Shattered (6 page)

"It's not,
not really, but I've been through some pretty rough stuff since I
started dream walking. I've learned that I can't always count on
someone showing up to save me. I have to do the best I can and hope
that it ends up being enough to see me through."

"I like
it. It would have made my life harder if you'd just called Mom and me
on all of our crap during the last few years, but maybe that would
have been a good thing."

I was still
worried about the investigation into my disappearance, but the
mention of our parents wasn't something that I could just let slip by
without asking the questions that had been building in the back of my
mind ever since I'd left.

"How are
they, Cindi? Mom and Dad, I mean. How are they doing?"

"Better
mostly. They still have good and bad days, but the good days
outnumber the bad days by two or three to one. Dad started putting
his foot down a little more at work, not enough to get himself fired,
but enough that he's not working so many hours. Mom has stopped
buying so much photography equipment. She used the money from her
last gallery showing to pay down all of the credit card debts and has
started setting aside money in case Dad does lose his job."

I could feel
tears of happiness starting to pool at the corners of my eyes.
"That's really good to hear."

"Yeah,
it's been really neat to see. They're working together more as a team
and I'm not whining about needing new clothes all of the time now, so
that has taken some of the pressure off too."

"It sounds
like paradise."

I'd meant it to
come out joking, but it ended up sounding more longing.

"Are you
sure that you can't just come back home, Adri?"

"Yeah, I'm
sure. I wish things could be different, but I'm not a very safe
person to be around right now. In fact I'm even less safe to be
around now than I was when I left. I've made some very dangerous
people mad at me and they wouldn't think twice about hurting all of
you to get at me."

"They miss
you. Mom and Dad both miss you. They don't talk about you very much,
almost like that makes it easier to deal with, but I can tell that
they wish you were back home. They blame themselves, Mom most of all,
but they blame me too. I can see it in their eyes when they look at
the empty spot at the dinner table and then look at me before turning
away. They know that I'm not telling them everything I know and they
resent me for making your life so hard before you left."

I shook my
head. "But they have to know that nothing you did had anything
to do with me leaving."

"Do they?
Do they really? They don't know anything about Jackson being a
vampire or the fact that you can visit people in their dreams. They
just know that you were bitterly unhappy and then you went away. Even
the fact that you called and told them that you weren't safe to be
around doesn't prove anything for Mom and Dad. It's the kind of thing
that you would have said just to keep the peace."

I started to
disagree with her, but I couldn't get the words out. I didn't think
that I would do something like that now, but she was probably right
about the old me, the me who had never done anything more dangerous
than cross the street, the me who hadn't taken shots at the single
most dangerous hybrid in the world.

"I'm so
sorry, Cindi. I'll try to visit their dreams sometime in the next few
weeks and explain everything to them. I can't guarantee that it will
make everything better, but maybe it will make a difference. I'd
offer to call, but that wouldn't be very safe, especially if this
detective has started monitoring your phone calls."

Cindi nodded.
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure that she got a warrant for that after she
tracked us down to that hotel. It seems like the judge has pretty
much given her whatever she wants since then. You should start with
Mom. They are both struggling with you being gone, but Mom is having
the hardest time. She feels like she let her art and her relationship
with me get in the way of having a relationship with you."

Part of me
wanted to point out that Mom was right—that was exactly what
had happened—but I didn't want to make Cindi feel any worse
than she was already feeling.

"Okay,
I'll visit Mom first."

"She
really is a good photographer, Adri. I know that we used to complain
about how much time she spent downstairs in her cave, but she's taken
me to some gallery showings since you've been gone. That's where we
were the night before they left on their camping trip. She's got
fans, like honest-to-goodness fans, people who pay thousands of
dollars for her prints. She has a chance to be a really big deal. She
knows that shouldn't be the most important thing in her life, but she
wants it so much. She keeps wondering if she's going to miss her
chance because she didn't work hard enough. It was bad enough before,
but ever since she started cutting back I can see it eating at her."

I looked at
Cindi for several long seconds, unable to come up with a response. I
wanted to ask her why she was defending Mom, why she wasn't as
unhappy as I was that Mom valued her career more than her own
children. In the end though, there was just one question that
mattered right now.

"Why are
you telling me all of this?"

"Because
you need to know what you're getting into before you go see her. Mom
is who she is. I think she's starting to change, but she's not going
to get there overnight. If you'd gone to see her without realizing
where she's at right now you would have just gotten into a fight with
her and that is the last thing that the two of you need right now."

"When did
you get so smart?"

"I don't
know. I guess once you were gone I figured that I needed to step
things up to make up for the drop in the familial IQ."

That drew a
laugh out of me. "You were always the smart one, Cindi, not me."

"No, you
were always smarter than me, you just didn't care enough to try. I
think that is what made me the maddest back when you joined the
squad. I'd worked so hard to be exceptional, and you made it look so
easy."

"I'm
sorry…"

"Don't be,
we don't need to go back through that. I just wanted you to know that
it's nice to see you with a purpose, even if it's something that
might get you killed. Purposeful and dedicated looks good on you."

I reached over
and gave her hand a squeeze. "Thanks."

"Anyway,
you wanted to know what I really think about Detective Belarose. I
don't think that she'll give your case up until she has another case
to take your spot."

"That's
easy then, there must be hundreds of murders and missing people in
the city in any given year."

"No, not
like that. Her caseload is already full, but she's not going to give
up on you unless she finds another girl our age she thinks needs
saving."

"What
makes you say that?"

