The Romeo Catchers

by Arden, Alys

  As Adele and I sat there alone in awkward silence, her mouth began to curve upward.

  “What are you so smiley about?”

  She looked at me. “The coven. Doing magic together again.”

  I nodded, but uneasiness washed over me.

  “We’re on the same side, Isaac.” She scooted next to me and touched my arm. “I want to put the coven together, but not at the expense of losing you.”

  I pulled her closer, our faces nearly touching. “You’re not going to lose me.”

  “Isaac, we’ll be stronger as five—stronger against our enemies.”

  Her words made my heart pound, but when her lips pressed into mine, I could feel that she meant it. And when the kiss deepened, I could feel how much she wanted this—the coven—and suddenly it became more important to me too.

  Taking a breath, she pulled my hand from her face but kept it in hers. “If you’re not in, I’m not in.”

  “I’m in,” I said, but this time I meant it.

  Her smile made me smile, and our energies felt balanced again.

  She quickly kissed me one last time and scooted away as Désirée came back into the room.

  “I think it’s time we break in this place,” Dee said, resting her grimoire on the table along with a rolled canvas.

  “You swiped the painting?” Adele asked, visibly excited.

  Désirée walked to the marble fireplace and held the canvas up against the wall to the left. “Of course I swiped the painting.” She looked over her shoulder to Adele. “Would you like to do the honors?”

  We both stood, and Adele’s hand slowly scanned the room. A pile of leaves in the far corner crinkled, and four small pieces of rusty metal rose into the air: two nails, one key, and an unidentifiable scrap. “That’ll do,” she said, and with a flick of her wrist, they all whizzed past Dee’s head.

  Dee exhaled loudly, letting go of the painting, which was now secured to the wall at each corner. “You’re getting good at that too.”

  “Merci beaucoup.” Adele walked over to the painting.

  With that one little mark, it felt like we belonged here. I could see the future weeks unfurling. I could see the magic and the rituals. I could see myself kissing Adele in every single room. I was almost glad for the Borges family spat if that’s how we ended up here.

  I walked behind them and leaned an arm on each of their shoulders, looking at the painting.

  “The original mixed-magic coven,” Adele said. “I think Susannah painted it.”

  The swirls of purple mixed into the sky told me one thing: “She definitely did.” And any coven that Susannah had been a part of was something I wanted a part of.

  “So whose descendent do we try to identify first?” Dee asked. “Cosette’s or Morning Star’s?”

  “Cosette!” Adele said, as if she’d been waiting for eternity for this moment. She kind of had—she’s the one who dragged us here weeks ago, insisting the property was linked to our ancestor’s coven.

  “It seems only fitting,” I said.

  “Plus,” Dee added, “Morning Star is bound to have even less of a paper trail than my former-slave ancestor.”

  “Paper trail . . . ,” said Adele. “Maybe we could break into the Historic Center and look up the property records of this address? Tax records? Inheritance records? Or censuses?”

  “That’s not the worst idea,” said Dee.

  “I love how quickly you’ve both warmed up to petty crime as a solution to our magical dilemma.”

  “It’s not like we’re going to steal anything.” Désirée tapped her chin like she was actually considering it.

  “I don’t think intent matters to cops when it comes to suspected burglary.”

  “My dad’s the mayor, and yours is the director of FEMA.”

  “Director?” Adele asked me.

  I didn’t like talking about my pop, or FEMA. In the current postdisaster disarray, it typically led to names being called and punches being thrown. Everyone in the city had a different opinion over who was to blame for all of the injustices.

  In my silence, Désirée answered for me: “Black was canned a week ago. They just haven’t announced it to the press yet, so everyone’s just pretending like Norwood isn’t in charge now. As if he hadn’t already taken over weeks ago.”

  Adele gave me a look that asked why she was the last to know.

  I shrugged. “She’s the mayor’s daughter. She knows things. Can we get back to the dilemma at hand? The magical one?”

