by Arden, Alys
“You didn’t answer the question.” He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. His eyes were heavy and a little pink, maybe from the air in the studio, more likely from going straight from a graveyard shift to the graveyard. “Are you okay?”
“My feet hurt,” I said, but he just looked at me until I conceded. “I’m fine, Dad. I just . . . can’t believe they’re gone.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. I wanted people to stop worrying about me.
“I can’t either,” he said, pulling a stool over and sitting down.
I looked at the pile of tools on the floor and back to him. “Dad, are you okay?” When was the last time someone asked him that?
“Yeah, sweetheart. I’m fine.”
His stock answer was unconvincing. “You sure?”
“I’m sure. I’m just worried about you.” He leaned down, picked the hammer back up, and flipped it around in his hand. “And . . . just a little surprised your mother didn’t come to the funeral to support you, considering she’s in town. That’s all.”
“Oh—” My breath caught short at the mention of my mother, and when he flipped the hammer again, it spun out of his hand and shot directly to my feet.
“Watch out!” He jumped up.
My feet danced out of the way. “I’m fine!”
“Jesus, I’m sorry. Did it nick you?”
I shook my head, scooped up the hammer, and handed it back to him. Frowning, he put it down safely on the tool bench.
“She surprised me,” he continued without questioning the hammer’s unnatural trajectory, thank God. “And I didn’t think Brigitte could still surprise me.”
It was so strange hearing him say her name. He usually only referred to her as “your mother.” The one little word humanized her more than all the good things he’d ever told me about her—things that had fallen on angsty ears.
“I know, Adele, that you’re not going to believe me, because you were too young to remember your mom before she left, but it’s just not something she would do. I even left her a message with the details. I knew she’d want to be there for you, but . . . I guess I don’t know her at all anymore. It’s so hard to accept that she’s a different person now.”
I stood there, stunned, the lump swelling in my throat. Literally a different person.
“She called me,” I said.
“What?” His back straightened.
“She called me and told me how much she wished she could have been there.” Tears rose, but I fought them back down. “She was on a plane back to France when you left the message. Émile was supposed to call me to say they were leaving New Orleans sooner than expected. She was furious when she found out he hadn’t . . .”
“Her assistant was supposed to tell you she was leaving?” His head shook in disappointment—and that headshake was the worst thing my father had ever said about my mother. I wished I’d left out the part about Émile. I hadn’t thought fast enough.
“It’s okay, Dad. Émile and I were friends in Paris.”
“It’s not, Adele. It’s not okay.”
I was pretty sure he knew I was lying, but he didn’t push it. I was also pretty sure he knew I was doing it to spare his feelings—there was no other reason I’d have ever covered for Brigitte’s irresponsibility in the past. He had no idea of the real level of lying I’d sunk to.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, I shouldn’t say anything to you about it.”
“Dad, it’s okay. I’m not a kid anymore.”
His arm went around my shoulder. “You’ll always be my kid.”
“One day I’ll be your adult.”
“Not a chance.” He gave me a squeeze and then walked me to the stairs. As he told me good night, the distance in his eyes killed me. It was obvious he was still thinking about Brigitte. None of it made sense to him, from the moment when she’d just packed up and dumped us for her native France. I hated how the lack of closure made it impossible for him to move on. And I hated lying to him, and not just about Mom—about everything.
Most of all, I hated that we had secrets now.
I climbed the stairs to my room, wondering if he would ever learn the truth about Brigitte Dupré Le Moyne.
I didn’t bother turning on the lights. All I cared about was removing the restricting clothing. I kicked off my shoes, immediate relief washing over me as my toes spread out. I hurled the mutilated pantyhose directly into the garbage can. Not salvageable.
Sweatpants, a T-shirt, and a washed face, and I went straight for my bed.
Alone in the darkness, under the security of my duvet, I continued to think about Brigitte.
My dad was right. This wasn’t okay. None of it was.
The tears released: slow trickles down the sides of my face.
My mother is dead.
My mother is a vampire who murdered two students, and I locked her in an attic for eternity.
That was the moment I decided I had to know everything. Not just everything that had happened to her—all of it. The magic. The coven. The feud.
Getting answers to why the Medici were after Adeline, the Count, and now me was the only way I’d ever get her out. It was also the moment I decided: I have to save my mother.
Whatever they were after, I needed it. It was the only thing they seemed to care about. Nicco was willing to kill me for it, which meant it could be a bargaining chip.
My mother wasn’t a part of their family. She was a part of our family—the Saint-Germains. And I was going to get her back.
But I couldn’t just charge into the attic. If I broke the seal, we’d be right back where we’d started, with the Medici still half-cursed and wholly pissed, and Gabe and crew stuck in the Quarter. They’d retaliate by killing people until we broke the rest of the curse, which we couldn’t do unless we found the other descendants. Besides, giving them what they wanted didn’t exactly work for me either. They’d just go back out into the world, feed on people, and turn other innocents—other people’s mothers—into vampires too.
No, opening the attic was out of the question. The Medici were monsters who belonged caged.
