rested on one, and one alone.

An odd calm settling through me, I slid it from the deck. “My aunt says you came to see me in Colorado,” I whispered, but didn’t look—not at Dylan, and not at the card.

This time, he moved. His hand found mine, a single, blunt-tipped finger sliding onto the card I’d isolated.

But he did not touch me. “Once.”

I’m not sure why I stared, why I couldn’t look away from the card, our fingers, the way his nail was trimmed neat, the pinkish flesh beneath, the strong half moon against his cuticle.

“Did we…” My throat tried to hold onto the question, but something inside me, something stronger, refused to keep living in the dark. “Did you ever chase me with a hose?”

I felt more than heard his breath, felt more than heard the rush. “It made you laugh.”

I closed my eyes. And saw … saw it all over again, the tall waving grass and the bright blue sky, the spray of water …

It hurt to swallow. It hurt to remember. Because if that was real, and the fire was real, then the rest of what I’d seen while on Julian’s couch had to be …

But that was impossible. Dylan and I had only been children.

There’d been nothing childlike about what had gone down there in the shadows.

“Aren’t you going to look?”

Dylan’s question was so quiet the fluted New Age music almost stole it.

I could have said no. That’s what I should have said. No. I wasn’t going to look. I’d already seen too much.

But I opened my eyes, and saw that somewhere along the line, I’d flipped over the card.

The image stared up at me, intricate and dark and beautiful, two pale purple towers glowing beneath a crescent moon, a sparkling river with a snarling dog on each side, and there beneath the surface, a crawfish.

“The moon card,” Dylan said, skimming his finger along the curve of the water.

Something wild and fantastical fluttered through me. “What does it mean?”

“That you face a great choice,” came a voice from behind me, strong, sure, as hypnotic as the slow glide of the pointer along the Ouija board. “And the time has come to make it.”

TWENTY-FOUR

I swung around.

She stood in the shadows, her hair white and long and flowing, her eyes ethereal, her skin ageless. She wore a long lavender robe and several strands of beads around her neck, gemstones with pendants of ancient coins and goddesses.

“W-who are you?” I asked.

She lifted her hands together in front of her, as if in prayer. And from each bony finger, a different stone glowed. “I am Madame Isobel.”

Which meant it was her shop—her cards. “What kind of choice?” I asked.

“You have traveled far,” she said in that same rich, monochromatic voice. “The darkness has been great. But now the moon rises, and a watery path emerges.”

Water …

Dylan’s hand slid to cover mine.

“And you feel disoriented, as if walking in your sleep. And you no longer know what is dream-state, and what is real.

“Now you must pass under the moon, between two towers ancient and mythical, and suddenly when you look, it is another land you see.”

Say something. I knew I had to say something. Ask something. But words would not come—and the woman did not stop.

“Here are the mysteries you seek, the ones that have driven you, defined you. You now stand in that water,” Madame Isobel said, sliding in to tap a finger against the center of the card. “On one shore safety awaits—on the other, the primal land of illusion and madness.”

Wordlessly, I lifted my free hand to the pendant at my chest, and curled my fingers around the steady warmth of my mother’s dragonfly.

“The choice is yours, child.” Her eyes, so dark and timeless, met mine, and the vibration within me strengthened. “You can succumb to the visions and trickery, the hidden enemies—or you can reach for the boat, and pull yourself through.”

I just stared. She spoke in riddles, but it was like she could see straight inside me—like she knew.
Everything
.

“You must not be afraid,” she said, and then she was taking my hand from Dylan—and I let her have it, let her close it in the surprisingly warm strength of hers. “You are strong, and you will survive wherever the roller coaster tries to take you.”

My throat was so dry I couldn’t swallow. “You know why I’m in Belle Terre, don’t you?”

A strange sheen moved into her eyes. “Do
you
?”

I glanced at Dylan, at the hair cutting against his jaw, and again felt the slow, steady swell.

“Fear creates illusions,” Madame Isobel said, turning my hand over in hers. “And terror creates traps. Both prevent us from becoming who we are meant to be.”

So much hit me at once, questions and answers and possibilities—and recognition. This stranger, this woman I had no memory of meeting, knew the most secret places inside me, my journey and my struggle. My … choice.

“Have we met?” She was, after all, a psychic. “My mother used to—”

My words trailed off as she turned my hand and skimmed a finger along the padded section beside my thumb.

Her eyes grew distant. “Yes,” she murmured. “I believe we have.”

I looked at Dylan. My throat burned. Something inside me started to unravel. But the second I saw the way he stood there, so quiet and unmoving, but totally, completely aware, the tight band released, and my breath came.

“This is not the first time you have walked this path,” Madame Isobel said, and now her voice was sad.

“W-what do you mean?”

She dragged her finger along a series of lines in the fleshy part of my palm, some thin and small, others deep and long. I’d never noticed them before.

“There were many others,” she said, glancing from my palm to Dylan.

