
St. Martin's Press
THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. ALL OF THE CHARACTERS, ORGANIZATIONS, AND EVENTS PORTRAYED IN THIS STORY ARE EITHER PRODUCTS OF THE AUTHOR'S IMAGINATION OR ARE USED FICTITIOUSLY.
"Haunted Destiny"
Copyright © 2011 by Ellie James.
All rights reserved.
For information address St. Martin's Press, 175 FifthAvenue, New York, NY 10010.
St. Martin's books are published bySt. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-0342-8
Contents
Lost souls. Old souls. Tortured souls. They gather in the dance of the shadows, swaying quietly to the whisper of eternity.
I stared at the words, repeating them silently---and trying not to laugh. "You're kidding, right?"
My friend Harmony shoved a drizzle-ruined strand of blond hair from her face and smiled. "You're gonna be so great! You're a natural."
I grinned back at her. "Yeah, I can see it now. Hello, my name is Marguerite, and I'd like to introduce you to my world." For effect, I used the same theatrical voice Harmony did when giving her Haunted Garden District tours. "The world of the dead---and the damned."
Harmony, seated next to me with a cast halfway up to her knee, laughed. "You are so not a Marguerite."
That was true. But I'd been warned from my very first day working in the French Quarter to never let anyone know my real name. So Rachelle Dugas was banished, and Marguerite took over.
"I still think you could have come up with something better."
"Like...Destiny," I reminded. That's what Harmony had tried to talk me into.
The green of her eyes went all devilish. "Or Purity."
We both laughed at that.
But there was no turning back now. I was Marguerite, and in only a few hours, I was subbing for Harmony and giving my very first tour.
"What about soul mates?" I asked, returning to the talking points she'd scribbled for me. She'd tripped and broken her ankle while leading a group through a cemetery the day before. "Do they dance, too?"
She winked. "I'll let you figure that one out for yourself," she said, reaching for a deck of Tarot cards.
Around lunchtime, the French Quarter should have been packed. It was a Saturday, and on Saturdays tourists started early (except for the ones who'd stayed out too late the night before. They were usually crawling into bed as everyone else was lining up outside Café du Monde.) Artists and street performers and horse-drawn carriages lined the Square.
But hurricanes had a way of changing that.
"You'd think the storm was going to be a direct hit," I said, watching moody grey clouds bubbling up from the south. "I don't get why everything is so dead---these are just feeder bands."
Harmony glanced up from shuffling her cards. "Drama," she said. "Everyone loves to freak out about something."
That was true. It was, in all honesty, one of the biggest reasons we'd come to New Orleans in the first place. The city had a reputation, a mystique. When you came to the Big Easy, you did things you didn't normally do. You ate food you couldn't pronounce and went into shops selling things you'd never seen before, you stayed up insanely late and took a picture next to the Bourbon Street sign post just to show everyone you'd been there. You did a swamp tour---or a ghost tour.
And, even though you told yourself it didn't mean anything, that it couldn't possibly mean anything, you nervously approached one of the psychics in Jackson Square, gave them your palm or reached for a Tarot card, and learned what destiny had in store for you.
And, yeah, you freaked out.
Harmony and I saw it every day. It was always the same. Someone would glance at our table in front of the imposing iron fence, beneath a phenomenally huge and massively old palm, then quickly look away. They would walk faster, but then turn back. And you could see the temptation in their eyes.
That was the moment you knew they were yours.
Except on a day like today, when despite the cooler temperature September always brought, the threat of something ominous chased everyone away.
"But who knows," Harmony said. "Maybe they're right. Maybe the storm's going to hook back our way. It's happened before. Maybe that's what you felt when you woke up this morning."
Even before I shot her a quick glance, I knew she would be studying me with those all-seeing eyes of hers. We'd been living together in a little apartment over on Dumaine Street for about four months, but we'd been friends forever. Literally. Our moms had been best friends. Our birthdays were hours apart. If there was such a thing as a soul sister, Harmony was mine.
And even if I hadn't told her about the weird heaviness I'd woken up with, the invisible weight pressing against my chest, she would have known. Because that's what Harmony did. She knew things.
So did I.
And yeah, having a best friend who could read your mind made things pretty fun.
Most of the time.
"Not the storm," I said. That actually would have been cool. I was kinda strange like that. I loved tropical weather, the way the pressure would drop and the trees would bend and the rain would fly in all directions...
"It's more," I said. "Something big. Personal."
Harmony reached for a tangle of blond hair and began to twirl it around a black-tipped finger. "Are you sure there wasn't a dream, too?"
I looked across the street toward the river, barely visible beyond big fountain and the levee. Harmony could read people, but I could read the future.
"I can't remember." I'd tried. I'd closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing like my grandmother had taught me, trying to send myself back. Sometimes it worked, and I could sink back into my dreams and see a little more, understand better what was to come.
The first few times it had freaked me out. Everyone dreams, and lots of people try to interpret all the crazy things that happen. But for them, dreams are just dreams.
Not mine.
At least not always.
Some of mine come true.
"Here," Harmony said, and when I turned back toward her, I found her eyes glowing like emeralds on fire, with her white-blond hair hanging in an angel-like curtain against both sides of her face.
In her hands, she held the Tarot cards.
"Concentrate on what you want to know," she instructed. "And shuffle."
The weight against my chest pressed harder, and without even realizing what I was doing, I lifted my hand and brought it to the V of my gothic-inspired dress. There I closed my fingers around the smooth edges of the bronze dragonfly my grandmother had given my mother for her sixteenth birthday.
I didn't need to look down to know that the yellowy green crystal in the center glowed. I could feel the warmth seeping through my flesh.
"Come on," Harmony urged. "You know the drill. Shuffle, then separate them into three piles. I'll take it from there."
She was right. I knew the drill. I'd seen Harmony and her mother do hundreds of readings.
And I'd seen those readings come true time and time again.
But I'd never let her do one for me.
That was the thing about knowing. Everyone thought it would be cool to see into the future, and sometimes it was. But it wasn't all about getting sneak peeks at what was going to be on a trig exam or the winning lottery ticket.
Sometimes it was stuff you really didn't want to know. Like when a little girl went missing and you had to tell her parents she wasn't coming back. Or when you slipped into bed and closed your eyes, and saw yourself kneeling at a grave, sobbing, and you know one day your heart was going to get totally shattered.
No. Knowing wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Sometimes it was better to just take life as it came. That way, you only lived things once, when they happened.
Deep heavy stuff for sure, but even at seventeen, I'd learned that.
"No." Just the thought of touching those cards made me itchy. "I'm good."
Harmony rolled her eyes. "Are you kidding me? You've been a stress-case since the minute you woke up, saying something big is coming. That your life is going to change. That you can feel it."
Leaning closer, she gave me one of her mystical smiles, made all the more other-worldly by the too-dark red lipstick she always wore when working the Square. (She insisted I was going to have to wear it that night, too. For, yeah, the drama.)
"So let me tell you," she said against a strong gust of rain-heavy air. "I can, you know."
I did. I knew. I knew she could tell me.
"No," I whispered, hugging myself.
Harmony stared me down a few seconds longer before giving me one of those deep, I'm-really-annoyed-with-you sighs, and plopping the seriously old deck of cards her great-grandmother had passed down in front of me.
The wind swirled around us, stronger, heavier, bending the crepe myrtles and sending trash scurrying along the cobblestone. The bars were all open, and they, of course, were full. Music played loudly. A few had signs in the window, advertising hurricane parties. But most of the shops were closed. Only a few people hurried with their umbrellas along the sidewalk.
Voluntary evacuations had that effect.
The facts were simple. New Orleans sat below sea level, basically in a bowl. Someday a big storm would come and the city that I loved would go under.
Shivering, I started to look away, doing a double-take as I saw one of the shop owners crouched in a display window with dozens of vacant eyed dolls. Some wore threadbare gowns of Victorian lace. Others showed off antebellum finery. One wore black. Desiree had given each a name and a birthday, and as the first wispy drops from a feeder band swept across the cobblestone between us, she lovingly packed them away, one by one.
"He's just too beautiful for words."
I twisted back to find Harmony shielded by our huge tarp, with my sketchbook open in her hands. I always brought it with me to kill time during slow periods.
"Give me that!" I shrieked, but she scooted further back, turning the book to show me the picture she was looking at.
But really, I already knew.
"Maybe that's it." She grinned. "Maybe today's the day you're finally gonna meet this guy."
My heart slammed really hard.
