Shattered Dreams: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (15 page)

“Chase!”

I vaulted down the steps and hit the concrete running. “Chase!” He’d been no more than five feet behind me when I turned around. No more than twenty seconds could have passed. “Chase!”

He was gone.

Heart racing, I spun around. “Chase!” I called again, but this time it was more of a scream.
“Chase!”

People didn’t just disappear. I knew that. Except—

Some people did. Especially in a city like New Orleans.

I started to run, the street stretching longer with each step I took. “Chase, please!” I cried. He’d wandered around the corner. That was all. Looking for the B. He didn’t mean to scare me. He was going to be right back.

Except when I reached the end of the block, I saw only strangers.

“Have you seen a guy?” I asked a young woman in a black suit. She had on high heels and carried a briefcase. “Tall,” I said, “dark hair, navy slacks, and a white shirt?”

She shook her head.

“But he was just here!” I darted from her to the next people I saw, an older couple. “I’m looking for my friend,” I said, rushing to describe him.

But they only smiled and pointed me in the direction of the police station.

I didn’t want the police station. I didn’t want the police. I wanted Chase.

“Oh, please,” I whispered, remembering my phone. I grabbed it and punched his number, running back to the street with the skinny green house and the bleeding cat. That was the last place I’d seen him. Maybe he’d …

I don’t know what I thought, but my grandmother had always told me if we got separated to go back to the last place I’d seen her.

I crammed the phone against my ear, listening as it rang. “Come on, come on!” I said, closing in on the little staircase.

The cat was gone, and Chase did not answer his phone. “Where are you?” I asked his voice mail. “I’m here, Chase, right where you left me…”

I made myself slow down as I ended the call. I made myself breathe. I was overreacting. I was being silly, letting my imagination and the fact that I was alone in a city I did not know get the better of me. There had to be a logical explanation. Chase would not go off and leave me.

“Chase!” I shouted as another taxi eased by. I’m not sure why I watched it reach the end of the street—maybe because that’s what Chase had been doing. But I waited until it turned the corner before spinning back around—

—and saw him.

Relief sang through me. A narrow alley ran between the green building and its peach neighbor, and as I turned and looked, I saw Chase slip behind the building.

I wanted to smack him.

“Chase!” I called, darting after him. He probably hadn’t meant to completely freak me out like that, but who goes off and leaves someone standing there, without saying a word?

“That was so not nice!” I said, turning behind the building at the same spot he had. “Are you out of your—”

The courtyard stopped me. There tucked behind the narrow green house with dark green shutters, a tropical oasis awaited. Dirty cracked concrete gave way to a cobblestone patio. Bougainvillea and roses in full, tangled bloom climbed brick walls. A pretty little iron table and chairs sat off to the side, beneath hanging baskets dripping with ferns and begonias.

And in the center of it all, through the lengthening shadows of dusk, petunias in little clay pots surrounded a gorgeous three-tiered fountain, in front of which the skinny tabby lay, repeatedly licking a paw then rubbing it behind her ear.

“Oh, my God,”
I whispered, trying to make sense of it all.

Then I saw the red door, and the letter B.

And behind me, hinges creaked.

I spun around, saw the gate I’d come through now stood closed. “Chase?” I called, reminding myself to be calm, that everything was okay. Chase didn’t know I’d followed him.

But where was he?

Swallowing against the tightness in my throat, as if someone had curled invisible hands around my neck, I made my way to the gate, squeezed the handle, and pushed.

Nothing happened.

The wind, I told myself. It was only the wind.

But even as I tried to grab onto the thought, I realized the truth.

There was no wind. Not even a flutter.

And my legs were starting to shake.

“Chase!” On a deep breath I stared at the door with the B, realizing he must have gone inside.

In a movie, that would be when the teenage girl would sashay into a dark room or building, as if nothing bad could possibly happen to her.

I hated movies like that.