  Adele turned back to the painting, contemplating. “It’s not just the curse that binds them together.” Excitement built in her voice, and I knew she had an idea. I also knew whatever she was about to say wasn’t going to make sense immediately, because her head got ahead of her words when she was excited. “It’s the magic.” She looked at me. “You’re right. It’s a magical dilemma. I keep wanting to look for answers in the pages of books, but the answers have got to be in the magic, not in the mundane. Dee, when you wanted to spy on your gran, you could have just pressed your ear to the door like a normal person, but you didn’t. And Isaac, when you wanted to find me, you could have just called—”

  “I did. Like, fifty times—”

  “Whatever. The point is, we’re witches. We have other means to find these people.”

  “Isaac, how exactly does the location spell work?” Désirée asked.

  “You need a map, a talisman, and something that belongs to the person.”

  “A talisman?” Adele asked.

  “An object with some kind of magical charge,” said Dee. “What did you use?”

  I pulled the feather from the pages of my sketchbook.

  “One of yours?” she asked.

  “Obviously not.” The feather was old and was a deep-red color, not black.

  “Holy . . . Is that Susannah Bowen’s?” Adele asked, which made me smile.

  “I found it pressed in her grimoire.”

  Désirée took it from my hand. “Well, that’s quite a talisman.” She turned it over, examining it.

  “I’ll be right back,” Adele said, walking out.

  From a nearby room, something scraped across the floor. Adele returned with a large wooden frame, which she set down on the rug in front of the fireplace. It was a map—an antique map.

  “Le Vieux Carré de La Nouvelle-Orléans, Capitale de la Louisiane en 1728,” she said, reading the inscription at the bottom. “It’s old, so some of the street names aren’t the same, but we can figure it out.”

  “Assuming the descendant even lives in the Quarter,” said Dee.

  “Well, we have to start somewhere.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But we still don’t have any of their possessions.”

  “We might,” said Adele, causing Dee’s brow to rise. “Ritha said that magic is hereditary, and we know that spells pass down from one witch to the next, so maybe their magical possessions are automatically inherited by their descendants as well?”

  Dee perked up. “So one of the casquette girls’ old things might lead us straight to her descendant, the new rightful owner.”

  “Exactly!”

  “But we don’t have any of their ancestors’ things either,” I said.

  “We’re in Cosette Monvoisin’s house, for God’s sake!” Adele was so excited she was practically screaming. “Let’s find something!”

  “I’ll check the first floor,” Désirée said.

  “Second!” chimed Adele.

  “I guess that means I’m on top.”

  “Just grab anything that looks like it might have belonged to an eighteenth-century, bright-blond, brothel-bopping Aether,” said Dee. “And be back here in thirty.”

  The upper level was cold and creepy. Damp winter air poured in through the broken transom, making the heavy drapes, weighed down with dust, ripple in the breeze. I shined my flashlight down the hallway.

  Door after door and hallway after hallway led to small rooms not made for much else than slee
ping . . . or brotheling.

  Some of them had small pieces of furniture, some had an odd pair of shoes or a jacket. The one I was peering into had nothing but a lonely crucifix on the wall, which was a little too Amityville for my taste. I turned my flashlight beam away from it. The first sign of a tilting cross and I was out of here.

  The last door at the end of the main hallway was different than all the others. An illustration had been carved into the wood: a forest scene where three naked, long-haired girls danced under the moonlight with a plethora of fairy-tale-looking animals watching on in delight. “Masterful” hardly began to describe the detail.

  My fingers traced over one of the girls. Her mischievous smile made me desperately want to know what she was thinking. This piece was something that should have been in a museum, not in an abandoned, decaying mansion.

  I pushed the brass handle down and swung the door open, suddenly much more interested in this treasure hunt.

  My mood instantly deflated. The door wasn’t at all representative of the room itself, and if it had been at one time, it showed no signs of it now.