"This picture's new, isn't it?" she asked. "When did you draw this one?"
From the river, a tugboat wailed.
I thought about changing the subject, but with Harmony that wasn't a possibility. "A few days ago."
"There's more detail than before," she observed.
There was. A lot, actually. At first, when I'd awoken to find my notebook open at the foot of my bed, the guy had been little more than a shadow. That had been my first night in New Orleans.
Before that, I'd only drawn in my sleep one other time. And yeah, the next afternoon they'd found the girl two grades ahead of me in the swamp, exactly where I'd drawn her.
"Still no idea who he is?" Harmony asked.
I shook my head, gathering my damp frizzy hair into a fist behind my neck. I'd been drawing this guy over and over for months, but I had no idea who he was.
Harmony liked to call him The Guy of My Dreams.
But his name didn't matter. All I had to do was look at him, and I couldn't breathe. Touch the line of his face, and invisible fingers tickled the back of my neck. Skim a finger along his lower lip, and feel the kiss whisper through me.
I wanted to think that meant something.
His eyes were warm but intense, and I knew they would be blue. His hair was thick, wavy, falling carelessly across his forehead. There was confidence in his sharp cheekbones, and laughter in his smile.
Lost in my own world, I wasn't aware Harmony had turned the page, until she blurted out a single word. "Mountains?"
I twisted my mouth. The guy sorta made sense. The mountains...not so much.
"I didn't think you'd ever left Louisiana," Harmony said.
The rain started to fall harder, sweeping in a horizontal dance from the river. "I haven't."
"Then what gives?" she asked, thumbing through page after page of mountain ranges. Those I'd done in colored pencils, with blue skies and white clouds, green trees giving way to snow-capped peaks...with a single dragonfly placed randomly in each.
I'd sketched close to the identical picture fourteen times.
"Who knows," I murmured, not concerned. I was in the Deep South. There were no mountains around. I was quite sure they had nothing to do with me.
Harmony flipped the page, and stilled. The wind kept whipping around us, though, sending stringy blond hair against eyes that had suddenly gone midnight dark.
And I knew what she was looking at.
"Your mom," she whispered.
My eyes filled.
"She was so pretty," she murmured with a sad smile. "Why didn't you tell me? Did she come to you in a dream or something?"
Sheltered by an umbrella, I reached for the tablet, and this time Harmony let me have it.
"I like to think so," I said. It would explain why I'd felt so warm before I woke up, in those hazy foggy moments before I'd sat up in bed and found the sketch on the floor.
Her hair was long and wind-swept, tangling around her face and falling wildly against a pink tank top. Her mouth was full, her eyes tilted, like mine. And with them, I knew she had seen far too much.
Like me.
"My mom dreams about her, too," Harmony said as I stared at the dragonfly pendant glowing against her chest. "She still misses her a lot."
So did I. Fifteen years had passed since she'd drowned. I'd been two years old. She'd been only nineteen. I had no real memories of her, but somehow I knew her.
That was radically different from my father, whom I'd never known. I'd asked questions, but no one would answer them, not even the grandmother who'd raised me. It was like I was an immaculate conception, except for the fact that that ridiculous.
"What's trinity?" she asked.
I looked at the single word, written lovingly in a beautiful calligraphy-like cursive---one I'd been unable to repeat, despite trying. "I have no idea."
Harmony shrugged. "Do you think she was trying to warn you about something?" she asked. "Maybe that's why---"
I shot her a look only a best friend can get away with. "Harmony?"
"Yeah?"
"Shut up."
She grinned. "Just trying to put it all together."
"Stop."
Her grin softened. "Maybe I should find someone else for the tour," she said, glancing toward the plaza in front of the beautiful old cathedral, where Dominic and Esmerelda usually set up.
We were the only ones sitting in the rain.
"With all this weird stuff, I'm not sure tonight's the night you should be leading a tour---"
"Stop," I said again, swooping up her script and shoving it into my bag. "You broke your ankle. I'm your best friend. I said yes." Actually, I'd jumped at the chance. "That's the way it's supposed to be---and that's the way it's going to be."
It was probably the one thing I'd learned about destiny. You couldn't run from it. You couldn't hide.
Somehow that just made things worse. Destiny had a plan of her own.
With another ridiculous gust of warm air, the rain turned to a downpour. "Who knows," Harmony said, scrambling to pack away her cards. "Maybe no one will even show up."
I hurried to slide an arm around her as she stood. Crutches were not going to work in this rain. "Maybe," I said, supporting her as we dashed toward Desiree and her vacant-eyed dolls.
But even as I said the words, I knew they were wrong.
I was right. The hurricane continued to churn east toward Alabama, spreading intermittent rain showers across southern Louisiana as feeder bands swept in from the Gulf of Mexico.
But at four o'clock I still had three people waiting at the corner of St. Charles Avenue and Jackson Street. Six had been scheduled, but the rest were no-shows, leaving me with a married couple from California and an English writer eager to research our Cities of the Dead for a book about a secret society of Immortals.
Her name was Naomi, and like the Hoods from San Francisco, she was all about the rain. Every time lightning broke the eerie late afternoon darkness or thunder shook the old houses, she smiled and opened her arms, and in her very beautiful, aristocratic accent, exclaimed, 'Brilliant!'
I liked all of them from the moment I walked up, and any anxiety I had about giving my first tour faded.
Despite the rain and slightly cooler temps, everyone agreed they wanted the full tour, no shortcuts. So bundled in rain-jackets with umbrellas in hand, we took off, walking along the broken sidewalks of St. Charles Avenue, where beautiful old mansions slept much as they had for hundreds of years, and equally old trees served as perpetual umbrellas.
Parked cars lined the street, but very few passed alongside us. Even the streetcar was stashed somewhere for the storm. I knew everyone was eager to get to the cemetery, but Harmony insisted it was best to let suspense and anticipation build. It was that whole drama thing.
"The stories are many, the tales as varied as the spirits themselves," I began we passed a gorgeous old concrete statue of the Virgin Mary cradling an infant. "But most would agree our most famous ghost is but a young girl."
The excitement glowing in everyone's eyes spurred me on.
"Long ago, when the Garden District was little more than a sugar cane field, a family came to visit friends. The adults busied themselves doing what adults do, drinking and catching up. It wasn't until sometime late that they realized their daughter, Sara, had wandered off.
"It took over a week before they found her body in the sugar cane field."
Standing statue-still beneath their respective umbrellas, Mr. and Mrs. Hood exchanged a brief somber look.
"Some say she's still here," I said, leading them toward a beautiful old Victorian home, where an older woman sat alone in a rocking chair on her veranda.
"Many have seen her, sometimes walking right through their house. Others say they hear her calling for her mother. But only by day.
"Sara never comes out at night."
Another gust whipped in, delivering a fresh onslaught of horizontal rain. "Tragic," Naomi murmured.
The Hoods remained silent.
Leaning into the wind, I led them onto Harmony Street and picked up the pace. (Yes, Harmony Street. My friend was totally born to do this gig. Lots of people thought Harmony was a made-up name, like Marguerite. But she'd been given that name at birth, by her mother---Faith. True story.)
"I participated in a marvelous French Quarter tour last night," Naomi said. Soaked despite her umbrella, her dark brown hair was slicked back from her face, making her eyes looked even bigger. "We walked by a particular house on Royal Street, where I was informed a woman kept people chained in the attic! I can hardly even fathom. Are there any stories like that here?"
Her accent and word choice made me smile.
"Lots!" I said, guiding them onto Prytania. Lafayette Cemetery was only a few blocks away. "Many of these houses have stood for over two hundred years."
"Which means they're haunted," Mrs. Hood gushed.
Her husband slid an arm around her, drawing her close against him. "Dawn has a thing for ghosts."
She grinned.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
I couldn't breathe.
The sensation gripped me, like being held, but not in a good way. The weight from before, the unseen force that had been pressing against my chest all day, turned into a straitjacket, wrapping around me, and squeezing. The warm rain kept falling and the tropical air continued to bend young trees to the point of breaking, but I couldn't feel any of that, only icy cold fingers closing around my throat.
"Marguerite!" Mr. Hood rushed over and took me by the arms, shaking me slightly.
I blinked and stared, tried to bring him into focus. But for the craziest second, all I could think was...run.
Mrs. Hood and Naomi crowded up behind him. "Is she quite all right?"
We meet again...
