Broken Illusions A Midnight Dragonfly Novel

ELLIE JAMES believes in dreams and destiny. A graduate of the LSU Manship School of Journalism, Ellie has been writing as long as she can remembering, with tragic poems and tender stories giving way to mystery, adventure, and a fascination with the unexplained. Currently, Ellie resides with her husband and two children in Texas.

ONE
 
 
“Do you believe in forever?”
Working to untangle two silver chains, I glanced toward the front of my aunt’s French Quarter shop, where my friend Victoria stood with a baby-doll tee in her hands. Half an hour before she’d walked in from the rain without any warning, not even a text. She’d hardly said a word since, other than asking what she could do to help.
Stopping by was normal. Silence was not.
“Forever?” I asked, focusing on her and not who would be walking in any minute—or what we’d be doing after I turned off the lights and locked the door. “Where’d that come from?”
Robotically she placed the tee—bubblegum pink with the shop’s name, FLEURISH!, emblazed in rhinestones—on top of the stack and looked up.
“What does it even mean?” she said, so totally a million miles away. “How can anything last forever?”
Brightly colored Mardi Gras merchandise crowded the display tables, beads and doubloons, parasols, even some crazy tutus that were actually selling. Upbeat music flirted from discreetly placed speakers—normally we went with Louis Armstrong or Harry Connick, Jr., but for the next few weeks my aunt insisted we flood the store with the traditional songs of the season.
The jazzy rhythms made standing still impossible.
But in that moment, I did just that.
Forever.
It was hardly a Saturday night, five weeks before Carnival, ten minutes before closing kind of thing.
But I also knew the twisty, timeless place where my mind immediately went was not where Victoria was coming from. She spun from one moment to the next, seeing and hearing, feeling that which was in front of her. It was the whole tip of the iceberg thing.
If she couldn’t see it, it must not be there.
And I so knew what this was about. “You and Lucas had another fight, didn’t you?”
With a distracted sigh, she picked up a strand of purple-and-gold beads someone had left by the T-shirts. “He thinks saying I love you makes everything okay,” she said, twirling the necklace around her wrist. “And, once, maybe it did.”
I glanced down at the tangled chains.
“I mean, for a long time, that was all I wanted to hear. When we first got together, all he had to do was look at me and I melted.”
I knew that feeling well. It was exactly what would happen the second Chase walked in and the electric blue of his eyes locked onto me.
He’d said eight thirty, but with Victoria such a mess, it was best that he was late.
“I couldn’t imagine a day I wouldn’t feel the same way,” she was saying. “Being with him was all I wanted.”
I glanced at the clock. “And now?”
“IDK.” She let the beads drop to the table. “So much has changed.”
For all of us.
Most of the time life was like a river. It flowed from one day to the next, giving no real awareness of when the deep water ended, and the shallow began. There was no defining line, no before and after. It just flowed.
But sometimes there was a point. Sometimes there was an exact moment, and when you looked back, you saw it all, the moment, the place, and you knew, you knew how different things could have been if you’d made a different choice.
Four months had passed. Four months since the night a simple dare had turned into a nightmare we never saw coming.
Four months since one chapter ended, and another began. And Victoria was right—so much had changed. I think that’s what surprised me the most, how one event could cast so many ripples. Even my aunt’s life had turned. She would have opened Fleurish! anyway. That had been in the works. But Detective LaSalle had been a stranger then—and now the two were inseparable.
