Shattered Dreams: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (27 page)

“Trinity,” she said, and I could tell from her voice she knew I wasn’t going to like what she said. “He’s not the monster you make him out to be.”

Everything inside me tightened. “He thinks I could be involved with what happened to Jessica.”

“That’s not true.”

“Did he say that?”

“No.”

“Then—”

She pushed the hair back from her face. “Sweetie, I know this is hard, but he’s just doing his job—you have to give him a chance.”

“A chance for what?” I almost screamed. It was all closing in on me, the walls and the lies and the secrets, the
truth,
boxing me in so tight I couldn’t even breathe. “To decide the only way I could know about that field is if I’d been there—”

Her eyes flashed. “Don’t even say that,” she said. “That’s not going to—”

I shoved back from the table. “But it could,” I said, standing. “It’s what happened to her, isn’t it? My mom?”

Every drop of color drained from my aunt’s face. “Trinity—”

“No, don’t,” I said, backing away. “Don’t try to tell me he’s on my side.”

Slowly she came to her feet, but made no move to come after me. “Where are you going?”

The threadbare edges of her voice made me want to cry. “With Chase.”

But I did not say where.

*   *   *

The yellow crime-scene tape was new. It stretched around the property like ribbon around a package, except there was no bow, and this was one gift I didn’t want to open.

Not wanting to draw attention to what we were doing, Chase parked a few streets away. We approached the old house through the persistent drizzle, full of stops and starts, slipping behind cars and trees every time we thought someone might see us.

In the end, no one much cared. Sundays in New Orleans weren’t necessarily lazy, but rainy days were. It was like the city just went inside and held its breath. Only three vehicles passed us as we made our way to the old house. Once I thought I saw someone looking out a window, but by the time I did a double take, the gauzy curtains were closed again.

Two houses away, we hesitated beside one of those massive oaks. And already my heart slammed stupidly. It was just a house. I knew that. It was broad daylight. And Chase was with me. He totally believed if I walked back into that house, something miraculous would happen.

I wasn’t so sure.

“Come on,” he said, taking my hand as we took off. I ran with him, through the rain, until manicured grass gave way to knee-high weeds. There we veered right, toward the obscurity of the overgrown backyard.

Darkness had a way of making everything look sinister, much as the rain made everything look dreary. Vines still climbed the sides of the house, but with daylight they were green not black, and every now and then a splash of color leaked through the tangle. Flowers, I realized. Bougainvillea and trumpet vine climbed the house, splashes of red and orange making the peeling paint and gaping windows look even more forsaken.

But not sinister, like before.

Just old. And empty.

“You okay?” Chase said, twisting back toward me.

It was only then that I realized I’d stopped just off the back porch in the pouring rain. “Yeah.”

With his Tulane T-shirt plastered to his chest, he shoved the rain-soaked hair from his forehead and extended a hand. “Let’s go in.”

*   *   *

Everything was … gone. The fast-food bags and cigarette butts, the dust and the tattoolike graffiti, the piles of bones in the corner. The blood. All gone, replaced by the smell of Lysol and dark smears against the walls.

“What the hell—” Chase said, and finally I exhaled. Because whatever I’d been expecting, whatever I’d been fearing for the past twelve hours, fell away like shadows when the lights came on. On a weird little rush I stepped away from him and glanced around the big room that had looked so sinister only a week before.

“This is bullshit,” he said. “Crime scenes are supposed to be preserved.”

“Maybe it’s not a crime scene,” I murmured, crossing to the far side. There I lifted my hand to one of the smears along the wall—and went straight to my knees.

“Trinity!”

I hung there, trying to breathe, understand. But not really doing either. Vaguely I was aware of Chase reaching for me, touching me, saying something. But detail wouldn’t form. Words wouldn’t come. There was only this lingering residue of something buzzing through every nerve ending of my body.

“Talk to me.”

I blinked, tried to swallow, gradually brought him into focus, the way he kneeled beside me with his hair all wet and falling into his eyes.
“Chase.”