I ripped away and staggered back. But it wasn't Mr. Hood that I stared at. It was the mansion. Big and boxy and covered by vines of bougainvillea, it sat back from the street, barely visible through the frame of moss-covered oaks. The front porch sagged. Dark windows stared like the sightless eyes of Desiree's dolls.
"Ohhh, it's quite extraordinary, isn't it?" Naomi murmured.
"Something bad happened here, didn't it?" Mrs. Hood realized. "That's why you're so pale."
Don't be afraid...
The huge, dark coil inside me tightened. I wanted to rip away and run, even as I wanted to step closer, and see. Touch.
Feel.
It made no sense.
"There are stories," I said, tightening my fingers around my umbrella. Harmony had told me. She'd been to this house several times, as recently as the weekend before. She'd been inside, explored every room. She said it was amazing, beautiful but sad, as if life had moved on and forgotten, but that the house remembered.
Everything.
Whatever had happened there still happened, over and over, an invisible movie trapped on eternal repeat.
"The house dates back before the Civil War," I recited. "Built by a sugar baron as gift for his wife." I took a step back, as if I could pull myself far enough back, the web would release me. "But as so often happened, she never lived to see it complete."
"I saw in some documentary that many of the mansions ended up occupied by Union soldiers," Mr. Hood said.
"They did," I said. "As did the White Jewel---that's what the house was known as back then. Bijou Blanche. The Union soldiers turned it into a field hospital."
Mrs. Hood gasped.
Naomi stepped closer, lifting a hand to the shoulder-high iron-gate surrounding the property. Even in its current state of neglect, the huge red hibiscus blooming profusely lent a haunting beauty.
"Years went by. The house was purchased by a merchant and his wife, who died shortly after they moved in. He lived out his years there, alone, until he drank himself to death, leaving the property to his daughter and her husband."
Mrs. Hood shot me a nervous glance.
"Richard was also a merchant and traveled for months at a time, leaving Adelaide home alone. One morning a neighbor was pruning her roses when she heard screams." I paused, swallowing against a strange burn in my throat. "And then a pregnant Adelaide came running from the house."
The web gripping me locked tighter.
"In a night dress of white," I whispered hoarsely. "Streaked with red."
Mrs. Hood winced.
"The neighbor tried to approach her, but she was wild and incoherent, her face scratched up, her eyes like dark pools, her hair falling in matted tangles, and before the neighbor could stop her, Adelaide had run off."
The rain slowed, slipping like tears down a crumbling statue of an angel, standing in the exact spot where Adelaide had last been seen.
"The police were called. Inside they found everything in perfect order---except for one room. A secret room," I said lowering my voice. "Upstairs, at the end of the hall---where the Union soldiers had piled their dead."
Despite the drizzle, Naomi lifted her camera and started to snap like crazy.
"What was in the room?"
I heard Mr. Hood's voice, but it came at me through a distorted tunnel.
"According to the police?" I mused. "Only an overturned chair. Maybe she fell, they speculated. Maybe she hit her head and became disoriented." For effect, I paused. "That could explain the broken glass," I murmured. "But not the gouges."
The odd combination of rain and shadow and light from the street lamps made Mrs. Hood's dark brown eyes glow. "Gouges?"
"On the floorboard and the walls," I said, trancelike. "Deep and rough and frantic, like those of a trapped animal, thrashing and clawing, desperate for escape. There are those who say the whole room bled.
"But those who were there, those who claimed to know someone who knew someone, said it was the smell that turned the veteran cop white as a ghost, and sent him straight to his priest," I whispered. "Pungent and earthy. Not human."
Naomi released the fence and stepped disjointedly back. I could see that she was shaking.
"Adelaide's husband returned from sea a few days later, and refused to believe that she was gone. He insisted he heard her, at night, crying for him. And he smelled the gardenia that she always wore. It is said he would run from room to room, throwing open doors and lighting candles---searching.
"His friends and family said that was the absinthe he'd turned to, slowly rotting his brain."
"I'll never let you go..."
I jerked back, twisting toward Mr. Hood. But he had his wife in his arms, and they were murmuring quietly to each other while Naomi wandered toward the angel statue.
There was no one else there.
I shivered, like I had so many other times since arriving in New Orleans. It wasn't called the most haunted city in America for nothing.
"He's still there, isn't he?" Naomi asked, lowering her camera. "Waiting for his wife."
"There are those who say on a quiet still night you can still hear doors opening and closing," I whispered, as against my chest, warmth radiated from my mother's dragonfly pendant. "And footsteps running."
Maybe that's why my heart started to drum really hard, because of the tragedy of it all, of fate and eternity and all those empty dark spaces in between.
Or maybe not.
"And even in the dead of winter," I murmured, "if you close your eyes when you inhale, it's possible to catch the faintest trace of gardenia..."
Lafayette Cemetery always got to people. Even those who thought they were prepared. Even those who'd seen pictures or been to other New Orleans cemeteries. There was just something about walking between the two sentinel oaks that had stood there for so long, and seen so much, and through the gate of wrought iron.
One step, and the world of the living fell away, and the dead took over.
"Lost souls," I said quietly. "Old souls. Tortured souls." To my surprise the words didn't feel silly or forced.
"They gather in the dance of the shadows," I continued, and for a fleeting second, I again thought of soul mates, and wondered if they, too danced, "swaying quietly to the whisper of eternity."
And then I said no more. I wanted the Hoods and Naomi to have their own experience, for their own impressions to form as they explored the haunting, timeless beauty of the weathered tombs, where crosses crumbled and angels wept and the vampire Lestat had hidden his valuables.
I'd been here several times, and I knew the stories, but as I turned and saw a man kneeling in the rain, with his head bowed and his hands clenched around the ornate iron fence surrounding a beautiful old crypt, a profound sadness gripped me.
The rain started again, this time harder, the wind shoving it in violent sheets across the tombs. Maybe that's why he looked up. I knew it wasn't because of me. I hadn't moved.
But the second our eyes met, all of that fell away.
The strangest echo of recognition whispered through me.
Shivering, I squinted against the downpour, trying to see. But even as he came into form, I was positive I'd never seen him before.
But the recognition wouldn't go away.
Tall and thin, he had the look of a poet, with dark hair falling against a tragic face, and eyes as dark as they were decimated. I would have sworn he stepped toward me and touched me, lifted a hand to press against my chest, even though I could see that five feet separated us, and he still knelt in the shadow of a headless angel.
"Oh, my God!" I heard someone shriek, and from one heartbeat to the next, the moment shattered and Mrs. Hood came running through the torrential downpour, her husband right behind her, absolutely soaked to the bone. And when I glanced back at the man, I found him once again facing the grave with his head bowed, and from his hands, still clenched around the iron, I could see the rosary dangling in the rain.
"I'm freezing!" Mrs. Hood said as her husband gathered her against him. Mascara ran down her face---I could only imagine how the goth make-up Harmony had insisted I wear looked at the moment.
But I didn't really care.
From behind me, Naomi splashed through deepening puddles, her umbrella destroyed by the wind. "My camera," she said, as a vicious streak of lightning cut through the sky. "I'm afraid it may be ruined."
Thunder shook the cemetery.
I could see their disappointment, but as the rain pelted us, I could also see the resignation on their faces.
"Tomorrow!" I said, guiding them back to the front entrance, where across the street, even the famous Commander's Palace restaurant sat empty.
The wind kept shoving us back.
"Same time, same place," I shouted against it. "No charge. We'll pick up where we left off!"
We dashed outside, huddling under the dense canopy of one of the old oaks, until finally a taxi turned from St. Charles onto the rapidly flooding Washington Street.
Mr. Hood splashed to the street and hailed it.
There was only room for three.
"No, no, I'm fine," I said as they climbed in, and the taxi driver frowned at the rain slanting into his car. "I'll catch the next one."
In truth though, I didn't mind walking. It was that whole storm thing. I really did love them.
As they drove away I headed in the opposite direction, and despite how bad it had been in the cemetery, here on the sidewalk, where decades-old cracks had turned to raging mini-rivers, the enormous oaks made great umbrellas. And anyway, I was already soaked.
Fighting the wind, I made my way along Prytania, not thinking about much of anything except how much I loved New Orleans, until I felt the breath of awareness slip down my back. Slowly I turned, and slowly I saw the Spanish moss whipping in the frenzy of rain, and the old house waiting through the shroud of oaks.
I'll never let you go...
There were a hundred reasons why I should have kept going, but I didn't care about any of them, only how incredibly cold I was---and the low vibration moving through me, the bone-deep curiosity to experience what Harmony had, to walk through the rooms and touch the walls, smell the air---and see how much of the past really did remain.
