The Dragonfly Prophecy

by Jacquelyn Castle

  “Don’t be. I shouldn’t have pushed it and I didn’t mean anything by that last comment. I hope you know I’m here for you. Whatever you need, I’m here. Why don’t you let me take you home so the girls can finish up here at the festival? I think they have a few guys they’d like to meet over there at the Burger Barn,” he joked.

  I smiled wide at Chace. Why was he so good to me? I knew we never stayed mad at each other for more than a few minutes. That was all his doing since I was more stubborn than that. “Yeah, sounds good. Let me text Paige and let her know.”

  I was about to send the text just as Paige called. With my finger stuck in my other ear to muffle the festival noise, I answered. “Hey, I’m a little tired so Chace is going to take me home now. Have fun. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Hey wait, Lex. Tracy wants to leave now, too. Can you guys meet her at the entrance and give her a ride?” Paige’s voice always carried and Chace nodded when he heard her ask.

  “Yeah, tell her to meet us at the entrance. Call you later.”

  Chace curled his arm around my shoulder and we strolled to the entrance of the fairgrounds. It felt so good to have him hold me that way, but it forced my emotions into a whirlwind. I loved him, but I loved William, too. I wasn’t the first person to be in love with two people, but two people in two different worlds? How would I figure that one out?

  We settled in the car and I helped myself to his CD collection while Tracy fidgeted with her seatbelt in the back. It was a dark, starless night already, and the dirt the cars kicked up made it harder to see what we were doing. I hid my annoyance when we started moving and security flagged us in the other direction, which meant we had a longer and probably more awkward ride home.

  Out of the darkness, Chace’s arm flung across my chest, pinning me in my seat as the car came to a skidding stop. I panicked at the loud thump, thinking we had hit another car, or worse, a person. It took me a minute to realize it was Tracy who had fallen out of her seat and onto the floor. My usual instinct would have been to scream, but I looked straight out through the windshield instead. The headlights cast a shadow on whatever it was that stood in front of us. Chace bolted out of the car and ran in the direction of the shadowy figure. I checked on Tracy and turned to see Chace put his arm up, gesturing me to stay in the car. I did for a second and then I got out.

  Slowly, the figure moved out from the headlights and into my view. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t speak. It was William. Chace’s seething anger turned his face a reddish blue, his jaw tightening from his gritting teeth inside his mouth. I had never seen him that way and the veins protruding from his temples made me worry. “What the hell is your problem, pal? You could’ve killed us! Get the hell out of here! Move!” he screamed, throwing his arms in the air.

  William’s eyes looked past Chace and right into mine. Even at that distance, I could see how sad and empty they were and their pretty green hue looked black. My shock hadn’t worn off and I still couldn’t move, even though I wanted to hurl myself into his arms. I could only stare back at him, waiting for him to say something—anything. He walked toward me when Chace started again.

  “Dude, what the hell? Get away from her!” Chace bolted over the car, but in the millisecond it took him to reach us, William disappeared into the night. I knew he vanished, but what did Chace think? He left too fast to have run anywhere. Chace was no dope. He would definitely start asking questions again.

  I ran back to the car to be sure Tracy was okay. With one leg draped out the door, she had tried to squeeze herself out of the back seat and, instead, wedged herself pretty good. Her laughter, as she rubbed her tiny muffin top, sideswiped my thoughts and I smiled, even laughed a little. “I would have gotten out too, but these flashy two-doors aren’t so easy to get out of, you know. What was that?” she asked.

  “You didn’t see him just standing in the middle of the road like that?” I questioned.

  “How do you know it was a him?” Tracy chuckled. “I had no idea you could tell the sex of common road critters. Baby deer or just an overgrown opossum?” she asked.

  Chace stared at me while he answered, “Yeah, it looked like a fawn. I don’t think I hurt it too bad, though. He must be okay; he took off pretty fast.”

  “What?” I shouted at Chace. “Don’t even tell me—” he cut me off.

