Shattered Dreams: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (2 page)

“The roads were like rivers,” he explained, “but most of the houses were okay.”

Through the beam of Drew’s flashlight, Jessica’s smile glittered as she dragged her finger along the grid superimposed on the heart. “Which is why the blood is still here.”

They were practically begging me to ask. “What blood?”

Jessica looked away, down toward a pile of … corn? I tensed, trying to focus on the faint sounds of the city drifting on the night, sirens and the horn of a tugboat, music. Laughter.

Crying.

In New Orleans, if you listened closely enough, you could always hear something.

At least I could.

The low buzz threatened to drown it all out. Still cold, I swung my flashlight toward the broken glass, but saw only the shifting shadows of the huge trees beyond.

I would have sworn someone had been watching.

“No one knows for sure,” Jessica said, and I could hear the deliberate drama in her voice.

“But they say when the moon is full…” Like it was tonight. I doubted that was a coincidence.

“The walls start to bleed.” That was Amber.

“And that you can hear a girl crying from one of the rooms upstairs.”

“And smell whiskey…”

My heart bumped hard, even though it was obvious what they were doing. They were like lame, wannabe actors reading the script for some low-budget horror flick. And while I hadn’t spent tons of time with kids my age, I wasn’t stupid.

Jessica and Amber had been friends forever. Chase and Drew were cousins. They’d all grown up together. I was the new girl.

That, apparently, made me fair game.

But the cold was real. And the tomblike darkness. The disgusting smell.

Still, I swallowed hard and tilted the flashlight to shine on my own face. “I want to see.”

*   *   *

Sometimes I really regretted my smart mouth. Now was definitely one of those times. Jessica led us through the shadows of the kitchen to a closed door. She pulled it open to a blast of stale air, revealing a hidden staircase.

“This is what the servants used,” she said, taking the first step.

“You mean slaves,” Amber corrected, lingering at the bottom as the rest of us started up.

Her friend huffed. “Whatever.”

“The blood is theirs,” Amber just had to say. “Some weird voodoo—”

Her terrified scream stopped me cold.

“Amber!” Jessica cried as we all swung our flashlights behind us. We saw them immediately, Pitre pressing Amber against the graffiti-polluted wall, his hand over her mouth. Her eyes were wide—
furious
.

“Jerk,” Jessica muttered.

But Pitre only laughed. “Sike!”

“Let her go.” That was not Chase, as I expected, but Drew. Three words strung together.

There’s a first for everything.

Pitre’s lip curled as he stepped back from Amber. She recoiled from him, slinking up several stairs while barely seeming to move. All the while she looked at him like he was one of those disgusting cockroaches Louisiana specialized in.

Apparently she was a lot more over the night they hooked up than he was.

“I think it’s time for you to go,” Jessica hissed, shining her flashlight into his face. “No one wanted you here to begin with.”

His mouth curled. “Now who’s scared?”

Her eyes got narrow. “
Chase.
Make. Him. Go.”

Chase moved between them like a referee, and in that moment I felt so bad for him. I mean, putting him in that position, making him choose between his girlfriend and his All-State receiver.

“I wanted him here.” Chase’s words surprised me as much as they surprised everyone else. I stepped back, but couldn’t stop staring at the way his blue eyes glittered. “If he goes, I go.”

The walls pushed closer. Jessica didn’t move, though. No one did. I’m not sure anyone even breathed.

It was Jessica who moved first, after a long hot second, glancing beyond Drew to her best friend. Their eyes met. Understanding flared.

“It’s cool,” Amber said, even though it was obvious she was lying.

The awful drone grew louder, and the walls wouldn’t stop watching. If someone got locked in here—

I needed to move. “Then come on,” I said. Standing in place made me feel like a sitting duck.

“Need me to lead?” Pitre asked, obviously needling Jessica. “Because I’d be happy to show you where to go—”

“Oh, shut up.” With the words she took off.

Flashlights in front of us, we all followed, Chase and Bethany behind Jessica, Amber and Drew behind them, me with Pitre. He said nothing, but I would have sworn I saw a flicker of respect in his quick glance. Or maybe that was gratitude.