Getting inside was ridiculously easy. The iron fence looked imposing, but the rails were frail and rusty, and as I ran my hands along them, I easily found the one Harmony had told me about, the one that wasn't attached anymore.
Quickly I slipped through the opening, and made my way to the house.
The front door was locked.
So was the back. But a few feet away I found the window with the rock wedged between the glass and the ledge, and I easily slipped it open, and climbed out of the rain.
I stood in the stillness for a long moment, absorbing it all, lifting my hands and feeling it, the silent, forgotten heartbeat of all who had come there before me.
Lightning flashed, and I saw the flowers.
Darkness returned, and they were gone.
I stepped forward anyway, keeping my steps small, until I reached the wall across the room. There I went down on my knees and ran my hand along the wood of the flooring, stilling when my fingers brushed against a scattering of dried petals.
"She loved gardenias."
I twisted around so fast I lost my balance and went sprawling against the hard wood of the floor.
"We meet again," he said, and when another flash of lightning streaked into the desolate old room, I saw that we did.
He had the look of a poet. That's what I'd thought back in the cemetery, when I'd seen him kneeling before a crypt, and he'd looked up, and the echo of recognition had moved through me like a forgotten fog.
But in that one fleeting moment before darkness again merged with the stillness of the room, it was not beauty that I saw.
"Don't be afraid," he said quietly.
I scrambled back. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"
"But you are, aren't you?" he said, and I heard it then, the timeless lilt. "I can feel it."
My mind raced. My heart hammered so hard it hurt.
"I've been waiting so long," he murmured, and even without light, I knew that he moved toward me. "But you already know that."
"Stay away from me." I had to get out of there. That's all I could think. I had to get out of there, fast.
Scrambling to my hands and feet, I started to crawl.
"But you were wrong about one thing," he intoned with another blast of lightning. "You forgot about revenge."
A thousand things closed in on me, questions and answers and possibilities, but I wouldn't let any of them touch me, take root. None of them mattered.
Only getting away.
"Richard could hear her," he whispered, closer. "Hear her scream---hear her cry. And he knew. He knew his beautiful Adelaide had suffered." Closer. "And he sought to punish."
Outside the wind thrashed the old house, and tree limbs scraped against the windows. And through the grime on the window I could see the sway of shadows, and I knew that I was getting close to a way out.
"That is why he's still here," the man said. "That is why he will always be here."
My breath stopped. I made myself move anyway, made myself shoot forward and scramble to my feet.
He laughed. "There, there," he murmured, and when lightning again lifted the room from darkness, I saw him, saw him standing in front of me in an odd velvet jacket of rich burgundy, blocking the door. "That's no way to greet me---"
I darted away, started to run. Up the stairs. It was the only option. Against the swirl of the long black dress Harmony had insisted I wear, my feet tangled.
He was right behind me. I could feel him, hear him...
"My friends will be here any minute!" I lied.
He laughed. "Your friends who drove off in the taxi?"
Staggering, I grabbed onto the splintered railing and dragged myself up. And then the hall was there, long and wide and stretching in both directions, and even though there was no light, I knew there would be a back staircase. All the old homes had them for the servants.
I took off, running as fast as I could, acutely aware that he tracked me with slow, deliberate purpose.
Like an animal.
"You're making this so difficult," he breathed as I slammed into something hard.
There was no staircase.
Horrified, I ran my hands along what felt like warped wood paneling, telling myself I was missing something, that there had to be some kind of opening.
And then he was there, trapping me between his body and the wall, and lifting a hand to the back of my neck. "Fear is such a wasted emotion."
Except the wall slipped away, and a new room opened.
I stumbled forward, catching myself against some kind of shelf.
Outside the wind blew, but here inside this small windowless room, the faded scent of gardenia hung in the air, mingling with something pungent and earthy and---
Not human.
Twisting around, I shot toward him, not about to be cornered in that horrible dead room like some kind of animal.
At the moment before impact, he grunted and collapsed in the opening, revealing a hulking form behind him.
I gasped---I'd never considered that he wasn't alone.
But then lightning slipped in, lingering, bathing the hall in a soft glow and revealing thick wavy hair falling against his forehead and the strong cheekbones, and eyes warm and intense, and so very, very blue.
"My God, are you okay?" he asked rushing past the unmoving heap on the floor. "I was driving by when I saw you go inside---"
And then he touched me, taking my shoulders in his hands and holding me, not threateningly or aggressively, but gently, the way it was supposed to be.
"And then I saw that guy go in after you," he was saying, but I barely heard, barely breathed. A little dazed, I lifted a hand to the side of his rain-slicked face, and felt an invisible feather tickle the back of my neck. And when I touched his lower lip, the kiss of eternity whispered through me.
And I knew. There with the storm raging outside, the images blurred, blended, became one---the guy in front of me and the guy from my sketchbook, my dreams. And my mother's dragonfly started to glow.
Destiny, I realized with a soft smile. She always had a plan of her own.
READ ON FOR A PREVIEW OF THE FIRST MIDNIGHT DRAGONFLY NOVEL
SHATTERED DREAMS
AVAILABLE DECEMBER 2011
One
"I heard this place is like...haunted."
Stepping around a huge old oak, I lifted my flashlight...and saw the house. Everyone else kept tromping through knee-high weeds, but something held me there, totally still, while Spanish moss slipped against my face.
The abandoned Greek Revival rose up against the moonlit sky like something ripped straight from the picture book my grandmother used to keep on her coffee table. Surrounded by seriously old trees and nearly covered by vines, it was big and boxy, with massive columns and wide porches. Once the place had probably been white. Even at night I could tell that. But now it was dirty and worn out. Tired.
Alone.
It was an odd word, but there you go. Alone. The old place with its dark windows and peeling siding looked like it was...
Waiting.
A warm breeze blew off the river, but I hugged my arms around myself as I watched them---Jessica, the stupidly beautiful cheerleader; her way-too-skinny best friend Amber; Jessica's little sister Bethany; and the guys: Chase, the quarterback (and my chemistry lab partner); Drew, who rarely said more than two words at a time; and the massively tattooed Pitre---making their way toward a broken window. They weren't that far away, but they might as well have been in another state.
At the steps leading to the porch, Jessica swung back to me. She was the one who'd invited me to tag along. "What's the matter, Trinity? You're not scared, are you?"
My throat tightened. I wasn't scared. That wasn't the right word. Just...uneasy.
Waiting.
"Just taking it all in," I said, forcing my legs to move. Beneath my flip-flops I felt stuff crunch. I didn't want to know what.
Amber made it to the window before she turned back. "Last year," she said, her eyes glowing, "these two seniors came here---"
"Amber!" Jessica shot her friend a shut up look. "What are you trying to do? Make her leave?"
That would be a yes. I was the new kid, after all. On the first day of school when the teacher had said Trinity Monsour, everyone had turned to stare at me, obviously sizing up the new girl. Being from Colorado made me an outsider, but at least I looked like I belonged. With long dark hair and dark eyes, skin my grandmother called olive, a T-shirt and low-rise jeans, I could have been Jessica's twin.
But still. Starting a new school junior year pretty much sucked.
"Leave?" Amber said. "No way." And with that she slipped into the darkness beyond the broken window.
Two of the guys---Drew and Pitre---followed. Jessica waited until I reached the big bushes obscuring the porch before taking Chase's hand and tugging him toward the darkness. Bethany shot me a nervous look, but followed anyway.
"You coming?"
I recognized the voice as belonging to Amber. Sidestepping broken glass, I reached the tall window and lifted my flashlight, looked inside. They all stood there, waiting.
There was that word again. Waiting.
And with it my throat tightened.
Or maybe that was because of what I saw behind them, neat little piles against the far wall. Ashes.
"Of course," I said against a slap of warm air. Until New Orleans, I'd never known air could be so thick. Breathing was hard enough, but my hair! It had been straight in Colorado. Here it was a frizzy mess. My aunt kept saying I would get used to it, but I think she was just saying that.
She does that a lot, tells me I'll get used to things. But I've seen that look she gets in her eyes, the worry.
"Then what are you waiting for?" Through a mass of perfect, coffee-colored ringlets, Amber's smile looked more like a smirk. "Want Chasey to hold your hand?"
Jessica's eyes narrowed, invisible claws coming out for the thousandth time since she'd discovered her boyfriend and I were chemistry partners. Just because we had an out-of-class assignment---
But that was another story.
