Broken Illusions: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (2 page)

I shook my head. The second they’d found out I grew up in Colorado, I became
Mile High.

Chase had been less than thrilled.

“Just girl talk,” I downplayed as Trey, basically a mirror image of his friend, repositioned the tiara I’d put on Victoria. His murmur was too quiet for me to hear.

“Son.”
Next to the T-shirt display, Deuce started to dance—I was convinced that instead of blood, rhythm ran through his veins.

“It’s Saturday night,” he sang, even though that was Trey’s role. Together, they called themselves the Blood Brothas and they gigged all over the Quarter. “Pretty girls should never be alone, so flip that sign and throw us guys a bone…”

I rolled my eyes.

“And come on down to Fat Cats, and let us show you a night that’s—”

I cracked up. “You never give up, do you?”

“Not my style, buttercup.”

I glanced at Trey and Victoria, who, despite still being rain-splattered, looked ridiculously awesome in her jeans and brown baby-doll tee, the way they stood a little too close, spoke a little too quietly, and knew exactly why she cringed when Lucas said forever.

“Come on,” Deuce said. “What do you say?”

They were good—really good. Chase had even convinced his uncle to hire them for his Mardi Gras bash next weekend.

I glanced at the clock, then my phone on the counter. “Chase is on his way. We’re hooking up with friends—”

“Bring them, too.” Deuce glanced at Victoria. “Just quit breaking my bro’s heart, angel face. You can’t keep him waiting forever.”

Her smile froze.

Forever.

Deuce shot me a questioning look. I shook my head, telling him not to ask. “We’ll try,” I promised. Nodding, he turned to the door, signaling for Trey to follow. “Lock up,” he said, stepping into the cold February rain. “The crazies be out tonight.”

I watched them go, crossing to twist the bolt as finally, finally my phone beeped.

“Omigod.” Victoria laughed as I hurried to the counter. “Deuce so has a thing for you.”

I grabbed the BlackBerry, saw Chase’s name. “Are you kidding me?” I hated the way my heart started to pound. It was ridiculous. There was no reason to be upset.

Except he should have been walking through the door—not sending a text.

“It’s all about you …
angel face,
” I said, bringing up the message.

Hey, T. Lost track of time.

Telling myself everything was fine, I fingered a quick response.

No worries. We’re just closing up.

A few seconds passed. A few more. Then it was a minute, and even before the words glowed up from my phone, I knew what was coming.

Something’s come up. Can’t make it to the Quarter 2nite. U free tomorrow?

I stared at the words. I stared until they blurred, and then I stared some more.

Victoria crossed to stand behind me. “Trin?”

I didn’t even try to hide the phone.

“Gee, I wonder what that something could be,” she muttered.

But I didn’t. I knew.

“She doesn’t know when to give up, does she?”

Part of me wanted to hurl the phone against the huge, abstract fleur-de-lis my aunt had painted a few weeks before, even as the rest knew that wouldn’t change a thing.

In the months since we’d found Chase’s ex-girlfriend huddled in that abandoned hospital room, she’d yet to leave her parents’ house, except for doctor appointments. Other than her family and best friend Amber, no one had even seen her. Except Chase.

He was the only one she wanted.

“She’s been through hell,” I said, fumbling out a quick response.

No worries. I’m good tomorrow. CU then.

“I think it’s an omen,” Victoria gushed as his reply zipped in.

I’ll make it up 2 u. Promise.

“You know how sometimes everything just falls together?”

I returned the BlackBerry to the counter cluttered by collectible pins and buttons, jelly watches, and three different kinds of pralines.

“Like a sign,” she said, retrieving the board. “He was supposed to be here, but now it’s just you and me.”

The hum came back, louder, stronger than before. It moved through me, vibrating—screaming. “Victoria—”

“Come on,” she said, as she always did. “It’ll be fun!”

How had I not seen where all the forever talk was leading?

“I can ask about Lucas and Trey, maybe Zach, about forever, and you can ask about Chase—”

“Dating advice from a Ouija board?” I said, trying not to laugh. “Isn’t that what a Magic 8 Ball is for?”

