Shattered Dreams: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (20 page)

So I just drove.

Close to midnight, my phone buzzed. The little jolt was immediate, and completely unwanted. I didn’t want to anticipate. I didn’t want to … want.

The more you wanted, the further you had to fall.

“Hey,” came my aunt’s voice, quiet, tired, and all the air pretty much whooshed out of me. I was the one who’d told him to leave me alone. It made no sense for me to be disappointed when he did just that.

“Wanted to let you know they’re calling it a night,” she said.

“Did they find anything? Are they done?”

“Not sure. Aaron—
Detective LaSalle
—said they’d done enough for tonight and they’d get back at it in the morning.”

“So no…” It was hard to force the word out. “Body?”

“No body.”

I wanted to feel relief at that, and I think that I did. But fissures of unease continued to ripple through me.

“Are you home?”

“Not yet.”

“Oh,
cher
—”

“But I’m on my way,” I said before she could lecture or lament. “I’ll meet you there.” And then we said good-bye and I turned off the sad street with as many vacant lots as houses and headed toward the Warehouse District.

On the outskirts of the Quarter, along Canal Street, the night showed few signs of winding down. Groups of people moved along the sidewalks on both sides of the street, shop lights blurring with those of the big hotels. But I saw no sign of Cemeteries, one of the streetcars that ran the main drag.

The pace slowed as I reached the Warehouse District, where most of the bistros and galleries had closed for the night. At our parking garage, I rolled down the window and slid my access card through the scanner, pulled inside, and parked next to Aunt Sara’s spot. Relieved it was empty, I slipped from the car and hurried toward the metal door. If I was lucky, I could get upstairs and into the shower before—

To my right, a shadow shifted.

Picking up my pace, I glanced over my shoulder, saw no one. Annoyed with myself for being so jumpy, I turned back toward the door—and froze.

The towel had not been there before. I was sure of that, knew there was no way I could have missed a dirty, wadded-up pink beach towel not two feet in front of me. Frowning, I started to veer around it, and heard her.

The whisper was soft, the voice more like a breath.
“Trinity.”

Something warm and paralyzing flashed through me. I told myself to move, knew that I
had
to move. But the voice would not let me.

“Trinity … please.”

My chest locked up. My lungs wouldn’t work. I could feel my heart slamming, but nothing else worked.

“No, no, no,” I said as a horrible roar swept in from all directions, swirling and pulsing. Distorting.

“Trinity…”

The towel glowed. “No,” I whispered again. It wasn’t possible. But the only way my body would move was toward that towel. I went down on a knee and reached for it, could no more have stopped my hands from closing around the damp terry cloth than I could have made myself breathe.

And then I saw her.

“Jessica…” I drifted, floating, no longer in the shadowy garage but in a room small and dark, and she was there, huddled in the corner in a gown of white, looking at me through eyes that did not blink. Calling out. Begging …

“Help me.”

“Jessica,” I said again, but she gave no indication that she heard me, saw me, just sat there with her knees gathered to her chest, rocking.

“Where are you?” I screamed. “Tell me where you are!”

“Waiting for you.”

The voice was not hers. It was low and thready, that of a man. With a quickness that had not been possible only moments before I twisted around and saw him, saw the man behind me, his shoulder-length hair pulled behind his neck and his suit of black, the eyes that pierced. And the knife in his hand.

“You,”
I whispered. Or maybe I screamed. Or maybe there was nothing at all, just the soundless agony of a dream. But on a rush of adrenaline I scrambled to my feet, and started to run.

EIGHTEEN

Darkness absorbed me. The roar took everything else. I tore for the street, knew it was my only chance. It wasn’t that late. There could still be a car.

Something hard caught me from behind. An arm. Around my chest. Wrenching me back. “No!” I screamed. But another arm joined the first, a hand sliding to my mouth.

“Trinity!”

The scream ripped through the silence, and everything just stopped. Froze. Went blank. The hands fell away and I was falling, going down to the punishing concrete and rolling into myself, and then the hands came back, but not hard like before. Soft. Gentle.

Tentative.

“Trinity—oh, my God! Oh, my
God
!”

