The Romeo Catchers

by Arden, Alys

  The phone rang. Désirée.

  “Did you get Adele’s message?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I tried calling her, but she didn’t pick up. Not that it’s totally unusual for her. Did you find Callis?”

  “No, just another preyed-upon Royal Street ghost. We need to get the coven together, now.”

  “That’s why I’m calling . . . I was starting to get worried, so I did the location spell on Adele, which of course didn’t work because of my badass gris-gris. But then I did it on Annabelle, and it showed her at . . . school.”

  “School, like the Ursuline convent?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “Why would she be there this late?”

  “I don’t know; that’s why I’m calling you.”

  “You go meet Adele at the brothel and see what’s up. I’ll swing over to the convent and find Annabelle. She better not have any funny ideas.”

  “Don’t worry, she won’t be able to undo our spells. The only thing that would happen if she broke the Monvoisin part of the curse is the vamps would get their memories back from that night.”

  “Still. See you in a few.” I went to hang up but then had one last thought. “Dee?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I thought you made Annabelle a gris-gris too?”

  “I did. But I may have left out the one extra ingredient that blocks the locator spell. After ten years of being besties with Annabelle Lee Drake, you know better than to ever trust her one hundred percent.”

  I hung up and stalked to the door, glass crunching under my feet.

  What the hell is going on in this town?

  The only thing certain was that a supernatural shitstorm was brewing.

  CHAPTER 44

  Animarum Praedator

  I ran down the dark stairs, trying not to make a sound, as if my footsteps might wake the slumbering vampires in the attic above. I hit the ground floor, wondering whether I should make a detour at Bottom of the Cup on the way to HQ, when a shadowy figure moved across the hall up ahead.

  I knew that perfect ponytail.

  “Wait!” I called out.

  She hesitated, and I could tell she was wondering whether turning to me or running away was the best move.

  I flashed my phone toward her. “Annabelle?”

  “Adele?” she said, turning around, extra surprise in her voice, a hand on her chest. “You scared me.” She hurried over and gave me a hug. “Everyone’s so worried. What are you doing here?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you, silly. Dee and Isaac are freaking out.” She flashed a stream of text messages up on her phone. “I told them I’d run over here and look since I had my car.”

  “Something’s going on,” I said. “We need to get back to HQ and make you official; then I’ll fill everyone in.”

  “Definitely! Everyone’s waiting for you to re-bind the coven.”

  I grabbed the front door handle, still not used to using my magic in front of someone other than Dee or Isaac.

  “Not that way.” She pointed to the back door. “My car’s in the student lot.”

  “Fine. Let’s hurry.”

  I paused as we stepped into the pitch-black courtyard; her hand lightly touched my back to urge me on.

  It might have just been the chill in the air, but something felt off. A shadow moved out on the grass. I grabbed her arm. “Annabelle,” I whispered, “I don’t think we’re alone.”

  “Of course you’re not alone, love.” Callis. Sounding disturbingly creepy in the dark. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  We? “Funnily enough, Callis, you’re just the person I wanted to see.”

  “He is?” Annabelle asked.

  “Well then, it’s fate who has brought us together.”

  Fate or Nicco . . .

  I lifted my hands out to the sides and quickly folded my fingers flat against my palms. Flames erupted in the two dormant fountains, one on each side of the courtyard.

  Callis was standing in the center of the arc of statues, on the grassy patch where our crew had hung out on the first day of school. A circle of unlit candles surrounded the whole patch. He turned to the fountain on the right. “And that is precisely why we’ve been waiting for you.”

  I don’t like this. Not one little bit.

  “I’ll get you a box of matches for your birthday.”

  “Oh, it’s not just any fire we’re interested in. It’s your fire.”

  Again with the “we.”

  “I just don’t understand why she’s so special,” Annabelle said, looking at me.

  “That makes two of us.” Out of the laundry list of people who had come into my life since the Storm, Callis was officially of the variety I didn’t want to be special to. Especially now—the way he was tenderly looking at me creeped me out.

  “I don’t want to fight, Adele. I have a proposition for you—”

  “In a circle of candles behind a convent at night? How romantic, but I think you might be a little too old for me.”

  His arms folded, and a smile crossed his lips, like he was glad I’d figured something out. But what had I figured out?

  “Age is relative,” he said. “You of all people should know that, consorting with vampires.”

  “When were you born, Callis?”

  “July twenty-ninth. Leo. It was a dark and stormy night . . .”

  “What year?”

  “Fifteen seventy? Fifteen seventy-five? Give or take a year or two. It starts to blur after the first two centuries.”

  I gave him a long, hard look. I didn’t want to go against a fellow witch, but now that I was physically standing in between him and the attic—between him and my mother—I didn’t want to play games either. This was as far as Nicco could get me, and now I was on my own.

  Well, almost on my own. I looked at Annabelle, then back to Callis.

  “You’re older than Nicco, then,” I said evenly, laying my first card on the table.

  His face seemed to tighten, but he returned my gaze. “So Niccolò is the one you’ve been protecting? Figures. I wasn’t sure, though. Emilio does have that bad-boy thing that all the girls love these days, right?”

