Broken Illusions: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (33 page)

“Oh, my God,”
I murmured, stunned. So close. I’d come so close to not getting away.

“I’ve got you,” Dylan said, as he always did. Because … he did. He always did. He was always there, even when I didn’t see him.

Even when I said I didn’t want him.

“It’s okay,” he said.
“I promise it’s okay.”

I struggled back, needing to see his face. Unlike everyone else, he wore no mask, none other than the ferocity that stripped me bare.

“It was him.” The pain wouldn’t stop. Wincing, I pressed a hand to my side, stilling at the warm stickiness. “The guy from the car.”

“He’s not going to hurt you again. I swear to God he’s not even going to look at you—”

I sagged.

Dylan caught me, his hand sliding to mine, as the silver of his eyes caught fire.

“He had a knife,” I whispered as Dylan slid down along the brick wall, lowering me to the cool damp concrete and drawing me between his legs. His movements were gentle as he slid back the destroyed fabric of my dress to reveal the torn flesh at my side.

“I’m going to kill him. I swear to God, I’m going to—”

“Dylan, no—”

“I tried,”
he said, and I don’t think I’d ever heard someone sound so tortured. “I couldn’t get there in time,” he said. “I tried—”

I looked up, finding that dark curtain of hair falling against his jaw, making the lines and angles look sharp enough to slice. “You were there?”

His eyes were narrow, concentrated. But instead of my face, they were on the movement of his fingers along the blood oozing from my side. “I’ve been there all day,” he said quietly, as the strangest calm moved through me. “You didn’t think I’d walk away now, did you?”

“But you were gone…”

He looked up, and his eyes met mine, and everything that had been momentarily frozen surged all over again. “Just because you can’t see me, doesn’t mean I’m not there.”

It was a crazy time to start crying. But there on the ground against the wall in the cold dark alley, with his legs and arms around me, all I felt was the stream of warmth, and the salty flood to my eyes.

“This isn’t over,” he said, still so quiet, so ragged. “And I’m not going to walk away.”

Tears slid down my cheeks.
“Like you did before,”
I whispered without thinking, and then his eyes were the ones with the sheen.

“I had to,” he said, and though I didn’t understand, I knew that he believed.

He drew me closer, wrapped me in the warm refuge of his body, and held on until there was no more cold, no more shaking, no more pain.

I don’t know what made me look up, toward the front of the alley, where Chase stood with his mask in his hand, watching. Our eyes met, but tired and hurt and bleeding, I couldn’t make myself move, couldn’t make myself go to him or explain.

Without a word, he turned and walked away.

*   *   *

“Delphi has to be here somewhere,” I said, emerging from Aunt Sara’s bedroom. I’d showered and changed into sweats and a long-sleeve T-shirt, blown my hair dry and let Dylan tend to the knife wound. Finally it had quit bleeding.

At least on the outside. On the inside …

I swallowed against the memory, couldn’t let myself go back to those last few moments with Chase. But I couldn’t stop myself from looking at the leather wrapped around my wrist, and the word on top:
HONEST.

I knew how hard it was for Chase to trust, but I thought he knew me better than that.

“I saw her yesterday before I left,” I said, looking up.

Dylan turned from the big window, still wearing the black jeans and dark gray henley that had allowed him to blend in at the party. After talking with his father he’d cleaned up, too, but blood still stained his shirt.

“Cats like to hide,” he said.

I’d checked Delphi’s favorite spots, including the cabinets where she sometimes napped in my aunt’s cast-iron skillet.

“She was a street cat,” he said as I opened the coat closet for the hundredth time. “She knows how to take care of herself—”

I turned toward him, vaguely aware of the twinge in my side. “How do you know that?”

I would have said he went even more still, but that was impossible. I didn’t know what it was about Dylan Fourcade and stillness, but even when he moved, he was so very, very contained. “You must have told me—”

“No, I didn’t.” It was phenomenal how hard my heart started to slam. But the pieces were all there, pieces I’d never seen before—never even really thought of, much less attempted to put together. And with them now, I made myself move toward him.