  “Don’t worry, Lex, he’ll be okay. You saw him yourself. If he was really hurt, he wouldn’t have been able to even stand, let alone run off that way.” Chace glared at me again and I got the message. He would explain the reason he told this elaborate story to Tracy when we were alone. For the first time it occurred to me that Chace may not have been as much of a straight shooter as I had thought.

  Chapter 10

  The Truth—Does it Always Set You Free?

  It took every bit of patience I had, which wasn’t much, to be so quiet all through the ride to Tracy’s house. I muttered some yes and no answers, but really didn’t even pay attention to the conversation. Chace owed me an explanation, in a huge way, and he couldn’t get Tracy home fast enough for me.

  Finally, we said our goodnights and Tracy walked inside her house, completely unaware of the trouble brewing in the car. She no sooner closed the door than I went after him with all I had. “What the hell was that about? You know that was a man! Why were you bullshitting her?” I asked harshly as he started to pull away. “Don’t!” I demanded and clenched my hand around the steering wheel. “We’re not leaving until you explain what the hell you were doing.”

  “Let me just get out of her driveway and then we’ll stop somewhere to talk.” After giving him the look of death that only women can give, I let go of the wheel. Another couple of minutes of being in the dark weren’t going to kill me and it wasn’t going to give him any reasonable amount of time to come up with some idiotic story. Not that I’d believe it anyway. So I didn’t argue. We pulled into Butler’s Pantry and went inside without a word between us.

  “Let’s go, start talking! I’m not stupid either. You think I don’t know why you want to talk in public? It won’t make a difference, you know. What’s the deal?” I screeched as I slid into the booth.

  “Calm down, Lex. I know you’re not stupid, but let’s not make a big scene here.”

  “Whatever. Now talk,” I demanded.

  “Okay. She couldn’t see him.”

  “Umm. No kidding. That’s probably because she was lying on the floor in the back of your car! But I saw him! So why the story about the fawn? I saw him! It was a man and I saw him in the flesh! He was just as I reme...” I caught myself before I confessed that I knew the stranger in the night.

  “Just as you what? You were going to say ‘just as I remember’! Now who’s holding back? You’ve seen him before! How do you know him? Why did he walk over to you and then disappear? Yeah, I said disappear! Maybe you owe me some answers too, Lex!” Chace was mad. No, he was furious. He turned away from me and faked his attention to something outside.

  “Listen, I would tell you, but I’m not really sure who he is or where he’s from,” I said nervously. He didn’t bite and stubbornly continued his icy alienation until I said something he wanted to hear. “It’s complicated. You’d be convinced I went friggin’ crazy if I told you what I think is going on.”

  “Why don’t you try me?” he huffed. “I have a few things to tell you, too, but not until you’re straight with me, Lex.”

  It sounded so good to just let it all out and tell someone everything that had happened to me. But I didn’t think I could. I didn’t know who I could trust and now I’d even started questioning Chace’s integrity. He had to know something about William, but I didn’t know if it was enough to do any damage to my plans.

  “Fine, you start. How do you know that guy?” I asked.

  “Know him? I don’t know him. I’ve never seen him before in my life! The guy pops out of nowhere and is in some kind of trance over you and I should be the one to know him? You’re hidi
ng something, Lex. You knew who he was. I saw your reaction. I could feel it.”

  We sat there in silence for a minute or two as people around us looked in our direction to see where all the commotion was coming from.

  I started again, only this time in a loud whisper, and from a different angle. “She didn’t see him?”

  “No, Lex, she couldn’t see him. She saw a shadow and assumed it was an animal. She didn’t see that guy the way we did. I’m sure no one else did either.”

  “Yeah, right. What was he, a ghost or something?” I said so smugly that anyone else would’ve walked out on me. “How do you know she saw a shadow? How do you know anything?” My voice rose with the tension tightening across my shoulders and shooting into my skull. All that had happened to me wasn’t bad enough. I needed to have Chace wig out on me as much as I needed another foot. The desperation and mental exhaustion won the duel in my head. I widened my eyes and looked away so he couldn’t see them juice up.