  Unlike the other rooms, this one was enormous, running the entire width of the house. It was mostly empty, with bare walls and bare floors. Windows lined the exterior wall, and rusty metal cots were stacked haphazardly against the interior wall. Even in their prime, there was unlikely ever anything inviting about them. They looked more utilitarian, like they belonged on the SS Hope, only a hundred years ago. Maybe this place had seen less risqué days in another life—a hospital or an orphanage or something?

  A rat ran the length of the floor, tiny toenails clicking against the floorboards. It wasn’t that I liked rats by any stretch, but they didn’t scare me—the whole bird thing gave me a new respect for all tiny creatures.

  I followed as it squeezed under a door. A supply closet, I deduced, pulling out a few of the shelved boxes to peek inside: plastic gloves melted together into a mound of yellowing rubber, metal syringes that were so old they had glass tubes, forceps, tongs, scalpels, and loads of other metal instruments whose last-century medical purpose frightened me. They probably didn’t have any significance, but I pocketed a couple so I didn’t return empty-handed.

  When I exited the closet, I stopped suddenly, as if I’d run into a wall—an invisible wall of cold. I tried to move around it, but it moved too, as if not wanting me to pass.

  My pulse spiked as I felt a touch against my chest—gentle, but icy through my T-shirt, the opposite of Adele’s warm, magical touch. Again I tried to move away from it, but then it pressed against me with so much force I went flying backward to the floor, sliding back into the closet, crashing into the shelves. Boxes came tumbling over me. Wings flapped frantically—a bird that must have been roosting in one of them flew away, its nest spilling onto the floor. A glint caught my eye.

  I fumbled for my flashlight, scooped up the nest, and examined it under the light.

  There was something buried inside the funnel of twigs and gum wrappers and cigarette butts, all of which made me immediately hate people. I pinched a bead and pulled as gently as I could, trying not to destroy the habitat of nature and litter. A necklace came out, a strand of pearls, and in the center a tarnished heart.

  It went into my pocket with the other things, and I headed for the stairs.

  When I got to the second floor, instead of continuing all the way down, I peeled off into the darkness, weaving through the bedrooms and parlors, each lavish in a Miss Havisham kind of way.

  Where is she?

  My eye caught the flutter of her pale pink dress as she entered at the opposite end of the room, her gaze fixed on a painting on the far wall—I hurried the last few steps.

  “Hey,” I whispered behind her, grabbing her arm.

  Her eyes flicked to mine as I pulled her straight into a kiss. When she smiled against my lips, the tension eased in my shoulders, after worrying for a second that the move was too forceful.

  The scarf she was holding slunk to the floor as her hands crawled around my neck and she kissed me back. Two steps forward for me, backward for her, and she was against the wall and I was against her.

  “We can’t,” she said. “We—have—to find—”

  “It can wait two minu—”

  She pulled my mouth back to hers. Or five.

  Something was different about the way she touched me. Infectious excitement transferred from her fingertips, and for the first time I became excited about finding the other descendants—despite the risk of the attic being opened—if it made her this happy.

  Just as my hands began to travel up from her waist, electronic dings on my phone sounded. Instead of stopping, the alarm just made the kisses more aggressive, as if just a few more seconds would be enough.

  With an almost-groan, I pulled away. “Time’s up,” I whispered in her ear, with heavier breath and tighter pants than when we’d started. In a poof, I took crow form and flew out the door.

  Because nothing save magic was going to get me to walk away from kissing her.

  Downstairs in the double parlor we’d dubbed the “blue room,” Désirée was already preparing for the spell. Our things had been moved to the side, and pillows now surrounded the map. Incense burned from an oyster shell, herbs floated in a bowl of water, and candles awaited Adele’s flame. There was a small pile of objects next to one of the pillows, including an antique globe, a sharp ivory letter opener, a lace blanket or shawl, or something, and a stack of sheet music that had seen better days.

  “She was a musician, right?” I asked, sitting on the floor. “Cosette?”

  “Yeah, tutor to the queen, if I remember correctly.”

