The Casquette Girls

by Arden, Alys

  Suddenly everything became very real. Too real.

  His eyes pulsed with need, letting me know that one wrong move and everything would be over. Then they glazed over, and his nostrils flared as his face came even closer.

  Trying to control the tremors rippling through my body only shook me harder. I was over the tears, the lies, the secrets. I thought about Adeline and Cosette.

  Through the window behind him, I saw the silhouette of an iron cross against the moonlit clouds. Adrenaline raced through my veins like electricity, shocking me into action.

  The cross broke off the neighboring steeple with a loud crack.

  And in a quick whip, it flew through the window, bent around his cold, pale neck, and boomeranged back, slamming him against the wall. The tiny bell tower shuddered as the iron cross plunged into the rock, pinning him in place.

  I jumped up and closed the gap between us, heart pounding.

  “Do not mess with me,” I spat. “I am not having a good night.”

  His fangs appeared to protrude even further as he reeled from the power reversal. “That’s it, Adele!” he hissed. “Trust your instincts, not your intuition. Instincts exist for your survival. They will keep you alive. Intuition is muddled with emotion.” He attempted to compose himself beneath the makeshift shackle. “Emotions will get you killed.”

  My instincts told me to run as he began to pull at the cross, but I easily held it in place. The tug-of-war only further charged him. With only a couple of spare inches, he slammed his neck into the iron with excited rage. The burst of emotion made me back away, but I kept my mind locked on the restraint. The more I focused, the warmer it became, until the iron nearly glowed and he had to stop or risk searing his neck.

  And then we were back to silently staring at each other.

  * * *

  I had no idea how much time had passed. Ten minutes? Twenty? Thirty? The only thing I knew for certain was that I would never beat him at the silent stare-off. Niccolò Medici had the patience of a marble statue.

  I loosened my grip.

  As soon as my mind let go of the metal, he ripped it from the wall and was behind me in a flash – one crushing arm around my chest and the other around my head, forcing my neck to the side. With his mouth against my nape he quietly asked, “Did you hear anything I just said, bella?”

  His sharp points grazed my skin. Blue eyes blazed in my mind. My upper arms were pinned to my sides, but my hands were free.

  “Si,” I said. My fingers spidered outward, and with every ounce of momentum I could muster, I grabbed the tops of his legs.

  When my hands made contact, he howled in pain and fell forward over me. I slipped out from underneath him and scurried to the wall, still confused at how I had gotten the upper hand.

  “So, it’s true,” he mumbled under his breath.

  A killer’s instinct shone through his eyes, but the smile on his mouth said otherwise. I followed his gaze to my own palms and jumped back – only then feeling the heat. A small sphere of fire sat in each palm, miraculously not burning my skin. What the hell?My heart raced as I tried to hide my shock as we both slumped against the walls on our respective sides of the tower.

  He winced as he carefully ripped the burned denim away from his thighs, and I watched in silent astonishment as his charred skin began to regenerate. Minutes later, there were two singed holes the size of my hands in his dark jeans, but they revealed nothing but his pale, China-doll skin. I sucked in air, still struggling not to panic.

  Eventually my heartbeat calmed and the flames in my palms extinguished, bringing back the darkness. The burning sensation in my arms and the tingling in my fingers didn’t go away as easily.

  We defensively waited – watching, wondering if the other would make an aggressive move, but neither of us stirred. Finally, he spoke. “You fiddle with your necklace a lot… just as she did.”

  I looked down. My fingers were around the charms that hung on my chain. I hadn’t even realized I was doing it. “So, I guess the whole ‘church is a sanctuary from vampires’ thing is not so much?” I said, looking back at him.

  He laughed. My shoulders relaxed a little.

  “No, not so much. That’s just antiquated Christian propaganda. Recruitment strategy.”

  “Coffins?”