She eased closer to him, inserting herself between him and me. Through the play of shadows his eyes met mine anyway, forcing me to look down at an empty fast-food bag trapped by a rock.
I so knew he was taken.
I also knew I did not want to go into that house. Everything inside of me screamed for me to stay right where I was. But I rubbed my palms against the amazing Rock Revival jeans I still couldn't believe Aunt Sara had bought for me, and stepped to the broken window.
(If anyone had told me back on my birthday in April, that six months later I'd be breaking into a deserted mansion in the Garden District of New Orleans in the middle of the night with a bunch of teens I barely knew, I would have thought they were on serious drugs.)
The cold hit like a punch to the gut. I must have staggered from it because Chase lunged for me, his arms reaching out. The warmth of his hand practically seared through the invisible blanket of ice suddenly covering every inch of my body.
No, I told myself. No! Not now.
Not here!
Not in front of these people...
The last time I'd felt the icy veil---
I stopped the thought, knowing I couldn't just stand there like an idiot in a trance. No one else heard the buzz. No one else felt like they stood in a freezer. My flashlight showed the sheen of sweat on Chase's forehead. Everyone had on tank tops---Jessica's was plastered against her chest. No one was shivering.
Only me.
And only on the inside.
Kind of like the old house.
With a pretend laugh, I stepped from the warmth of Chase's hand and again rubbed my hands against my jeans. I didn't bother looking at Jessica. I knew she'd be glaring in that she-animal way of hers.
"Holy crap." I gagged on my first full breath inside. Mud and smoke and stale whiskey mixed with something else, something really foul. "How old is this place?"
"Real old," Chase said. "Civil War, I think."
"Wow." The beams of our flashlights jumped through the pitch-black room, creating a strobe-light effect. I could only catch pulsing glimpses. Floor. Darkness. Empty water bottles. Darkness. Peeling walls.
Darkness.
By the time I caught detail, it was gone.
Refusing to let my hands shake, I played it cool and lifted my light to the far wall, and saw the tattoo. Well, not really a tattoo, graffiti was more like it, intricately painted over the faded image of a paddleboat on the river.
The heart was done in black. A red cross ran through the top, with some kind of weird swirl design and grid through the middle, like something you'd see on someone's arm.
Actually, I was pretty sure I had seen it.
"Before Katrina," Amber said, strolling over to dominate the circle of light, "you could still see the blood."
Blood? Inside, mine ran cold.
"You still can, dimwit," Jessica said. "This place didn't get any water."
"Omigod---" That was from Bethany. I twisted around, found her staring at the back corner. She was really pale---and really glued to Chase. His eyes were narrow, his dimples gone. "W-what's that?"
With my light I followed her line of vision to a small collection of sticks piled on top of each other.
Except they weren't sticks.
"Bones," Amber whispered.
I swallowed hard as Bethany let out some kind of strangled sound. "I don't think---"
"No one's making you stay," Jessica pointed out before her sister could finish. "If you want to leave..."
"Probably an animal." Chase's voice held absolute calm. "They like to die alone."
Bethany, a smaller, less sexy version of Jessica, looked up at him as if she wanted nothing more than for him to be right. It was so painfully obvious how badly she hung on his every word. His smile was warm as he gave her a brotherly pat on the back.
I was quite sure it broke her heart.
Around us darkness throbbed, and with every warm breath of wind, the old house groaned. The place was huge. I had no idea how many rooms there were, or who (or what) else could be inside.
Waiting.
The urge to move was strong. To leave. The stillness felt...wrong.
Everything felt wrong.
...still see the blood...
"I thought everything flooded," I said, stepping toward the wide hallway that cut through the middle of the house. I'd only been a kid, but my memories of the hurricane were vivid. My grandmother had been glued to the coverage, her eyes worried, her hands fisted together. I'd never seen her like that, and it had freaked me out.
It wasn't until Gran died that I understood why.
She'd never been one to talk about the past, had always said, Triny, ain't no point lookin' backwards. But I'd never really thought much about it. Maybe because I didn't have much to look back at.
My parents died when I was little---I didn't even have any pictures of them, didn't have any brothers or sisters. I had never been anywhere besides the Colorado mountain where Gran raised me, had never even seen an ocean.
Gran always made everything sound simple.
Never, not even in the aftermath of Katrina, had she mentioned that she'd been born in New Orleans and had lived there for fifty-one years, until my parents died.
I still didn't know why she'd left. Aunt Sara, Gran's youngest, said her mama had needed to make a clean break.
I guess that made sense. That was, after all, sort of why I was in New Orleans. Of course, being an orphan and having no living family besides an aunt I'd rarely seen was the much bigger part.
Nothing prepared me for how totally my life was going to change. And even though Gran had watched nonstop news coverage of Katrina, nothing prepared me for how wounded the city was.
At sixteen, I was coming to realize there were some wounds you never got over.
The old house knew, too.
"...Garden District and French Quarter are on higher ground," Chase was saying. His voice was warm, like some kind of drugging anchor I wanted to grab, but I knew how disastrous that would be.
"The roads were like rivers," he explained, "but most of the houses were okay."
Through the beam of Drew's flashlight, Jessica's smile glittered as she dragged her finger along the grid superimposed on the heart. "Which is why the blood is still here."
They were practically begging me to ask. "What blood?"
Jessica looked away, down toward a pile of...corn? I tensed, trying to focus on the faint sounds of the city drifting on the night, sirens and the horn of a tugboat, music. Laughter.
Crying.
In New Orleans, if you listened closely enough, you could always hear something.
At least I could.
The low buzz threatened to drown it all out. Still cold, I swung my flashlight toward the broken glass, but saw only the shifting shadows of the huge trees beyond.
I would have sworn someone had been watching.
"No one knows for sure," Jessica said, and I could hear the deliberate drama in her voice.
"But they say when the moon is full..." Like it was tonight. I doubted that was a coincidence.
"The walls start to bleed." That was Amber.
"And that you can hear a girl crying from one of the rooms upstairs."
"And smell whiskey..."
My heart bumped hard, even though it was obvious what they were doing. They were like lame, wannabe actors reading the script for some low-budget horror flick. And while I hadn't spent tons of time with kids my age, I wasn't stupid.
Jessica and Amber had been friends forever. Chase and Drew were cousins. They'd all grown up together. I was the new girl.
That, apparently, made me fair game.
But the cold was real. And the tomblike darkness. The disgusting smell.
Still, I swallowed hard and tilted the flashlight to shine on my own face. "I want to see."
Sometimes I really regretted my smart mouth. Now was definitely one of those times. Jessica led us through the shadows of the kitchen to a closed door. She pulled it open to a blast of stale air, revealing a hidden staircase.
"This is what the servants used," she said, taking the first step.
"You mean slaves," Amber corrected, lingering at the bottom as the rest of us started up.
Her friend huff ed. "Whatever."
"The blood is theirs," Amber just had to say. "Some weird voodoo---"
Her terrified scream stopped me cold.
"Amber!" Jessica cried as we all swung our flashlights behind us. We saw them immediately, Pitre pressing Amber against the graffiti-polluted wall, his hand over her mouth. Her eyes were wide---furious.
"Jerk," Jessica muttered.
But Pitre only laughed. "Sike!"
"Let her go." That was not Chase, as I expected, but Drew. Three words strung together.
There's a first for everything.
Pitre's lip curled as he stepped back from Amber. She recoiled from him, slinking up several stairs while barely seeming to move. All the while she looked at him like he was one of those disgusting cockroaches Louisiana specialized in.
Apparently she was a lot more over the night they hooked up than he was.
"I think it's time for you to go," Jessica hissed, shining her flashlight into his face. "No one wanted you here to begin with."
His mouth curled. "Now who's scared?"
Her eyes got narrow. "Chase. Make. Him. Go."
Chase moved between them like a referee, and in that moment I felt so bad for him. I mean, putting him in that position, making him choose between his girlfriend and his All-State receiver.
"I wanted him here." Chase's words surprised me as much as they surprised everyone else. I stepped back, but couldn't stop staring at the way his blue eyes glittered. "If he goes, I go."
The walls pushed closer. Jessica didn't move, though. No one did. I'm not sure anyone even breathed.
It was Jessica who moved first, after a long hot second, glancing beyond Drew to her best friend. Their eyes met. Understanding flared.
"It's cool," Amber said, even though it was obvious she was lying.
The awful drone grew louder, and the walls wouldn't stop watching. If someone got locked in here---
I needed to move. "Then come on," I said. Standing in place made me feel like a sitting duck.