  “I don’t know, Nicco didn’t seem like much of an angel when he was whispering threats in your ear at that twisted dinner party.”

  “And how did Niccolò Medici tell you about that if he’s trapped in an attic, slumbering—ah, of course. The dreamscape. That’s why you think your Spektral power is something as vapid as dream magic. You really should spend less time with the Daures before your magic becomes as soft as theirs.”

  “A mighty big statement coming from a Fire witch with no Fire—”

  “How adorable that you’ve been dream-twinning with Niccolò. Does Isaac know you’re in love with him?”

  I didn’t so much as blink. “There’s nothing to know.”

  “There’s always something to know when it comes to the Medici. Especially Niccolò. That vampire has more secrets than the Mafia and the Illuminati combined.”

  “Sounds to me like you were up to something back then. Emilio said you were after their blood.”

  “It started with revenge back then, just like it’s going to end with revenge now.”

  “I don’t care what it started with; it’s not ending with this convent.” The medallion shook against Nicco’s flannel shirt, and a Tigress I hadn’t known lived inside me emerged with a deep-throated growl, scaring away any last hints of the doe-eyed Ingénue.

  “Well, Adele, that depends on you. But first it’s my turn to ask a question: I know why the Medici are after me . . . Why are they after you?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Isn’t that obvious? Anything, or anyone, the Medici would go to such great lengths chasing must be very valuable to them. And anything of value to them—”

  “Oh, so valuable. A witch with no Spektral powers, as you were so kind to point out, and no magical family, and no grimoire.”
<
br />   He strolled over, only stopping when he was practically toe to toe with me. “But a witch who has budding telekinesis, and who has managed to get into Niccolò Medici’s head . . . or his heart. I’m not sure which would take more talent.” He paused. “Or which would be scarier.”

  His hand went to my jaw; I pushed it away.

  “You underestimate yourself.” He placed a hand on Annabelle’s shoulder. “You both do.”

  When Annabelle didn’t shrug him off, I pulled her closer. The way she was smiling at him made me think she didn’t understand the level of creepiness we were dealing with here.

  “Who are you, Callis? Why are you really after the Medici?”

  “I’ve already told you, Adele. Those self-righteous, lordly pricks burned our grimoire and destroyed my coven—my family. They got us excommunicated from the entire witching world! But now, finally, they’ll pay for what they did all those centuries ago.”

  “How are you so old?” I asked, thinking about the Count and his possible immortal-witch status.

  “Our Spektral power was the only thing that even the Medici couldn’t take from us, although I’m sure they thought it drained along with our Elemental magic when they buried us alive and left us for dead. It allowed us certain means to maintain longevity—it was the only thing that saved us in the sixteenth century, and it’s the only thing that will bring us back to power now.”

  “Nicco was a toddler in the sixteenth century, and I know Emilio is tough, but a child? Come on.”

  “Their father wasn’t a child. This family feud predates even your precious Niccolò—but enough history; let’s move on to the future.” The cold glint in his eye vanished, but his smile remained unsettling. “I know you didn’t grow up in a magical family, Adele, so maybe you don’t understand how the magical universe protects itself. Once a witch is stripped of his or her magical elements, it’s permanent. They say it’s impossible to get your magic back . . . and yet, we are about to prove them wrong.”

  I shrank back a little. Something about the way he said “we” made me understand that I was a part of whatever he had planned. Don’t let him intimidate you.

  From the corner of my eye, I glanced at the gate to the parking lot, judging whether we could make a dash for it—not that I’d leave Nicco and my mother unprotected, but Annabelle could get away and go get Isaac and Dee. I looked at her, wondering if she could use some Monvoisin coercion on Callis, or was he still enough of a witch to remain unsusceptible?

  She must have had the same idea, because she had that look: the one I always imagined on Cosette right before she went all witchy-badass. Sexy eyes and a slight smile, and she was looking straight at Callis. So this is what it was coming down to—the Tigress and the Femme Fatale. Me and Annabelle.

  My fingers tingled with anticipation, ready to ignite if things went south.

  “A witch’s power is strongest within its coven,” he said, “but in order to bind a coven, you must possess a grimoire, and in order to invoke the magic of the grimoire, you must have your Elemental powers. Do you see the conundrum? The Medici have taken all of those things from me, but tonight I’m getting them back.” He looked at Annabelle and then to me. “And if the Medici are after you for the reason I suspect, then I may be getting back even more.”

  “Care to enlighten me as to what the hell you are talking about?”

  “Care to join my coven?”

  All I could do was laugh, because the notion was so ridiculous.

  He smiled wider and walked back to his spot in the center of the circle. “If you stand with us, I’ll tell you everything you want to know—more than you could even imagine about magic, about witches, and how we’re going to become the most powerful coven in the world. You’ll learn everything. Coven members don’t have secrets.”

  “I’ve gotten pretty far excavating secrets on my own.”

  “I’ll bet you have, darling. It’s one of the reasons I know we’re meant to be together—magically speaking, that is. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First the grimoire.”

  “I don’t have a grimoire, Callis, I’m no use to you!”

  “I wasn’t talking to you.”