  “Please, Lex, don’t,” he said, his voice taking on a sympathetic tone. “I haven’t been completely honest with you either, but it was for good reason. I couldn’t tell you about it until I was absolutely sure. I wanted to protect you, as I always have. I know what you’ve been dealing with and I can explain.” He reached across the table and took my hands in his, caressing the tops with his thumbs.

  “You ready to order now?” the waitress asked. Her demeanor was pretty nasty and she looked happy to sabotage the moment. “Yeah, we’ll just have two Cokes, please.” Chace turned his attention back toward me. “You want anything else?”

  “No, I’m good,” I said and then turned my attention to the waitress. “Just the soda, thank you.”

  Chace still held my hands tight and looked lovingly at me while he spoke. “You’ve spent so much time trying to prove to everyone that you’re not crazy. Well, you’re not. It’s actually the opposite. Tracy didn’t see that man because only certain people can see him, or his kind. I have abilities, Lex. Let’s just leave it at that for now. You have them, too, and that’s why you saw him. I knew everything that happened with the gypsy, because I felt your mind open as she read you. So when the shadow stood in front of us, I wasn’t that surprised that you saw him, too. It just confirmed what I already knew—your abilities were coming to the surface. You are a gifted one.”

  That was so insanely laughable that if things hadn’t been so awfully strange, I might have let out a very loud cackle. A gifted one. Yeah, okay. What could I have done to be gifted? And gifted with what? Was I M.E.N.S.A. material or did I just have a wicked talent for basket weaving? Since everything had been completely off kilter since I woke up, I had to ignore the urge to blow it off and listen. But then the gypsy reading popped into my head. There was a slim chance that Chace may have been able to help me after all.

  “So what are you saying here? That you and I have some special ability to see things that others can’t? Why? What makes us so special? Was that guy real or was he some kind of spirit or something?” I asked. I wanted verification that William was a real person from a real world, just not this one.

  Chace couldn’t hold back a faint laugh. “I’ve never seen a ghost, so I guess he was real. We have a name for people like you. We call you phyters. It’s short for neophyte, which is another way of saying you’re an amateur. But mostly we use it because you’ll ‘fight’ the urge to let the abilities take over. So, my little phyter, let me try to put things in perspective for you. Tell me what you know and I can fill in the gaps for you, but you have to promise you’ll answer my questions too, Lex. You don’t know what you’re dealing with yet. We can help each other, you know.”

  Making a deal didn’t strike me as a good idea at first, but I had enough on him to complicate his life if I had to. He probably knew all about my dilemma already, and, as far as I knew, he couldn’t stop me from doing what I wanted. I tore my paper napkin into shreds and rolled the pieces between my fingers in a nervous fidget.

  “Okay. But you have to promise no matter how nutty it all sounds, it’s gonna stay between you and me,” I sighed.

  “Done,” he said with a shrug. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah, don’t try to change my mind.”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “No. I can’t promise that. Keeping it between us is the best I can do.”

  I exhaled hard and sank in my seat. We both knew I needed him more than he needed me. It looked to me like the fat lady was singing—the negotiations were over. I started the story.

  “When I was in the coma, I went to an alternate universe. I was there with my parents and William, the man who stood in front of the car tonight. I didn’t know that I wasn’t in the right world. I didn’t even know more than one world existed. My parents gave me drugs to keep me in the coma here, so I could stay in their world with them. Eventually, they let me go. When I came back here, I knew nothing about what happened. It was like this world and everyone in it was new to me. Sometimes I felt like it was all a hallucination. Everything I knew was gone and I had to force myself to accept my new world. My new reality. I wasn’t happy about it, but I was trying to convince myself that none of what I had known was real. That’s when William started coming to me in my sleep. Well, I think it’s when I’m asleep. He told me everything about what really happened, of which I just gave you the short version. It made enough sense to convince me I wasn’t insane, but I kept all of this to myself because everyone else would definitely think I was. The only reason I’m telling you is because I have a feeling you already know about that world.”

