by Alys Arden
His eyes are a shade of blue almost as dark as a nighttime sky, nothing like the glassy, light green all four children of this house share. He has neither Gabriel’s sharp chin nor Emilio’s prominent nose, which has been broken so many times it now has a permanent crook.
“And what is so special about Florence, cugino mio?” León asks in perfect Italian, but with a hint of dialect I cannot place. “Is that what you spend your days writing about? The splendor of Tuscany?”
He reaches for my sonnet and begins dragging the paper across the desk with an interested eye, but I whip my dagger from its sheath and stab the page, straight in between two of his fingers.
Never breaking his gaze, I slowly drag the page back.
“You cut me,” he says, bringing his finger to his mouth.
“Sì. Stay out of my things, or next time you will lose a finger.”
“Of course, cousin,” he says, seemingly unaffected by the threat.
He strolls around the room, taking in each detail with equal scrutiny and fascination, and I detect an aura of entitlement. It is well hidden beneath a lifetime of armor, but I recognize it.
“Who are you?” I ask, genuine curiosity overtaking my suspicion. “Where are you from?”
He picks up the viola da gamba and pulls the bow slowly across the strings. I expect him to stop after the dramatic display, but instead he whips it back across the strings into a melody that sounds distinctly Spanish—Catalonian maybe. He plays with both confidence and ease, his body moving jovially with the instrument.
He ends the tune with a slight bow and sets the instrument down. He glances over at my sonnet, which now contains a second blotch from the droplet of his blood. “You have your secrets,” he says, his tone almost playful, “and I have mine.”
I relax into the chair as he moves to pick up the mandola. Instead of plucking the strings, he flips the instrument over and pats the back of the gourd.
Thump-thump.
Again he slaps the hollow cavern with his hand.
Thump-thump.
The room starts to spin. Léon looks directly at me and begins to laugh.
No. This is not how it happened. León did not laugh at me.
His image blurs, and his voice grows distant, as if he’s a mile away, but the drumbeat becomes louder. I hold my head, and my blurred vision becomes gray; the gray is swallowed into black. I blink, but there is only blinding darkness.
Thump-thump.
I cry out to León but hear nothing in return. I no longer hear even the sound of my own voice. The muscles in my throat move, but I get nothing back other than an all-encompassing, senses-destroying obsidian.
Thump-thump.
In the silence between the beats, the sound of water rushes like a river.
I am no longer fourteen.
I am no longer in Florence.
I am lying on my back in a very small space.
I command my fist to punch through the cassette, but I cannot move. It’s as if my body is full of sand. I cannot even open my eyes.
Magic.
I cling to the moment of consciousness, now remembering it won’t last long.
Thump-thump.
Thump-thump.
The pounds vibrate against my rib cage, rippling through my entire skeleton. The water rushes through me. Drowning me.
It’s not water. It’s blood.
It’s not my heartbeat.
It’s her heartbeat.
Thump-thump.
Thump-thump.
Adele must be close.
The phantom smile that spreads across my face feels more real than any previous smile from the past four centuries in which I had lived.
She’s going to open the door.
CHAPTER 6
Breathe
No matter how many times I blinked awake, nothing came into focus—just darkness.
What the hell?
Then the more pressing question came: “Where am I?” A little ball of fire rose from my hand and hovered close to my face, illuminating my surroundings.
I sat up quickly as it all rushed back: the moldy church, my eulogy en français. The convent.
The light fizzled out, and the darkness returned.
I came to the convent. I’m in the attic.
My arm shot up, and I slapped around feeling the door. The locks. They were all still there. The door was sealed.
Of course they are. You didn’t open the door.
I continued trying to ignore the dream, trying to ignore my memories of the boy with the poetry that . . . Nicco had written.
I dreamt of Nicco.
Blood rushed my cheeks, and I reveled in the invisibility of darkness. I’d been so adamant about not allowing myself to think about him, the fact that he’d entered my unconscious state felt like a violation. Maybe it had been a hallucination thanks to Désirée’s herbal refreshment? Surely.
Why else would I dream of Nicco . . . as a human?
It was hard to even imagine such a thing now that I was awake. I did not want to think about Niccolò Medici being human, as a real person I’d trapped. It was hard enough trying to think of my mother as a vampire on the other side of the door. Trapped.
Halloween night was still so vivid in my mind: Martine and Lisette chained to the ceiling, Lisette hanging upside down like a bat, furious. My hand moved to the claw marks she’d left on my neck, and my mind drifted from the events of that night to a familiar fantasy where I quietly opened the door and tiptoed inside, careful not to wake any of the vampires from their unadulterated slumber. Lisette and Martine in the rafters and Gabriel on the floor against the wall, wrapped in chains, perhaps still spewing obscenities at me in his sleep. But Nicco, Emilio, and my mother would be uninhibited, sleeping where they’d dropped. I’d creep in past the Medici, take my mother under the arms, quietly drag her out, and then reseal the door.
Great plan, Adele. And then what would you do with your slumber-spelled, three-week-starved vampire mother?
People have solved bigger problems . . .
