Fragile Darkness (18 page)

“I freakin'
love
it!” Victoria said, and for a heartbeat everything seemed so normal, so like before …

But the second thoughts caught up with feelings, the feeling fell away.

Hating the quick tightening of my chest, I stepped back and lowered my chin, studying my reflection in the full-length mirror for customers trying on T-shirts.

Victoria joined me, sweeping her hair to rest over one shoulder.

“Trey's gonna flip,” I predicted.

“Lucas would tell me I look like a slut.”

“Lucas is an ass,” I shot right back.

She laughed. “Then let's do this.”

Aunt Sara took pictures like it was prom or something. She had us pose all over the shop, some normal, some totally goofy with me and Victoria jabbing needles into little straw dolls while Trey and Deuce pretended to writhe in agony. Ready to get on with things, I started to protest, but in those few minutes when she had her camera to her eye, the shadows fell away, and it was just me and my aunt again, being us, being silly. And silly made something amazingly warm feather through me.

Until my hand brushed the bracelet wrapped around my wrist, and the brief time-out faded.

*   *   *

Wall-to-wall people crammed the French Quarter.

With the guys dance-walking a path in front of us, we made our way through the blizzard of beads and doubloons toward the square. Lights blared from every window of every building, with parties overflowing onto second-story balconies. A different song blasted from every shop and restaurant and bar.

On a normal night psychic tables would fill the plaza beyond the cathedral, with musicians and other performers. But tonight hundreds of people stood body-to-body, dancing and watching the fireworks explode over the river.

Pushing up on my toes, I looked for Kendall.

“S'okay, Primetime,” Deuce said, drawing me toward the gently blowing canopy of a huge palm. “Repeat after me.”

I turned toward him. He and Trey weren't the Blood Brothas tonight, they were the Blues Brothers, with black suits and fedoras, even the dark sunglasses.

“Primetime?”
I asked, not needing to see his eyes to know he was about to pull a Deuce on me.

He grinned, his teeth flashing as white as his shirt.
“The Secret Life of a Teenage Psychic,”
he said, all dramatic and announcer-like. “It's the next sure hit.”

I couldn't help it. I laughed. “I'm not so sure about the secret part,” I pointed out. He'd seen the video of me from the night before. Everyone had.

With an arm around me, he turned me toward a blast of white exploding over the river, little glimmers falling like thousands of shooting stars against the night.

“True enough,” he said, his body moving to the rhythm of the music. Nearby, Trey and Victoria danced. “That's why we've got rules.”

Another volley of fireworks shot up against the sky, the boom reverberating along the riverfront.

“Rules?”

He nodded, lifting a hand to slowly slide the Ray-Bans from his eyes. The gleam there rivaled the show beyond the levee.

“No drinking,” he said.
“Anything.”

He didn't have to worry about that. “No drinking anything,” I repeated.

“No wandering off by yourself.”

A quick little twist went through me. “No wandering off by myself,” I agreed, all solemn-like.

“If you start feeling like something's wrong or you're going to have a vision—”

“You'll be the first to know,” I promised as a huge ring of red blossomed over the levee beyond his shoulder.

He'd been dancing, but the rhythm stilled, the line of his jaw, where the thin stubble of his chinstrap ran, tightened. “And if you see the guy from the video last night—”

I stopped him with a quick flash of my eyes. “I know what to do,” I said, playing along. Very deliberately, I pulled the voodoo doll from a hidden pocket in my costume and lifted it between us, smiling as I jabbed a needle between the straw legs.

Deuce winced. “Thatta girl.”

The fireworks kept exploding, faster now, one brilliant, flickering burst after another.

“We're good,” I said, with another quick scan for Kendall. It was six thirty. She should have been here. Of course, with the tight swarm of people, she could have been right behind me and—

The quick breath of cold whispered like a spider down the back of my neck. I stiffened, knowing—
knowing
someone was there. Watching.

Deuce crowded in on me. “Mile High?”

