Shattered Dreams: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (26 page)

“This is so wrong,” I said. “Jessica’s out there somewhere, but here we are—”

“No,” Chase said before I could finish. “
This
has nothing to do with Jessica.”

“But it does! It has
everything
to do with her. You were her boyfriend—and I can’t just pretend I didn’t see her staring at me through the darkness.”

Again, his hands squeezed mine.

“
That’s
why I pushed you away,” I said, this time quieter. “Because of Jessica. Because of me, what I see…”

“Trinity—”

“Because
I was scared,
” I whispered, and Chase frowned.

“Of me?”

I swallowed, made myself continue. “Of what you’d do when you found out.” Each word felt a little like walking on broken glass. I’d never been so absolutely honest with anyone, not my grandmother or aunt, not even Victoria. “The way you’d look at me.”

Methodically, his thumb skimmed along the edge of my hand. “What do you see now?”

I didn’t want to look. Because I didn’t want to see. Doing so hurt in ways I’d never even imagined. Because when I looked at him, at the vortex of strength and tenderness in his eyes, I saw a lifetime of dreams. The kind I wanted—not the ones that made me wake up with a scream burning in my throat.

“You want to know what
I see
?”

His question was so hoarse I’m not sure how I managed to breathe, much less nod.

“I see someone who’s beautiful,” he said, and deep inside, I started to shake. “And amazing, and perfect exactly the way she is.”

The melting started slow, gathering force with every breath I managed.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he murmured, again tightening his fingers around my hand. “I’m not—” Then he stilled. “I’m sorry—are you okay?”

I blinked. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Your hands…” Gently he turned them over. Only a few hours before they’d bled, and I’d winced in pain. But even before we saw the bandages, I knew there’d be no blood.

Because I felt no pain.

“Thank God,” he muttered, but I was already pulling back, trying not to yank as I tore at the strips of gauze.

“Trinity—what the—”

I wasn’t sure what came over me, what drove me. But I knew what stopped me.

The sight of my flesh, absolutely and completely perfect.

Chase took my hands the second the bandages fell away. “That’s impossible.”

I stared. I couldn’t do anything else. And even still, with my eyes wide open, belief did not come.

The wounds were gone.

With excruciating gentleness Chase skimmed his index finger along the pinkish flesh, where only hours before cuts had crisscrossed and bled. Now his finger traced the curve of my lifeline, and I felt nothing but the faintest echo of a tingle.

“The salve,” I whispered. The one Jim Fourcade’s son had applied. “It must have worked.”

Chase’s eyes, totally flat, met mine. “Nothing works that fast.”

*   *   *

The darkness came as it always did, like sunset at warp speed. One minute the sun boiled low against the horizon, turning the tall trees into skeletons. In the next, shadows danced.

I spun around. He was there. I knew he was. I could feel him.

But I didn’t know where—or who.

“Chase!” I called. It had to be him. Hadn’t he been there only minutes before?

But my memory blurred, and I couldn’t be sure.

“Chase!” He’d been looking at me in that warm, melting way of his, his hand holding mine. I’d felt safe—or at least, that’s what I’d told myself.

But even as he’d held me, I felt the presence of another.

“Chase! Come back!” And then I started to run.

But I didn’t know which way to go.

Someone was out there, watching. Waiting. I could feel them, knew that they followed me. Everywhere I turned—

The sudden wash of light blinded me. I froze, squinted against the intrusion. “Chase?”

I jerked, pivoting toward the deep voice.

“Dad … Mom…”

Chase. I twisted toward him, felt him pulling away. “Trinity.”

I opened my eyes to a wash of brightness, saw Chase hovering over me.

“This is a … surprise.”

The voice came from across the room, and with it the last vestiges of sleep crumbled away.

“Mom … Dad?” he said, pulling away as other things began to register, like his parents standing absolutely motionless in the shadow of the foyer, his father in a dark gray suit, standing rigid with his arm around Chase’s mother, almost as if … holding her up. She was a beautiful woman with beautiful dark hair in a beautiful dress, with beautiful jewelry. Even her makeup had no doubt been beautiful earlier in the evening. Now the mascara smeared beneath her eyes created a stark contrast between the black of her lashes and her ashen complexion.