We’d been alone together before. I’d seen him in light and in dark, inside and out. He’d pulled me from the river and a fire, had tended me when I was hurt over and over again, physically, emotionally, but had refused to undress me, even when I was unconscious, opting for help from Lena Mae. He’d seen me running and screaming and crying. He’d seen me hiding.

But this was the first time I’d seen him inside my condo, my world and on my terms. And something about the sight of him standing beside the velvet curtains, with the curtain of his own hair in a sharp line against his cheekbone, while the silver of his eyes glowed hotter with each step I took, brought a focus that rocked me.

“It was you,” I whispered, closing in on him. “You gave me Delphi.”

He looked away, and I had my answer.

I stopped, and my throat knotted. I don’t know how I’d never pieced that together. Six days after we found Jessica, I’d been alone in my room when the intercom buzzed. I’d answered, but no one had responded, so I’d glanced outside the window where Dylan now stood, and seen a plain brown box on the doorstep. Inside, I’d found Delphi, scared and emaciated, staring up at me.

I’d wondered who’d put her there, who’d brought her to me. Chase, Aunt Sara, and Detective LaSalle had all made my suspect list, but they’d denied any involvement. But I think I’d assumed it was one of them anyway. They were the ones who’d been there, helping me find solid ground after the insanity of Jessica’s kidnapping.

I’d never thought about Dylan.

But that wasn’t true. I
had
thought about Dylan. I’d wondered where he was and why he’d walked away, why he’d never followed up, called, texted, anything. Why he’d vanished without saying good-bye.

I’d wondered all of that, but I’d never connected him to the kitty from the wharf—the one only the two of us had seen.

Now I saw, and now I knew, and the knowledge did strange, strange things to the ebb and flow inside me.

“Why?” I asked.

Dylan didn’t need clarification. “Because she needed a home,” he said, looking back from the shimmer of lights below. “And you needed to give her one.”

For one of the few times in my life, I was at a loss for words. But I wasn’t at a loss for emotion. It bubbled beneath the surface, and before I even realized I’d moved, I had a hand at my chest, my fingers around the smooth edges of the dragonfly.

“She’s gone,” I whispered. “I don’t know how, but…”

He did away with the last of the distance between us, taking my shoulders in his hands. “No, she’s not.”

I wanted to believe him. “But I feel something,” I said, opening myself to the disturbing vibration I’d been trying to write off as nerves. “I felt it the second I walked into the condo, this strange emptiness.”

“You’re not used to being here alone.”

“It’s more than that,” I said. “It’s … like this ringing in my ears, this hollowness.” I’d sensed it that morning, when Chase had brought me back from Belle Terre. Bone tired, I’d attributed it to leftover shock. “I can just tell.”

“When’s your aunt coming home?”

My sigh was automatic. It was also bizarre. Aunt Sara had only been gone two days. And considering we’d been virtual strangers six months before, I hadn’t expected to miss her. But I did. Maybe Dylan was right—maybe the emptiness had nothing to do with Delphi and everything to do with my aunt.

“Tomorrow morning,” I said.

“Then you should get some sleep. I’ll keep an eye out for Delphi.”

Because he wasn’t leaving
. “Why are you doing this?” It was a question that had been bothering me.

His hands fell away. “My father—”

“Not your father,” I said again, as the play of shadows across his face fascinated me.

There were so many questions, it was hard to collapse them into one. “You let me go,” I said, my voice dropping quieter. “Last night, you knew I left the hotel room, didn’t you? That’s how you were at the church. You followed me, when it would have been so much easier to stop me.”

It’s what everyone else tried to do.

“Is that what you want?” We were the only ones there. No one could hear us. There was nothing to hide. Yet neither of us used full voice. “For me to stop you?”

“No.”

“It’s not what I want, either.” Lifting a hand, he smoothed the hair from my face, his fingers hesitating where, only the day before, there’d been pain. “You’re not the one I need to stop.”

Everything got a little fuzzy.

“And if I did, you’d keep right on trying,” he added as his hand fell away. “And sometimes it only takes a second…”

He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to. I knew.

It only took a second to lose everything.

*   *   *

The scream woke me.