Her smile reminded me of a kid on Christmas Eve—except she wasn’t a kid, and trying to contact spirits was as un-Christmaslike as you could get.

“Why not?” she said. “I mean, even if it’s really a subconscious thing, who’s to say I can’t find answers there? Isn’t your subcon supposed to be smarter?” She pulled a small wooden triangle from the bag and, reverently, skimmed it along the golden hue of the board.

She didn’t stop until she reached the word
HELLO
.

“I’ll do all the talking. Just sit with me, okay? Julian says if I don’t have at least one other person—”

“Julian?” Automatically I glanced toward the front door, where across the rain-slicked street, a silver sign glowed against the night:
HORIZONS
. People were in and out of the New Age shop from the time the doors opened until the minute they closed. Sometimes after.

Julian Delacroix was always there. Not only was he the owner, but he lived upstairs. The self-appointed metaphysical guru was many things—clever, smooth-talking, completely fascinating—but my aunt got edgy anytime she saw us talking.

“Since when are you hanging out with him?”

“Not hanging out,” Victoria corrected. “Just asking questions.”

“About the Ouija board?”
His area of expertise seemed more sophisticated, but I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me that a man with a shop slogan of “anything your heart desires,” a man who reserved the entire second floor for
special customers,
would have an opinion about contacting spirits.

One of these days I was so going to find out why Aunt Sara didn’t want me talking to him.

“I was looking for some new crystals,” Victoria rushed on, “and was telling him about playing with the board. I mentioned being alone, and he got real serious, saying I should never, under any circumstance, try the board alone. That bad things would happen. He said if I’m serious, I should try it here at the shop since—”

“The lights flicker,” I supplied before she could.

She nodded, her eyes seriously dark. “And the floors,” she said. They creaked.

And the doors opened and closed, all by themselves.

“It’s like a spirit city,” she whispered.

Or maybe just a two-hundred-year-old building. It was one of those French Quarter things. The buildings had been around …
forever.

But there was a big difference between my aunt’s shop and the Garden District mansion where the rooms were always cold, piles of ashes and corn dotted the floor—and Jessica’s life had come to a terrifying fork in the road.

“My point exactly,” Victoria was saying. “Can you imagine all the people who died here? All the spirits that could still be around?”

I glanced away, toward the raindrops sliding down the front windows. Before signing papers, Aunt Sara had compiled a history on the narrow, three-story structure. Built by a sugar baron in the 1800s, the then-lavish mansion had been a part-time home for his socialite wife. Over the years the building had been turned into a boardinghouse, a restaurant, even serving a tenure as a brothel.

People had been born here—and yeah, they’d died—exactly like everywhere else in a city as old as New Orleans. People were born. People died. Everywhere, all the time. No big deal.

“You’re doing it again,” Victoria said.

I turned back to her. “Doing what?”

“What you always do when you start wondering what’s possible—you’re rubbing your mom’s dragonfly.”

I had no memory of lifting my hand.

“Please.”
Her voice was quieter than before. “I’d think you of all people would want to explore what else is out there.”

I did.
That was the problem. I … did.

But ever since last fall, every time I asked my aunt about my abilities, she got all quiet, and every time I talked to Chase about my dreams, I could feel him pull back. Maybe only for a second or two. Maybe only a fraction. It was almost as if he was afraid of what I would see next.

But it was obvious what had gone down with Jessica still lingered between us.

But Victoria … I’d told her everything, even things my gran had warned me to never speak of. I’d shared my dreams, my mistakes. She even knew about the guy who’d dragged me from the river and given me his breath, only to vanish a few hours later.

Dylan.

“Come on, Trin,” Victoria said from behind me. “What can it hurt?”

Slowly I turned, my breath jamming in my throat just as it had that night we’d stepped into the darkness of the abandoned mansion. Open door number one, I remembered thinking; open door number two.

Life was about choices.

Months had gone by. Nothing else had happened. Nothing too freaky, anyway. Just dreams. Chase and I were—

I didn’t know what we were. But we were more than we’d been before and when he smiled at me, when he touched me, my heart sang.