"Need me to lead?" Pitre asked, obviously needling Jessica. "Because I'd be happy to show you where to go---"
"Oh, shut up." With the words she took off.
Flashlights in front of us, we all followed, Chase and Bethany behind Jessica, Amber and Drew behind them, me with Pitre. He said nothing, but I would have sworn I saw a flicker of respect in his quick glance. Or maybe that was gratitude.
Upstairs, doorways lined each side of an ultra-long hallway, all closed, like in a hotel. Except this had been a house. Actually, was still a house. Just empty.
Except for the presence that hummed like invisible blood through invisible veins...
Oblivious, Jessica swung open the second door to the left, and vanished inside.
Again we all followed. My heart pounded hard as I crossed into the room---the mattresses stopped me. Surrounded by the remains of little white candles and an unbroken chain of dead flowers, they dominated the center of the room, like...an altar.
Crouching beside them, Jessica glanced up through a tangle of dark hair, and smiled. "You wanna see?"
Two
No one moved. Through the crisscross of flashlight beams they all looked at me, as if some massive gauntlet had been hurled at my feet.
Probably because it had.
Challenge glimmered in Jessica's eyes, but it ran so much deeper than the mattresses. They were just a prop, everyone else the audience. This was about her, and me. And Chase.
Actually, it was all about Chase.
She was staking her claim, daring me to make a move. I was supposed to back away, to run, giving her the satisfaction of scaring me away. Not from the house.
But from Chase.
Open door number one; open door number two. Life was about choices. Take a different path---dream a different dream. Even the road not taken led somewhere.
I'll never know what would have happened if I'd just turned and walked away.
But I'd never been very good at that.
Determined not to buckle, I stepped deeper into the room---and saw. Lightning flashed in from a cloudless sky, replacing shadows with a harsh silver light. And in that one cruel flash, everything came into horrible focus. Filth littered the warped wood floor. Some kind of greasy grime coated the windows. Dark copper smeared against the walls. And on the mattresses, something really red.
A single pink flip-flop lay upside down.
A cell phone in the corner.
On the bed...
I gasped. The girl lay limp as a rag doll, long legs barely covered by short denim shorts. And the hair, long, dark---
I recoiled, tried to breathe. My throat burned. My chest hurt---
"Jesus."
I grabbed onto the oath, the familiar voice, used it to pull me back. Somehow I managed a forceful blink, returning the shadows to the room and revealing everything exactly as it had been: Jessica and Amber crouched among the candles by the mattresses, a scowling Drew a few steps away, Bethany hovering close to Chase, Pitre beside me. They all stared as if I was crazy.
There'd been no lightning. Not for them.
Only for me.
"You're eff 'in cold as ice," Pitre muttered.
Only then did I realize he'd grabbed my hand.
I yanked back from him, willing the stupid images to clear. There was no light in the room, no blood. No knife on the floor.
I wasn't lying discarded on the bed...
Nonsense, Gran had told me the first time she'd found me frozen by that horrible, invisible lightning. It's all nonsense. Shaken, I'd buried myself in her arms and clung to her, held on as tightly as I could.
I missed having someone to hold onto. Aunt Sara was awesome, but it wasn't the same. She wasn't the same. She didn't know.
She couldn't.
Gran had made me promise to never speak of what I saw.
"A nice shade of pale, too." Amber smirked, exposing me with her flashlight. "What's the matter? See a ghost?"
Say something! I told myself. Don't stand there like some kind of freak.
"Maybe," I said with a hint of smart-ass I didn't come close to feeling. Forcing my own smirk, I kept my eyes on the girls, absolutely refusing to look at Chase. It was bad enough that I could feel him watching me.
"Don't you feel it?" I played innocent, crossing my arms to fend off the shiver I felt---but they did not.
"Feel what?" Bethany asked, and the real fear in her voice made me feel kinda bad. I didn't look at her, though. Because looking at her would mean looking at Chase. "The cold."
Pitre laughed. "Sorry, babe, but it's hot as hell in here."
"Like a meat locker," I said, edging closer to the mattresses. "Like on those ghost-hunter shows."
Jessica pushed the hair back from her face, rolling her eyes. "Uh-huh. That's why my shirt is sticking to my chest."
No, but heat and humidity weren't the reasons either. Buying clothes a size too small...
But I wasn't going to go there.
"Wait a minute." Amber closed her eyes and opened her arms in welcome. "I think I do feel something."
Bethany edged closer to Chase.
"The candles, the mattresses," she purred, opening her eyes. "It's perfect!"
"Perfect?" I echoed.
Through the play of shadow and light, she literally glowed. "For a séance! We could do one, see if there really are ghosts here."
Around my throat, a nonexistent scarf pulled tight.
"Anyone got a lighter?" she asked, kneeling to pick up a candle.
"I-I don't think this is a good idea," Bethany said.
But her sister joined Amber, lining up the votives in two little rows. "Come on," Jessica said. "Don't you have anyone dead you want to talk to?"
The wave of grief hit so hard, for a second I couldn't breathe. Mom...
It was a weird time to think about a woman I didn't even remember. But New Orleans had been her town, and sometimes I'd swear I could feel her...
Was she here? Would she come if I called?
Driven by something I didn't understand, I ignored the heaviness in my chest and approached the altar of mattresses. They were old, dirty...stained.
Going down on one knee, I leaned in for a better look, counting to ten before twisting toward Jessica. "I dare you to touch it."
Gran hadn't been much for television or movies, but she'd been a mean poker player. Early on, she'd taught me the beauty of the bluff --- and the rush of calling one out.
The surprise in Jessica's eyes felt good. Beautiful and popular, the oldest child of two rich doctors, she was one of those people so used to calling the shots, it never occurred to her that sometimes the tables could get turned. "Touch it?"
Something dark drove me. Challenging Jessica was not the smartest way to get accepted, but she'd started the game. And when you started a game, you had to be prepared to play.
"The blood," I said as the others bunched closer. "I dare you to touch it. I mean, if we're gonna have a séance..."
Pitre laughed. "Yeah, babe," he drawled in what I'd learned was a Cajun accent. "Touch it."
Maybe it was the way he said "touch"...or maybe the way he said "it"...but daggers shot into Jessica's eyes. I just knew she was going to tell Chase to make Pitre leave.
Instead she glanced at her BFF, then looked down to where I crouched.
"If I do," she said quietly. "What will you do?"
I think that was supposed to scare me or make me back off. And while little warnings did ping through me, I wasn't going to be the one to back down. "Clap?"
Someone gasped. Bethany?
It was Amber who spoke up first. "Truth or dare," she answered before Jessica could. I wondered if she realized the way her fingers closed around the silver cross dangling from the chain at her neck. "If Jessica takes your dare, you owe her."
The room got crazy quiet. The stillness vibrated.
Walk away. That's what common sense told me. This was Jessica and Amber's territory. I was the outsider, the newcomer. I had no way of knowing---
"Trinity."
Chase's voice, the tense undercurrent, stopped me.
"You don't have to do this," he said.
But I did. "I'm not afraid." Yeah, that was so a lie.
Jessica got down beside me, whispering, "Maybe you should be," before leaning over the mattresses. She made a show of lifting her hand toward the copper stain, then lowering her palm to the center of it. She held it there, the beam of her sister's flashlight highlighting the contrast between the black polish on Jessica's nails and the pale skin of her fingers.
"Happy?" she asked.
That wasn't exactly the word I would have chosen. My eyes met hers, but I said nothing. I didn't need to. We both knew the game we were playing.
"Give me your flashlight."
My heart slammed---I didn't need to look down at my death grip to know my knuckles had gone white. Game, I told myself. Game, game, game!
But the buzz no one else heard rang like a bullhorn in my ears.
"You're not scared, are you?" Amber asked.
"That's enough---" Chase started.
But I cut him off. "What if I'd rather a truth?"
I'd grown up believing smiles were reflections of happiness. Smiles made you feel good. Smiles held warmth, love, compassion.
Jessica's held none of that. There was only triumph. "Then a truth it is." Her voice was very quiet.
"Jessica." Chase broke toward her and took her hand, yanked her to her feet. Away from me. He led her to the corner---the same corner where I'd seen the discarded cell phone.
There was an edge to his voice, sharp, angry, but the words were lost to me. He stood stiff and rigid, like he wanted to drag her out of there. But his girlfriend held her head high, letting her perfect hair fall down past her shoulders. Her black tank top had ridden up, exposing the intricate chain of Celtic crosses tattooed to her lower back. A tramp stamp, Aunt Sara called them, but despite how much Jessica irked me, I thought it looked pretty cool.
