Fragile Darkness (4 page)

“You're Trinity, right?” one of the uniformed officers asked. “Monsour?” He was tall and thin, with military short hair and sharp, never-miss-anything eyes. He looked from me to Victoria to Deuce, then back to me. “I need you to tell me what happened. Do you need an ambulance?”

“No,” I whispered. “Nothing happened.”

He so didn't believe me.

“Is something going on?” I asked. The house that had been swarming not that long ago stood empty now. Mr. Greenwood, all tall and distinguished and antique-dealer looking, stood with two other cops off to the side. He looked like a dad about to ground his kids for life.

“That's what we're trying to figure out,” the officer who'd approached me said. “We got several back-to-back nine-one-one calls saying something bad was going down.”

“I didn't see anything,” I said. Not at the party, and not when the world flashed white.

He handed me a card. “If that changes, let me know,” he said. “You want me to call someone? DeMarcus? Your aunt?”

I shook my head.

“How's she doing?” he asked, reminding me of the other cops who walked by the shop, glancing in with the same stunned, apologetic expression. “I know it's been rough.”

That was one word, but there were tons of others for discovering your boyfriend was really a psychic psychopath. “She's okay.”

The cop nodded, again like he didn't believe me, then walked over to the Greenwoods.

“Here,” Trey said, sliding in next to Victoria and handing me a cup of water.

I lifted the glass to my mouth, sipping deeply.

Victoria lowered her voice. “You really didn't see anything?”

“No.” But the disruption reverberated through me, like it had last fall with Jessica, a jittery residue in every cell of my body. “It's like one was trying to form, but there was too much white, like an overexposed picture.”

Deuce frowned. “That ever happen before?”

“No,” I said, confused.

Victoria shoved pink streaks of hair from her face. “Then it's probably nothing, right?”

Another roll of cold moved through me, but before I could say anything, a quiet, thready voice came from the backyard side of the porch.

“I think it was my boyfriend.”

We all turned at the same time.

The girl with the pixie hair stood there, the one who'd been running after the guy in the beanie. Now she stood ghostly pale among a sea of heavily budded azaleas, staring at me through wide, tearstained eyes. She had her hands together prayer-like, pressed to her mouth.

“What?”
I asked.

“I saw you,” she whispered. “And I heard you just now, about the white.” Nervously she glanced to the far side of the porch, where the cops and the Greenwoods were still talking, and lowered her voice. “You were looking at my boyfriend when it happened.”

I frowned, trying to remember. “There were a lot of people there,” I murmured, but I
could
see the guy in the blanket again, running toward me.

“He was looking at you, too,” she said, stepping closer. “And…” Tears flooded her eyes.
“He kept saying something bad was going to happen.”

I saw Deuce stiffen, but stepped closer anyway. “When? Tonight?”

“Earlier,” she said, with a quick nod. “Inside.” She kept glancing around. “He disappeared for a little while, and when I found him, he was different, like he was upset or scared. He told me I needed to go, that I didn't belong here, that something bad was going to happen.”

“Bad how?” Deuce asked, inserting himself between her and the cops' line of view.

“He wouldn't say,” she said. “He just pulled me into a corner and kept looking around, like he was looking for someone.”

If he was scared, why hadn't he left? “Where is he now?” I asked.

“His dad came and got him.”

“His dad?” Victoria blurted out, echoing my own thoughts.

The girl looked embarrassed, and, I realized, incredibly upset.

“I called his mom,” she said quietly, sadly. “We're really close and I wasn't sure what else to do…” Her words trailed into a frown. “But then everything got crazy and then his dad got here, and the cops, and Will started running with everyone else. That's when we came outside, and he was running toward you and you got real still, like you were in a trance.”

Trance?

“He was terrified,” she whispered.

Deuce and I exchanged a quick look. “Sounds like he's on something,” he pointed out.

The girl shook her head. “Not the Will I know. He had a beer or two, but that was it.”

She swiped at her tears, stepping up to curl her hands around the twinkling railing. “Do you think I'm right? Could your trance have been about him?” she asked, real quietly. “The way y'all were looking at each other? Do you think that means something?”

Fear and love and desperation clashed in her eyes, throwing me back to those final moments in Chase's hospital room.

“It's possible,” I whispered.

“Then…” She cut a quick, desperate glance at the cops before continuing. “What if you, like, talked to him? Would that work? Could you do a reading or something, like they do on TV?”

Around us the night stilled, the sudden blast of hope in her wide, tear-drenched eyes glistening against the shadows from before.

Could I
do a reading, like they did on TV? Like my mom had done?

I'd never tried, not like that. Not cold, like a pursuit. The images had always
come to me,
faces and places, something tangible to grab onto. I'd seen my dog lying in a clearing and my grandmother on the kitchen floor, Jessica on a mattress and Chase …

I pushed at the memory, but my eyes filled anyway, and when I looked at the girl, the dark swirl of desperation and love, I knew there was no way I could say no. Because the harsh flash of white meant something, too.

The things I saw, the things I felt, always did.

“Yeah,” I whispered, sliding a hand to the soft leather curled around my left wrist, the bracelet Chase had made for me because I was me, and no one else was. “I'll talk to him.”

*   *   *

“I still don't like it,” Deuce said, stepping into the elevator of the sugar factory turned condo building an hour later. “Real life's not like those TV shows.”

He thought I should wait and see if the vision finished forming on its own, that I was probably barking up the wrong tree, and that the girl—
her name was Kendall and she and her boyfriend were both juniors, like me
—was creating a swirl of drama where there was none.

That
I
wasn't ready.

“I know you don't,” I said, trying to assure him with my eyes. “But how can I not try?”

That was the bottom line.