Chase was across the room in a heartbeat. “What’s wrong?”

Alone there on the sofa, I sat very, very still.

“Oh, Chase,”
his mother said, reaching for him and drawing him into her arms, holding on tight.

And I would have sworn every drop of blood in my body crystallized into something hard and sharp.

Chase held onto his mother, looking over her head to where his father stood. “
Dad?
What’s going on?”

Jessica.

Only two days had passed since I’d last seen Richard Bonaventure, but during them it looked like he’d lived another decade. “Bryce called a little while ago.”

Bryce. Jessica’s father.

Now I was on my feet, not joining them, because they stood in a closed circle. But standing with a hand to my mouth.

“They found her purse,” Chase’s mom whispered.
“In that field by the airport.”

The room started to spin. I swayed, fumbled for the edge of the sofa.

“Jesus,”
Chase whispered, and I could tell the difference, see the difference. Up until an hour ago, he’d been operating under the blind belief that this was all a game. That Jessica would magically return, waltz back in with the pleasure of having taught everyone a lesson.

Now he knew that was not going to happen.

“Was there … did they find—”

“I don’t know much,” his father said. “Bryce didn’t say much besides something about a note.”

I saw Chase stiffen. “A note?”

Around New Orleans, Susan Bonaventure had the reputation of a barracuda. But in that moment, she just looked like a horrified mother. “In the purse,” she said. “Typed on plain white paper … daring Jessie to go to that awful house.”

Daring …

“That’s why she was there,” Chase muttered.

“She was lured there.” With the words, the lines of his mother’s face tightened. “This wasn’t random,” she said. “She wasn’t there by accident. Whoever did this targeted her very carefully.”

“But … how did her car end up in Baton Rouge?” I asked without thinking.

Even had I not been watching, I would have felt it the second Susan Bonaventure’s icy stare found me. “You must be Trinity,” she said. No warmth, no welcome. Just cold hard facts, presented in perfect lawyer style.

“Hi,” I said, so totally lamely. I didn’t want to, but I made myself move toward Chase’s outstretched arm.

“Really?” his mother asked, no longer looking at me, but at her son. “With everything that’s going on, you really think this is appropriate?” He was five inches taller than she was, but the way her face pinched up made it seem as if she looked down at him.

“Mom.” He took my hand and tugged me against him. “Trinity’s been trying to help.”

Now that pinched look found me. “So I’ve heard.”

I swallowed, searched for words. “I know how hard this must be for you.”

“Does your aunt know where you are?” she asked.

I nodded. “I texted her.”

That did not seem to make Susan Bonaventure feel better.

“Chase,” his father said. “We’ll talk later. But for now, you need to get this girl home.”

This girl.

Chase stepped toward his father. “She has a name, Dad.”

“I’m well aware of that. I’m also well aware that every time the two of you get together—”

“Richard.” Susan’s voice was as severe as her black dress. “That’s enough.” Then to Chase. “It’s late, honey,” she said. “I’m sure Trinity’s aunt is ready for her to be home.”

The abrupt shift from aggressor to conciliator left me a little breathless. No wonder some said she was a shoe-in as the next D.A.

“Come on,” I said, and this time it was me who tugged at him. “I didn’t mean to stay this late.”

Chase, still locked in a staring match with his father, lingered a few seconds longer before leading me into the foyer.

“There and back,” his dad called as Chase pulled open the door. “Keep your phone with you.”

The cool swirl of night air could not have come soon enough. I stepped into it, exhaled for what felt like the first time in hours.

Behind me the door slammed, and then Chase was turning me around and pulling me into his arms, bracing his forehead against mine. “They had no right to talk to you like that.”

“They found her purse,” I said, holding on tight.
In the field I’d told them about.

