The Romeo Catchers

by Arden, Alys

  Wind rustled through the leaves, and the lingering silence was far too definitive for my liking. Blood dripped from a nearby hedge, not far from a crumpled body of a guy my age.

  Adele.

  I soared up to the attic and shot straight through a window, high into the rafters, anticipating starving vamps. No one lurked below in the dark room, but the floor was covered in scattered objects: chains, broken statues, and stacks of long wooden boxes, several of them smashed. The casquette girls.

  Something about the stillness of the air told me the signs of struggle weren’t fresh. This was what remained of Adele’s fight Halloween night.

  No vampires, no blood. No Adele.

  The attic’s clear.

  I swooped down and out the door, clearing the room where we’d slept on the blankets, the storage room, and the hallway, slowing only when I got to the door at the stairs.

  The padlock was blown to bits on the floor, but that’s not what concerned me. A girl’s whimpering floated up from down below.

  I hesitated, wondering if I should take human form, to be more prepared to fight, but then I pumped my wings, tipped to the side, and soared around the curve of the staircase toward the whimpers. The source was on the second landing. I stopped heavily on the stairway bannister above, scrabbling to hold my perch.

  His blond hair was so disheveled, and so stained red, he was almost unrecognizable from his usual movie-star-looking self.

  Gabe paused without detaching his mouth from the woman’s throat and peered up to me like a wild animal deciding whether the next hunt was worth giving up the current catch. The woman’s hair was too light to be Adele’s. My chest nearly exploded with relief.

  Even with his jaw clamped, he still managed to smile, and I fought the instinct to dive into him and peck out his eyes. He started drinking again all while holding the stare, daring me to turn, daring me to try to take him.

  She whimpered again, and I knew I should drop down and help her. There was another body behind him. A guy—dead. He’d kill this woman too if I didn’t do something. I thought about the stake strapped to my ankle.

  Then I imagined Adele lying on another staircase with one of his brothers attached to her neck.

  I took off again, beating my wings to pick up speed.

  And that woman would die because of it.

  I took the next curve sharply to gain momentum. At the bottom of the stairs, I’d have to decide—a right turn down the hallway toward the classrooms, or stay straight and go out the back door into the gardens. But when I got to the bottom, a clicking sound, like nails against the floor, drew my attention. Then two sharp, assertive barks.

  Stormy?

  Her yelps went wild when she saw me, and she darted down the hall to the left—toward a trace of cold—the sensation of death rippled through my feathers, pulling me, needing me. No. No. I zoomed left and soared out into the dark hallway.

  Does she know where Adele is?

  One hallway led to another that was tunnel-like. Stormy gained speed, and I matched her. We ducked through a doorway into a cavernous space, where her barks bounced hard off the marble floors. We’d entered the church from a side entrance near the altar. Where is Adele? I flew straight up, pumping my wings, and circled high above, avoiding the chains that hung from the gold-painted ceiling suspending the light fixtures.

  Observe.

  I swooped long. The alcove behind the altar was painted with clouds carrying horn-blowing angels through a bright-blue sky. The walls glittered gold with gilded crucifixes and other Catholic paraphernalia. On the far opposite end was the street entrance, over which was a mezzanine choir loft—it was dark and empty except for the huge pipe organ. On the long walls in between, moonlight glowed through tall stained-glass windows onto statues of saints.

  Stormy’s barks continued to echo up to the ceiling along with voices . . . tiny voices, and faint clapping. Shining through an enormous circular stained-glass window above the choir loft, a moonbeam spotlight illuminated two little girls who were sitting on the marble floor in the center aisle. What the hell are kids doing here? The girls were slapping their hands together in a singsong game. Their voices drifted up to me.

  See, see my playmate,

  Come out and play with me

  I swooped lower, getting a better look at the girl leading the song, and answered my own question. Celestina. Her black curls spilled down her baby-blue dress all the way to the floor, and the words floated sweetly out of her thin lips, to a smaller girl in a yellow dress who giggled with delight as they slapped their hands in time with the rhyme.