“Either I talk to this guy and I see something, or I don't,” I pointed out, as the doors slid open to the fifth floor. “Either way, the question is answered. If I see something, then Kendall knows what they're dealing with and she can go to his parents or whatever.”

He sighed as we stepped into the cool sweep of the exposed-brick hallway.

“And who knows,” I said, downplaying it all. “Maybe whatever started at the party
will
finish tonight in a dream, and in the morning we'll have the answer.”

But even as I said the words, cold whispered through me.

“Trinity Monsour,” he grumbled. “Teenage psychic detective.”

I couldn't stop the quick smile, even as everything inside me went on red-alert.

A few minutes later, he turned to leave as I unlocked the door and stepped inside.

Every light, every lamp, even some old lanterns I'd never seen, burned against the night. Confused, I stepped inside and onto plastic. Long, thin sheets covered everything, the antique sofa and love seat, the funky chaise, the table and chairs, the rugs and the hardwood floor.

It was like opening the door to the wrong condo, or the wrong life.

But then something moved near the biggest lump in the center of the room, and a blur of white streaked toward me.

I smiled. “Hey, kitty,” I said, sweeping Delphi into my arms. After locking up behind me, I turned back to the bare walls. That morning, when I left for school, a distressed iron fleur-de-lis had hung by the big picture window overlooking the city; it was gone now, replaced by narrow blue strips running along the ceiling and baseboards.

“Trinity?”

I spun around.

Aunt Sara stood in the back corner, her dark brown hair soft and pretty around her face, her makeup glamour-magazine perfect. Her dress was little and black and totally killer. Her shoes were the stilettos we both loved.

She was standing on a ladder.

With a roller in her hand.

Paint dripped down the arm lifted to the wall and dribbled onto the plastic.

White.

“H-hey,” I said, knowing I needed to say something, but not sure whether I should act like this was normal, or point out that maybe she should be wearing her ratty old Bruce Springsteen T-shirt and cutoffs. “I thought you were going to a party.”

She flashed me a quick smile. “I was. I did. But I wasn't tired when I got home.”

Okay. “So
you're painting
?”

She lowered the roll to the pan balanced on the ladder and shoved it around. “I'm ready for a change.”

Six five-gallon cans sat on the plastic. Two looked empty. I had no idea when she'd purchased them. She hadn't mentioned a word about making a change. Just the opposite, actually. She'd always said the exposed brick was what gave the condo its character.

“White?” It screamed from the wall, bright and sterile, cold, exactly like the flash at the party and the secret second-floor room at Horizons where Julian, the owner, had taken me to access a higher dimension.

Oblivious, my aunt twirled back around and pushed up on her toes, returning her attention to a new section of reddish-brown brick.

No,
some place inside of me shouted.
No! Don't make it white.

She rolled and globs dripped. “It's a primer.”

“Oh.”

“It helps the color go on smoother.”

Like a bandage covering up what was already there.

More brick vanished. More white glowed. “So what color are you thinking?” I asked.

She reached over, continuing her assault. “I'm not sure yet,” she said, all singsongy. “Maybe something blue-green, like the ocean.”

I stilled.

“We've got to get you to Florida sometime,” she whirred on. “It's so incredible.”

The memory flashed:
Sugar-white beaches and turquoise water.
I could see it, the sand and the surf, exactly as Chase had described.

“Or maybe a pale yellow or gold,” Aunt Sara murmured from somewhere in her own little world.

I closed my hand around the soft leather at my wrist. “Maybe you should ask Julian,” I suggested. “He's all about color. He says we actually absorb—”

She whipped around. Eyes that had been doll-vacant for weeks flashed. “I told you I don't want you talking to Julian.”

The edge to her voice sawed off what I'd been saying.

She had told me not to talk to Julian, true enough. But that was
before.
And while my aunt and I hadn't talked about him since he helped me figure out where she was being held (we hadn't talked about anything other than the weather or school, the shop), the vague flickers of memory from those first few days told me he'd been there.
A lot.
At the hospital. Here. At the stove, the sink. I could see him with his shirtsleeves rolled up. I had a foggy image of him by the window, with his raven-black hair loose and flowing against his shoulders. And on the sofa, holding my aunt while she cried.

I'd assumed Julian Delacroix was no longer taboo.

“I'm not talking about me,” I clarified, watching her closely. “I'm talking about you, and color.”

She turned back to the half-white wall. “I'm quite capable of picking by myself.”

I stood there, not sure what to say, watching her jam the roller back into the tray. White splashed over the edges. A drop splattered against the black of her stiletto.

She gave no indication of noticing, or caring.

“I don't need Julian,”
she said, forcing another coat of white onto the brick.

Liar,
some place inside me whispered, but I knew it wasn't the time to point that out. I also knew I could never tell her about the almost-vision, or that I was going to try my first cold reading, like my mom had done for a living.

My aunt didn't need anything else to worry about, especially the dark possibilities running through me.

Delphi squirmed, making me realize how tightly I'd dug my fingers into her fur.

Turning, I headed for the kitchen, where on the counter, a prescription bottle sat by an array of flickering votives.
Count how many are left,
a little voice inside me urged. There'd been nineteen that morning. But the la-la in my aunt's eyes told me she'd only taken one or two. If she'd taken more, she wouldn't be perched on a ladder. She'd be out cold.

With one last scratch to Delphi's head, I lowered her to the floor and headed for the fridge.

“Thirsty?” I asked.

“No, I'm good,” Aunt Sara said, as she always did when I offered her something.

I turned, watching her go at the half-painted wall. Not that long ago, she would have asked about the parade and the party. She would have wanted to know who we saw and how many throws we got. She would have come over to inspect my beads. She'd have texted a few times, just to touch base. And I would have told her everything. About the flash of white, about Kendall and her boyfriend,
about Dylan.