Of course, movies also had ominous music to cue the viewer something bad was about to happen, but I didn’t need music. I had stillness and the echo of trickling water from the fountain, and a chill that sliced straight to the bone. And I did not want to go into that building, B or not.

Fumbling with my BlackBerry, it took me several tries to stab out the words.

Chase … where r u?

I hit send, waited.

No answer came.

I mean it. WHERE R U?

I counted to ten, stared at the cat.

She lay stretched on her side and perfectly contented, in a sliver of fading sunshine, watching me. Through eyes of gold.

That did not blink.

There was not a trace of blood in sight.

“Chase,” I whispered, and my hands started to shake. “Come on, come on,
come on
!”

Please

I hit send.

Come back.

With each word, my fingers found it increasingly difficult to find the right keys.

Dom’r lrsve ne hwew

The second I sent the message, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye—and almost fell to my knees. “Chase.”

An old woman emerged from the shadows. Her long, flowing robe was as white as her hair. Her eyes were as dark as her skin.

“Put down the phone, chile.”

I took an instinctive step back. “W-who are you?” And why was she watching me like that, as if
I
was the freaky one? “Where’s my friend?”

Her face remained without expression. “
Chile.
You cannot bring that phone inside.”

I swallowed hard. Inside? I was not going inside. “Are you … are you my mother’s cousin?”

A soft breeze whispered around her, tinkling wind chimes I had not seen before, but not moving a hair on her head. “Come,” she said.

The walls of the courtyard started to push closer. I spun around and fought the urge to lift my arms to shove everything back. Away.
“Where’s my friend?”

Her eyes glowed like black diamonds heated from the inside out. “You waste my time,” she said, and then she was turning, floating back toward the door.

“Wait!” I practically screamed after her.

The second I realized what I was doing, I froze. “Is … Is he okay?”

She turned back to me. “I did not see your friend.”

The disembodied words came at me through the shadows, settling against me, oozing through me like a horrible cold mist.

“I am afraid you have a choice to make, Trinity Rose. You, chile, and you alone.”

Trinity Rose.

She knew my name.

Her eyes met mine, and I would have sworn I felt the impact clear down to my soul. “Do you want to know about your mother, or do you want to find this so-called friend?”

In my hand I still held the phone. I glanced down at my bloodless fingers curled around the pink case, and wished like crazy that I’d saved Detective LaSalle’s phone number as Aunt Sara had suggested.

“You must come alone,” the woman said. “Your friend cannot see what you can.”

I started to shiver from the inside out. The gate was locked. I could not get out. There was nowhere to go—no one to hear me scream.

Chase.
Where was he? What had happened to him?

My fault, I knew.
My fault.
He’d wanted to wait. He’d told me something didn’t feel right.

But I hadn’t listened. I’d begged him, and now he was gone.

“Come,” the woman said, and with the single, hypnotic word, she shifted, a frail hand emerging from the folds of her robe—and extended a knife.

Somehow I didn’t scream. At least not out loud. Inside I screamed over and over.

Wake up! Wake up, wake up, wake up!

But you can’t wake up when you’re not asleep.

“When you are ready,” she said, laying the knife on the little iron table.

“What’s that for?”

Again her eyes met mine, but this time she looked more maternal than demonic. “It is for you.”

And then she was gone.

My phone fell from my fingers, and as if my legs had a mind of their own, they started to move. Toward the door with the B, where the woman with the long white hair had vanished.

Stop,
I told myself.
Stop!

But something greater pulled me toward the darkness, as if the house was a magnet and I was a scrap of metal.

At the table I picked up the knife, my hand curving around the cool, smooth handle of carved bone.

I didn’t want to think what kind.

At the door I extended my arms in front of me, both hands secure around the handle of the knife as if it could protect me.

Then I stepped inside.

FOURTEEN

The cat slipped by me, and the magnetic pull stopped.

I staggered at the unexpected release, reaching out to steady myself against the closest thing I could find. A soft, buttery light bathed the room, making me blink to focus. That’s when I saw the grandfather clock.

