Fragile Darkness (27 page)

Yanking her hand back, she wrapped her arms around herself again, holding on tight.

Not knowing what else to do, I put my hand to her back. “It wasn't your fault.”

“Yes, it was,” she sobbed. “If we'd never been in that house, you would never have had that premonition, and that sick cop would never have known you existed.”

And if he'd never known I existed, he would never have decided to play with me. Aunt Sara would never have fallen for him, Grace would never have been kidnapped, and Chase would never have …

The hugeness of the crashing dominoes blew me away. Without thinking I felt myself reaching for Jessica. She was living with that, the awful scenario she'd painted in her mind.

“You can't know that,” I said, hugging her. “There's no way to know how things would have played out.”

She pulled back. “Me. I was the one that psycho wanted. It was only supposed to be
me.
”

“Was it?” It was easy to think like that, but I was coming to realize no one thread made a tapestry fall apart. “How do you know I wouldn't have had a premonition anyway?”

She stilled. I could tell she'd never thought about that.

“I play the what-if game, too,” I said quietly. It was always there, in the back of my mind, all the hindsight-enhanced choices and decisions, the consequences. “What if I'd warned you about what I saw? What if I'd gone back to the house the second I learned you were missing, instead of turning to the police?” Maybe I could have picked something up or caught another glimpse of what was to come.

“But I didn't understand what I was seeing, or
why
I was seeing it.” Like now, with Will. “If I'd just been more like my mom.”

“You
are
like her,” she countered. “You
found
me.” Eyes glowing, she twisted a long strand of hair around her finger. “There was no reason you should have helped me, but you did. You found me when no one else could.
You
.”

She smiled the old Jessica smile, but with a glimmer of warmth that had never been there before.

“
That's
why I took you to Dylan's and tried to warn you,” she said as the bathroom door opened. “That's why I followed you today, to make sure you were okay. Because it's what you would have done.”

*   *   *

Long after Jessica and Deuce left, the hugeness of all she'd told me lingered.

“Are you hungry?” I asked Dylan, after telling him everything. “I can get you a sandwich or something.”

“Trinity.”

Just my name, that was all he said, but even though he stood on the other side of the bar, I would have sworn he reached out and feathered a hand along my neck. Because of his voice, I knew, the way it could pitch both rough and soft at the same time.

I made myself keep walking. I made myself ignore the picture on the door of the fridge, the one Aunt Sara had taken that morning, of me and Dylan, and reach inside for some turkey and cheese.

“You don't have to do that,” he said.

I pulled down the bread.

“I can take care of myself.”

I stilled, closing my eyes. And then he was there, coming up behind me, and I could feel him, feel him long before the fresh, clean scent of soap drifted around me.

“Let me take care of
you,
” he said, taking the sandwich stuff from my hands.

I didn't turn, knew I couldn't turn, not with how raw I felt after everything that had happened, and not when I knew how close he stood, that if I did I'd find myself staring straight at his chest and shoulders. “I'm okay.”

He smiled. I didn't see it because I still faced the fridge. But I heard it in the hoarseness to his voice, like his vocal chords had turned to sandpaper. “You don't have to pretend, Trinity. Not with me. It's okay to be scared.”

I swallowed, furious at how badly it hurt. If I couldn't manage simple things like swallowing and breathing, how was I going to get through what came next—what always came next with Dylan.

Another good-bye.

“I was,” he said, his voice quieter. “Today, when you were with Will.”

My eyes burned, but I didn't look, not at him, anyway. But with a hard blink the picture my aunt had printed on plain computer paper came into focus, and my heart squeezed. Dylan stood with an arm around me, anchoring me to his side. Silver gleamed from behind the black Zorro mask. His jaw was set, his mouth hard.

I was … looking at him. Aunt Sara hadn't snapped a pic of us both facing the camera, but of me facing Dylan, with my hair falling into my face and the oddest look in my eyes, surprise and caution, but something else, recognition, almost.

Longing.

Regret.

“But you didn't try to stop me,” I whispered.

Behind me, he stiffened. “Why don't you go get cleaned up?”

And I knew this conversation was over.

I started to protest anyway, but before I could Dylan put his hand to my arm, his fingers streaking first against the dark smear of blood on my shirt, then lower.

I stood without moving, staring at his thumb skimming my wrist, then on to my fingers, leaving swirls of warmth where he touched and pools of cold where he didn't.

Slowly, methodically, his index finger slipped along mine, down to the broken nail, and the dried blood against my cuticle. “You need to wash this off.”

My chest tightened. He made it sound so easy. Wash it off, make it go away.

“It's your turn,” he said with a quiet that played against the fringes of memory. “Let me make the sandwiches.”

It was the right thing to do. A shower, wash it all away …

“Okay,” I said, glancing up without thinking, without remembering everything I'd just told myself about not looking at him.

Damp hair slipped against his face, emphasizing his cheekbones and the hot silver of his eyes, the way he looked at me, the way he watched me, as if he didn't trust himself to look away, but knew that he had to. But not yet.

Later.
That's when he'd look away, when he no longer needed to watch my back.

And he knew it.

We both did.

Turning, I walked to the bathroom.

Will's text arrived as I was stepping into the shower.

I'm OK. Somewhere safe. Can't go home.

The bliss people know we're on to them. Be careful.

By the time hot water ran cold and I slipped into my favorite pajamas, the silly flannel ones Aunt Sara gave me for Christmas with big wide-eyed owls against a turquoise background, quiet filled the condo.