Chase pulled back, and I saw his throat work. “We have to go back,” he said, and suddenly everything about him went hard, determined. “To the beginning,” he said. “If there’s any chance that she’s still out there…”

“Go back?” I whispered, but even before his annihilated eyes met mine, even before he spoke, I knew.

“To the house,” he said. “The house on Prytania.”

TWENTY-THREE

“Avoiding me doesn’t make it go away.”

I looked up from my BlackBerry to find my aunt watching me from across the table. It was barely nine in the morning, and even though she was still in her big Saints sleep shirt, she already had beads and charms and chains strewn everywhere.

It was the first time we’d really talked since Friday night.

“I know you’re mad at me,
cher,
” she said. “And I know you’re disillusioned. But running off with Chase again isn’t going to make any of that go away.”

Like I didn’t know that. But I had to try. He was convinced going back to the house was the key, that if I went inside, I might … pick something up. Because now he believed. And now, like me, he knew time was running out.

“I’m not mad at you,” I tried to tell her.

“No?”

“No.”

But she so didn’t believe me. She sighed, grabbing a fistful of uncombed hair from behind her neck and dragging it forward. “Trin, I saw the look in your eyes Friday night. I can imagine how you must feel—”

“Can you?”
I’d barely slept. I’d already downed a full pot of coffee. Both combined to make the words sharper than I’d intended. “Can you really?”

She winced. “I’m
trying,
” she whispered, but I looked away, didn’t want to see the raw emotion in her eyes.

She
was
trying. I knew that. But she was on the outside looking in. She didn’t see what I did. She didn’t …
feel
it.

From the huge windows, midmorning sunshine poured in, but everywhere I looked, shadows slipped closer. Blinking, I tried to focus on a stack of papers at the edge of the table. Most looked official, typed with a few signatures and a seal. On top sat a light pink page torn from Aunt Sara’s to-do tablet.

Leaning closer, I squinted at the unfamiliar handwriting. Fleuriffic, Fleurever … “What’s this?”

She looked up with a handful of crosses, and stilled.

“Fleur de Chic,” I read on, “Fleurleans…”

Her expression went strangely blank, as if I’d asked her another question about my parents, rather than simply reading a list. “I-I wasn’t going to say anything until all of this…”

I felt my eyes flare. They must have darkened, too, because again, she winced.

“… but yesterday I signed papers for a property on Royal Street.”

My phone buzzed—or maybe that was the room. But I made no move to find out.
“We’re moving?”

“No, no, no,” she rushed on. “Not to live in, but to work in. A shop,” she said, as I tried to shift my mind from where we’d been to where she was going. “It’s something I’ve dreamed about forever…”

But never spoken a word of.

“To sell my things,” she said with a surprisingly unsure smile, gesturing toward the necklaces and bracelets and rings scattered across the table. “Mom thought I was crazy, but everything just finally fell together…”

Gran pouring oil on dreams … the irony made me smile. But it wasn’t a happy one. All this time I thought Aunt Sara had simply been crafting, but in reality, she’d been amassing an inventory.

Intrigued, I glanced back at the list.
“Fleur-ever?”

She made a funny face as she picked up a mass of tangled chains. “No?”

The glimmer of normalcy, of the way things had been before the game of truth or dare, when things had been simple and easy and not littered by lies and dreams, felt really, really good.
“This Fleur’s For You
?
”

She didn’t look up, kept working the necklaces. “That was Aaron’s.”

And then the glimmer was over, and reality came crashing back down.
“Aaron?”

Her fingers stilled as, through a sweep of long bangs, she looked back up to meet my eyes. “He stopped by last night,” she said in the oddly quiet voice I was growing to dread. “… to tell us about the purse.”

I watched her, hated the hesitation in her voice. It wasn’t the first time she’d called Detective LaSalle by his first name. Nor was it the first time he’d stopped by to handle what could easily have been settled through a phone call.

“He likes you…” I said, letting the comment dangle as other things came back to me, like the way he looked at her and how he sometimes touched her arm. The first time she’d pulled away, but Friday night …

She’d asked for him. When she’d found me in the parking garage, she’d asked the woman from the third floor to call … Aaron.