I would have sworn I heard her breath catch as she looked back down, this time just below my pinkie—and squeezed her eyes shut.

“What?” I asked. “What do you see?”

She remained motionless, her head bowed, as flutes and harps trickled into the vacuum.

Then she looked up. “The answers you seek,” she murmured, “cannot be found here.”

I lifted my hand higher, urging her to keep looking.

But, twisting a ring of black onyx, she stepped back and took a deep breath. “But there
was
a man who did not belong,” she said, point-blank. “Yesterday.”

Dylan spoke before I could. “What did he look like?”

“A wrestler,” Madame Isobel said. “Wide shoulders and big arms—hair short like a soldier. A thick gold chain and ring.”

The chill was immediate.
“Omigod.”
He’d been there, the guy from the gold car, the day before. “What about the girl?”

I had no doubt Madame Isobel knew who I was talking about.

“Sometimes,” she said in that same oracle-like voice she’d used when describing the moon card, “you must accept no answer as
the
answer.”

“No—” I stepped toward her, but she tensed, and Dylan reached for me. “She was here.” Frustration pushed me. “I know she was. Why won’t anyone tell me? She could be in trouble—”

Madame Isobel put her hands to my shoulders. “You do not need to worry about anyone here.”

And with that, she turned and flowed out the front door.

I lunged after her, darting into the bright afternoon sunshine.

But Madame Isobel was neither left nor right. She was gone.

*   *   *

Afternoon bleached the sky, transforming vibrant blue into a whitish gray. So close, was all I could think. I was so close to … something.

Standing in the old white gazebo across from the bookstore, I stared at the intricate pattern of lines running through my palm. My lifeline was long but broken, I knew that. But the rest, like so much else, was a mystery.

What had Madame Isobel seen?

Closing my fingers into a tight fist, I looked across the short brown grass of the park to the playground, where a little girl swung from monkey bars while a woman tossed a baseball with a young boy.

Every time I sought answers, new questions came. I’d been right to come here. I knew that much. I also knew Madame Isobel spoke the truth: the fact no one would answer my questions was, in and of itself, an answer.

The new question was
why
?

The girl, with dark hair falling against her shoulders, glanced my way as she swung from the bars. I smiled—but she turned and hurried away.

With the wind whipping around me, I looked back at Dylan standing at the front of the gazebo, alert, watching—watching
everything.

Everything but me.

And that place inside me, where I’d shut away the craziness of the night four months before, the total
wrongness
of it, nudged against the walls I’d slapped around it—walls I’d
had
to slap around it when Chase had pulled me back into his arms and told me how sorry he was for doubting me—and Dylan had walked away.

I’d told myself it didn’t matter. Dylan and I may have played together as children, but we were strangers now. Whatever recklessness had driven me to kiss him had burned out as quickly as it had flared. None of it meant anything—
he
didn’t mean anything. The fact that he hadn’t said good-bye—that he’d stayed away as if nothing had happened—didn’t mean anything.

But now, out of the blue, here he was, beside me again, resuming his role as my protector and leaving little doubt that he would hurt someone, if he had to. Hurt someone badly.

And all the lingering questions from before, the unwanted emotion, tangled through me all over again.

“I don’t understand,” I said before I could stop myself. “Why are you here—why did you follow me?”

He looked beyond me, beyond the monkey bars, toward the cypress trees sinking into the bayou. “I already told you—”

“No, you told me about your father,” I said, swiping the hair from my face. “But he’s not here. You are.”

And Jim Fourcade didn’t look at me like it hurt, didn’t touch without lifting a hand.

And he didn’t speak in riddles.

And his voice didn’t swirl like a drug—or a dream.

“And I want to know why. Why you and not him? Why didn’t you tell him no?”

With the wind falling quiet, Dylan turned from that spot across the water to look at me, making me wonder what he was trying to see. And then his eyes took on that dark gleam, the one that revealed the fire inside. “Because he didn’t ask.”

Behind me, the little girl shrieked. “W-what?”

“I didn’t say no,” he said with that same crazy stillness. “Because he didn’t ask.”

“Then—”

“I’m here because this is where I need to be,” he added with a quick glance toward the playground.

Need.

He looked back, and the corner of his mouth lifted. “But you would have.”

“Would have what?”

“Said no.” There was no emotion in his voice, just a simple statement of fact. “If my dad or your aunt had told you I was going to keep an eye on you…” Stepping toward me, he lifted his hand, the movement so slow I could have stepped back before his fingers found my hair and slid it from my eyes.

But I didn’t.

“You would have said no.”

I wanted to deny what he was saying—there was no logical reason for me to reject protection.

“It’s written all over you,” he said, and somehow I hadn’t realized he was still touching me, his hand to my face, his thumb gliding along my cheekbone. “Like a closed door.”

I took a quick step back, realizing too late that in moving, I was validating his words. “I’m not the one who closed it.”