Shattered (5 page)

They weren't
in-your-face about the fact that they were a couple, all they did was
hold hands, but it was still obvious that they were, at least in some
sense, a couple.

I'd chickened
out and turned away from them, at which point Isaac and Heath had
asked if I'd join them and Taggart for a quick conference before
everyone left and that had been that. Once I was with Taggart again,
I couldn't have left his side to go talk to Alec even if I'd wanted
to.

We all split up
and went our separate ways without Alec and I saying anything else to
each other and I'd spent every day since wondering what I could have
done differently and still been me.

In the end, I'd
made the right decision, the practical decision. Taggart had been
hurting. Somewhere along the way since he'd saved me from Pamela—the
mentalist vampire who had wanted to capture me back in Minnesota—he'd
become family, and I wasn't the kind of person to abandon part of my
family when they needed me—not for some guy who might or might
not turn out to be the man of my dreams. I knew that I would make the
same decision again if I had it to do all over again, but part of me
hated the fact that I'd done the right thing, the
safe
thing.

Was it even
possible to experience epic, all-consuming romance if you refused to
take chances? Risks are inherently terrifying, but I kept thinking
that taking risks and being hurt was better than a life of quiet
desperation where I never realized any of my dreams. If I wanted to
experience the kind of amazing love that I'd started to feel the
first time that Alec and I had met, then I should be willing to do
whatever was required to realize it. Only I wasn't.

Isaac would
give me Alec's phone number if I asked him for it. I could have
called Alec any time in the last few days, but I hadn't, and that
seemed to indicate that there was something broken inside of me.

With everything
else going on, I felt petty and selfish for worrying about what was
going to happen—or not happen—with Alec, but I couldn't
seem to help myself. I needed to talk to someone, but the only real
option at the bunker was Dominic, and I couldn't bring myself to
bother her with something so dumb when she was worried that her dad
might show up at any minute.

There was one
other person, someone I'd been wanting to talk to for ages, but I
wasn't sure it was very smart to reach out to her right now. I
debated for a couple of seconds and then just decided to go for it.

I fixed the
relevant feelings in my mind. Love, friendship mixed with a touch of
frenemy, and most of all the sense of being at home, and then I
reached
. I was getting better at nearly everything inside of
the dream. This time the tiny threads of essence spun free of my
center with only the faintest hint of reluctance.

It was always
easier to find someone when I really needed them. This wasn't need on
the same level as when I'd pulled Taggart into my dream to save me
from Pamela, but it was still a real kind of need and that made the
process less painful.

My strength
poured out through the seeking filaments, powering them in their
search until I finally felt one of them connect with the target I'd
sent it out to find. I reeled the rest of the threads back in,
reabsorbing some of the strength that I'd expended, and then I
wrapped the remaining thread around my mental arms and started
pulling.

For the longest
time it seemed like nothing was happening and then all of a sudden
there was a sense of movement on the other end of the line. I
pushed
off from the bench where I'd been sitting, and then it was me who was
moving, only nothing about my surroundings had changed. I was already
moving at mind-blowing speeds—and going faster with every
second—but at the same time I was somehow still sitting on the
bench inside of my dream.

I couldn't
explain any of it; all I knew was that it worked. I kept pulling on
the thread, speeding faster and faster. I was approaching the wall
that kept my dreams separate from other people. I couldn't see it,
but I knew it was there—I had to be close now after so much
distance had been covered.

I had a split
second to wonder if it was my dream that was moving instead of me
like I'd always assumed, and then I hit the wall. I thought of it as
a wall because when I hit it the experience always hurt, but there
was actually the slightest hint of springiness to the impact.

I went from the
speed of light to nothing in a fraction of a second, but the
collision didn't just affect me. I felt the wall start to tear from
the force of the impact, but I was too busy pulling on the fat cable
that the thread had become to register the change until after the rip
widened into something big enough for me to pass through.

Between one
moment and the next my surroundings changed. I'd gone from the
featureless plain that had become my normal starting point lately to
the football field behind my school. It didn't surprise me that Cindi
was dreaming about the football field—she certainly spent
enough time there to explain the choice—but it did surprise me
that the bleachers were empty.

I looked around
and realized that the field was empty too. None of the other
cheerleaders were around either; it was just Cindi standing there on
the sidelines all alone. I almost called out to her, but something
about her posture stopped me.

Instead I
slowly walked towards her, studying her as I finally got close enough
to start noticing some of the details that distance had hid from me.
It took longer to cross the field than it should have. I'd walked
across that field at least a hundred times in real life both before
and after cheer practices, and it hadn't ever taken this long before.

The only
explanation was that this was being caused by Cindi's subconscious.
The football field was longer than it really was because she felt
like she was so far away from everyone else around her.

The sky turned
darker the closer I got to Cindi, and the uniform that had looked as
flawless as ever when I'd started out, now looked worn. It was
tattered and frayed beyond anything I would have believed possible,
with sections of her legs and stomach showing through from a couple
of rips. It wasn't the uniform of a cheerleader at the top of her
game; it was the uniform of a cheerleader whose entire team had
turned against her, a cheerleader who was holding on by her
fingernails.

"Cindi,
are you okay?"

She turned to
look at me and I saw the dark circles around her eyes that she
normally would have hidden with makeup.

"Adri, is
it really you, or is this just another dream?"

"It's
another dream, but this is the real me."

She threw
herself forward, wrapping her arms around me before I even had a
chance to register what was going on.