But my mom isn’t a Medici. She tried to save me that night, even against Emilio’s orders. She’s not a monster. She’s just caught in the crosshairs of this ridiculous family feud. There had to be a way to get her out.
I scanned my memories for missed clues: every interaction I’d had with Emilio in France, everything Ritha had ever told me about magic, every word of Adeline’s. But no matter where my thoughts started, they always ended up in the one place I was always trying to avoid: Nicco.
Why had he been after the Saint-Germains in 1728? And why was he still after the Count? Why had he pretended to care about me?
My eyes watered again, but this time I sat up. I refused to cry over Nicco. How had I ever been so stupid to think he was on my side, that he’d betray his family for me?
Family.
Adeline wouldn’t let them have her dad, and I wasn’t going to let them have my mom.
A slow creak came from beside the bed, almost as if in response to the intensity of my thoughts.
I turned my head as the closet door creaked open wider.
I’d been ignoring Adeline ever since that night. I had an implicit love for her, but Adeline Saint-Germain had caused me nothing but trouble since the moment I’d discovered her. Now it felt like she was in the room with me.
I slid out of bed into the darkness, heart pounding. Things were different now.
Now I was ready for trouble.
I tiptoed inside the little closet room, which I’d cleaned out as a distraction from the funeral. Only the two antique steamer trunks remained and the darkness and silence, and the remnant smell of the vanilla candle I’d burned trying to cover up the must. A slither of moonlight slipped through a muck-stained window, providing just enough light to guide me to Adeline’s floorboard.
I knelt down, and the door swung closed behind me, shutting me in the tiny room. I took a deep breath, pushed out any
claustrophobic feelings, and looked up at the decaying string. It was attached to a little strand of ball ’n’ chain, hanging from the Edison bulb. I envisioned the chain pulling down.
Click.
Beneath the muted light, the floorboards, old and worn, all looked the same, but they weren’t. I raised my hand over the wood, and the nails began to shake. The magical tingling, the sensation of supernatural energy, crept from my fingertips into my hands and then my arms, until the nails wriggled out and popped up into my palms. I gently put them aside and did the same with the nails in the adjacent floorboard.
Wedging my fingers between the loose wood, I popped the boards out, feeling a rush of excitement when I saw the metal underneath. It was cool to the touch but radiated magical energy. Her magic . . . Saint-Germain magic.
Our magic.
My hands hovered over Adeline’s safe. I’d done this twice before, but it wasn’t as simple as turning on the light or opening the door. Focus, Adele. My hands shook, feeling polarized against the metal beneath them, like two repelling magnets.
“Come on, steady,” I said, rising on my knees. “Come on.”
The metal rippled.
“Almost there . . .”
I gasped as it morphed, parting ways like water. As fast as I could, I reached in and grabbed her things, still afraid of the magic, as if the safe might simply close up and cut off my hand.
My fingers were spared, but the safe did close quicker than it had opened, like it didn’t want me to renege and shove everything back in.
Clutching Adeline’s necklace and diary, and my journal with the French translation, I scooted away from the hole until my back knocked against one of the trunks. I sat there under the moonlit window, slowing my breath, my thumb rubbing the opalescent stone on the medallion. I hadn’t worn it since the night we sealed the attic.
It had started out a simple necklace: a gift from the Count to his daughter. The initials ASG were etched onto the silver disc in a delicate calligraphy, but were now mostly covered by a silver star. Now that I thought about it, I wondered if it had ever really been so simple. The more puzzle pieces I put together, the more I understood that nothing about Adeline or her father was ever simple. On her journey across the Atlantic, Adeline had pressed the giant opal—formerly of the eye socket of a pirate captain—into the other side of the medallion to serve as a reminder of just how dangerous the Medici were. And that was something I needed to remember now.
I slipped the medallion back onto my chain where it belonged, next to my father’s sun and Isaac’s feather. It was hard to believe I’d ever taken it off, but at the time I’d just wanted to bury it all. I wanted to believe we were finished with the Medici.
I hadn’t yet processed my mother coming back into my life.
I’d only found half of the medallion in our attic; Brigitte had sent the other half back from France with me. Did she know what it was? Had she been trying to help me, even back then?
That meant she’d helped me twice—consciously or not. Now it’s my turn to help her.
And so, I needed to know everything about the enemies I’d inherited. But everyone who had answers about the past was locked in the attic.
The only thing I had to turn to now was . . . magic.
We have to put the rest of the coven together.
Together we could figure out a way to save my mother. I pictured myself calling a cabal and telling Dee and Isaac everything, finding the other descendants, and sorting all of this out. My nerves ate away at the image like hungry rats until it was gone. It was too risky. I’d tell them after we found the other members.
I took Adeline’s things back to my room, tossed them on the bed, and grabbed my phone.
Adele 6:29 p.m. We need to find the rest of the descendants.
Désirée 6:29 p.m. Thank God. What brought on this revelation?
Adele 6:30 p.m. I guess the funeral put things into perspective. Priorities.
Désirée 6:30 p.m. Great, now u just have to convince Isaac that putting together the coven is a worthwhile cause.
Adele 6:30 p.m. Why me?
Désirée 6:31 p.m. Please. . .