  “Hmm… derived from a multitude of Eastern European superstitions, but you can mostly blame the nineteenth-century novel Dracula.” As he spoke, I tried not to stare at the two fangs he no longer attempted to hide, but my defenses wouldn’t allow my gaze to wander too far from them. “Oh, and that atrocious German expressionist film Nosferatu in the twenties.”

  “House entrances?”

  “There’s no physical reaction when crossing a threshold without invitation, but philosophically most vampires believe that all creatures should be able to find asylum in their own homes.”

  “Holy water?”

  “See ‘church.’ As with crucifixes, rosaries and exorcisms.”

  “Silver?”

  “Most vampires do have a severe sensitivity to silver, but only in extreme cases would it have a grave effect like anaphylactic shock.”

  “Garlic? No, wait…” Ren’s accent crept into my voice as I answered my own question. “Crypt keepers in New Orleans used to wear strands of garlic around their neck to help cover the stench of the corpses, not because they actually thought vampires would rise from the ground.”

  “Molto brava. And, centuries ago, people used to stuff cloves of garlic into the mouths of their beloved dead so they wouldn’t return as vampires and hunt them…. because the first thing on every newborn vampire’s mind is to terrorize their previous family.”

  “Is that true?”

  “The garlic? No. Terrorizing one’s previous family? Not usually.”

  “Blood?”

  “Sustenance.”

  “Mind-reading?”

  “No. Mind-bending, yes.”

  “Mirrors?”

  “Myth.”

  “Murder?”

  “Inconsequential.”

  I looked away, trying to digest his blasé answer to my last question, but then forced myself to look back at him. I couldn’t afford to be terrified if I wanted something from him.

  “I have two more questions.”

  “Just two, bella? I have a sneaking suspicion there will be more, but please, go on.”

  “I thought vampires couldn’t come out in the sunlight?”

  “We don’t need Vitamin D to survive. Our senses are heightened by the darkness and dulled by the daylight, so most vampire beings are nocturnal.” He paused, smiling to himself.

  “What?”

  “All vampires are very susceptible to sunburn, but you won’t find any who will spontaneously combust, if that’s what you are wondering.” He became serious again. “Humans think many things about vampires, almost none of which are true. Some think we are creatures spawned from Satan.”

  “Are you?” I felt foolish as the words slipped off my tongue.

  “Do you believe that you descended from God?”

  I stumbled over the question, picturing Jeanne and Sébastien sighing at me in the name of science. “Um, I don’t know.”

  He smiled. Luckily, my answer was exactly the point he was trying to make.

  “Well then, where did vampires come from?”

  “Whoa, so existential. It’s going to be one of those kinds of nights, then?” His long index finger stroked his well-defined chin. “The mythology is vast. Some vampires believe we descended from Cain and Lilith, some believe we are fallen angels, others believe we are alien life forms, et cetera. Most just believe the obvious – that we evolved from humans. Just the way humans evolved ages ago.”

  “It’s not the same. Human beings evolved over an insanely long period of time, as a species, but you used to be a human, right?”

  “Of course, I did. And no, it’s not exactly the same. We have a far superior evolutionary process. I was just trying to make th
ings as linear as possible to explain—”

  “The point is, no one knows.”

  “Exactly. There are many theories for the genesis of man, vampires, and everything else on the planet.”

  We both gripped onto another moment of silence, contemplating the origin of the universe.

  “What is your second question, bella?”

  I didn’t want to ruin the mood, so I ditched my original accusation and opted for triviality with a press-lipped smile. “Did you… ever meet Leonardo da Vinci?”

  He let out a hearty laugh. “I’m not that old, bella,” and then joked in a faux American accent,“Leo died, like, a hundred and eighty years before I was born.”

  The jest sounded strange coming from his lips. I smiled. His fangs retracted.

  He may not have met da Vinci, but he had a million and one stories to share about the Italian Renaissance. My knowledge of Italian history was slim, so I asked a lot of questions, listened intently, and tried not to become too mesmerized when his eyes lit up as he zealously bopped from eighteenth-century Florence to Mussolini’s Rome.