"I'm so
sorry for what I put you through, Adri. You were going through so
much and instead of being there for you I just added to your
problems."

She was crying
and shaking, but I didn't know what to do other than just hug her
back.

"It's
okay, Cindi. Everything worked out okay."

"The only
reason that you were on the team was because of me, but all I could
think about was how jealous of you I was. Everything seemed to come
so easily for you. Flying, Tristan, everything."

I created a
sturdy silver bench on the edge of the field with a split second of
concentration and then pulled her down onto it with me.

"You
apologized for all of this at the hotel before I left with Dream
Stealer, Cindi. I'm not going to lie to you and say that it was all a
bed of roses. You're right, things were really hard for me while I
was on the team and you made them even harder. I wanted to tell you
about what was going on, but there was never a good time for that at
the start and then by the end I wasn't sure I could trust you."

"I know,
I'm so…"

I stopped her
with a shake of my head. "I really wish that things had been
different, but I don't want you to keep punishing yourself for what
happened. That doesn't help anyone. It doesn't help you, it doesn't
help Mom and Dad, and it certainly doesn't help me."

She started a
little bit when I mentioned our parents, so I ran with that.

"Mom and
Dad must be worried out of their minds about you if you look even
half this bad in real life."

Cindi seemed to
notice the state of her uniform for the first time and started to
shift around to hide the worst of the rips, but I simply conjured a
light blanket out of thin air and handed it to her. She wrapped
herself in the blanket and then nodded.

"You're
right. I don't look quite this bad in real life, but they are
worried. They are worried a lot lately. They worry about you, they
worry about me, and they worry about the police."

"Wait, the
police?"

"Yeah. I
know that you guys thought that you had all of the important
information safely hidden away, but the police investigation into
your disappearance has started to pick up steam."

"How is
that even possible?"

"Honestly,
I don't even know. There is this female detective, Belarose—Katherine
Belarose. She's made it her personal crusade to figure out what
happened to you and she's turning up information that it shouldn't
have been possible for her to find."

"Like
what?"

"She found
the hotel that the four of us stayed in. Don't ask me how, but she
did. She didn't even need a warrant first; she just walked in at
precisely the right time to talk to the right desk clerk and showed
him pictures of all of us. Two hours later she had a warrant and
every scrap of video footage the hotel had from the couple of days we
were there."

The possible
repercussions of what Cindi was telling me were making me sick, but I
forced myself to remain calm. I could freak out later, once I told
Taggart what was going on, but until then I needed to keep my cool
and find out everything I could.

"This is
super important, Cindi. I need you to tell me everything you know
about this detective's investigation. What does she know, what
doesn't she know, and what is she trying to find out still? It could
mean the difference between life and death."

Cindi took a
deep breath, which seemed to be what she needed to get herself back
under control. "She knows that Tristan and I were involved in
your disappearance. She has pictures of Taggart and she's pretty sure
that he's involved too, but somehow he managed not to show up on any
of the cameras at the same time as the rest of us, so she isn't
positive."

That was
something at least. It was precious little, but at this point I was
happy to grasp at straws.

"What
else? Does she have a name for Taggart? Does she know where we went
after that?"

"Just the
alias he used when he checked into the hotel, but she knows that has
to be an alias because she keeps asking me who he is and if I know
his real name. She tracked you guys to an underpass somewhere on the
outskirts of the city, but she seems to have lost you there. She's
pulled Tristan and me in for questioning at least half a dozen times
so far."

"Why would
she do that and not charge you with something?"

Cindi shrugged
uncomfortably. "I'm not sure, but I keep getting the feeling
that she's like you, Adri."

"What? You
mean she can dream walk?"

"No, not
like you in that sense, like you in that she's not entirely…normal.
All of the breaks she's had in the case so far seem like they are
because she played crazy hunches. It's like she's psychic or
something. Is that even possible?"

"I'm not
sure. It seems like the more I find out about how the world really
works the more I realize that I never really knew anything before
Taggart found me. I think I remember him talking about other humans
having abilities, so I guess it's possible that she has access to
something that gives her a leg up on everyone else. How psychic is
she?"

"I don't
know—psychic enough to have found out where we were all
staying, but I don't think she realizes what she's doing. I think
she's just following her gut and doesn't stop to think about how much
the odds are against her."

"Is there
anyone else involved in the investigation, is it high profile or is
it just her?"

"No, it's
just her. Based on some of the looks she got the last time she
dragged me down to the police station, I don't think she has very
much support from her colleagues. It kind of looked like they all
think that she's gone off the deep end."

"So maybe
once some more time has passed she'll give up and move onto another
case, one that she has a better chance of solving."

Cindi nodded,
but I could tell that she wasn't convinced. Part of me wanted to snap
at her, but I forced myself to be patient. I'd been through hell and
back in the last few weeks, but she hadn't—at least not in the
same way. Working with Taggart had taught me that I needed to speak
up if I thought there was something that he was missing, but she was
still essentially the same girl she'd been when I left home.

"You need
to tell me if you think that I'm wrong, Cindi. You're there having
the conversations with her. That makes you the expert. You may still
be wrong, but I'd rather hear it than have you keep something to
yourself because you think I won't like what you want to tell me."

Cindi looked at
me oddly. "You've changed. You hardly sound like my sister at
all now."

"Who do I
sound like now?"

"Not a
who, a what. You're still you, but now you sound like one of the
co-captains on the cheer squad, that or an adult. You sound
confident, like this is all something you've been through before."