Adele 6:31 p.m. Ok. I’m sure it won’t be that hard. Right? He’s obsessed w everything magic.
Désirée 6:31 p.m. I’m burning a candle for u.
Just thinking about asking Isaac to help with breaking the curse, even if indirectly, made my heart race, especially after today.
I opened the leather cover of Adeline’s diary and turned the first few pages until her handwriting, with all its flourishes and exotic French phrases, appeared. I used to think the dry, aged pages were too precious to handle, that the diary should be in a museum, not in my possession; but now I suspected it was magically indestructible, like Adeline’s spirit. Every piece of the puzzle I’d found so far—every artifact, person, curse, and mystery—had always connected back to Adeline. All roads led back to the Saint-Germains.
To the Count.
Why were the Medici so obsessed with him? Any person who held so much power over the Medici made me insatiably curious. But most importantly, how the hell is the Count still alive? Emilio seemed to think it was plausible when I tricked him Halloween night.
After leafing through some of the pages at random, I turned back to the first page.
And so, back to the beginning, I went.
3 mars 1728
Le voyage a commencé, Papa. Nous avons été à bord du SS Gironde, sous le commandement du capitaine Vauberci . . .
And I read and read, until I was dreaming about Parisian salons, and bubbly wine . . . and Monsieur Cartier.
CHAPTER 8
Street Smart
I reached out for the bed frame and caught myself, but my arm jerked so hard in its socket, I wished I’d crashed to the floor.
Fucking dream.
My phone blinked 01:46 hours. I didn’t try to convince myself to go back to sleep—after finding Adele at the convent earlier, I didn’t know how I’d fallen asleep in the first place. I stepped straight into my shoes, not bothering to grab a shirt from the pile on the floor as I ran out of the room.
What the hell was she doing there?
I leaped off the deck, but tonight being in the air wasn’t enough to bring me any serenity. No, tonight, if there was trouble to be had, I would find it.
I swooped past Le Chat and contemplated stopping in for a beer. Don’t push your luck with Mac. He was just starting to seem kind of okay with me dating his daughter. Instead I picked up an air current that carried me over the rooftops. Getting a bird’s-eye view high above the roosting city was one of my favorite things about flying. Although, according to Adele, the Quarter never roosted before the Storm.
I rode the updraft peacefully, until the strike of shattering glass echoed down the street.
Looters.
Post-Storm looting really got me hotheaded. Raiding a Walmart because your family needed food was totally acceptable in my book, especially after such epic institutional failure, but stealing from someone else whose life had already been ruined by the Storm was not okay.
I dipped off in the direction of the sound. Another smash of glass led me straight to a three-story Creole town house on Royal Street. The mint-green paintwork had taken a beating in the Storm, revealing the red brick beneath it. The long shutters, a much darker green, were all closed. I soared past the gallery on the second level. Scrolling brackets of ironwork framed the outside sitting area, curling and looping so intricately with the vines and ferns it was hard to tell where the metal ended and the foliage began.
Another crash came from the upper level, and I swooped over the gated alley to the back, scoping for their entry point, the first-responder protocol automatically stringing through my head: Observe. Adapt. Dominate—OAD.
Observe.
The mammoth trash pile in the driveway spread down the entire side of the house, which meant the owners must have returned post-Storm. If the place was as gutted as the trash pil
e indicated, my guess was that they weren’t currently living here.
At the back of the house flames flickered in gas lamps hanging on either side of the entrance, illuminating a broken glass pane in the door. Bingo.
Another crash came from inside, and that was enough for me.
Adapt.
I dropped down to the ground, regained human form, and opened the door.
The room was made of mostly windows, which I’m sure at one time had been a lovely spot to sit—wicker chair rocking, sipping the kind of iced tea that made your teeth rot out—but now it was furnitureless and the floor had been ripped out. The flames from the outside gas lamps shone through the windows revealing tall piles of stuff: salvaged furniture, rolled-up rugs, ladders, and boxes of power tools. It all cast dark shadows on the walls. I didn’t like it—there were too many large, bulky things for someone to hide behind.
I instinctually reached for my flashlight, but I didn’t have my knapsack—I didn’t even have a shirt on. I walked through with caution . . . peering into every shadow created by the moonlight pouring in from the windows.
The rooms became emptier the deeper I went, and a twinge of freshly applied drywall mud pervaded the air. Ladders and paintbrushes waited for workers to return. Sheets of plastic hung from the ceiling, gently rippling as I walked by. I lost all light as I moved farther into the interior of the house. My pulse thumped, waiting for someone to jump out.
Then I froze—footsteps briskly moved across the room overhead. I hurried, light on my feet through the dark hall, heading straight for a winding staircase.
I silently ascended to the next floor, listening for the intruder. The second floor seemed like it hadn’t sustained any storm damage, and all the unboarded windows allowed me enough light to move faster. I entered the first bedroom, adrenaline pumping through my veins. Clear.
Another crash came, followed by an explosion of smashing glass and laughter. What an asshole. The sounds grew louder. I was getting closer. I slipped from bedroom to bedroom and back out into the L-shaped hallway that overlooked the first floor, until there was only one more door left.