Relieved, Dawn found that she was actually grateful to see her. Hell, a normal chick from Pahrump, Nevada, beat a fang-wielding vampire any day of the week.
She relaxed, but her pulse still jittered her veins in the aftershock.
Jacqueline’s head was tilted in obvious concern as she set the flowers on a table. “Oh, my God. You were hurt in Kiko’s stunt, too?”
In Dawn’s sleep-deprived world, Jacqueline’s words sounded like they were being played at slow speed. Even the edges of the actress’s body seemed blurred.
Dawn forced her eyes wide. Tired. Still very tired.
“Kiko and I need to be more careful with our choreography, I guess,” she said, voice croaky. “He’s asleep now, but he’ll love waking up to the sight of his favorite up-and-coming fencer.”
“Anything I can do to help. For both of you.” Now that Jacqueline knew Dawn was okay, she got a big, goofy smile on her face, then started bouncing on her heels.
Dawn just gave her a curious look, still blinking the sleep away.
“So…” Jacqueline said. “Guess what?”
Her first instinct was to answer with a Kiko comeback that included freaky apartments and their evil residents, but she didn’t have the energy right now. Subdued, she merely went along with Jacqueline’s enthusiasm.
“What?” Dawn asked.
The actress made a tinyeeeksound and handed the papers over. Printouts from the Net. “I know you haven’t had time to pay attention to gossip, but”—she hopped up and down some more—“I got the part! Can you believe it?”
“Wow.” Happiness mixed with doubt. Here it went: the change of Jacqueline from nice girl to movie star, right? “Congrats, that’s…amazing.”
“Thanks.” She shuffled her sneakers, looking like she was at a loss for words. “But I thought I should tell you something before you start hearing it for yourself….” She began to continue, then stopped.
Dawn could hear anything at this point and not be fazed. “Just say it.”
“Okay.” Jacqueline blew out a breath. “Okay, here goes.” She exhaled again, then offered a hesitant glance. “They’re…well, they’re calling me a throwback…a…” She shrugged helplessly. “Jeez, this is rough. My managers want me to go with this whole thing that they dreamed up for my ‘image.’ So, maybe if I show you this makeover they sprung on me this morning…Well…here.”
With a shy flourish, the actress took off her baseball cap.
As her bleached golden locks came tumbling down, Dawn felt the first jab of dream-addled disquiet.
But when Jacqueline slipped off her sunglasses, Dawn took an inadvertent, heart-stopping step backward, dropping the papers.
Holy…no.No.
At the fencing studio, Dawn hadn’t cared to look Jacqueline in the face while she’d helped her with the jacket, and when she’d decided to finally do so, the actress had already donned her mask. And then there’d been the sunglasses…the ever-present dark lenses hiding her gaze.
As Dawn’s vision blurred, Jacqueline anxiously waited for approval. Disapproval.Something.
“They say that, even though I don’t look exactly like her, I remind them of your mom.” The actress’s eyes were shining—not so much with a color, but with a feeling.
An invitation to compare her to Eva Claremont, to think she had the same qualities that defined Dawn’s mother.
Mother.
With the crash of a wall falling into a ruin of dust and vulnerability, images rushed back—images Dawn had stored and shoved into the furnace of her anguish, hoping they’d be destroyed. But now they were resurrected, called up by Jacqueline’s face.
The picture. The crime-scene photo of Eva from her dad’s hidden bootbox.
A woman’s pale body laid against white satin sheets, her wrists tied to the bedposts, the belled sleeves of her nightgown spread like crimson wings as blood flowed down her arms from the ragged slits decorating her skin. Blond hair sunning over a pillow. Brown eyes staring at the ceiling. A peaceful smile on her lips. Someone’s fantasy angel—sweet, sacrificed, and murdered on a bed of red-soaked purity.
Eva’s corpse—the catalyst of a legend born one dark night in Hollywood.
Nausea banged a furious rhythm in Dawn’s temples. Blindly, she sought the wall, groping for her chair.
But Jacqueline was at her side, frantically helping her into it. “I knew this would happen. I’m so sorry, Dawn. I’m really so sorry.”
“I’m okay.” Goddamnit, she had to be.
But when she tried to stand back up, her body wouldn’t allow it. She slumped down to the seat, unable to function.
Red on white. Blood. So much blood.
Mom.
“Here.” Jacqueline dragged a chair over, then helped Dawn to relax, laying down her head on her lap, her voice soothing.
A blanket on a stormy night, Dawn thought, clinging to the fragmented hope of it, pushing it away at the same time.
“It’s a shock, I know.” Jacqueline stroked Dawn’s hair. “Such a shock. But you know what used to make me feel better? My mom’s favorite bedtime song….”
And when the first tear ripped out of Dawn, Jacqueline held her even tighter, shushing her, calming her; but it didn’t stop the bafflement, the anger, the bottomless questions.
Then she started to sing in a sweet voice, her hand resting on Dawn’s back. On Frank’s shirt.
“Hush, little baby, don’t say a word…”
Turning her face upward, Dawn didn’t even have the strength for any kind of defense. No, all she wanted to do was look into the compelling, beautiful eyes gazing down at her, the light of affection making them clearer than anything she had ever seen in her life.
“Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird…”
Under the soft lyrics, Dawn’s eyelids grew heavy, the slow melt of surrender. Her breathing evened out, and another tear followed the first, then another.