I spun around, searching hundreds of masked faces as Victoria dragged Trey over.

“He's gone,” she said, saying more with her eyes than her words.

“You saw someone?” I asked.

She nodded. “Over there,” she said. “I looked up and saw him staring at us.” The bright red sparks showering down behind her made her darkly lined eyes look more severe. “He looked familiar, like maybe I'd seen him at a party, but he turned before I could place him.”

The smoky wind tore around us, whipping at the big palms by the iron fence.

“You think maybe it was that Will guy?” she asked.

My heart kicked hard. “Maybe.” That's what I
wanted
to believe, but then Kendall texted a few minutes later, and the Will theory went out the window.

Change of plans!

Will wanted to go to some place on Bourbon.

I have no idea why, but we're at Club Rouge.

Can you come?

The place was packed.

A bald, goatee'd bouncer stood at the door, allegedly checking IDs but he seemed as gone as everyone upstairs. With nothing more than a smile, the four of us squeezed past him and up the narrow staircase to the music blasting from the second floor.

Red. That was the first thing I noticed. The lights were all red, creating an amber haze against the frenzy of dancing. Black lights swirled, not rapidly like the party at the theater, but more of a dreamlike progression, pale crimson fading into shadows, shadows into darkness, hovering for a slow breath before giving way to the muted, dawn-like glow of crimson all over again, and again, like an endless roll of day into night, night into day, but with each hour lasting only seconds.

Victoria grabbed my hand, leaning in close. “Wicked,” she murmured.

That was one word.

The mindless electronic rhythm hummed through me, the crowd swelling from all directions. I texted Kendall, letting her know we were there, then we split up to look for them. Victoria and Trey headed for the bar, while Deuce took my hand and soul-walked me to the dance floor. With each swirl of red into black, black into red, something inside me swirled, too, a cold awareness, a knowing like in the Square, making my chest tighten, as if my throat wasn't letting enough air squeeze through.

The energy was the same, broken and desperate, as the night before. The white didn't flash, but for a disjointed second I could see the twist of shadows again, collapsed against the ground, frozen there.
Forever.

Half-dancing, half-walking, Deuce guided me deeper into the thrash of sweaty bodies, keeping my hand locked in his. With every step we took, every slam of the drums, the hum inside grew stronger, a low-wattage electricity zinging through my blood, telling me Will was close.

Will, or
someone.

Stopping, I lifted my face to soft red haze, pulling in a thousand different scents, perfume and smoke and beer, sweat and something else, something earthy and pungent. Something that swirled through me, quietly urging me to let go, and
just be.
For once. For that night, that moment. I'd been fighting for so long, to breathe, to understand. To forget.

Especially to forget.

Everything.

Somewhere along the line, part of me had. I'd built a quiet wall inside me, to protect, Julian said. But I didn't want protection. It was like cheating—or hiding. I wanted to live, to be the me I'd been before.

Around me, hundreds morphed into a mindless entity moving in unchoreographed synchronicity. Closing my eyes, I felt them, every one of them, all the individual strands wound together, escape and freedom, pain and agony and a desperate cry for release.

It all tightened through me, exactly like the night at the abandoned hospital where we found Jessica. Emotions lingered, echoes surviving long after bodies failed. You heard them, even when you heard nothing. You
absorbed
them, lived them, even when you felt nothing. And in that moment, I felt so much more than I had in weeks.

The numbness was fading.

Opening my eyes, I stared at the flickering contortion of bodies, knowing,
knowing
that someone stood directly behind me, waiting. But nothing prepared me for the strung-out face I found when I turned around, the sunken, raccoon-rimmed eyes and stringy hair, the diamond stud in the left nostril, and the wobbly way she reached for me, as if we were BFFs, rather than BEFs.

“Trin-Trin!” Amber slurred, holding onto my arm. “I almost didn't recognize you!”

I'd noticed the differences before, that she was paler if possible, skinnier. And I knew she'd bombed a few tests, that her grades were slipping. And of course the ickiness with her and Lucas.