I turned my gaze toward the locks above me. The shroud of darkness suddenly scared me, like it could keep me unaccountable for my actions.
No one would see me do it.
She was right there. On the other side of the door.
No one knows she’s in there, so no one would know if she’s taken out.
“No,” I whispered. “They’re monsters, Adele. Go home.”
Monsters.
My mother is right on the other side of this door. My mother is a monster.
The tears that had been caged all day nearly escaped. I locked her in there, and that made me feel like a monster—
“Adele!”
I froze as my name echoed down the hallway. Shit. How did he—?
“Adele!”
A flicker of artificial light came with the next shout, and I was made. Isaac’s footsteps pounded down the hallway until the only thing separating us was a tidal wave of mortification.
“Jesus Christ, Adele.” He fell beside me.
I shielded my face as the light struck my eyes.
“Are you okay?”
My heart sunk as the full extent of what I’d almost done registered—and even worse, Isaac had found me here, lying against the door of our sworn enemy. I pulled my knees into my chest, nodding. I didn’t have to look up to know he was clamping his jaw shut.
“Are you okay?” he asked again.
I nodded. All I could do was stare silently at the floor.
“Then what are you doing here?”
The tears welled. Just tell him, Adele. You swore no more secrets. Tell him about Brigitte. Tell him that you want to get her out—that you need to get her out. That you want him to help you and not hate her because she’s a vampire.
My chest burned, and when I opened my mouth to speak, nothing came out. No words. No air. I looked up at him.
My throat tightened, and my lungs contracted, but they didn’t expand. I tried to suck in
air through my nose, but it didn’t go past my throat.
“Adele?”
Invisible chains wrapped themselves around my ribs, cinching the bones tighter around my lungs, just like the thick iron links I’d smacked around Gabriel, crushing his bones.
My hand slapped the wall behind me.
“Adele, breathe,” Isaac said, but the fear in his eyes made my anxiety grow.
I tried to suck in more air, to no avail. The wheezing noise from my throat sounded just like the first time I’d had a panic attack—just after my mother left, at the playground on my first day of kindergarten. After that the doctor ordered me to carry an inhaler with me everywhere. My father had been so concerned about me being lax, he’d explained death to me. When I asked him if Mommy had stopped breathing and that’s why she went away, he got teary and said, “No, Mommy is just visiting with grand-mère.”
I hadn’t used an inhaler in years, so I didn’t carry them on me anymore. This can’t be happening. Not in front of Isaac.
“Adele, look at me!”
The wheezing worsened; I clung to his wrist.
“Adele, you have to breathe.”
I frantically pulled the bow from around my neck. I really wanted to rip the entire shirt off. The chains pulled tighter. I tugged at the high waistband of the skirt, dizziness dancing up my spine before I slumped to the floor.
After everything that’d happened—after we’d finally won—I was going to die next to the sealed attic, cracking from the pressure.
A chuckle that couldn’t slip out of my mouth flung out of my eyes in the form of tears.
Whispering under his breath, Isaac yanked the hem of my blouse from my skirt.
“Do not close your eyes!” he yelled, grabbing my jaw with one hand. His other hand slipped beneath my shirt.
Spots appeared all around his head—pink, red, blue—as his rough hands slid over my stomach and unhooked the clasp on my bra. The ease of tension around my chest brought a second of relief. I attempted another gasp, which just resulted in a deathly choke. I thought if the panic attack didn’t kill me, I’d actually die from mortification.
A moment later, his touch no longer induced panic. I was barely aware of what was going on . . . barely aware as his hand slid from my ribs to just underneath my breasts, or when he applied a small amount of pressure and the last bit of air deflated from my lungs. I felt my eyes roll back in my head, and I became weightless, like I was floating.
Like the first time we’d kissed, in the Tremé.
Only this time instead of floating with him, I was floating away from him. I didn’t want to float away.
Pressure on my mouth pushed me back down to reality—to him.
Tingles. First in my throat and then crackling into my chest like icy Pop Rocks melting onto my inflamed lungs. Another cool burst entered my chest, like the inhaler steroids only without the icky medicinal taste. The air pushed my lungs open, raising my chest along with Isaac’s resting hand. Just when I thought they might burst, I felt the air slowly begin to pull out, still icy against my scorched lungs.
He slowly breathed into my mouth again. On the third time, my eyes popped open.
“I’m okay,” I choked, pushing him away and exhaling deeply. “I’m okay.”
I raised myself up on one arm, my lungs remembering how to inflate and deflate on their own.
He sat back, nodding. I stared at him, no longer with embarrassment, but with disbelief, taking a moment to commit the tingle of his breath to memory.
His air was magical.
He was magical.
What’s wrong with me? Why would I ever run away from him? Why would I ever hide anything from him?
I rolled over on my side so I could quickly hook my bra, my modesty returning with the oxygen flow to my brain. When I turned back, he was still just sitting there in shock, breathing heavily.
My words were soft: “I want to go home.”
“Thank God,” he said, part seasoned first responder, part freaked-out witch.