  “So you knew him?” he asked.

  “Yes, I knew, I mean know him. He said that my parents crossed over because they weren’t supposed to die in the accident. In the other world, destiny can’t be changed as it can here. Whatever is pre-determined by fate will happen, no matter what decisions people make. I got stuck between worlds because I was in the coma. William said that if I had died, I would have crossed over with my mom and dad. You know there were plenty of times I wished I did die in that accident. I miss my mother and father like you wouldn’t believe. I remember they were trying to find the people who could help them keep me there with them. They obviously didn’t figure it out. William said he would help me get back. I’m not sure how or when but until then, he promised to visit me each night. So, that’s pretty much all I know. It’s not much but that’s all I got.” I purposely left out the part about William and me planning a life together. Chace would have never understood. I thought it was worth taking the chance that he didn’t already know that. “Now it’s your turn.”

  He sipped his drink and then leaned in closer to me. “You’re right. I do know about the alternate universe. I’ve known about it for as long as I can remember. I’ve been there quite a few times, as a matter-of-fact. Whatever you do, don’t be fooled. It’s not a perfect world and you don’t want to live there. You’d be breaking the laws in both worlds if you even tried. It’s all about fate and yours was that you came back. Yeah, the majority of people in that world are ‘norms,’ just like they are here. But there is no way your friend William is one of them. He definitely has a morphing ability that he can use to show himself only to whom he wants, when he wants. That’s why he was only visible to you. He probably didn’t know that one of my gifts allowed me to see him, too. Or there could be a reason he wanted me to see him.” He paused, probably waiting for me to jump to William’s defense. I couldn’t. He was right. I wanted to believe William was a norm, but I had no proof, and from everything I’d been hearing, I couldn’t be sure of anything.

  “There are so many things going on there that you don’t know about yet. They have entities and beings we’re not so familiar with. It’s not the whole world that’s bad. It’s pockets of defectors that have caused most of the trouble. They don’t abide by the universal laws and have an agenda all their own. There aren’t enough gifted ones there to control them so we’ve taken on most of the burden. If it weren’
t for them, both worlds could exist without a problem. Each day here is about a week in time there, which gives them the advantage of having more time in preparing for any controversy with us. We have ongoing issues with them, Lexi. It can be very dangerous. Especially for you, now that you know you’re a gifted one.”

  “Why? What do they want with me?”

  “It’s nothing personal. They just don’t want you in their way. The defectors were all gifted ones at one time. The majority of them came from here. The more gifted ones we have, the more work the defectors have to do to come up with a plan to get rid of us.”

  “Wait a minute. I have enemies I don’t even know about? Great!” I said sarcastically. “Some friend you turned out to be! How long have you known about this and didn’t tell me?”

  He laughed a little. “It doesn’t work like that. Gifted ones are a secret, sometimes even from each other. We have laws that dictate our behavior.”

  “So when did you know you were gifted?”

  “My abilities surfaced the day I was born. The gifts that we both have were inherited from our parents.”

  “Nah, can’t be. Neither of my parents was gifted. I wouldn’t have missed that.”

  “Trust me on this, Lex. One or both of your parents have the ability. Maybe they kept it from you or maybe they didn’t even know they had it.”

  Maybe that’s why I looked so opposite from my mother, I thought.

  As if he read my mind, Chace said, “Don’t worry, I’m positive you weren’t adopted.”

  “Oh.” I brushed his comment off to coincidence and didn’t give it another thought. “What about you then?”

  “My mother was the lead scientist for a covert branch of the United Nations known as the Commission. It had been established, maintained and run only by gifted ones so as not to cause hysteria amongst the norms. It was her job to investigate how these abilities could be controlled, so if and when they were used for evil, it wouldn’t be destructive in any sense. My father worked for the same branch, but in a much different capacity. He was a gunner. His job wasn’t so pleasant. There were and still are complications with the two worlds existing together and, let’s just say it was his job to keep the peace at all costs.”