Upstairs, doorways lined each side of an ultra-long hallway, all closed, like in a hotel. Except this had been a house. Actually, was still a house. Just empty.

Except for the presence that hummed like invisible blood through invisible veins …

Oblivious, Jessica swung open the second door to the left, and vanished inside.

Again we all followed. My heart pounded hard as I crossed into the room—the mattresses stopped me. Surrounded by the remains of little white candles and an unbroken chain of dead flowers, they dominated the center of the room, like … an altar.

Crouching beside them, Jessica glanced up through a tangle of dark hair, and smiled. “You wanna see?”

TWO

No one moved. Through the crisscross of flashlight beams they all looked at me, as if some massive gauntlet had been hurled at my feet.

Probably because it had.

Challenge glimmered in Jessica’s eyes, but it ran so much deeper than the mattresses. They were just a prop, everyone else the audience. This was about her, and me. And Chase.

Actually, it was all about Chase.

She was staking her claim, daring me to make a move. I was supposed to back away, to run, giving her the satisfaction of scaring me away. Not from the house.

But from Chase.

Open door number one; open door number two. Life was about choices. Take a different path—dream a different dream. Even the road not taken led somewhere.

I’ll never know what would have happened if I’d just turned and walked away.

But I’d never been very good at that.

Determined not to buckle, I stepped deeper into the room—and saw. Lightning flashed in from a cloudless sky, replacing shadows with a harsh silver light. And in that one cruel flash, everything came into horrible focus.
Filth littered the warped wood floor. Some kind of greasy grime coated the windows. Dark copper smeared against the walls. And on the mattresses, something really red.

A single pink flip-flop lay upside down.

A cell phone in the corner.

On the bed …

I gasped.
The girl lay limp as a rag doll, long legs barely covered by short denim shorts. And the hair, long, dark—

I recoiled, tried to breathe. My throat burned. My chest hurt—

“Jesus.”

I grabbed onto the oath, the familiar voice, used it to pull me back. Somehow I managed a forceful blink, returning the shadows to the room and revealing everything exactly as it had been: Jessica and Amber crouched among the candles by the mattresses, a scowling Drew a few steps away, Bethany hovering close to Chase, Pitre beside me. They all stared as if I was crazy.

There’d been no lightning. Not for them.

Only for me.

“You’re eff’in cold as ice,” Pitre muttered.

Only then did I realize he’d grabbed my hand.

I yanked back from him, willing the stupid images to clear. There was
no
light in the room,
no
blood.
No
knife on the floor.

I wasn’t lying discarded on the bed …

Nonsense,
Gran had told me the first time she’d found me frozen by that horrible, invisible lightning.
It’s all nonsense.
Shaken, I’d buried myself in her arms and clung to her, held on as tightly as I could.

I missed having someone to hold onto. Aunt Sara was awesome, but it wasn’t the same.
She
wasn’t the same. She didn’t know.

She couldn’t.

Gran had made me promise to never speak of what I saw.

“A nice shade of pale, too.” Amber smirked, exposing me with her flashlight. “What’s the matter? See a ghost?”

Say something!
I told myself.
Don’t stand there like some kind of freak.

“Maybe,” I said with a hint of smart-ass I didn’t come close to feeling. Forcing my own smirk, I kept my eyes on the girls, absolutely refusing to look at Chase. It was bad enough that I could feel him watching me.

“Don’t
you
feel it?” I played innocent, crossing my arms to fend off the shiver I felt—but they did not.

“Feel what?” Bethany asked, and the real fear in her voice made me feel kinda bad. I didn’t look at her, though. Because looking at her would mean looking at Chase.

“The cold,” I said.

Pitre laughed. “Sorry, babe, but it’s hot as hell in here.”

“Like a meat locker,” I said, edging closer to the mattresses. “Like on those ghost-hunter shows.”

Jessica pushed the hair back from her face, rolling her eyes. “Uh-huh. That’s why my shirt is sticking to my chest.”

No, but heat and humidity weren’t the reasons, either. Buying clothes a size too small …

But I wasn’t going to go there.