Vaguely I was aware of being tugged, of rolling, of my body being shifted, and when I blinked, when I finally hacked through the shadows of my mind, it was my aunt I saw, crouched over me, her hair wild and stringy against the twist of horror on her face.

“Oh, my God,” she said again, and finally other things slipped into the haze of awareness, and I could feel how badly she shook. “What happened—are you okay?”

“There was a man,” I whispered, but even as I said the words, I knew that he was gone. “He was here…”

She gathered me closer, clinging to me as she twisted toward the back of the garage. “I just got here,” she whispered as I tried to breathe. “I didn’t see—”

“Sara?”

Through the fog I made out the older woman from the third floor, who lived directly below us and waited tables in the Quarter. She was running toward us, her face contorted. “My God! Are you okay? What happened?”

Methodically Aunt Sara started to rock, just rock, back and forth. “Call the police,” she whispered. “Ask for Aaron … LaSalle.”

*   *   *

“I saw her—she was in a small room. It was dark and she was huddled in a corner…”

“You saw her,” Detective DeMarcus Jackson repeated, very slowly. “And were you in this room, too?”

“No, I—” Words shifted around inside me, none of them adequate. I could see the disbelief in Jackson’s and LaSalle’s eyes, even as they pretended to take me seriously. “Maybe,” I said. “I don’t know. One minute I was in the garage, reaching for the towel, then I was … with Jessica.”

“Floating,” Jackson said, throwing back at me a word I’d already used.

Frustration made me want to scream. The two had shown up at the condo with lightning speed. I hadn’t even had a chance to shower—my aunt had barely let go of me long enough to get me a glass of water.

Now, every second dragged, and the more I talked, the crazier I knew I sounded.

“I know you don’t understand,” I said, changing approaches. “And I know you think I’m crazy or making all this up—”

“Trinity!” Sitting next to me, Aunt Sara squeezed my hand really tight. “That’s not true.”

“But I’m not,” I said, despising the way my voice cracked on the words. “
It was real.
The second I touched the towel, everything just flashed and then it was like I was seeing through someone else’s eyes…”

Jackson wasn’t even subtle the way he half-coughed, half-cleared his throat. “So you were seeing through the towel’s eyes?”

He might as well have laughed. I sat there staring at him, refusing to look away, even as something sharp and hot flashed through me, obliterating every molecule of respect I’d tried to have for him. I knew his job was to ask questions. I knew his job was to investigate, be skeptical.

But I hadn’t realized it was to belittle.

“I was there,” my aunt bit out. “I found her. She was terrified!”

“Sara.”
Up until that moment, Detective LaSalle had been quiet, standing off to the side while his partner questioned. Now he crossed toward us, bracing a hip against the edge of the sofa. “I’m sure she was. No one is disputing that.” He looked exclusively at her, his eyes so solid and convincing, until finally she lifted her face to his. Then he swept in with the killing blow. “There was no towel.”

I felt my aunt stiffen.

“We looked,” he said. “Everywhere.”

“Found a few soda cans,” Jackson put in. “Some gum wrappers, a fast-food bag, a crushed Mardi Gras mask.”

“Then he took it with him,” I blurted without thinking.

“Or maybe it’s like the knife from last night.” It was bizarre to hear how scraped clean Jackson’s voice could get. He looked like such a cool, hip guy, with his cornrows and pierced ear. But pure ice ran through his veins. “And the woman,” he said. “Maybe she and this man and the towel are all—”

“Stop it!” I jumped up, glared at him. “I’m not crazy!” I said. “
I’m not.
Don’t you get it? I saw him! A man—at the vigil, then in the parking garage! He said my name—”

Aunt Sara stood and reached for me, pulled me against her. It stunned me how something as simple as a touch, an arm around my waist, could settle through me like a deep, forever breath.

“Why is it so hard for you to believe her?” Her voice was strong and calm, yet forceful. “She’s young, she’s pretty, she was alone. If he saw her at the vigil, he could have followed—”

LaSalle and Jackson exchanged a quick look. Then LaSalle stepped closer. “Does anyone else know about your … dreams?”

For twenty minutes there’d been nothing but doubt and sarcasm. Now, the quick slice of concern in his voice chilled.
“Everyone,”
I whispered.