Ripped from the darkest corners of sleep, I opened my eyes and listened, didn’t trust myself to move, or even breathe.

Delphi crouched beside me, her ears flat back as the terror again cut into the night. “No—no!”

And with the voice came recognition.

I called out for her to come back, but she didn’t, and then I was on my feet, running.

Darkness stole details, but I knew I couldn’t stop, couldn’t wait. There wasn’t time. I had to find her—fast.
Now
.

The silence stopped me. It pulsed from all directions, muted and distorted, the perfect backdrop for … sound.

I heard her. I heard the chop of her breath. And she heard me.

Clumsily she took off like a frightened animal, and this time I knew where to follow.

And then I saw her, through the darkness, the shadows, standing statue still, nowhere left to go. Long dark hair cascaded over her shoulders, falling against the torn lavender of her little dress.

I stepped toward her—and saw the knife.

“I’ve been so patient,” he said. I said.

We said.

Moonlight caught the serrated blade in its upward arc, and she screamed, twisting around—

“Trinity!”

I froze, the voice piercing in from behind me. And then someone was reaching for me, pulling. “Wake up!”

I hung there a cold, wordless moment, as the distorted edges came into focus, and I realized I was no longer standing amid tangled vines, but in my bed, and that Dylan was on the edge of the mattress, and that the first rays of morning spilled through the sheers at my window.

“Omigod.” I tried to breathe, couldn’t. I couldn’t move, either, even as everything inside me kept running.
Screaming
.

“Tell me.” His hands found mine, and held. “What were you seeing?”

But already the images were fading, draining. Looking away, I found my blown-glass dragonfly lying on its side next to my aunt’s nun doll. The tip of the wing was broken.

“I-I woke up,” I said, trying to understand. “I woke up right here with Delphi…” My heart slowed as I looked down at the mattress—and saw no sign of my cat.

When I looked back at Dylan, he silently shook his head.

Delphi was still gone.

“I-I heard someone screaming.” Could still hear them, but quieter now, distant. Fading like the dream.

“Do you remember who?”

“No … I … It’s not there anymore. I tried to follow her, knew I
had
to follow her. But everything was so dark, and I was running—”

The memory stabbed through me, not from the dream, but from Dylan’s father. “Oh, my God—it was him, wasn’t it?” The man who’d taken Grace. “I was seeing through his eyes.” That’s why I’d run so fast, wanted so badly. That’s why I’d seen the knife—in my own hand. “He’s hunting again.”

His eyes went dark. “I want you to text your aunt.” Standing, he retrieved the BlackBerry his father gave me from the nightstand. His movements were stiff, forced. “Ask her when she’s going to be back.”

I took the phone, didn’t understand why I couldn’t feel anything. “W-why?”

“Just do it. I’ll be right back.”

I watched him leave, then texted my aunt.

Hey!

I knew I had to pretend. I knew I had to act like everything was normal.

When will u b home?

Then I caught the green glow from the clock, and realized it wasn’t even six-thirty in the morning. So much for being all casual and normal.

Chase and I had a fight.

I sat and waited, hoping she would buy my reason for texting so early.

It was almost five minutes before she responded.

Ah, cher. I’m so sorry. R U OK?

Relieved, I exhaled.

I will b.

This time she replied more quickly.

R U alone?

Mindlessly, my fingers fumbled across the keys.

No.

“Did you reach her?” Dylan asked from the doorway.

I looked up as he crossed to me, and felt a chill cut through me. “What is it?”

The lines of his face were tight, closed. Shadows ringed his eyes, making the whites look whiter—and the silver burn as he slid down beside me and took the phone, saying nothing as his fingers flew across the keys.

“What are you doing?” I asked, scrambling to see what he’d typed.

Should I take those new necklaces to the shop?

I blinked, didn’t understand. “What necklaces—” But before I could finish, my aunt’s response zipped in.

That would be gr8.

My heart started to pound, pound really, really hard—Aunt Sara and I had not talked about any necklaces.

Dylan never looked up.

K. Want me 2 string a few more?

The second he hit send, quiet fell between us. Questions burned my throat, but I held them there, didn’t trust myself to give them voice.