The Romeo Catchers

by Arden, Alys

  After the third repetition, Adele sat back. “No more. I think I know what’s throwing it off.”

  Dee and I both looked up.

  “Vampires. Or one vampire, to be exact. Lisette Monvoisin.”

  “Ugh! Do you think that’s possible?” asked Dee. It was the first time she’d ever asked our opinion on something magical.

  “I—I don’t know,” said Adele. “Lisette’s not a witch anymore, but she’s not exactly dead either. Maybe somehow she’s muddling the magic, making the spell think she’s the next ancestor and blocking us from getting to the magical descendant?”

  “Makes sense,” Dee said. “Unfortunately.”

  “One more reason to burn the attic,” I said, only half joking. Neither of them laughed.

  Adele stood up and walked to the other side of the room.

  I quietly sighed, got up, and followed her to the sliding pocket doors. She’d paused at the archway, looking up at the carving in the center—various pieces of fruit, surrounding a pineapple.

  “L’ananas,” she said. “A symbol of welcome. They were given to plantation guests upon arrival, but if you ever came back to your room and found a second pineapple, you knew you’d overstayed your welcome.” She looked back at me. “Southern passive-aggressiveness at its finest.”

  “Man, you know some random things.” And she did—especially about New Orleans—and every strange fact she knew dripped with her love for the city.

  “I wish I knew how to find our next descendant.”

  I squeezed her shoulder. “We’ll find him.”

  “Him?”

  “He’s a guy; I can feel it.”

  She laughed. “Okay, Madame Morgana.”

  “Who’s Madame Morgana?”

  “Just someone I used to know.”

  Because kids who grew up in New Orleans knew people named Madame Morgana, and by sixteen were old enough to not know them anymore.

  She leaned her head back onto my shoulder, and my hand slid around her waist. “You know I was just joking back there.”

  “Oui.”

  “Then why does it bother you?”

  Her head turned slightly so she could see me. “I don’t know. I’m just scared you’re going to do something stupid one day.”

  “Me do something stupid?” My fingers began poking her ribs, and I pulled her closer so I could use both hands.

  “Noooooooo!” She hated being tickled, but I loved hearing her laugh. Unable to get away, she buckled, laughing in protest and pulling me down to the floor with her.

  I loved hearing her laugh, but I hated that I was now thinking about the attic. I hated wondering if Adele was thinking about the attic too. I wanted to know if every time she thought about the attic, she thought about Nicco . . . like I did.

  CHAPTER 14

  Marked

  “We never saw stars before the Storm,” Adele said, all of us gazing up at the twinkling sky. “Too many lights in the Quarter.”

  And then we were back to a much-needed silence after all the chanting and all the magic. The three of us were lying on the thick edge of an enormous fountain, the centerpiece of the garden, in the vine-covered courtyard. Adele and I head to head, Désirée lying on the other side of the circle, doing deep breathing exercises so that she didn’t spontaneously combust after all the failed magic.

  The fountain had three life-size girls in the center, all with long flowing hair, just like on the door upstairs, dancing, hands to the sky. I could imagine how angelic they’d look under the moonlight with the water spraying out from the top, dripping down over their bodies like rain. But now they were coated in algae and draped with moss, their toes dipped in black rainwater, like they’d been dancing in a storm of torment. There was still something beautiful about the natural decay in comparison to the blunt destruction reaped by the Storm at the sites I worked on every day.

  I tilted my head away from them, nearly knocking Adele’s. Despite all of the failed spellwork, excitement bloomed from her cheeks as she tapped out a message on her phone. I raised an eyebrow.

  “Telling my dad that I’m sleeping at Dee’s so we don’t have to stress about the curfew.”

  She smiled, and I wanted to kiss her.

  Adele hadn’t been particularly interested in magic ever since the incident in the attic, and at first I didn’t mind. It had given us the chance to hang out like normal people; plus, the less we talked about magic, the less we talked about vampires, and the less we talked about vampires, the less we fought. I’d been hoping, though, that she’d snap out of it after the funeral, because now that I’d been practicing so much on my own, there was nothing that I wanted more than to do magic with her.