  Annabelle turned to me, beaming. “Me. He was talking to me.” She opened her enormous Hermès bag and pulled out a heavy book.

  The brothel ledger?

  “What the . . . ?” My fingers balled as the sparks flicked from my palms. She’d taken it from the house. I knew she was there this afternoon. I knew something was missing.

  Callis extended his hands. “You did have a grimoire, Adele. You were just too shortsighted to realize how an Aether’s grimoire hides itself.”

  Annabelle walked over to him with the book.

  “Annabelle! What are you doing?” I hurried after her, but she set the book down in his palms and placed her hands over it. “Don’t let him touch that if it’s really your grimoire! He’s not who he says he is.”

  “Focus,” he told her. “Just like we practiced.”

  Practiced?

  She closed her eyes, and her lips began to flutter, whispering words I couldn’t hear.

  “Annabelle! What are you doing? Stop!”

  The brothel-ledger illusion slipped away, revealing a book of an entirely different sort. The cover was still the same baby-blue leather, but it looked older and more worn, and hardly able to lie flat, because the pages were stuffed with so many extra things: papers, dried flowers, feathers.

  Annabelle opened her eyes and looked down, and the smile that appeared on her face was the most genuine thing ever worn by Annabelle Lee Drake—the ecstatic bliss of a cult member who’s found her new home.

  She flung her arms around Callis’s neck, and he hugged her back, still holding her grimoire with one hand and gently petting the back of her head with the other.

  I just stood there like a broken toy, mute and in shock.

  When she finally released him, he reached up to stroke her cheek, and I swore for a second he was going to kiss her. “See,” he said. “I told you, you underestimate yourself.”

  And then he did kiss her, on the forehead, with a look that might have meant there was more to come.

  “Annabelle,” I said in a low voice, “get away from him!”

  She looked back at me, and the corner of her mouth crooked, letting me know that she wasn’t some brainwashed child to pity. She’d known exactly what she was doing the entire time.

  She played me.

  She played all of us.

  “We just needed my family’s grimoire to bind our coven, but I told Callis I could get the Medici’s location out of you too. You didn’t even make me work for it, Adele. You just let me right in. Or maybe it was your boyfriend who was so keen to have me?” She battered her eyelashes my way.

  More sparks shot from my fingers; this time I didn’t bother balling my hands.

  His arms slid around her waist, and he lowered his head next to hers, neither of their eyes leaving me. “You did very good, darling,” he said to her.

  I couldn’t tell if he wanted to kiss her neck or slice her throat.

  A stocky man approached from one of the side buildings. He had dark hair tied back in a long ponytail. “Callis, this is a bad idea. We don’t need Aether magic in the coven. We’ll find another way.”

  Annabelle’s sly smile turned stern. She broke away from Callis and took a couple steps toward him. “If it weren’t for this Aether witch, you wouldn’t be about to get your magic back, because you wouldn’t have a grimoire to bind your coven. And you still wouldn’t know where your enemy is!”

  “Annabelle, are you insane?” I shouted. “You can’t join his coven.”

  “I can join yours; I can join his. Nothing’s changed, Adele. I’m just the same popular girl I’ve always been.”

  “You have something he needs—that’s it. You can’t trust him! Let’s get out of here, now. We can forget this ever happened.” As if.

  “Let me see. I could go with you to
join a mixed-magic high school coven with two girls who don’t even have their Maleficiums, or I could join the ranks of one of the most powerful covens in the history of witchcraft. Hmm. Tough choice.”

  “Most powerful? Callis doesn’t have enough Elemental magic to light a candle; how is he going to bind a coven?”

  She walked right up to me and got in my face. “You’re right.” She grabbed my arm and jerked me to her side, gripping me so fiercely it sent chills up my spine. “We do need more Fire magic.”

  Fear washed over me as the severity of whatever I’d gotten myself into came crashing down. This time I didn’t have Nicco at my side, and I didn’t have potion-powered witches at my back, weakening my enemies with magic and casting protection spells. I ripped my arm away, Annabelle’s fingernails scraping into my skin.

  “Come, now, Annabelle, don’t hurt her,” Callis said, walking closer.

  My palms lit up. “You can’t force me to join your coven; that’s not how it works.” I looked left and right in search of some magical assistance.

  He smiled. “You won’t find any metal back here, Adele. I’ve made sure of it.”

  “I hope you removed it all from a three-block radius,” I spat, vowing to learn how to fight sans magic, starting tomorrow.

  He stopped right in front of me. “What have they done to you, love? Even at such a young age, you are clearly an extraordinary witch. No doubt descended from one of the greats. I can see that—I can see all of your potential, and I can help you realize it. Yet you choose the side of those who think of you as nothing but a meal? The side of the monsters. The side you know has been chasing your family through the centuries, just like they’ve been chasing me. Niccolò Medici is nothing more than a predator that needs to be taken down. He’s twisted your head. I promise, when he gets what he’s after, you will be his reward. Every last drop of your blood will be his reward.”

  He brushed the loose hair from my face; I swatted his hand away again and looked him straight in the eye. “I’m not joining your coven, and I’m not betraying Nicco.”