Yeah, that was awkward.
But for Victoria, it was the change itself that rocked her, the realization of how quickly life could turn.
“It’s like now, whenever he says forever, I freeze up inside, like it’s some kind of trap.”
It didn’t take a psychic to figure that out.
“Maybe that means he’s not the one,” I pointed out, as I’d done many times before.
“I think it’s the word. Forever. Even things you want to last, don’t.” She shifted toward me, zinging me with the glitter in her eyes. “Think about it,” she said. “Everything dies. Everything. Flowers, trees, animals. Love … people. I mean, really, from the second we’re born, that’s all we’re doing. Dying.”
I took a deep breath—a really, really deep breath. Victoria was many things, and she could definitely lose herself in drama, but that was a bit much, even for her.
Trying to lure her back from the edge, I let the hopelessly tangled necklaces slip from my fingers and snagged a purple-and-green rhinestone tiara.
“Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine tonight,” I teased, strolling over to plop it on her head. Stepping back, I gave her an overly bright smile. “Can’t say I’ve thought about it like that.”
“How can you not? I mean, you of all people, with your parents and your grandmother, Chase, and the thing with Jessica…”
My smile faded. Detective LaSalle said she was lucky, that the drifter who abducted her had taken others. Taken, and not given back. But after all these months, the thought of what she’d been through still twisted me up inside.
One decision. One cruel twist of fate. Sometimes that was all it took.
“How can you believe anything lasts?”
I glanced away, toward the antique mirror behind the jewelry case, looking long and hard at the new me. My hair was still long and dark and wavy, my skin still a hue of olive, and I still rarely touched dark eyeliner or goth lipstick. But like everything else, the changes were there, running deeper than the sparkly powders I’d grown to adore, staring back at me from eyes that looked as if they’d lived a lot more than sixteen years. In them a new awareness glowed.
How could I believe anything lasts? That was easy. How could I not? The things I saw, the coming attractions of events yet to happen, had to come from somewhere.
“Maybe not here,” I said, rearranging bracelets and earrings. “But later—after.”
“You mean like … after we’re dead?”
I was no longer sure there was a before—or an after. There just … was.
“So what do you think happens?” she asked as I returned a pair of dangly fleur-de-lis earrings to their card. “Do you really think we go to Heaven and live happily ever after? Or that we come back and get reborn, get a do-over?”
I turned from the jewelry as the music shifted, and Big Chief started singing about smoking a peace pipe. (After a week of nonstop play, I knew the words by heart.)
The gleam in Victoria’s eyes should have warned me.
“What if we could find out?” she asked, reaching for the camo messenger bag she’d dropped by the front display. She dipped her hand in, and for at least the fifth time over the past month, pulled out the Ouija board.
And over the music, the buzzing began.
“Victoria—” I started as the bell on the door jingled. I spun around—
The lazy grin stopped me. “Evenin’, beautiful,” the taller of the two guys drawled.
“Deuce,” I said, smiling. He strolled in as he did a few times per week, his walk in rhythm to the music. His bandmate, Trey, made a beeline for Victoria—just like he always did.
“I thought ya’ll were playing tonight,” I said.
Looking every bit a sax player with his skinny black jeans and slim-fitting button-down with tribal tattoos, the two gold hoops in his ear, Deuce took me by the hand and twirled me under his arm.
“Not until eleven.” Releasing me, he frowned. “What’s wrong, Mile High? You lookin’ way too serious.”
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.