  Well, almost nothing . . .

  And now she was rosy cheeked and lying to Mac so she could stay and do coven things.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  I’m definitely not wondering how hard it would be to sneak you on board the ship after curfew.

  “We didn’t smudge the house,” Désirée’s voice floated over to us. Adele shrugged when I looked at her in confusion. “No wonder the spell failed. Jesus.” Dee’s tone hardened. “If Gran was here, she’d kick me out all over again—”

  “Dee,” Adele said. “Explique, s’il te plaît.”

  “We didn’t cleanse the space of any unwanted hexes, jinxes, or otherwise negative energy. I can’t believe I let us do magic in here without a proper smudging. I’ll pick up the supplies tomorrow. No more magic until then.”

  I didn’t care if it was cleansed or uncleansed, I was quickly falling in love with this house after four months of living in a stainless steel box. We’d only been here for a few hours, and it was already feeling like ours.

  Désirée shot straight up, causing us both to sit up.

  “I want to do a séance. Contact the other side—find out what’s going on with the spirit world.”

  “Uh, Dee, you just said no more magic until further notice,” I reminded her.

  “Pfft. We’re not going to do the séance in the house.” She got up and headed toward the back door. “I’m going to get my stuff.”

  “Then where?”

  “The cemetery, obviously.”

  Adele and I both turned to each other with the same is she serious look.

  I couldn’t tell if the little orbs of light floating around us helped or if the shadows they created just made things creepier. Adele pushed the fireballs ahead, lighting the way through the rows of mausoleums, most of which looked about as old as the city.

  Dee and Adele both seemed totally comfortable walking through the graveyard in the middle of the night. Although one could hardly call it a graveyard, because there was no yard, just brick pathways between rows and rows of mausoleums, because people in New Orleans were buried above ground. I, on the other hand, was not into this. The air felt thicker and damper the deeper we went, until my bones felt like they were shivering under my skin. “Alert” hardly described my senses as we walked through the rows of the dead.

  Suck it up, Isaac.

  A loud metallic creak split the air, sending goose pimples through my flesh. It was just the gate of a rusted iron fence in front of one of the mausoleums, swinging in the breeze. Rock and shell crunched under our feet as we moved ahead; I tried not to think about bones.

  The mausoleums got bigger and bigger until they looked like miniature houses, guarded by cherubs and weeping angels and iron crosses. Some had glass windows so crusted with dust and grime you’d hardly know it was glass. A few appeared to have been tended to post-Storm—one had stained glass that reflected rainbow flecks when we walked past it with Adele’s fire, some were whitewashed, and one even had fresh flowers laid out in front. But many others were crumbling, or were not much more than piles of bricks.

  The only constant was the greenish-black line that ran across everything about chest high—the mark that showed exactly where the floodwater had sat before they were able to pump it out. We
were still within walking distance from the brothel, but a few blocks outside of the Quarter. Just outside of the protection spell’s border.

  “Jesus!” Adele yelped, stumbling backward into my chest.

  “What?” I held her steady.

  She directed the swarm of flames to the left of her feet. They hummed like fireflies over the broken lid of a breached coffin. “That is so not okay,” she said as she flicked a flame closer to the ground. She squeaked when it illuminated a skull sticking out of the smashed lid.

  “It’s just a bone,” Désirée said. She knelt, gently pushed the skull back into the coffin, and repositioned the lid as best she could. Then, as if it were just another day in the park, she reached into her bag and pulled out the bottle of homemade antiseptic and spritzed her hands, sending vanilla notes wafting into the foggy air.

  We moved on, but Adele hung back, her wide eyes not unnoticed by me.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing.”

  I wrapped my fingers into hers, hoping she’d tell me whatever it was.

  “Halloween night . . . Minette’s . . . skeleton was in one of the cassettes. Lisette hurled her sister’s skull into my stomach while we were fighting.”