  “She was,” Adele said from the doorway, holding a round hatbox brimming with objects. Her hair was a little tousled from where my fingers had run through it, making me want to pull her into my lap. “There were so many cool things up there, I wanted to take them all.”

  Of course she did. Adele loved old things.

  She knelt by the map and laid down each item as if it was precious. I knew she was purposefully trying not to look at me so she wouldn’t blush. Adding my loot to the pile, I brushed my hand against hers, just so I could see the tiny smile spread across her lips.

  They settled on the pillows, and I opened my grimoire to the location-spell page: an island scene, presumably Susannah’s home in Bermuda, but then again, who knew how long she’d spent on that pirate ship and how many beaches she’d seen. The drawing was one of my favorites: a cave in the bottom-right corner, dark but surrounded by glistening pools of water and rock formations baking in the sunlight.

  I wonder if we’ve ever been to any of the same places in the Caribbean? Seen any of the same shorelines?

  The greens in the water bled into blues, which bled into the pinks and purples in the sun-setting sky, over which her words scrolled. Watercolor wasn’t a medium I’d given much thought to before, but seeing how much Susannah seemed to love it had made me start to love it too.

  Dee placed the first object, a jeweled brooch from Adele’s collection, into the center of the circle. We joined hands, and flames grew from the candles. Palms in palms, I said the words out loud, inserting our intention.

  The owner of this object we must find.

  Through streets and streams we will wind.

  The Monvoisins were once three,

  The owner of this object, reveal her to me.

  Let this map be our guide,

  So she can no longer hide.

  They joined on the second repetition, and the feather stood on its point. A wave of energy rushed the room, sweeping across our shoulders, bringing volume to our voices, but that was it—four more verses, and it never moved again.

  “The brooch wasn’t hers,” I said as the feather rested back on its side.

  The result was no different when we repeated the spell on the globe.

  We went through the rest of their objects until our throats were dry and our palms sweaty. Disappointment c
rept over both of them.

  Dee started to lean back.

  I fished the necklace out of the pocket of my jeans. “My turn!”

  “What is it?” asked Adele.

  I dropped it into her palm. “It’s a necklace, like Désirée’s bracelet.”

  Dee scoffed. “This,” she said of the thick silver chain around her wrist, “is Tiffany.”

  “Whatever,” I said. “They both have hearts.”

  The necklace began to vibrate in Adele’s hand, and then the heart opened up, revealing a compartment with a salve inside.

  “Lipstick?” I asked.

  She brought it to her nose. “Perfume, I think.”

  “Don’t touch that,” said Dee. “In case it’s not just perfume. We are in a witch’s house after all.”

  Adele snapped it closed. “Noted.”

  She gently set it next to the oyster shell with the incense, and we joined hands again.

  Before we finished the first lines of the chant, a loud boom exploded and everything went completely dark. Our hands gripped tighter as we repeated the lines. Two tiny flames rose from the candles in front of each of Adele’s knees. Her smile spread, and the flames grew.

  I followed her gaze to the middle of the map—Susannah’s feather was standing upright on the tip. In the center of Jackson Square.

  The words flowed from our lips, and the feather began to shake. It felt like the whole room did.

  Then the feather slid directly in front of the cathedral.

  Adele’s hand squeezed mine so tight I thought she might snap the little bones in her fingers. The chant turned over, and the feather jerked down Chartres Street, toward Esplanade Avenue, and then there was another boom and the candles blew out again, the darkness cloaking the location.

  Our hands released.

  Adele relit all the wicks in the room, of which there were plenty, and we hovered over the map. The feather was lying back down, but the tip was resting on a very particular place. Chartres Street at the corner of Ursuline.

  “The convent?” Adele whispered. “That can’t be right.”

  We all sat back.

  “We must have done something wrong,” said Dee.

  The speed at which my pulse raced didn’t make me think we’d done anything wrong, but we did the spell three more times to satisfy Désirée’s perfectionist tendencies.