His eyes were dark—totally spooked. But he wasn’t turning from me. Running from me. He was right there, on the floor with me, holding on like he never intended to let go. “What happened? Did you see something?”

Shakily, I shoved my hand into the front pocket of my jeans and closed my fingers around the smooth blue stone that had once belonged to my mother. I’d grabbed it before leaving. I’m not sure why, but the larimar made me feel connected. Like she was with me.

“No,” I managed. Not really. There’d been no image, no snapshot. Just a zap. “It was like I got shocked.”

“Jesus,” he muttered. “You’re cold as hell.” Then he pulled me against the damp warmth of his chest.

And someone started to clap.

We both twisted around, saw them standing in the shadows inside the window, Pitre and Drew and Amber.

“And the nominees for best actress are…” she said, slowing the cadence of her clap, until each smack of her hands echoed through the cavernous room.

I stilled, even as I felt Chase gather me closer. His arms were like tight bands around me, as if he could make a barrier between me and Jessica’s snarling best friend.

“You suck,” he said, and I saw Drew wince.

“Really?”
Chase’s cousin said, standing a little straighter. The way his hair was slicked back from his face emphasized how freakishly green his eyes were. “You tell me you’re coming here to see if … what?
She has another dream?
And you think I’m gonna stay at home? Really?”

Chase stiffened. “It’s not a freak show.”

“But if you’re trying to reenact the crime, shouldn’t we all be here?” Drew asked as Bethany appeared at the window behind them. Soaking wet, she looked ready to cry.

Actually I was pretty sure she had been.

“Chill,” Pitre said, moving away from the other two. He reached out for Jessica’s little sister and helped her inside. “My brother said the cops have been all over this place.”

“
They
cleaned it,” I whispered.

“There was nothing here,” he said. “By the time they got here, the place was already spotless.”

“It’s called destroying the evidence,” Amber snarked in. With her stringy long hair and wet clothes plastered to her body, she looked even more emaciated. But her mascara was perfect. “God, you’re pathetic,” she muttered.

The words came at me like the daggers they were meant to be, but I refused to let them touch me. Refused to let any of them touch me.

Even Chase.

I pushed away from him and stood, stepped back from them all. “You’ve got a real problem, you know that, Amber? You want it to be me, don’t you? You actually want me to be involved.”

Her chin came up. Her eyes narrowed. “You couldn’t even wait for them to find her body before you let him in your pants, could you?”

“You think I’d hurt someone just to get a guy? That’s sick.”

Amber said nothing, just smirked as if I’d confessed, and inside, the chill oozed deeper, first through my flesh, then blood and muscle, finally reaching the bone. But I refused to lift my arms to hug them around myself, refused to give her—or any of them—any sign that they could get to me.

I was trying to help.
The words were right there, but I held them back, knowing they would do no good.

“Just get the hell out of here,” Chase said, once again inserting himself between me and his friends.

“And miss the little slut’s show?” Amber shot back. “No way.”

Chase pivoted toward his cousin. “You’ve got five seconds to get her out of here—”

“No.” The word broke from my mouth before I even realized it was there. It was as if some other force came over me, guiding me when moments before I’d been at a loss. Amber and Drew and Pitre … they didn’t matter. If they wanted to make fun of me, let them. I’d felt something when I touched the house, a muted current running through the wall, like the pulse of a human body. I didn’t know what it was, but it had been real and it had been powerful, and if there was any chance,
any chance at all,
that something of Jessica remained here, some strange psychic residue, I had to find it. I had to know.

It’s what my mother would have done.

It’s what she
had
done.

“I don’t care what you think about me,” I said. And in that moment, I realized how amazingly liberating that discovery was. From the day I’d arrived in New Orleans, I’d wanted to fit in. To be like everyone else. To be liked.

But standing there in the shadows of that big gaping room, with Amber crucifying me with her eyes while Drew looked on like it was a spectator sport and no one seemed to give a damn that Jessica’s little sister was falling apart behind them, I realized how wrong I’d been. I didn’t want to be like
them,
standing in judgment and casting stones, so small-minded and hateful.