 
Copyright © 2012 by Ellie James

ONE
 
 
“Do you believe in forever?”
Working to untangle two silver chains, I glanced toward the front of my aunt’s French Quarter shop, where my friend Victoria stood with a baby-doll tee in her hands. Half an hour before she’d walked in from the rain without any warning, not even a text. She’d hardly said a word since, other than asking what she could do to help.
Stopping by was normal. Silence was not.
“Forever?” I asked, focusing on her and not who would be walking in any minute—or what we’d be doing after I turned off the lights and locked the door. “Where’d that come from?”
Robotically she placed the tee—bubblegum pink with the shop’s name, FLEURISH!, emblazed in rhinestones—on top of the stack and looked up.
“What does it even mean?” she said, so totally a million miles away. “How can anything lastforever?”
Brightly colored Mardi Gras merchandise crowded the display tables, beads and doubloons, parasols, even some crazy tutus that were actually selling. Upbeat music flirted from discreetly placed speakers—normally we went with Louis Armstrong or Harry Connick, Jr., but for the next few weeks my aunt insisted we flood the store with the traditional songs of the season.
The jazzy rhythms made standing still impossible.
But in that moment, I did just that.
Forever.
It was hardly a Saturday night, five weeks before Carnival, ten minutes before closing kind of thing.
But I also knew the twisty, timeless place where my mind immediately went was not where Victoria was coming from. She spun from one moment to the next, seeing and hearing,feelingthat which was in front of her. It was the whole tip of the iceberg thing.
If she couldn’t see it, it must not be there.
And I so knew what this was about. “You and Lucas had another fight, didn’t you?”
With a distracted sigh, she picked up a strand of purple-and-gold beads someone had left by the T-shirts. “He thinks saying I love you makes everything okay,” she said, twirling the necklace around her wrist. “And, once, maybe it did.”
I glanced down at the tangled chains.
“I mean, for a long time, that was all I wanted to hear. When we first got together, all he had to do was look at me and I melted.”
I knew that feeling well. It was exactly what would happen the second Chase walked in and the electric blue of his eyes locked onto me.
He’d said eight thirty, but with Victoria such a mess, it was best that he was late.
“I couldn’t imagine a day I wouldn’t feel the same way,” she was saying. “Being with him was all I wanted.”
I glanced at the clock. “And now?”
“IDK.” She let the beads drop to the table. “So much has changed.”
For all of us.
Most of the time life was like a river. It flowed from one day to the next, giving no real awareness of when the deep water ended, and the shallow began. There was no defining line, no before and after. It just flowed.
But sometimes there was a point. Sometimes there was an exact moment, and when you looked back, you saw it all, the moment, the place, and you knew, you knew how different things could have been if you’d made a different choice.
Four months had passed. Four months since the night a simple dare had turned into a nightmare we never saw coming.
Four months since one chapter ended, and another began. And Victoria was right—so much had changed. I think that’s what surprised me the most, how one event could cast so many ripples. Even my aunt’s life had turned. She would have opened Fleurish! anyway. That had been in the works. But Detective LaSalle had been a stranger then—and now the two were inseparable.
Yeah, that was awkward.
But for Victoria, it was the change itself that rocked her, the realization of how quickly life could turn.
“It’s like now, whenever he says forever, I freeze up inside, like it’s some kind of trap.”
It didn’t take a psychic to figure that out.
“Maybe that means he’s not the one,” I pointed out, as I’d done many times before.
“I think it’s the word.Forever.Even things you want to last, don’t.” She shifted toward me, zinging me with the glitter in her eyes. “Think about it,” she said. “Everything dies.Everything.Flowers, trees, animals. Love … people. I mean, really, from the second we’re born, that’s all we’re doing. Dying.”
I took a deep breath—a really, really deep breath. Victoria was many things, and she could definitely lose herself in drama, but that was a bit much, even for her.
Trying to lure her back from the edge, I let the hopelessly tangled necklaces slip from my fingers and snagged a purple-and-green rhinestone tiara.
“Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine tonight,” I teased, strolling over to plop it on her head. Stepping back, I gave her an overly bright smile. “Can’t say I’ve thought about it like that.”
“How can you not? I mean, you of all people, with your parents and your grandmother, Chase, and the thing with Jessica…”
My smile faded. Detective LaSalle said she was lucky, that the drifter who abducted her had taken others. Taken, and not given back. But after all these months, the thought of what she’d been through still twisted me up inside.
One decision. One cruel twist of fate. Sometimes that was all it took.
“How can you believeanythinglasts?”
I glanced away, toward the antique mirror behind the jewelry case, looking long and hard at the new me. My hair was still long and dark and wavy, my skin still a hue of olive, and I still rarely touched dark eyeliner or goth lipstick. But like everything else, the changes were there, running deeper than the sparkly powders I’d grown to adore, staring back at me from eyes that looked as if they’d lived a lot more than sixteen years. In them a new awareness glowed.
How could I believe anything lasts? That was easy. How could I not? The things I saw, the coming attractions of events yet to happen, had to come from somewhere.
“Maybe not here,” I said, rearranging bracelets and earrings. “But later—after.”
“You mean like …after we’re dead?”
I was no longer sure therewasa before—or an after. There just … was.
“So what do you think happens?” she asked as I returned a pair of dangly fleur-de-lis earrings to their card. “Do you really think we go to Heaven and live happily ever after? Or that we come back and get reborn, get a do-over?”
I turned from the jewelry as the music shifted, and Big Chief started singing about smoking a peace pipe. (After a week of nonstop play, I knew the words by heart.)
The gleam in Victoria’s eyes should have warned me.
“What if we could find out?” she asked, reaching for the camo messenger bag she’d dropped by the front display. She dipped her hand in, and for at least the fifth time over the past month, pulled out the Ouija board.
And over the music, the buzzing began.
“Victoria—” I started as the bell on the door jingled. I spun around—
The lazy grin stopped me. “Evenin’, beautiful,” the taller of the two guys drawled.
“Deuce,” I said, smiling. He strolled in as he did a few times per week, his walk in rhythm to the music. His bandmate, Trey, made a beeline for Victoria—just likehealways did.
“I thought ya’ll were playing tonight,” I said.
Looking every bit a sax player with his skinny black jeans and slim-fitting button-down with tribal tattoos, the two gold hoops in his ear, Deuce took me by the hand and twirled me under his arm.
“Not until eleven.” Releasing me, he frowned. “What’s wrong, Mile High? You lookin’ way too serious.”
I shook my head. The second they’d found out I grew up in Colorado, I becameMile 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 forspecial 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.


 
Copyright © 2012 by Ellie James