"I don't
know, it's just a feeling. I think that something happened to her
when she was our age and that is why she's so persistent. Maybe she
lost someone or something—it's hard to say for sure, but I
think she's going to keep looking for you until someone else comes
along that she has a better chance of saving."

There was
something in Cindi's voice that made me sit up and take notice of
what she was saying. I had no idea if abilities like my dream walking
ran in families, but once you accepted that they existed, it wasn't
too much of a stretch to think that Cindi might have some kind of
ability of her own. If so, it seemed like it was more along the lines
of the psychic sensitivity that she'd described the detective as
having rather than being like my ability.

"Do you
have any other…feelings where she's concerned, Cindi?"

"I don't
know. I guess just that if she understood the full nature of her
ability that she would be pretty much unstoppable. She'd jump in a
car, start driving across country and just end up wherever you
happened to be."

"Let's
hope that she doesn't realize what she's capable of then—the
last thing I need right now is a bunch of police trying to take me
back home. It would probably turn into a bloodbath."

I gave the
issue a few more seconds thought before asking Cindi my next
question. "Do you think that you could convince her to break off
the chase? I mean if you told her that I hadn't been abducted, she'd
have to know that you were telling the truth, right?"

"Yeah, I
already tried something like that. I told her that you were okay and
that she didn't need to keep looking for you, but it didn't help. It
just painted an even bigger bull's eye on me. She asked if you were
still in danger and saw right through me when I told her that you
weren't. I think the only reason that she hasn't charged Tristan and
me with some kind of aiding and abetting crime is because her gut is
telling her that we didn't do anything wrong."

I could feel a
stress headache building behind my eyes, but knowing what it was that
was causing the headache was half the battle. Once I dropped back
into a normal sleep, dreamless or otherwise, most of the pain would
dissipate. Talking to Taggart tomorrow and letting him know
everything that was going on would probably get rid of the rest of
the pain, but that would just have to wait for a few hours.

"Well,
that ruins that idea. The only other thing I can think of, besides
just waiting for her to get sidetracked with another case, would be
to convince her that she really is psychic and then once she believes
that, tell her that I'm safe—at least relatively so—that
you've talked to me and I not only left of my own free will, I'm free
to come back at any time, but have chosen not to do so."

Cindi nodded.
"I guess I could try telling her that right now, but I think
you're probably right. Right now she only listens to her gut some of
the time. It works for her when it comes to getting ahold of evidence
that she needs, but it's not going to overrule her head, which is
still convinced that you were abducted. Do you want me to give it a
shot?"

"No, let
me go back and talk to Taggart. He may have a better idea, but even
if he doesn't I should let him know that we might have company before
we proceed with anything like that."

Cindi nodded,
but I could tell that she wasn't happy. I gave her hand another
squeeze. "I'm not going to leave yet."

"How did
you know that was what I was thinking?"

"I've
basically spent my entire life with you, Cindi. I know you every bit
as well as you know me. What else is wrong? You're obviously
struggling more even than the things you've told me about already
could account for."

She gave me a
shaky smile. "You know me better than I know you these days.
You're right, things have gotten pretty tough lately. Miss Winters
let me back on the squad last week, but nothing is the same. Everyone
in the school knows that I was being mean to you and they all think
I'm a total bi-otch. The rest of the cheerleaders refuse to even talk
to me outside of when we are actually stunting. I've never felt this
alone before."

I slowly picked
my way through her points, conscious of not only what she'd said, but
also what she
hadn't
said.

"I'm sorry
that everyone is being mean to you. It doesn't really make sense
though. After my fight with Janessa and then my having joined the
cheer squad, it didn't seem like anyone in the school would have even
given me the time of day."

"Yeah, but
the funny thing about being kidnapped is that everyone decided that
you weren't as bad as they used to think you were."

I opened my
mouth to respond, but she talked right over me.

"I'm glad
that they all realize that you're not the popularity whore everyone
was saying you were a month ago, but the hypocrisy of it all bothers
me sometimes. It's true that I was a jerk to you, but so were most of
the people who are treating me like a leper now. If they are going to
treat me like this then they should be at least as mean to Missy."

"A
popularity whore?"

"Yeah,
sorry. I didn't come up with that one, but I repeated it a few times
back in the day."

We sat there in
silence for a while before Cindi would look at me again. Eventually
she sighed and rubbed her eyes.

"Let's be
honest, I deserve everything that is happening to me and I know it.
It's just hard. I've spent my whole life trying to be a certain way.
I wanted to be smart and popular and pretty and now I'm wondering
what the point was when nothing seems to matter without…"

She bit off her
sentence as soon as she realized how it was going to sound, but I
didn't mind. I'd known where we were headed even before she'd started
her rant.

"Without
Tristan?"

She flushed
guiltily. "Yeah. I know it's terrible for me to be worried about
a boy when my own sister had to run away from home to get away from
the vampires who wanted to turn her into some kind of mystical
super-weapon, but it's really hard to know that he's not interested
in me. Especially now that I know how much more amazing he is than I
originally thought."

"Is he
really not interested in you?"

"Yes…maybe…I'm
not honestly sure. He's not around anymore. There was nearly a media
frenzy when the police found out that Tristan had been lying about
how he got injured. His dad had to grease a lot of palms to keep it
out of the press. His parents were furious about the whole thing,
they pulled him out of school and I haven't seen him since."

I felt stupid
for not having seen the probable consequence back when Cindi first
told me that the police had traced us back to the hotel Taggart had
put us up in after he'd killed Jackson.

"What
about phone calls and texts?"