His brows went alarmingly tight.

“Amber found out,” I explained before he could ask. “She’s had a field day with it.”

Again LaSalle glanced toward Jackson. “We need the footage from the school.” Then, to me: “Do you think you’d recognize him if you saw him again?”

Mouth dry, I nodded.

“Good girl,” he said.

“My God.”
Aunt Sara’s movement was subtle, a slight step toward Detective LaSalle, a hand to his forearm. “You think it could be him, don’t you? Whoever has Jessica.”

His expression gentled. “I get paid to think, Sara. To consider every option. And at this point, they’re all on the table—a random mugging, some sick perv trying to copycat.”

LaSalle’s voice trailed off, but through the ensuing silence I heard what he didn’t say, what he did not need to say—or a perp trying to cover his tracks.

Or absolutely nothing at all.

*   *   *

At some point I would have to sleep. I knew that. But long after LaSalle told me he didn’t want me leaving the condo alone, long after they checked the windows and tested the locks, after they left, I finally showered. I stood there until the warm ran cold. Then I stood there a little longer.

By the time I slipped into a huge Saints T-shirt and stepped from the bathroom, it was close to two
A.M.

The sight of Aunt Sara, sitting on the sofa with her arms wrapped around her middle, her eyes dark and trained straight ahead, threw me right back to the parking garage.

For a moment I just watched, stunned by the difference. Normally my aunt was Miss Put Together. Yes, she had the scattered soul of an artist, but she hid that well, pouring herself into whatever she was doing, whether it be evaluating commercial real estate, decorating her condo or preparing a gourmet meal, making an awesome new necklace.

She had friends. Or at least, she’d had them before I came along. She didn’t talk much about what her life had been like before I showed up, but I knew there’d been girlfriends and a boyfriend. Her best friend, Naomi, had followed her fiancé to Austin, Texas the month before I arrived.

But Aunt Sara did not like to talk about any of that. Much like Gran, she almost never talked about herself—or the past.

Seeing her sitting on the sofa, so still and shaken—I’d never seen her like that. I told myself to turn around and walk away, give her the privacy she so religiously clung to.

But walking away seemed lame. Whatever she was thinking, whatever she was feeling, was because of me.

“I’m sorry.” The words shot out of me.
“I’m so sorry.”

She twisted toward me, the fully controlled mask sliding down on the rare, naked moment with lightning speed. “Trinity.”

My throat worked. “This is all my fault,” I said. “You had this great, perfect life going, and then I showed up and now you’re spending your nights—”

“Stop.” The force of that one word flashed in her eyes. She stood, crossed to me. “I don’t want to hear you saying things like that ever again.”

“But it’s true.”

“No, it’s not.” She closed in on me, lifting her hands to the sides of my face. “Actually, nothing could be
further
from the truth.” It was weird how intense but soft her expression was. “You’ve brightened my life,
cher
. You’ve given me something I didn’t even know was missing.”

Slowly, I shook my head. “Drama,” I whispered.

Her smile was somewhere between amused and heartbreaking. “My brother,” she whispered. “You’ve given me back my brother and your mother—all swirled together in the wonderful young lady you’ve become.”

The sting at the backs of my eyes was automatic. I blinked furiously, hated all the little fissures of emotion springing up inside of me.

“You are such an amazing person,” she said with a ferocity that made me long to believe.
“They would have been so proud of you.”

I’d been trying. I’d been trying really hard to hold myself together, but there in the shadows of my aunt’s condo, sometime after two in the morning, everything caught up with me, and the cracks split wide open.

“Hey,” she said, moving fast, pulling me into her arms and hugging me tight. “I mean it. You’re everything they ever dreamed of—warm, loyal, compassionate. Bright—”

Whacked out of my mind,
I added silently.

“Funny,” she whispered, and I would have sworn somehow she’d known exactly what I was thinking. But that ability came from my mother’s side of the family, not hers. “Loving.” She hesitated a long moment before continuing, as if for a brief heartbeat, she’d gone somewhere else. “I still remember you when you were a baby. Sometimes when your parents went out, you’d come stay with us at…”