It was time to let go of the past. It was time to realize dreams could be just dreams, and games could be just games.

Victoria was right.

What could it hurt?

*   *   *

Ten minutes later, she scattered white granules around my aunt’s worktable.

“What’s that? Sugar?”

“Sea salt.” One circle complete, she started a second. “Julian says it’ll keep bad spirits away.”

He would know. Secret powers and hidden ability were his thing—which in a city like New Orleans, made him a rock star.

“Go ahead and light the candle,” she instructed.

Outside the rain slashed in unrelenting sheets. Everyone said this was normal, but for me, winter meant snow.

“He recommended sage,” Victoria said as I extended my aunt’s Zippo. “It’s supposed to be cleansing.”

Candle lit, I stepped back. With the windows closed and the space heater off, the flame flashed high, shooting little white sparks as it burned through the wax.

Then lightning speared in, and the room went dark.

TWO

Victoria looked up from a handful of crystals, the candlelight making the green of her eyes glow. “Wicked cool.”

But the vibration humming through me was anything but. Not sure what was going on, I glanced around the small area that had once been a bedroom. Aunt Sara had a mini-fridge and microwave along the back, with stacks of boxes and crates lining the sides. We’d painted the main shop a pretty …
sage.

Um, yeah. I tried not to read anything into that.

Here in the back room, a dark cranberry covered the walls, almost like—blood. Aunt Sara had seen no reason to repaint. She’d said it had
energy.

Slipping on my hoodie, I joined Victoria at the table. She’d cleared the laptop and paper cutter, the tackle boxes filled with pliers and wire cutters, tweezers and clasps and other tools for making jewelry. Now, the Ouija board sat dead center.

She glanced up. Her hair hung like a pale curtain on either side of her face, making her look very much like the ethereal creature Deuce claimed her to be.
Angel.

I sat across from her. Our knees touched. Julian said that was important. Then she reached for my hands—and the blast of heat blew me away.

“Whatever you do, don’t let the pointer thingie off the board,” she said. “And never, ever let it go to all four corners—or let go without saying good-bye.

“Angel of Protection,” she then whispered, and with the words, everything else dropped away, “my guardian dear, to whom pure love commits me here.”

My breath turned shallow.

“Ever this night, be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide.”

A heaviness spread through me, much like the night I’d walked into that horrible room with the dirty mattresses arranged as an altar.

“Okay.” As when she flirted with Trey, Victoria’s smile was part nervous, part excited. “Here we go.” Releasing my hand, she drew my right index finger to the pointer positioned over the word
HELLO
. Its triangular shape reminded me of a misshapen heart.

“You okay?”

I looked from our pale fingers to the glow of her eyes. “I’m good.”

She moved first. Or at least I thought it was her. Beneath our fingers, the pointer started sliding in a methodic, clockwise circle.

Victoria closed her eyes and bowed her head.

I was supposed to do the same.

I didn’t.

The pointer kept moving, one deliberate circle after another, each faster than the one before.

“Hear me now,” she chanted. “I invite only those spirits who are for our highest good.”

The pointer slowed.

“Any spirits who come through who are not, are to be absorbed into the light of protection.”

Swallowing, I focused on the bright yellow flame of the lone sage candle.

“Harming none,” she concluded.

The pointer stopped.

Darkness throbbed. The flame fought it, but my heart quickened anyway. Something told me to pull away. A voice deep inside, maybe. A … knowing. It
screamed
for me to pull away.

But I could no more have moved, than I could have understood the low voltage buzz beneath my skin. It was the same draw I’d felt that night with Jim Fourcade’s son, in his small kitchen, when a dangerous curiosity had drowned out everything else.
Even Chase.

I was so not proud of that.

“Is there anyone in the room with us?” Victoria asked.

The candle flickered, and the pointer shifted toward its first answer.

YES

My throat tightened. I’d been in the small back room almost daily since before Christmas. I’d been there when the sun had shone and long after it had set. I’d been there with my aunt and by myself. With friends, and with strangers. I’d never been scared. I’d never even been nervous.