Broken Illusions: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (31 page)

“And painted them.”

I looked away, toward the sun slanting through the windows. “And she saw me,” I murmured. The possibility—the implications—made it hard to breathe.

“Just like you saw Grace,” Detective Fourcade confirmed. “And Jessica.”

“But…” I struggled to put the pieces together. She’d known, this girl whom I’d never met, she’d known years ago that someday I would go to Belle Terre.

“She’s the reason I was there,” I said, trying to understand. As if I’d been summoned. “Because I saw her,
in my dream,
painting.”

“And if you’d never gone,” he said as I turned back toward him, “she would never have painted those pictures.”

Even though she’d painted the pictures first. It was one of those chicken versus egg loops that defied logic—and made my brain hurt.

“We think of time as linear,” he added. “It’s easier that way. But it rarely is.”

Part of me wanted to reject what he was telling me, and yet, how could I? I, of all people, knew it was possible to see things long before they happened.

“What was her name?” I asked.

“The girl’s?”

“Yes.”

He hesitated a long beat before answering. “Faith.”

But the chill was immediate. “She must have known Grace,” I murmured. “I saw envelopes in Grace’s apartment with a return address of Belle Terre.” Maybe that’s why Grace showed me the image of Faith painting, but I still had no idea why.

“What about the guy in the gold car?” I’d seen Faith in my dream, and she’d seen me. That was between us, and Grace. The guy’s presence didn’t fit. “How did he know to be there?

Something flashed in Detective Fourcade’s eyes. “I think he was hunting.”

“Hunting?”

“Maybe he saw the envelopes, too—and went to see what else he could find.”

My throat tightened, and the memory came slicing back, of the night we’d taken the Ouija board to Grace’s, and the guy in the black boots had broken in.

“Maybe that’s what you saw,” Detective Fourcade went on, but his voice was different now, lower, darker, as if recounting something horrific.

Or seeing it for the first time.

“What you’ve been seeing all along.”

“What do you mean, what I’ve been seeing all along?”

He looked down for a second, obviously considering, then lifted his eyes back to me. And this time, there was no silver, not even a trace. They were dead dark. “Him. Hunting.”

I couldn’t breathe, process—understand. “W-what?”

“You heard Grace,” he said. “And you saw the buildings. So you assumed, you assumed she was the connection, that you were seeing what she wanted you to see.”

I stilled, but the cold kept bleeding, faster and sharper and deeper. “But you don’t think so?”

He looked at me as if I’d just asked him to confirm something horrible, like someone had died—or never even existed.

“What else have you seen?” he asked. “Any other dreams, anything strange that didn’t fit, that maybe didn’t seem to have anything to do with Grace?”

I thought back. “Running,” I said. “Just now, when I woke up, and before. I was running.”

“Someone was chasing you?”

“No, I…” Could feel it, feel it still, the dizzying rush of adrenaline, anticipation … “I was. I was running after someone, and all I could think was that I had to catch them, before it was too late.” Before they got away.

His eyes flashed.

“Omigod,”
I whispered, stunned. “You think it’s him, don’t you? You think I’m connected to
him
—that I’m seeing through his eyes, not Grace’s.”

Slowly, he nodded. “It happened to your mother.”

I lifted a hand, saw that it shook, pressed it to my heart. “The guy who killed her?”

He looked away, but not before I saw the streak of pain, and sliver of memory.

“Do you think he knows? Do you think this guy knows I can see what he does?”

Horror. It was the only word to describe what I saw as his mouth flattened, and his eyes again met mine. “It’s very possible.”

“That’s why he tried to kill me.” Saying the words felt surreal. Even after I’d learned the truth about my mother’s work with the police and the psychopath who’d murdered her and my father, even after I’d gotten involved with finding Jessica, and now Grace, I’d never imagined that what I saw could endanger me.

“I’m going to talk to LaSalle and Jackson.” Standing, he reached for his phone. “But I don’t want you alone, okay? Not even for a second. Stay with your boyfriend. At the party, tonight, stay in public, stay with crowds.” From a plastic bag I hadn’t noticed, he pulled out a small box. “Dylan said yours was destroyed.”