  There was something about her giggle that made me circle to see her face. I nearly lost bird form midflap.

  Jade.

  It was as if she’d stepped out of my dreams—a smaller version of Rosalyn, her two tiny puffs of hair tied up with yellow ribbons that matched her dress. She appeared no less real than Celestina.

  Stormy circled them, eyes on Celestina, a low growl grumbling from her throat.

  Adapt.

  I swooped down and dropped to my feet a few yards away, stunned.

  It’s not Jade, Isaac. Jade is dead.

  The little girl looked at me, giggling, and then repeated the words back to Celestina:

  And we’ll be jolly friends

  Forever evermore

  I stepped closer. “She’s not your friend, Jade.”

  “Hi, Isaac,” Celestina said, looking up at me, her blue eyes as piercing and bright as her voice. “Do you want to play too? I can teach you. We can all play.” Nothing in her tone indicated anything other than sweetness and purity. Nothing was mocking. Nothing sinister. Yet chills pricked up my spine.

  They began slapping their hands together again.

  I had an overwhelming urge to get both of them out of there, away from the vampires and whatever the hell else might be lurking in this place. “What are you doing, Celestina?” I asked, unable to keep my eyes off Jade.

  The last time I’d seen her, I was handing her limp, waterlogged body off to a marine. I reached out and touched her shoulder, my hand pressing into her skin and bone.

  Again, she turned to me and giggled.

  “This can’t be real. Jade is dead.”

  “Of course Jade is dead, silly! But she’s still my friend. Callis says I can’t drink her. He’ll be mad if I do. He said I had to wait until you got here.” Celestina gazed at me. “Are you going to drink her?”

  Drink her? What the fuck?

  “Are you going to share?” she asked. “Sharing is nice. I love you, Isaac.”

  “Y-you do?”

  “My brother says you’re our hero. We were starving before we met you because spirits are hard to find, but you can see all the ghosts, and you bring us straight to them. Are we going to drink her now?”

  “No. No one is going to drink Jade.”

  Her sweet little doll face morphed into the scowl of a rabid animal. “I’m hungry!” she screamed, and then let out a shriek that made me take a couple steps back.

  Footsteps pounded closer from the back hallway. “Celestina!” Callis yelled frantically, bursting in from the doorway near the altar.

  His worry turned to a smile when he saw me. “Very good job, Stina. You’ve found Isaac.”

  “Now can I have dinner?”

  “Not yet, darling, but soon.”

  She squealed with delight, stood up, and skipped in a circle around Jade, singing the song again.

  My dollies have the flu.

  Boo hoo boo hoo

  Stormy crouched low to the ground, snarling.

  In between singing the phrases, Celestina took deep breaths—unnaturally deep breaths.

  Jade began to flicker away, her head pulling toward Celestina like she was being plunged.

  “No!” I yelled, throwing my hand toward them. A gust of wind lifted Jade up and carried her across the room and into the arms of a statue high on a pedestal—a woman holding a book and a skull.

  “No!�
�� Celestina screamed, chasing after her, with Stormy nipping at her heels.

  Jade wrapped her arms around the statue’s purple-robed shoulders and stared back at us, looking both scared and delighted. Celestina reached the statue and jumped up trying to grab Jade’s feet, but Jade climbed higher and sat on the statue’s shoulders.

  I looked back to Callis, who was now sitting on the long altar table, keenly watching me.

  “It’s fascinating,” he said. “Celestina can see Jade, but no other spirits. It must be some kind of child connection. If I could only get it to extend to full-grown ghosts, I wouldn’t need you.”

  “What the hell does she mean drink Jade?”

  “She’s a growing witchling, Isaac; she needs sustenance.”

  My gaze flicked back and forth between him and the girls. “What did you do to Julie? And Alessandro?”

  “We did nothing more than what’s natural for witches with the right Spektral powers—well, supernatural, if you will.” He smiled at his own joke.

  “There’s nothing natural about witches drinking ghosts. It’s subnatural.”