  “Jesus.” I pulled her close and walked her away from the coffin.

  We followed Désirée between two mausoleums at the end of a row, to a patch of green in the back corner of the cemetery. The corner walls were covered with rows of oven tombs.

  “This should be good,” Désirée said, setting her bag down. “Adele, candles. Isaac, salt circle.”

  We both went to work.

  A few minutes later the three of us were sitting in a circle surrounded by salt and unlit white candles. Dee laid a silk scarf in the middle and then a flat piece of slate she’d scavenged. She handed us each a little pouch made of burgundy velvet. Mine was about four times bigger than the gris-gris but just as light as a sack of air, even though it was stuffed full.

  “Cup your stones,” she said. “Get them warm in your hands. Exchange your energy with them.”

  What?

  I poured the contents of the pouch into my hand: black stones, so light they felt like nothing.

  “Lava stone,” Dee said.

  “Pyrite?” Adele asked, holding up glittering chunks of gold.

  “Yes. And Jade for me.” Dee lifted up a palm of green stones before setting them aside so she could empty two more pouches. “Moonstone and rose quartz for our missing sisters.”

  “Or brothers,” I added.

  “Dream on,” she said, and placed her three piles of rocks in the middle of the circle. Adele and I did the same with ours and watched with wonder as she poured something that smelled like rum from a flask into a tin cup, placed it on a saucer, then unscrewed a fancy-looking thermos. “Sorry ancestors,” she said as she poured the coffee into a porcelain cup. “It’s from this morning. Adele will bring you a freshly brewed pot next time.” She ripped open four packets of artificial sweetener and poured them into a shell. “And real sugar.”

  I looked at Adele and mouthed, Next time?

  She shrugged. “Are we doing a séance, or having a tea party?”

  Adele joked when she was nervous. When Désirée didn’t give her the death stare, it made me wonder if she was nervous too, not an emotion I’d ever seen Désirée Borges exhibit.

  “Dee, what exactly are we doing?” I asked.

  Désirée opened Marassa’s grimoire on her lap. “I figure the best chance we have for success is contacting someone from my ancestral line.”

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “Because we’re surrounded by them.”

  In one whoosh, all of the candles around us lit up. We looked to Adele, who shrugged unapologetically.

  In the light, I could read the names on the mausoleums behind us. Many were etched BORGES, and the older-looking mausoleums had names like PARRISH, GLAPION, and ROCHE. Knowing we were surrounded by the skulls and bones of Désirée’s entire family line somehow made everything feel much more intense.

  “Now it’s just figuring out how far back to go,” said Dee.

  “How do we do that?” I asked.

  “I’m not totally sure.”

  “So we’re just going to cruise around your ancestral spirit graveyard and see who shows up?”

  “Pretty much. That’s what the offerings are for.” She added some cookies on a plate. They looked lumpy and homemade, but ten times better than the Hooah! bars I’d been eating for the last five months. She held out her hands, and we all joined together.

  Papa Legba, ouvrez la porte.

  Papa Legba, ouvrez la porte, open the door.

  I shut my eyes, listening to her repeat the chant. Désirée’s energy always changed when she wanted us to join in. You could feel it through her palms—like the magic was pulsing from her pores. It came in a wave: the cue, the squeeze. Adele and I joined in, and we repeated the chant three times.

  Open the door to the other side. Be our guide.

  A connection to my ancestors, I seek.

  So that I may get a peek

  Into the havoc that may have been wreaked.

  Papa Legba, open the door.

  As we chanted, the temperature dropped, not in one quick plunge, but with every line it got just enough colder to notice. Adele’s hand pulsed warmer in my palm.

  “Holy sh . . .” Désirée’s voice trailed.

  I opened my eyes and understood why.

  The stones were floating, some just inches above the ground, others at shoulder level. A smile spread over Désirée’s face as she poked a piece of lava stone that had begun to float too far away. It moved back into the circle.