Blood on white sheets…Eva’s empty eyes staring into nothing…
Cringing with a screaming sob that had been building for years, she held on to this woman while, at the same time, wanting to push her away in denial and rage.
Bitch, mother…what was she?
And why’d she come back?
Helpless in her fury and need, she buried her face against Jacqueline’s…her mom’s arm. But it didn’t carry the scent of Dawn’s memories; the flesh was scented with something Dawn couldn’t place, slightly cold.
Abandoned,Dawn thought, mind spinning.She left me, and now she wants to come back?
Dawn fought the sobs, dug her nails into the woman’s skin.
“Dawn!”
The cry was stamped with utter shock, punching its way through her head, pulling her out of her sorrow and into a clearer reality.
I don’t want you back…Ican’twant you back….
On a wave of anger, she pushed away from the woman, lifting a stiff arm to make sure the blonde didn’t approach her again. For a baffling moment, Dawn locked eyes with her, lost in the depth of the other woman’s gaze.
Mom…?
A loud sound blared from the TV, making Dawn jump.
It was as if something had clicked into place, waking her up. The newscast filtered into her perception, and her vision seemed to realign, showing her the brown of the other woman’s eyes, the startled confusion of a friend named Jacqueline Ashley who’d merely dyed her hair blond this morning.
Dawn’s breathing evened out as she talked herself into sanity. My God, Jacqueline did look a lot like Eva, but…
She laughed, almost a little crazily. Dreaming. She was so tired and emotionally messed up that her brain obviously wasn’t working right.
“Dawn, what’s…” Jacqueline stood, her hand to her throat, her gaze wide. “I should’ve eased into this change a little better. I’ve shocked the tar out of you. I can tell. Should I get a nurse?”
“No.”
Psycho, Dawn thought. I’ve gone completely nuts. Eva was dead. She had been
for many years and there was no bringing her back, no matter how much Dawn might want it to happen.
“I just…” Dawn rubbed at her face. Her hands were shaking.
Searching for features that would distinguish Jacqueline from Eva, she glanced up again. Their chins. There, that was a difference—Jacqueline’s wasn’t as pointy. And Jacqueline had higher cheekbones, a slimmer nose. Uncanny, yes, but the same person?
No. Not at all.
So why did she still feel like she was sitting alone in a dark cabin while something stalked around outside? Why was there an unsettling shiver that wouldn’t go away?
That something knocked at her brain.
Leave me alone. I’m not going to go crazy….
Breisi walked into the room with their beverages, and Dawn stiffened. Would she see Eva, too?
When her eyes widened at the sight of the blonde, Dawn prepared herself for an escalation of emotion. How was Breisi going to react to the woman who still haunted Frank?
Or…not the same woman. This wasn’t Eva.
After scrutinizing Jacqueline, Breisi paused…walked over to Dawn…gave her the coffee…straightened up again…started to lift her hand…
Dawn held her breath, waiting for the world to explode.
But when Breisi turned on her own smile and extended her hand to the actress for a welcoming shake, the oxygen rushed out of Dawn.
Yeah, she was losing it all right. If anyone would’ve had a reaction to seeing Jacqueline as Eva, it was the woman who’d taken up with Frank.
As Breisi settled next to Kiko’s bedside to sip her tea, Jacqueline’s cell phone rang.
“Oooo, it’s my agent,” she said, already heading out of the room. “Mind if I take it?”
“Not at all.”
Dawn kept her gaze pasted on Jacqueline, but as soon as she was gone, she turned to Breisi.
“Did you notice it?”
The other woman slowly set down her tea. “Notice what?”
Dawn’s heart did a freefall to her stomach. Crazy.
“Okay.” Breisi’s eyes locked onto the open door, and she lowered her voice. “There’s a resemblance. I almost hit the roof when I walked into the room and saw her. Truthfully, I wanted to rip her face off.” She got out of her seat, came toward Dawn. “But on a second glance, I realized that your friend’s an imitation, just like so many other actresses around Hollywood. Madonna even had her Eva Claremont stage, remember?”
“Really? Jacqueline doesn’t…?”
Breisi got down on her knees on the other side of Dawn’s chair and took her good hand. Her dark brown gaze was steady, doing a lot to lure Dawn out of her doubts and suspicions.
Maybe shewasoverreacting, a victim of her own imagination. That’s right. That had to be it.
“You’re strong enough to handle this, Dawn. Think of what you’ve already been through and how it’s probably affecting you right now.” She squeezed Dawn’s hand. “And that’s what I’ll keep telling myself, too.”
It hit Dawn at that point: Breisi was just as rattled by the close call, but she was better at containing it. She’d had more practice, and she was offering Dawn the support to accomplish the same thing.
“Time to move on from Mom, huh?” Dawn asked, swallowing back a lump of grief that had lodged in her throat. “Is that what you’re going to tell me?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, you’ve got other people you can depend on now.”
They both looked at Kiko, who was still snoozing away, oblivious. But Dawn knew Breisi was right, even if part of her new team was halfway gone.
She’d spent her life trying to get back at Eva, trying to elicit a response from someone who wasn’t around to react. Someone who’d never even made the choice to die.
Too much of her life had revolved around an absent mother, and that needed to stop.
As she brought Breisi’s hand to her heart, Dawn closed her eyes, accepting what was offered. But, even so, there was still a heavy feeling that she would need to open her eyes soon.
At the same time, in the background, the news of Tamsin Greene’s death played on.
Eternally resurrected over the airwaves.
END
Night Rising Page 31