  He leaned forward, gripping the table. “You can choose to see it that way, or you could just call it evolution. The natural pecking order. Ghosts are food for the Animarum Praedators.”

  I charged the altar, ready to knock the smug smile from his face. “You sound just like one of them. The vampires! No regard for life!”

  “We live off ghosts! Ghosts are not living.”

  “They have souls!”

  “Pfft. Witches of this generation are so sensitive. I don’t know who’s worse, you or Adele. Ghosts are dead, and vampires are monsters!”

  “Where is Adele?” I yelled, grabbing him at the collar. I twisted and threw him down the altar steps.

  “Have you already given up on Jade’s soul?” he said, smiling and propping himself up. “That’s not very heroic of you.” He laughed, his gaze moving over my shoulder.

  I quickly looked back. Celestina was climbing the statue as if it were a tree.

  My boot went to his chest, slamming him back down, and with my right hand, I directed a stream of air, pinning him to the floor.

  “Air witch,” he said. “I’ve always wanted Air powers. The whole flying thing.”

  As he struggled to get out from under the current of wind, rambling about my powers, I concentrated on the street outside: the trees rustling, and the flag blowing in the breeze. I yanked my free hand, and an enormous gust of wind slammed open the church doors as I pulled it in. My arm whipped to the statue, and the air ripped the ceramic skull from the saint’s hand and shot it straight into my palm.

  I let that little girl die once already—I would not let this deranged witch drink her ghost and turn her soul into a parasite. I bobbed the skull in my palm a couple times, immediately grabbing Stormy’s attention. It wasn’t a tennis ball, but it would have to do.

  With one swoop of air, I brought Jade to the ground in the center aisle and hurled the ceramic skull past her out the door. Stormy tore after it, and Jade ran after her furry friend, and they both blinked out before they crossed the threshold. Back to the spirit world? The Ninth Ward? I didn’t know, but anywhere was better than here for a ghost currently.

  Enraged, Celestina knocked over a collections box. I dragged Callis to his feet and shoved him up against the wall. “I hope you have backup dinner plans.”

  “I’m curious, Isaac,” he said, his tone still light considering how tight I was holding him. “How do you think those vampires got free? Did Adele’s death break the curse, or did she open the attic for her beloved Niccolò? If she’s alive, where do you think they are now? Run off together under the stars?”

  My fist smashed into his mouth so hard I lost my grip and staggered back a couple steps.

  His teeth lined with blood as he adjusted his jaw and spat on the floor. “And that’s why you should join my coven—to fight with me against them. I know your hatred for Niccolò Medici runs as deep as mine. I made a very sensible offer to Adele, but she just doesn’t seem to understand that witches and vampires don’t mix.”

  I grabbed him again and shook him hard. “You’re not drinking Jade, and you’re not taking Adele.”

  “Too late.” A flame rose out of his palm. Celestina’s tantrum stopped at the sight of the fire, and all went silent as I stared at the flame. “I already took her magic.”

  I dropped him to the floor, startled by the sight of his Fire. Her Fire. “If you hurt her . . .”

  The flame extinguished. “Again, Callis! Again!” Celestina yelled, clapping.

  He took his time standing up, brushing off his clothes, lamenting a torn sleeve. I knew he was purposefully trying to set me off.

  “Where is she?” I said through gritted teeth. “You got what you wanted: the Medici!”

  He carefully rolled the cuff of his shirt. He had about five more seconds before I pounded him. “Screw this.” I turned to leave. I was wasting seconds that for all I knew were precious.

  “And now I want something else,” he said, his voice steady. “I’ve recently gotten into collecting old books, and I hear you have a rather rare one from the Norwood family collection. One of the occult variety.”

  “You will never get anything of my family’s.” I turned back, swinging, but this time his knee launched into my stomach. I stumbled back, breathless.

  “Then I guess we’re going to have to do this the hard way, Isaac.”

  His hand flung out, like when Adele was throwing a fireball, but instead of unleashing fire, he yanked his hand back again—and I felt a tug at my chest. I tried to back away, but it was like an invisible fist was clenching my insides.