And it was probably better if they
didn’t
like me.

Because I sure didn’t like them.

Finding Jessica. That was all that mattered. And while I didn’t necessarily want an audience, I wasn’t going to let them stop me from doing what had to be done.

*   *   *

Once, the curved staircase had been beautiful. Even now, crumbling and in disrepair, a faded grandeur remained, like the wedding dress I’d found stashed in a box under my grandmother’s bed, all yellowed and threadbare. The second I’d put my hands to the fabric, the years had fallen away and I’d seen her as she’d been so long ago, smiling and young and elegant.

Maybe that’s why my chest tightened as I made my way up the staircase we’d not used the week before. With each step my movements dragged, but I kept going, refused to look back. Doing so was no longer an option.

At the top, a narrow passage stretched in both directions, four rooms to the left, four rooms to the right. I remembered that from before. But unlike that horrible night, all the doors stood open.

Hand fisted around my mother’s dragonfly, I stepped into the coolness of the shadows—and one by one, all the doors closed.

My heart slammed hard, but I made myself keep moving. Until I heard the footsteps, and relief surged.
“Chase—”

But when I turned, only shadows spilled across the hall.

“Please,”
I whispered, though I wasn’t sure to whom. Myself, God. My mother. Breathing hurt. Walking felt insane. But only a few feet away, the room waited. All I had to do was turn the glass knob. All I had to do was step inside. Then I would have my answer. Then I would know if anything of Jessica remained.

The second I lifted my hand, something cold shoved me back.

I staggered, cradling my arm as—

The amber glow stopped me. Through the shadows at the end of the hall, light radiated like the sun through clouds, and drawn, I moved like the flow of water down the river. Behind me, darkness bled. In front of me, silence echoed. No one had followed, not even Chase.

I didn’t allow myself to wonder why.

I didn’t allow myself to hesitate, either. I lifted my miraculously healed hands to the glowing wall—and remembered why you should never use a blow dryer while standing in a shower. I expected heat. I got ice. The shock jolted me, even as I made my hands run along the punishing chill until my fingers stumbled against the small knob, and the heavy door creaked open.

I stepped inside, and forgot to breathe. I spun around. Or maybe that was the room. I wasn’t sure. Just of the spinning, the shadows. The cold. The stench of whiskey and smoke and something else, something stale and rancid and primal.

“Jessica,”
I whispered, and my knees buckled. I went down hard. Shoved. By something I could not see. I flailed out to brace myself, but the second my hands slapped the icy floor, my whole body sang, and everything went black.

*   *   *

“Trinity.”

The voice came at me through a long tunnel, faint, fractured. I tried to twist toward it, reach for it, but the darkness kept spinning. Flashes of light. Vortexes of sound. Then shadows, silence. There was my body kneeling without moving on the floor of the small room, but I was not in it. Didn’t know how
to be
in it. Where it was. How to get back.

“Trinity!”

The release came so fast it jolted through me, a hard cruel zap like slamming into a frozen wall, and I felt myself jerk, recoil, felt my eyes open and then I could see him, see Chase squatting beside me. His hand was on my body. I could
see
it.

But through the frigid veil I felt nothing.

“This was a mistake,” he muttered, reaching for me, dragging me to him. But the numbness insulated me from the warmth I craved.

“
Je
-sus.” His hands. To my face. One on either side. Cradling. Gentle. I knew they would be gentle, because Chase was always gentle. And I wanted that. I wanted to feel that …

“Chase.”
Finally my mouth worked. Voice came, followed by the shallow rasp of my breath, the struggle of warmth against cold making my arms and legs tingle as if they’d been sleeping, starved of blood, oxygen.

“I’m here,” Chase muttered and I used his voice to pull myself back into my body. The moment.

The room.

“I shouldn’t have let you come up here alone.”

I blinked, stared down at my thighs, where jeans that had once been damp from the rain were now dry. I wanted to look up. At Chase. Into his eyes. I wanted to see the dark blue light there, the one that always promised me everything was okay. I
needed
to see that.