"Trust me," I heard her whisper as she pushed up to give him a quick kiss. Then she was crossing back to me, standing so close she looked down at me.
"Who in this room," she began in a measured, singsong voice, and suddenly I so knew where this was going, "do you most want to hook up with?" I saw Chase frown as she added, "---and what, exactly, do you want to do with him?"
I felt myself still as her words slipped around me like a slow, insidious snake. I'd asked for this. I knew that. I'd issued the first dare. I'd requested a truth.
But that one was far too venomous to indulge.
Mouth dry, I looked up at Jessica. Everyone else faded from my awareness.
"I'm not here to hook up with anyone," I said, pushing to my feet. It was better standing. At least that way, she wasn't looking down at me. In flip-flops, we were pretty much eye-to-eye.
"Most," she repeated. "Who do you most want to be with?"
There was absolutely no winning with that question. So I returned to her dare, and held out my flashlight. "A dare for a dare," I said as my cell phone buzzed.
Jessica's hair fell into her face. It was sticky now, no longer quite so shiny. "Sorry, Trin," she said, taking my flashlight and letting it fall to the ground. "You already got your do-over."
Which meant I was left with the one thing I could never give. Mind racing, I looked through the shadows to Chase, saw the horribly still way he stood watching me. The worry still lurked in his eyes, but something else gleamed there, as well. Something that shifted the roar within me to a hum.
"You better check that," he said, with absolutely no emotion in his voice. "Unless you want your aunt to freak and call the cops."
The virtual lifeline fell into the silence like an unexpected gift. He was right. There were only two people who could be texting me, and I knew it probably wasn't my friend Victoria. She was with her boyfriend, and Lucas didn't like it if her attention slipped elsewhere.
Downstairs, wind blew through the broken windows, but up here it was as still as a cemetery on a cloudless night, and ten times as hot. I could feel everyone watching as I slid the BlackBerry from my pocket and flipped it over. Sure enough, Aunt Sara had texted me. Three times.
Not sure how I missed the first two.
I'll be home round midnite.
The first message had arrived a little after eleven. We'd still been in the Quarter.
Home now...will wait up n case u forgot key.
The second had come shortly after twelve.
Worried, Trin. Let me no u r ok!
That was the most recent, sent at 1:16, and even though my aunt and I were little more than strangers linked by blood, the thought of her worrying made me feel bad. Plus, her ex was a cop. The last thing I needed was for her to send him out looking for me.
"Hang on," I said as I keyed in my response. I was pretty slow compared to everyone at school, but I was getting the hang of it. There'd been no reason for a cell phone on the mountain.
Everything OK. With friends. Home soon.
Only a few seconds passed before her response:
U sure?
I could hear Jessica and Chase arguing in the corner as I typed out my response, but couldn't make out their words. Drew had positioned himself behind Amber, with his hands on her hips. Pitre hung back, watching.
Y. Chase is here.
Aunt Sara liked Chase.
Good. CUITM
See you in the morning. I recognized that one. I returned the phone to my pocket.
"Any day now," Jessica said, still draped all over Chase. I couldn't see his face, but the press of their bodies gave me a sick feeling in my stomach. And suddenly I wasn't sure why I cared whether or not these people liked me. Chase had really been the only one...
Abruptly I shifted my focus to the right. "Amber," I said, and seemingly on cue, Bethany's light found her sister's friend on the far side of the mattress. Drew, not much taller than she, still stood behind her. "I most want to be with Amber."
I loved the flash of surprise in her eyes. Maybe she and Jessica weren't as untouchable as they wanted everyone to think.
"Amber?" Jessica scoff ed. "But---"
"And as for what I want to do with her..." With a deliberate smile, I let the words dangle. "I'm thinking a dare."
My words fell into dead silence, save for the slow, labored breath of the room itself.
"Now we're talking," Amber whispered, and over the scratch of a branch along the window, I would have sworn I heard Jessica growl.
"What," I started, dragging the word out for effect, "...were you doing...after the football game last Friday night---"
Just like that, the room quit breathing.
"---in the backseat..." Hesitating, I toyed with one of the small silver hoops at my ear. I'd never actually played the game, and while I'd wanted to make Amber squirm, the way her mouth worked made me second-guess myself. I would have sworn she was silently begging me to stop.
Jessica moved closer to her.
"...of Pitre's car?" I made myself finish. And as far as bombs went, mine sucked the air right out of the room. Amber stiffened. Drew's hands fell away. Jessica let out a strangled noise.
Against my earring, my fingers froze. Sometimes games were fun. And sometimes they weren't.
Amber's eyes met mine. Her voice faltered. Clearly she hadn't realized Victoria and I had seen them.
"You said a dare," Jessica snapped. "That's a truth."
Either way, everyone knew the answer. "It's all the same to me," I said.
"Then I dare her to tell the truth," Pitre said. I couldn't tell whether it was possession I saw burning in his eyes---or contempt.
"It's not your turn, Jerk-off," Jessica snapped, as Drew took another step away from Amber.
Bethany's light, the last one still on, shifted toward me, and even though I could no longer see against the glare, I knew they all watched. Would I give Amber a new dare, or dare her to tell the truth?
It was an unexpected moment of power, but it came with consequences. I got that. Jessica and Amber had brought me to this nasty place as some kind of initiation, but I'd held my own. And while we would never be BFFs, I didn't want to be a total loser either.
Games were one thing. Punishment was another.
"I dare you..." I hesitated before obliterating the point of no return. "...to lie down on the mattress." Maybe Amber didn't deserve a do-over, but giving it to her had more to do with my sense of right and wrong, than anything to do with her.
Pitre muttered under his breath and stormed from the room, leaving Amber hugging bony arms around her body while Drew hovered nearby---but no longer touched.
Like a virgin (as if!) sacrifice, she moved to the mattresses and lowered first one knee, then the other. Then she dropped from her knees to lay with her back covering the stain.
Through the darkness, her eyes met mine. "My turn," she whispered. And I knew my reprieve was over.
"So what's it going to be?" she murmured, stretching like a centerfold. "Truth, my friend?" And before the word could really register, she shifted, smiling at Jessica. "Or dare?"
Stunned, I stood there so very, totally still, trying to figure out what had just happened. Bethany's light swung to her sister, who negligently twirled a strand of dark hair around her finger. "Moi?"
"Toi," Amber confirmed. "Unless, of course, you're too scared."
"Have you ever known me to be too scared?"
"Truth?" Amber asked.
Her friend's eyes gleamed. She glanced at Chase, then back at Amber. "Let's find out."
What was it with these people and the truth?
Amber was on her feet now. "Walk down the hall," she said.
"Alone." Then she held out her hand. "Without any light."
"No." The flash came with the word, invisible like before, a spear straight through me. The room shifted as everyone twisted toward me.
"No?" Amber asked.
"It's not your dare," Jessica pointed out.
But the nonexistent scarf choked off my breath. "I...I just..." Breathe, I told myself. Breathe. But I saw it all again, this time through the darkness. The walls. The blood.
"Trinity---" Only then did I realize Chase had left Jessica's side and was moving toward me.
I shook him off. "I don't..." Tangled dark hair. "...don't think it's a good idea." Long legs. "What if someone else is here?"
"Puh-lease." Jessica yanked the sole remaining flashlight from her sister and handed it to Amber, along with her Maglite. Then she flashed a bright smile and trotted from the room in the same way she took the field to cheer during half-time.
Twenty-two seconds later she screamed.
Three
We ran.
"Jessica!" Chase reached the hall first. "Stay here!" he shouted, clicking on his flashlight as he broke toward the staircase we'd used on the way up. Drew, Amber, and Bethany veered left, taking the other two lights with them. "Jess!"
On instinct I went after Chase, but he was already gone. I had no light and couldn't see two inches in front of me. Behind me, the others had disappeared, as well. I could hear Amber, though, shouting.
There weren't even shadows to guide me.
I took off anyway, using my arms to feel my way toward the end of the hall.
"Jessica!" My feet ran out of floor. "Chase!"
In response, the silence breathed.
Heart pounding, I slid my hands along the wall. There was a door there. I knew there was. I'd come through it---"Chase!"
From downstairs, I could hear him shouting for his girlfriend.
I fumbled for my BlackBerry, turning it over to reveal a faint glow. The door had to be somewhere!
"Jessie!" That was Amber. The burst of footsteps sounded like running.