It was tall and beautiful, intricately carved with a traditional face and columns running along the sides, an astrological dial along the top, and Roman numerals for numbers.

Six thirty-five, it read, and through the quiet, I could hear the steady heartbeat of the pendulum.

Slowly I turned, and felt what was left of reality shift from beneath me.

I’d walked into an old darkened building, and emerged into a nineteenth-century parlor.

I’d seen the movies. My grandmother loved them. Old classics where a man and woman sit on some dainty sofa, with a silver tea setting on the table in front of them, heavy drapes against the tall windows and a grand piano in the corner, walls covered by a heavy floral fabric or simply painted pink or peach.

The room with the clock was dusty rose. And beautiful.

Everything was there, the sofa covered in rose velvet and the formal chairs, the tables and the glass lamps, the artwork on the walls. The piano.

No, no, no … that was not music I heard. At least not in the room. Only in my mind.

French doors dominated the wall in front of me, tall and white. Closed. I could think of a thousand reasons to leave them that way, but found myself moving toward them anyway. Until I saw the china cabinet. Beautiful and wide, with shimmering glass and dark, polished wood, it sat in the far corner like a child being punished.

Unable to look away, I crossed the thick Persian rug until I stood close enough to lift my hand to the cool, perfectly clear glass, and totally forgot to breathe.

It was all there, everything that had been in my mother’s trunk, the crystals and rocks in all colors, red and blue and topaz. Black. The feathers and the seashells. The small jars of ash. The misshapen stick and the vials of liquids.

Trancelike I shifted the knife to my left hand and used my right to ease open one of the doors and pick up a jar. I pried off the lid and slid the small, perfume-looking bottle beneath my nose, smelled roses. And something else. Something stronger.

Closing my eyes I inhaled again, and the room shimmied around me, as if a huge droplet of water separated me from everything else. I fumbled to return the vial to the dust-free shelf and ran my hands along the curious assortment of seashells.

I’m not sure what made me turn, but the second I saw the mirror to my left, I started to move. A square of black framed an intricate pattern of silver swirls and circles and birds, which gave way to a coppery circle in a Celtic pattern. The mirror itself glowed from the center, as perfectly round as it was black.

I’d never seen a black mirror before, but knew without hesitation that’s what it was.

I crossed to it, didn’t think twice about stepping onto the wooden footstool waiting beneath. The slight elevation brought me to the height of the mirror, and with a slam of my heart, I lifted my eyes, and looked.

It was like looking into the deadest hour of night. Through the pool of cool obsidian, I saw nothing, not even my reflection.

Not sure what I was expecting, or why disappointment slipped through me, I started to pull away. And saw her.

She was beautiful, with long dark hair and gentle, smiling eyes, gazing with uplifted hands at an older woman. In her open palms a baby bird sat very still. And the older woman frowned.

“Mama,”
I whispered, but then the image dissolved and the black flashed, and another image came of the woman with the long hair, older now, rocking a babe of her own. Tears ran down her cheeks as the infant lifted a chubby hand to wipe them away …

“No, no, no…” I whispered, backing away.

But the room held me, and I could not move.

“Stop!” I cried, not sure who I was talking to, but knowing that I needed it to stop, all of it, the images swirling in the black and the crazy way the room rocked around me.

Then I saw the girl running through the darkness, falling, rolling. And then she was underwater and I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything as the oxygen squeezed from my lungs.

The room kept spinning, faster, harder, like an out-of-control carnival ride. And the house flashed with tiny insidious earthquakes of lightning. Over and over again.

Then I saw the body, pale and still, laid out on a marble slab. Nearby a woman was crying—Aunt Sara? And through the fading heartbeat of the room I could hear another voice, this one male, shouting
no
over and over again. But I saw no face and felt—

Absolutely nothing. I felt nothing at all, as if I was watching the scene play out while drifting away, floating, leaving my body behind.

My
body, I realized. It was my body stretched out on the cold slab, with wet hair plastered against my face.