But seeing her like this three out of four nights sent a bad feeling sinking through me.

“Isn't it
a
mazing?” she sang-said, wobbling into me.

I caught her, holding her up so she didn't fall.

Deuce and I exchanged a quick look. His was total WTF.

Amber gazed up at me, her eyes somewhere between lost and gone. “I should have known you'd be here when I saw your hot friend…”

The quick tightening was automatic. “Deuce and I—”

“No,” she said, all dreamy-like, and yeah, I was still holding her. All I had to do was let go, and she'd drop like a rock. “Not the Blood Brotha.”

I wasn't following her. “Who? Where?” How could she know about Will?

“Your bodyguard guy,” she muttered.

My heart kicked, and the current inside me revved into a dark rush. A rush I recognized.

A rush I didn't want.

Spinning around, I searched the shadows.

Amber pulled back, looking at me through a tangle of sweaty hair stuck against her mouth. “He was with some girl.”

I stilled.

It didn't matter.

It so didn't matter.

He could. Dylan could totally have a girlfriend.

How could he not?

“He can be with whoever he wants,” I whispered over the forceful rush of blood through my ears and into the even louder techno rhythm. The two merged, fusing, pounding.

“Really?”
Amber breathed, gazing up at me as she swayed. Or was she dancing? I didn't know, wasn't even sure there was a difference. “That's what I was hoping you would say.”

Disconnecting myself—from her, the moment, from the iciness seeping through me—I pushed up on my toes and looked beyond the wall of Deuce and the girls swarming him, searching for Kendall or Victoria or—

I stopped before another name could form.

It didn't matter, though, even if his name
had
formed. I couldn't see anyone. The trancelike pulse of the dance floor stole faces and identities, leaving only amorphous anonymity.

“Wasn't last night amazing?” Amber sighed, hanging onto me again.

I turned to look at her.

Lost, I thought again. She was so totally, completely lost.

“I saw you with that guy,” she murmured, smiling.

And I knew. She so took that video.

“Do you want some more?”

We bobbed along with the crowd, the strangest sense of vertigo and this-isn't-really-happening carrying me. Me with Amber. In a Bourbon Street bar. Kind of … dancing together.

“More what?” I asked.

The dreamiest look blanked her gaze.
“Bliss.”

The bad feeling from a few minutes before got a whole lot worse.

“Here,” she slurred, pressing something into my hand. “It helps, doesn't it? Makes the bad go away, the pain, and leaves only the
bliss.
”

I looked down. Three little yellow pills rested against my palm.

“You wanna go to the bridge with me?” she ask-slurred.
“It'll be like old times.”

Everything inside me tightened. With a steadying breath, I reached out and touched her, running my hand along her bony arm.

The rush of heat shocked me, the rapid-fire flutter of the pulse at her wrist. And her eyes, I realized, they were wide and dark, completely unfocused.

“Amber,” I said, as my phone vibrated against my thigh. “I don't think you should be here.”

Closing her eyes, she kept right on swaying. It was like talking to air.

Sighing, I reached for my phone and pulled up the text, eager to get on with talking to Will.

People who play with fire get burned.

Go home now, while you can.

Then I was the one swaying. I spun around, searching: Amber danced by herself, Deuce looked up from over his harem, crimson faded into black, and Victoria broke through a group of guys.

“Trinity!” she shouted over the music. “He's here! You have to come, hurry!”

“Where?”

With pink highlights falling against her Cleopatra eyes, she twisted back around and wedged her way through the hot, sweaty kaleidoscope, to the back of the club.

Holding her hand, I shoved Amber's pills into my front pocket with the other and hurried after my friend.

Beyond the dance floor the insanity thinned, but the music still pulsed, and the lights flickered, red then black, black then red.

Five or six girls stood staring wide-eyed toward the narrow hall to the bathrooms. Hands pressed to their mouths, they watched in horror.

Then I got closer, and recognized the dark gleam for what it really was.