“Wait a minute.” Amber closed her eyes and opened her arms in welcome. “I think I
do
feel something.”

Bethany edged closer to Chase.

“The candles, the mattresses,” she purred, opening her eyes. “It’s
perfect
!”

“Perfect?” I echoed.

Through the play of shadow and light, she literally glowed. “For a séance! We could do one, see if there really are ghosts here.”

Around my throat, a nonexistent scarf pulled tight.

“Anyone got a lighter?” she asked, kneeling to pick up a candle.

“I-I don’t think this is a good idea,” Bethany said.

But her sister joined Amber, lining up the votives in two little rows. “Come on,” Jessica said. “Don’t you have anyone dead you want to talk to?”

The wave of grief hit so hard, for a second I couldn’t breathe.
Mom …

It was a weird time to think about a woman I didn’t even remember. But New Orleans had been her town, and sometimes I’d swear I could feel her …

Was she here? Would she come if I called?

Driven by something I didn’t understand, I ignored the heaviness in my chest and approached the altar of mattresses. They were old and dirty … stained.

Going down on one knee, I leaned in for a better look, counting to ten before twisting toward Jessica. “I dare you to touch it.”

Gran hadn’t been much for television or movies, but she’d been a mean poker player. Early on, she’d taught me the beauty of the bluff—and the rush of calling one out.

The surprise in Jessica’s eyes felt good. Beautiful and popular, the oldest child of two rich doctors, she was one of those people so used to calling the shots, it never occurred to her that sometimes the tables could get turned. “Touch it?”

Something dark drove me. Challenging Jessica was not the smartest way to get accepted, but she’d started the game. And when you started a game, you had to be prepared to play.

“The blood,” I said as the others bunched closer. “I dare you to touch it. I mean, if we’re gonna have a séance…”

Pitre laughed. “Yeah, babe,” he drawled in what I’d learned was a Cajun accent. “Touch it.”

Maybe it was the way he said “touch” … or maybe the way he said “it” … but daggers shot into Jessica’s eyes. I just knew she was going to tell Chase to make Pitre leave.

Instead she glanced at her BFF, then looked down to where I crouched.

“If I do,” she said quietly. “What will
you
do?”

I think that was supposed to scare me or make me back off. And while little warnings did ping through me, I wasn’t going to be the one to back down. “Clap?”

Someone gasped. Bethany?

It was Amber who spoke up first. “Truth or dare,” she answered before Jessica could. I wondered if she realized the way her fingers closed around the silver cross dangling from the chain at her neck. “If Jessica takes your dare, you
owe
her.”

The room got crazy quiet. The stillness vibrated.

Walk away.
That’s what common sense told me. This was Jessica and Amber’s territory. I was the outsider, the newcomer. I had no way of knowing—

“Trinity.”

Chase’s voice, the tense undercurrent, stopped me.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said.

But I did. “I’m not afraid.” Yeah, that was so a lie.

Jessica got down beside me, whispering,
“Maybe you should be,”
before leaning over the mattresses. She made a show of lifting her hand toward the copper stain, then lowering her palm to the center of it. She held it there, the beam of her sister’s flashlight highlighting the contrast between the black polish on Jessica’s nails and the pale skin of her fingers.

“Happy?” she asked.

That wasn’t exactly the word I would have chosen. My eyes met hers, but I said nothing. I didn’t need to. We both knew the game we were playing.

“Give me your flashlight.”

My heart slammed—I didn’t need to look down at my death grip to know my knuckles had gone white.
Game,
I told myself.
Game, game, game!

But the buzz no one else heard rang like a bullhorn in my ears.

“You’re not scared, are you?” Amber asked.

“That’s enough—” Chase started.

But I cut him off. “What if I’d rather a truth?”

I’d grown up believing smiles were reflections of happiness. Smiles made you feel good. Smiles held warmth, love, compassion.

Jessica’s held none of that. There was only triumph. “Then a truth it is.” Her voice was very quiet.

“Jessica.”
Chase broke toward her and took her hand, yanked her to her feet. Away from me. He led her to the corner—the same corner where I’d seen the discarded cell phone.