  Hours escaped, and the city became even quieter – it felt like we were the only two people in it. Like we were the only two beings on the planet. Somewhere in the middle of the rise of Italian cinema, he moved beside me, causing my heart to pitter-patter and my brain to forget about the first half of the night.

  “How is it possible that you’ve never seen La Dolce Vita?It’s a cinematic masterpiece!” His accent became thicker the more passionate he became. “You have a lot of homework, bella,” he said without a trace of judgment. Trying not to swoon, I mentally filed away the name Federico Fellini.

  I wanted to hide here forever. With him.

  Before I could fall too deeply, a bloodcurdling scream shattered our night. We both bolted up and leaned out the back window of the tower just in time to see a dark figure dart through the humungous Jesus shadow in the garden below. The screams didn’t stop after the one, and they sounded close. Very close.

  “Emi…” he muttered under his breath.

  “Huh?” I turned to ask. The rickety door was bouncing against the frame. I ran down the dizzying stairs after him, but catching up was a lost cause.

  * * *

  Black lines of makeup streaked the traumatized face of a hysterical woman on her knees at the base of the statue. I fell beside her, squeezing my arms around her shoulders. She murmured words in Spanish, which must have been prayers because I kept hearing the word “Jesus” over and over.

  “What happened? Are you hurt?” My head continued to flip in either direction, but I found no one else.

  “Not me.” She raised her head to the shadow. “Jesus.”

  The shadow seemed distorted. She pointed a shaking finger up at the statue. There were two extra appendages hanging around Jesus’ neck. Two dead human arms. Trickles of blood had dripped down the slick marble to his knees. Vomit rose in my throat, and I gagged, forcing it back down. The body of a man was hanging on Jesus’ back.

  The ruffle of a large black bird in my peripheral vision distracted me. I whipped around, but it was too late – the bird became smaller as it flew towards the moon and disappeared into the distance.

  The woman clutched my arm. I was clueless about what to do.

  Breathe.

  Through the fog, the muffled sounds of footsteps approached down Orleans Avenue. My grip on the poor woman’s arm lessened when I saw Ren leading the way, flanked by Theis. It must have been part of the crowd from Le Chat Noir.

  No sign of my father, thank God. Or Isaac. Or… Gabe’s crew.

  “Bébé!” Ren ran and scooped me into a bear hug.

  “Ça va bien,” Ren.

  He set me down, casually moving aside one of my braids to catch a glimpse of my neck. Theis looked at me with suspicion.

  I suddenly remembered all the freshmen girls scattering away from the bouncer. Guilt attacked me. Jesus. What had I been thinking? It was after curfew by then. I should have made sure they got home!

  I scanned the crowd.

  Jaime and Bri were taking photos with their phones. Annabelle’s face was buried into the pecs of some frat boy, crying, but she was obviously enlivened by the drama. I frantically scanned the rest of the crowd for the missing Big Sister.

  There was no sign of her.

  I hurried over to the girls, calling out, “Where’s Désirée?”

  “She went off with that ridiculously hot foreigner Gabriel,” Annabelle said with an exaggerated tongue roll on the “r.”

  “What? Do you know where they went?”

  She shook her head, utterly unconcerned. My cheeks flushed as she scanned the two additions to my grungy ensemble.

  “Where did you get off to, by the way?” she asked. “That cute little ponytail ever catch up with you?”

  I ignored her and checked my watch. 2 a.m. Should I be worried about Désirée? Are Gabe and Nicco really even brothers? Nicco’s words echoed in the back of my mind.

  Never trust a vampire.

  Tires screeched to a halt. Lights flashed. Doors slammed. A voice on a megaphone told everyone to vacate the garden. Detective Matthews. Dammit. This is way worse than being busted out past curfew. You didn’t do anything else wrong,I reminded myself.A plainclothes cop started shooing people away. I eagerly took the opportunity to exit with the crowd.