Numbly I stood and stared at the new BlackBerry. Victoria would be here soon to do my hair and makeup. Chase would pick me up. We’d go to the party …

“You think he’s going to come after me again?” I murmured.

Detective Fourcade crossed to take my arms in his hands. “I’m not going to let anyone hurt you, you hear me?” His voice was somewhere between wild—and deadly quiet. “I’ll kill anyone who tries.”

*   *   *

Everyone wore masks
.

Some were simple, little more than felt or plastic strips of black or gold or silver, concealing only eyes. Others were more elaborate, garish, like tigers or wolves or peacocks, concealing everything. Some were beaded. Some had … feathers.

Standing at the back of the crowded courtyard, I fiddled with the pink-and-silver butterfly mask Victoria and I had picked to complement my glittery baby-doll dress. For herself she’d picked a jeweled creation resembling a crown.

Detective Fourcade’s, shaped like a gold jester’s hat, covered his entire face.

He’d escorted me to the party and turned me over to Chase, then relocated to the edge of the stage, where he could see everything.

“Omigod, look how awesome he looks,” Victoria said, gesturing toward the two guys cutting through the crowd.

I didn’t need to ask which one she meant.

Trey swaggered straight up to her, isolating her against a bead-draped tree.

“She’s a mess,” Chase murmured beside me.

I looked up at him and felt my heart kick really hard. His mask was black, like Zorro’s, and from behind it, the blue of his eyes looked even more electric. “But you look awesome.”

I stepped into him, and smiled. Victoria had spent over an hour on my hair, straightening it so that it fell like black silk against the spaghetti straps of my dress. Even though our faces were hidden, we’d experimented with glittery powders and a new plumping lipstick, an amazing blackest-black mascara. She’d even used eyeliner to create Cleopatra-like wings for both of us.

For
later,
she’d said. And though, in her tight, hot pink dress she’d glowed, the word made something inside me twist.

There always had to be a later. At least, if you believed in forever, there did. There was a now, and there was a later.

The key was knowing what belonged when.

This was the first time Chase and I had been alone in almost forty-eight hours. And during those hours, a lot had happened. Changed.

And I needed to tell him. I knew that.

I just didn’t know if it should be now—or later.

Because I knew he wasn’t going to like it.

“Mile High!” Deuce said, coming up behind me to wrap me in a quick tight hug. “Chase told me what happened—you okay?”

I felt my eyes warm. “I’m good.”

He pulled back, and even though his half-black, half-white mask hid his face, I could tell he didn’t believe me.

“You gotta watch out for the crazies,” he said, drawing my hand up to brush a soft kiss along my knuckles, before walk-dancing off to retrieve his friend.

I watched until he vanished, leaving me staring at the twinkling lights strung from a pair of skeletal crepe myrtles.

Chase slid a hand around my waist. I could feel the warmth of his fingers, his palm, and for that one heartbeat, I closed my eyes, and wished. Wished for so much. Wished that things could be different, that none of this was happening, that we could go back …

But I wasn’t sure to where. To Friday morning, before I’d headed to Belle Terre? To Thursday, before the dream regression? Or further, back to the point where it had all started—

“You can’t keep pretending.”

Robotically I turned to him in his costume of all black, a swanky silk shirt that looked like it belonged in the 1970s and skinny black jeans, his slightly parted lips, and blue, blue eyes—all that the mask revealed—and the sweep of dark brown hair against his forehead.

And something inside me shifted. “I watched the sunset last night,” I said, lifting a hand to touch his chest—the chain around his neck, with dog tags and a fleur-de-lis. “I stood at the window and watched the colors fade, and then it was just dark.” His flesh was warm, his pulse strong beneath my fingertips. “And I realized that even though I’d been watching I had no idea when the day ended and night took over.”

Something about him changed, shifted, his shoulders going a little more rigid.

“But how is that even possible?” I asked, as much of myself as him. “When something major happens, it seems like there should be a moment, a turning point, when you can look back and isolate it, see that one decision, one breath, that changed everything.”

But I couldn’t see.