Before I could attempt to stand, he slipped his arms underneath me and scooped me into his chest. The tautness of his arms told me not to fight him on the lift.
“Aren’t you tired after carrying the casket?”
“No.”
The short reply made me wonder whether he was a little mad or off-the-charts mad that I’d come to the attic.
I considered lighting the wall sconces as we walked down the hall, but I wasn’t ready for the look on his face.
He paused at the top of the stairs so I could relock the door.
“Are you going to put me down now?”
“No.” He gripped me tighter.
“Ooookey dokey.” I flicked my right hand, and the base of the padlock flew from the wooden floor and reattached itself to the hook with one quick jerk. “Done.”
I tried not to be annoyed when he tested it; instead I hugged him tighter, resting my head against his neck.
He bounced down the wide, winding staircase, careful not to bump me on the banister. On the last set of stairs, he finally spoke: “For future reference . . . there are much easier ways to get me to cop a feel.”
My face burned. “For future reference, we are never going to talk about this, or you will never cop another feel.”
“Talk about what?”
I couldn’t control my grin or my blushing, so I burrowed my face into his shoulder. Could I be a bigger loser? The first time my boyfriend feels me up is to try to keep me from self-inflicted asphyxiation. If he is my boyfriend, that is . . . It’s not like we’ve ever had that discussion.
“And for the record, I barely touched your boobs.”
“I know.” I hugged him tighter, burying my face deeper into the crevice of his shoulder, which was tense to say the least.
He didn’t let my feet touch the ground until we were halfway through the labyrinth of hedges in the garden, and by then it was me who wasn’t ready to let go—I hung on to his neck, pulling him down until his lips touched mine.
For a split second, he hesitated, and that hesitation shook me. Isaac was always ready—to help someone, to stop a looter, to stop a monster—and he was always ready to kiss me. In that microsecond I realized how much I’d been taking him for granted, and I felt the emptiness of what it’d be like to lose him.
His hand cupped my cheek, keeping my face close to his. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“I’m sorry.” My voice was meek. I didn’t know if he was referring to my running away or the panic attack or my coming to the attic. “I’m sorry,” I repeated, peering directly into his eyes so I couldn’t see the shutters behind him. All I wanted to see was him. “Please don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad . . . I just wonder . . . what it’s going to be like when you come to school here every day.”
My stomach tensed. My father had enrolled me at Ursuline because he knew how much I hated Sacred Heart. That, plus the monumental difference in tuition costs and the proximity to our house, meant there was no way I was getting out of the transfer. I didn’t know what to say.
I hooked a single finger into his and whispered, “Let’s go.”
And he walked me home, finger in finger.
When we got to my stoop, I unlocked the gate and turned back to him from the first step, closer to eye level. “Everything’s going to be fine in January. Today just sucked with the funeral.”
He nodded, but the crease in his brow did not smooth out.
“Ooooor you could enroll and finish your senior year in the vampire holding tank with me.”
He gave me a limp smile. “Why, you embarrassed to be with a dropout?”
I shook my head, sliding my arms around his neck.
He pulled me closer, and my heart breathed a sigh of relief. Our lips brushed, and this time there was no hesitation when he kissed me. In that moment I was so thankful I hadn’t opened the attic door. I pulled him closer and kissed him until he had to pause for air.
“Bre
athe,” I whispered, with our heads together and my lips still smiling against his.
And he did.
CHAPTER 7
ASG
Metal on metal screeched from my father’s studio. A grinder or a band saw.
He’s not at work?
The ear slaughter got louder as I walked down the hall. Somehow my anxiety attack had brought on a new sense of calm—cathartic release, perhaps. Or maybe it was just the residual effect of Isaac’s kisses.
The studio was open, which was rare; my father always kept the door closed as a courtesy, containing the screeching tools and harsh chemicals.
He’s waiting for me to come home.
I grabbed a pair of earmuffs—he kept protective gear hanging in the hallway just outside the door—adjusted them to fit my head, and put on plastic eyewear before I went in. My father was a stickler for safety.
“Dad!” I yelled, waving my arm to get his attention.
“One second!” He turned off the saw. “Keep your muffs on!”
I nodded as he picked up a ball-peen hammer and slammed it into a large sheet of metal. He held up his hand, letting me know that he wasn’t done.
It was too early in the process to guess at what he was making.
He whacked the metal again, the explosion of sound still intensely loud through the muffs.
Mac had two kinds of swings when it came to blacksmithing. The first had the careful precision of an artist; when he made those kinds of swings, you could almost see the end piece sitting in his head, each swing getting him one step closer. Other times, his pounding was more aggressive—yes, he was making art, but he was also working something out . . . something that had nothing to do with art. These were swings of the latter variety. A final swing squeezed a spark from the metal and a grunt from his throat. I could practically feel the reverberation through my fingertips.
He tossed aside the hammer.
Definitely of the latter variety. My father’s love affair with metal really made me wonder sometimes . . .
“Are you okay?” he asked as I pulled off the goggles and earmuffs. “Where have you been?”
“Nowhere, really. I exhausted myself walking around and then got upset and fell asleep.”
His eyebrow slanted.