  “Told you I have a Ouija board,” she said to Adele, then squeezed our hands and refocused on her chanting. The stones rose higher, as if pulled up by invisible strings.

  A breeze rushed around the circle, unnaturally cold.

  Our arms rippled as the wind whipped under them and over them. Désirée’s hand tightened in mine, and mine tightened around Adele’s, as the stones rattled against each other. The chant got faster, and then, as the two of us continued the chant, Désirée called out, “Is anyone there?”

  The stones moved around, and my pulse began to pound.

  Désirée rose slightly off her seat. “Is someone there?”

  The stones moved again, clumping together in specific formations.

  When she asked the question a third time, they dropped to the ground, falling into a pattern in front of Désirée. It was a three-letter word:

  OUI

  She squeezed my hand tighter. “Are we related by blood?”

  The rocks rose again, shifting formations, and fell down again, spelling out the same word.

  OUI

  “Can you tell us your name?”

  MARA

  Désirée got so jittery, I thought she was going to launch herself into the sky. “Marassa? Marassa Makandal?”

  OUI

  She regained her composure. “Marassa, is everything okay in your world?”

  This time the rocks shot up quickly and immediately fell back to the ground.

  NON

  Before Désirée could get the next question out, the rocks shot up and down again.

  NON NON NON NON

  They rose, scattered, and fell again.

  AIDEZ-MOI

  Désirée’s head whipped to Adele for translation.

  “Um. Help me.”

  “You need help?” Désirée asked. “Are you in danger?”

  NON

  “Who is in danger? Who needs help?”

  PROTÉGEZ LA

  Cold fingers slipped up my neck. I whipped around. There was no one there, but as soon as I faced forward, there it was again, slipping over my neck and down my chest—a hand so cold it felt like it had slid right through the thick hoodie fabric and was against my skin. “Isaac,” a voice said close to my neck.

  The breeze curled around m
y stiffening spine. “Isaac . . .”

  “Protégez la,” another voice whispered directly into my left ear, making me jolt away, but a new voice whispered my name into my right, and then more whispers came from behind. “Protégez la. Protégez la. Protégez la.”

  Neither Adele nor Désirée seem bothered at the slightest by the whispers and stayed focused on the stones as they rearranged themselves once more, banging themselves down just in case the message wasn’t clear.

  PROTÉGEZ LA

  The stones floated up again.

  “Protégez la, Isaac. Protégez la. Protégez la. Isaac. Isaac. Protégez la.”

  Our eyes rose and our necks craned as the voices floated high above our heads. Our hands still clasped in one another’s, the chant still slipped from our lips. The breeze picked up all around us, sending Adele’s hair whipping back. Voices—hundreds all around us, whispering the same thing over and over. Adele didn’t look frightened, but I was, and I wanted to stop. I wanted her to make it—“Stop!” I yelled.

  The cloud of stones exploded, and I yanked Adele into my lap, folding myself over her as the stones whipped past us, pelting against mausoleums, statues, and the wall of oven tombs.

  In the next moments, still bent over her back, and with my eyes tightly closed, everything felt starkly calm—other than Adele’s racing heart pounding against me.

  Quiet but cold. A lingering cold.

  Adele pushed us both up, her hair a bit wild from the wind, but not a strand of Désirée’s was out of place. I don’t think she’d even flinched.

  We stood up slowly, looking around.

  “Dammit,” Désirée said. “We were so close! What did it mean?”

  “Protect her,” Adele said. “Protégez la, protect her.”

  “Protect who?” Désirée asked. “That can’t be it. What does it mean?”

  Still breathing hard, I rested my hands on the back of my head. For some reason, controlling the wind and turning into a bird was a lot easier for me to deal with than talking to dead people.

  “What the?” Adele asked, getting up, looking out to the mausoleums. The stones hadn’t dropped to the ground: they were all floating against the targets they’d hit, like little glints of shine and shimmer. The pyrite especially gleamed against the monochromatic palate of tombs.