Chase’s hand found mine and tugged. “Come on, let’s get out of here. We can go somewhere quiet—”

Around us the party swirled, laughter and music and drinks, but none of it registered. “I think,” I said, curling my fingers around his, “sometimes it’s just so much bigger than us.”

He tugged me again, urging me toward a cluster of festively decorated trees.

“Maybe someone we don’t even know casts the die—” or lifts a paintbrush … “—and sets an entire chain of events into motion, and even though you had nothing to do with it, nothing at all, somehow it still touches you.”

Changes you.

Chase slid the hair back from my shoulders, letting his hands settle there. But he didn’t say anything.

“It’s like that butterfly-effect thing,” I said. We’d seen a documentary on it one night, the reality that a simple butterfly fluttering its wings in South America could alter wind currents enough to spin a tornado in Texas in an entirely different direction. One decision, one tiny pebble tossed in a pond, sent ripples in countless directions.

Drawing me closer, he fingered the dragonfly at my chest. “You worry too much, T. Nothing has happened that can’t be undone.”

I wanted to smile. I tried to. But something inside me kept pulling tighter.

“I think about last fall,” I said, hesitating as a voodoo queen floated toward us. Her gown was black, flowing, with lace, and a necklace of bone. Her mask, black and intricate, covered her entire face, leaving only a ringlet to slip against her shoulder.

And she was really skinny …

My eyes widened as she closed in on Chase, and pretend-stabbed a needle into his heart.

“Still playing with fire, huh, Amber?”

After whispering to Chase, she swirled back to me, another needle in her hand. “No, Trin-Trin … that’s what you do.” All serious-like, she held out the needle.

I took it, and let it drop to the cobblestone.

For a long moment she just stared at me, long enough for me to see the hate in her eyes. When she finally turned, she grabbed onto Chase and spoke in an overly loud voice. “Be careful,
sha.
The night is young.”

Then she … vanished.

“Omigod,” I whispered, watching after her.

But Chase put his foot down on the needle and took my hand. “Last fall what?”

I turned back toward him as the speakers crackled, and thought about changing the subject.

But knew that I couldn’t.

“I think about what would have happened if I’d walked away,” I told him. “If I walked away instead of walking inside the house on Prytania.” That was the moment, the turning point. “We would never have played truth or dare. Jessica would never have locked me in that closet—and Pitre would never have lured her back to teach her a lesson.”

She would never have been abducted.

And Chase and I would never have come together to find her. Sometimes it was hard to know how things were supposed to be, and what was the aberration.

“You can’t blame yourself, he said. LaSalle told Jessica’s parents it looked like that guy had been watching her for weeks.”

“I know, but—” My heart started to race. I stood there so completely still, but everything inside me accelerated, as if I was running, running fast.

“Trinity?”

Everything kept blurring, smearing, bleeding together until there was no color or light, just dripping darkness.

“T—” Chase said, and I could feel him, at least I thought I could, hands on my arms, curling tight.

But the screaming wouldn’t stop. It grew louder and louder, until I spun around, searching—

Hunting.

The spinning slowed, and I saw her, saw the angel standing against the darkness, tall and crumbling, her arms lifted, a single black feather mask dangling from a wing.

“What’s going on?” someone screamed, and then I blinked again, and it was Victoria closing in on me as Chase made me sit.

“Omigod, it’s happening again,” she whispered, going down on her knees. “You’re so cold…”

I blinked her into focus, the fear and the confusion, just like the night we’d taken the Ouija board to Grace’s apartment. “I’m … okay,” I whispered.

But everywhere I looked masks mocked.

I stood, trying to make my way toward the stage, where Detective Fourcade watched.

But Trey and Deuce had started to play—how had I not realized that?

Chase reached for me. “Come on, Trinity—you need to sit.”

It all blurred, the masks and the laughter, the music and the dancing and the drinks, swirling like a carousel. And even though I wanted off, I kept moving, looking—

“Something’s not right,” I murmured.

“What do you mean?” That was Chase. He still held me. “What’s not right?”

The whispers came from all directions, swarming, making it impossible to discern one from the other. I spun around anyway and saw—