Following it, I slipped into the main room. On the table, a plate with a turkey and swiss sandwich sat next to the open cardboard box. On the bar, votives flickered, and sage smoldered. On the sofa, Delphi lay sprawled on Dylan's chest. They both slept.

Quietly I crossed to the bundle of herbs and dragged my thumb and forefinger through the ashes before slipping to the sofa. There, I kneeled in the shadows.

Looking at him hurt, because looking at him reminded me of all the things I'd tried to forget. Looking at him lying there erased the past four weeks and threw me back to the hotel room in Belle Terre, when he'd been the one kneeling beside me, when I'd opened my eyes to the clash of tenderness and violence in his.

That was the moment. That was the moment everything turned.

But there were no rewrites. I knew that now. Maybe in my dreams, but not in reality. We didn't get to go back, only forward. Mistakes could not be erased. Choices could not be changed. You couldn't pretend before still existed, not when you'd felt the jagged shards slice down around you.

The world got watery. I blinked, and the silent tears spilled over.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered, lifting a hand to slide the hair from Dylan's forehead. There my finger lingered, leaving a smudge of sage. “It's my turn to protect.”

Then I rocked back, and cried.

*   *   *

I awoke in the predawn darkness with Delphi pressed against my chest, in my room. I yawned and stretched, trying to remember when Dylan left and I slipped into bed.

Then I noticed the pen in my hand, and the journal at the foot of my bed.

Heart slamming, I scrambled from the covers and crawled toward open pages. Delphi followed, positioning herself directly on top of the bold, dark scrawls.

I dragged her toward me and saw the words.

Beneath them, like a signature, was a hand-drawn picture of a roller coaster.

My eyes burned. It was too late to walk away, or I
had
to walk away? I didn't know! All I knew was I was supposed to do
something
. But …

I looked up, staring at the small red light shining from the camera Dylan had placed on the chest while I showered. Just as quickly I was on my feet and crossing the room, picking up the device and looking for … what? Dylan had set the equipment up. I had no idea how to retrieve the video, or if it had even worked.

I fiddled with it, turning the cube over in my hands and looking for a port or some other way to connect it to my computer and finding the memory card.

From there I rushed to fire up my laptop, climbed back onto my bed, and slid the card into the slot.

I was waiting for the image to load when a soft knock sounded against my door.

Startled and not wanting Aunt Sara to see what I was doing, I shifted the computer.

“Trinity?”

It wasn't Aunt Sara.

 

TWENTY-SEVEN

Dylan.

It was 5:26 in the morning.

I slipped across the room and opened the door. With sleep-messy hair falling against his face, he stood in the shadows of the hall, still wearing the black T-shirt and plaid pajama bottoms.

Barefoot.

Beyond him shadows slipped, stillness stretched, and Arcade Fire no longer played. My aunt's door was closed.

“Dylan,”
I whispered, realizing that just like last month, when I'd dreamed of Aunt Sara and he realized she was in trouble, he'd never gone home.

His eyes were dark, drenched with an intensity that made my heart beat faster. “I thought I heard you.”

“It happened.” Quickly, I took him by the arm and tugged him into my room, closing the door behind us. “I wrote something.”

With two steps he was beside the bed with the journal in his hands and Delphi rubbing his arm. On my laptop, the video played.

The image was grainy, but clear enough to show the transformation from sleeping cat to crouching cat. Her eyes went round and dark. Her ears perked up.

“
Dylan,
look,” I murmured.

He shifted toward me, coming up beside me to watch as, on the monitor, light flooded my room and I came into view. I moved slowly, more like flowing than walking, eyes fixed on some point in front of me. But I didn't look scared. I looked at peace.

Standing there watching, I hugged myself, running my hands along the flannel of my pajamas to generate some warmth. From the corner of my eye I saw Dylan's arm lift and thought he meant to touch me, but he only leaned over and braced his hands against the heap of my covers.

I kept watching myself on the monitor, the way I reached for the journal and the pen, the way I eased onto the mattress and looked up, staring in the same direction as Delphi. In my hand, I cradled the little stuffed puppy Dylan had given me.

In real time he went down on one knee beside me, watching.

The surveillance footage ran on, chronicling second after second of me sitting on my bed, staring at something unseen while fingering the soft leather bracelet. Minutes passed, long, excruciating minutes, before I looked down at the blank page of the journal, closed my eyes, and started to write.

With my left hand. Just. Like. Chase.

“Oh, my God.” It was barely more than a breath. I watched myself, watched the way my hand moved in jerky movements, the way Delphi stayed crouched beside me, her eyes still unblinking.

“It's like I'm in a trance,” I murmured. “Either that or someone else is guiding my hand.”

“Both,” Dylan said.

The hair on my arms lifted.

“Dad said your mom did the same thing, filmed herself painting, because she wanted to see.”

I looked up. “
What?
My mom painted?”

Finally Dylan moved, angling toward me so that I could see his face, and the wash of something I didn't understand in his eyes. “Sometimes.”

Shock tripped through me. “Did she paint me or the fire?” Slowly, achingly, my fingers stroked the dragonfly at my chest—
my heart
—and curved around the smooth edges. “Is that how she knew I was next?”

A quick chill ran through me.

“I wish I remembered her,” I said as my own eyes filled. “And him, my dad.” On the monitor, I stopped writing and stared into space. “I wish I had more than dreams.”

Dylan moved slowly, but it seemed fast, a blur of movement before his hand found the side of my face, sliding the hair from my eyes, and lingering.