  “I told you, I always wanted Air power.”

  The invisible fist clinched tighter. He wasn’t throwing magic.

  He was pulling my Air.

  Celestina squealed, skipping up the center aisle as the siphon dragged me a step forward. I clutched at my chest, grinding my heels into the marble floor. “There is no chance in hell you are taking my magic, Callis.”

  “And how are you going to stop me?”

  Without thinking, my hand shot toward Celestina. She erupted with giggles as a twist of wind took her up through the dark shadows to the cavernous ceiling.

  Callis kept tugging at my chest, pulling away my magic.

  “If you take my power,” I yelled over the wind, “your sister drops to her death. She may be an Animarum Praedator, but she’s still made of blood and bone like the rest of us!”

  Fear flicked in his eyes before he managed to play it cool.

  “Where the hell is Adele!”

  “Adele’s a traitor!” Celestina yelled from the moonlit twister. “She helped the witch slayers! She should be burned!”

  I turned back to Callis. “Keep siphoning if you want to see your sister splattered all over the marble floor!”

  “You’ll never do it! You’re too much of a hero to kill a little girl, or to kill anything!”

  A loud crash caused us both to turn—a woman’s limp body spilled over the balcony from the choir loft, a freestanding candle rack impaling her as she smashed onto the marble floor.

  “But I’m not,” Emilio said. He leaped off the balcony and landed next to the corpse, crouched over like an animal, fingertips to the ground. The stained-glass moonlight speckled across his face like a kaleidoscope. His jaw was covered in blood.

  He was there and then he wasn’t.

  In a blink, he pummeled into me, sending me crashing into the gilded tabernacle. Chalices of communion wafers, a cross, and a Bible fell on top of me.

  “Stina!” Callis screamed as his sister plummeted.

  Knocking off the Catholic props, I flung up another gust to catch her. She shot back up and into the choir loft.

  Her eruption of giggles echoed down to us. “Again! Again!”

  Emilio looked to me and then Callis, licking his lips. “It’s like Christmas and my birthday in one.”

  I
scrambled to my feet as he stalked straight to me. I’d fantasized about the day Callis and I would take Emilio down together as fellow witches, but instead, just as Emilio neared—a killer’s glint shining in his eyes—I yanked a gust of wind and jerked Callis in front of me. Blood sprayed across my face as Emilio tore savagely into his neck instead of mine.

  Fireballs rose from Callis’s palms, and he slapped them into both sides of Emilio’s face. Emilio’s eyes tightened with pain, and his throat filled with grunts as his skin singed, but his jaw only clamped down harder on Callis’s neck, blood oozing from his lips.

  Psycho.

  Celestina’s shrieks echoed throughout the church, and she spewed words at Emilio that even I wouldn’t utter as she ran down the metal spiral stairs.

  As Emilio sucked Callis’s life away, his glare told me that I better start running. I backed away, not wanting to take bird form so close to Emilio that he could snatch me.

  “Isaac,” Callis choked. “Help me, witch.”

  “Help yourself,” I spat. “It’s just the natural pecking order, right? The food chain.”

  Through the cacophony of Emilio’s grunts, Celestina’s shrieks, and Callis’s dying words, a girl’s screams sliced through the musty air. Adele.

  Dominate.

  I tore back through the hallway and into the convent toward her voice, arms pumping.

  Hold on. I’m coming. Hold on.

  CHAPTER 46

  Ma mère

  The walls rumbled, like cyclopses were stomping around the building, but that was all I could feel. Darkness and cyclops footsteps and the cool stone floor against my cheek. I couldn’t move.

  Chaos hummed in the distance, echoing down the halls, through the window from the gardens—from everywhere.

  I wondered if my phone was in my pocket. As I forced my eyes open, they felt unnaturally heavy, but then a glimpse of feet in the hallway made them pop open: someone walking past the doorway paused in the moonbeam that cut across the dungeon-like room. I knew from the Burberry print on the shoes that the feet belonged to Annabelle.

  My heart rate accelerated against the stone floor.