Another scream.
I thrust my phone in front me as if it could protect me, almost crying with relief when I found the small knob. Fumbling, I yanked the door open and staggered through---never saw the wall of shelves. I slammed into them, forehead and waist plowing in simultaneously. The impact stole my breath. Pain sang hard. I fell back, doubled over and tried to breathe. "What the---"
My hands shook. I lifted one to my face, my fingers stilling at the stickiness. Blood. And everything started to spin.
I gasped for air, gagged on the smell. Stale like before, rancid now. Coppery. I went for the light from my phone, but realized I no longer held it.
Darkness took everything. I lifted my hand but could see nothing. I dropped to my knees, feeling my way through the grime for the opening.
Behind me, something moved.
I made myself keep going, refusing to think too much about anything. The webs my fingers ripped through, the spiders that had to be somewhere. The sound of shuffling.
The smell of whiskey---and worse.
Through the darkness everything throbbed, bringing with it a low mewl...
Me, I realized with a start. The barely human sound was coming from my own throat.
The wall stopped me. I twisted...found another.
Tried to stand.
Couldn't.
Tried to breathe, swallow.
Gagged instead.
Think, I begged myself. Think. Find the phone. Call someone. Aunt Sara would come.
But the darkness pressed from all directions, holding me, sucking the oxygen from my lungs.
The bright flash blinded. Recoiling, I sat frozen, once again in the unsettling room with the dirty walls and grimy windows, the cell phone discarded in the corner, the girl on the bed...the dark tangled hair.
Not me, I finally realized. Not me.
Jessica.
And finally, the scream burned my throat.
Immediately something whooshed to my right, and the darkness let go. This time the stab of light did not come from the confused corners of my mind.
"Jesus---Trinity."
"Pitre..." I managed, but the sound that crawled from my throat was no more than a whisper.
Flashlight in hand, he lunged inside what looked like a large closet and reached for me. "What the hell---"
The instant his hand touched mine, he looked like he wanted to hit someone. To hurt them. Bad. "Jesus---you're like ice."
I fumbled for words. "...bad place." With a gentleness totally at odds with the rough-around-the-edges veneer, he helped me to my feet.
But around me, everything kept right on shifting.
"Easy," he muttered, stepping beyond me, toward the walls of shelves that had not been there before. They hadn't. I was sure of it. All the while he didn't let go, kept his hand curled around my wrist.
Then he blew my mind. Slipping his hand under the fourth shelf from the bottom, he pushed something, and the shelves creaked open, revealing the vat of darkness beyond.
My heart slammed, hard. "Omigod..."
"Come on!" He jerked his flashlight from me to illuminate the staircase we'd used on the way up. "Let's get out of here."
My mind struggled to process everything. The staircase was secret, hidden. The heavy door must have closed after Chase ran through it, accidentally trapping me...
My legs felt like rubber, but I made it to the kitchen. With the muggy night air rushing me, the stench of mud welcomed. Never letting go, Pitre led me to the gaping room where we'd started, where broken windows stood like the most amazing welcoming committee in the world. I scrambled through to the backyard, where Spanish moss swayed with the breeze---and three girls stood watching.
I stopped.
"Jessica." She looked...fine. "What---"
She and Amber beamed---Bethany looked away.
And in that fractured moment, another kind of flash went through me, uglier than before. And I knew. I understood.
The dare Amber had given her friend hadn't been for Jessica at all. It had been mine. She and Amber had planned everything, long before we'd reached the awful mansion. They'd goaded me, played me, gotten me to give them my flashlight. When Jessica screamed, everyone had run, taking their lights with them. Leaving me alone.
They'd closed the door to the secret staircase. They'd waited until I was inside the fake closet.
They'd shut me in.
They'd been on the other side, waiting, knowing I was inside. In the dark. That I was scared...
"Trinity!"
Something dark and vicious took control of me. I spun toward Chase's voice, found him emerging through the gaping darkness. "You're okay!" he said, vaulting through the window.
I didn't wait for him to reach me. I charged him, catching him off guard as I slammed my hands against his chest. "You knew!"
The others I could understand. But him...
"Easy," he said, reaching for my hands.
I twisted back from him, hating the tightness in my chest. "Game over," I whispered.
He went so very still, looking beyond me to where his girlfriend stood like a vision of saintliness. "No---" he muttered.
"Liar!"
He shook his head, eyes darker than usual. "No, I swear!"
"Bullshit!" My hands were tight fists. I wanted to hit him. "You pretended to be my friend! You pretended I could trust you!"
That he was different...special.
"Trinity." His voice was softer now, lower. "This isn't what it looks like. You have to---"
"I don't have to do anything." Except leave. I very much had to do that.
"Let me explain---"
"What, you think I'm an idiot? That because my grandmother homeschooled me I'm stupid?"
"No---I didn't know---"
"Save it." I spun and started toward the front of the house, my flip-flops crunching down on broken glass.
I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have noticed if any had sliced straight through.
"Wait!"
From his voice, I knew that he was right behind me.
I kept going, didn't turn back.
"You can't just---"
This time I did stop, spin. "Don't."
From beneath a sweep of bangs I'd once fantasized about brushing from his forehead, he stared hard at me. "Let me take you home."
I laughed. I really did. It was a hard sound, ugly. "Not in this lifetime," I said as I noticed Jessica strolling toward him.
I didn't wait. I twisted back around and made my way to the street. The cars we'd come in were by the cemetery around the corner.
I walked in the opposite direction.
The night settled around me, darkness broken by puddles from the streetlamps. The house on Prytania Street was deserted, but around me manicured lawns and cars parked in the street told me life went on. I wasn't scared. Not for me, anyway. Walking down the old cracked sidewalk was peaceful in an odd sort of way. A major intersection was only a few blocks away. There I could find a taxi.
Instinctively my hand went to my back pocket, but my BlackBerry was gone.
I was so not going back for it.
Away. That was all I could think. I had to get away from them, Jessica and Amber, Chase...
My heart gave a cruel little thump. Especially Chase.
From that place---the ugliness.
From what I'd seen.
Because while the frantic search for Jessica had been staged, while me being locked in a small pitch black room had only been a joke, the strobe-light images I'd seen were real.
They always were.
I'd been seven years old the first time. It was my earliest memory. We'd been in Colorado by then, living in a nice little house on a huge piece of property. There'd been lots of trees, pine and aspen, towering up toward the always-blue sky. I'd been outside playing with our golden retriever, Sunshine. She'd run into a thicket after a pink ball---and I'd started to scream.
The flashes scared me, like a lightning storm dancing around me. I remembered falling, blinking, crying for Sunshine. Through the flashes I'd seen her lying on her side, so horribly still. I'd heard the whimper...
That's how Gran found me, curled on my side, crying. I dove into her arms and held on tight, clung to her as I tried to breathe. I was trying to tell her about Sunshine when the big dog came bounding out of the trees, running up to slobber us with doggie kisses.
Two days later we'd found her dead.
Even now, all these years later, the memory made me shiver.
The things that I saw...happened. They always, always happened.
I didn't notice the headlights until the car was right beside me. I tensed, prepared myself to tell Chase or Jessica or whoever it was exactly where they could go.
The shiny black Lexus stopped me. One darkly tinted window lowered, and Aunt Sara looked like she wanted to cry.
She also looked like she'd rolled straight from bed. Her long dark hair, so like my own, fell softly against a face with no makeup, making her look much younger than thirty-three. I could tell her shirt was the huge New Orleans Saints Championship tee she always slept in.
"Hey," was all she said. Maybe it was something in her voice---or maybe something in her expressive eyes---but my throat got all tight. I don't really know what I felt. Surprise, maybe relief.
"How did you know?" I asked.
Her smile was sad. "Chase called me."
I hated the sudden salty sting in my eyes. He must have called the second I walked away. The Ware house District where she lived wasn't that far, but still, she must have come for me the second she got the call.
"Come on, cher," she said. "Let's go home."
Home. I wasn't sure where that was anymore. I stood there a long moment, looking at this stranger who was my father's sister, my grandmother's daughter, and though we barely knew each other, something warm swelled through me. Quietly I walked to the passenger side of her gorgeous brand-new car and pulled open the door, saw the photograph.
"I found that earlier," Aunt Sara said. "Not sure why I grabbed it on the way out..."
But I was. Because somehow she understood. She knew. She knew how badly I needed to connect.
Numbly I picked up the faded black-and-white image, and for the first time I could remember, saw my mother.
About the Author
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.
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