  “Adele!” Detective Matthews accidentally said through the megaphone. Everyone looked at me as I stopped in my tracks. He hustled over. “Were you the first one to arrive at this scene?”

  “Um… Not exactly.”

  “Oh my God! Look at his throat!” Annabelle shrieked as the cops lifted the corpse. The neck of the victim had been ripped open.

  The crowd gasped. It was Wilson the Wolfman Washington, the DJ who, on that very evening, had warned the city to keep their eyes peeled. My back stiffened. This could not be a coincidence. This was not a random act of violence. Both of his eyes had been plucked out. Blood dripped from the empty sockets.

  Detective Matthews began to interrogate me, going back and forth with his partner, asking me a hundred questions. All I could think about was Désirée. Warmth spread through my body, making me shake. Just as I was about to explode, an arm pulled me backwards.

  “What the hell is going on here, Terry?” my father asked, pushing through a couple of forensics.

  “I’m sorry, Mac,” said the bleary-eyed detective. “I’m just following protocol.”

  “Well, my daughter is a minor, so all of your protocol can go through me from now on. Got it?” There was more aggression in his voice than I’d ever heard before.

  “Of course, Mac, I think we’ve gotten everything we need. Why don’t you take little Addie home?” He patted my shoulder and walked back to his team. My fingers twitched. One minute I was being grilled like a murder suspect, and the next being treated like a toddler.

  “Adele, where the hell have you been? I have been calling and texting you for the last—”

  “I’m sorry, Mac. She was with me.” Isaac was staring straight at me, offering me an out. How long had he been standing there?

  “Dammit, Isaac—”

  “I know, sir. I’m sorry. We were just sitting by the river talking, and we lost track of time.” Isaac looked at the leather jacket I was huddled into and the shirt hanging out below it. He knew exactly whom they had come from. He turned back to my dad, blinking away the sting.

  “I expect more from you…,” my father proceeded to yell.

  Isaac quietly accepted the lashing.

  When he finished, Isaac wouldn’t even look my way. Another wave of guilt washed over me.

  The body bag was zipped. My gut told me I was responsible.

  And vampires.

  My lungs pinched.

  Where the hell is Désirée?

  Chapter 27 It’s Bird

  October 28th

  “Your hair is amazing, Adele,” said a girl with a faux tan and diamond-hooped earrings. “Di
d you do something different?”

  “Ugh, thanks?” I replied, hoping she would turn back around and leave me alone. There was definitely nothing different about my hair, other than that it was dirty and genuinely disheveled rather than purposefully styled into a messy bun.

  I could have played hooky today, considering the circumstances, but I’d decided to escape to school rather than stay home with my father – we’d had a huge fight after our walk home last night (currently unresolved). Now that I needed pencils to hold open my eyelids, I regretted my choice, but I couldn’t just blame my father. A multitude of other things had stolen my remaining few hours for sleep. For starters, the beady-eyed crow had perched on our neighbor’s balcony all nightlong. Even after the curtains were drawn, it gave me an immense sense of paranoia. Then there was the fact that Désirée was still M.I.A. She hadn’t returned any of my texts, nor had she picked me up for school. Lastly, and this was horrible given the circumstances, I couldn’t stop thinking about Nicco. So, I knew that I looked terrible, and this girl’s fake compliment made my foggy brain want to ooze out of my ears and flee.

  Maybe I was just delirious, but out of all the bizarre things that had occurred over the last few weeks, today was the most confounding. A guy had helped pick up my spilled books, and a girl had complimented my necklace, which was hardly fashionable. At least half a dozen other upperclassmen had smiled, waved, or told me hello in the hallway. All before first period.

  I waited for Mr. Anderson to turn his back, and then leaned close to my lab partner, the younger Drake sister, who was carefully pouring a clear liquid from a plastic bottle into a glass cylinder.

  “What is going on today?” I whispered. “What is wrong with everyone?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why is everyone being nice to me?”

  “Because you have something they want,” she said without looking up. “Something that not even their parents’ money can buy them.”

  “Huh? What?”