The Casquette Girls (44 page)

“That’s all she said?”

“Yes.”

He remained completely calm, but I could see that multiple scenarios were spinning through his mind.

“Do you think it was your blonde friend?”

His silence answered for him, which had a dizzying effect on me.

“Who is she? Is she dangerous?”

Silence.

It was as if he was trying to decide how much information to reveal, which only further frustrated me. He waited through another Mariah verse, but I refused to allow my eyes to wander. Then I saw the exact moment he gave in.

“Her name is… Liz. And all vampires are dangerous, Adele
.
Al
l
.
”

My heart thumps ricocheted against my chest. “Even you?”

“Especially me.”

“Why especially?” I intertwined my fingers with his. The small gesture was bold for me.

“That’s why.” He yanked his hands away and dragged them through his hair, causing my self-esteem to plummet.

“I’m sorry—” we both said at the same time.

The awkwardness that followed made my stomach knot come back tenfold. I desperately wanted to get back to the place we had been last night, in the bell tower. I wanted to jump into his side of the booth and wrap myself underneath his arm. Instead, I twisted a napkin until it morphed into a ropelike shape. I wanted answers more.

“Did I break Adeline’s curse? Is that how the v—your, er, family escaped the convent attic?”

His eyes flickered again. “What do you know about Adelin
e
Saint-Germain
?” He nearly spat out her surname.

A wave of energy rushed through my limbs, collecting at the tips of my outer extremities, and the chain around my neck gently rippled against my skin. Suddenly I remembered the woman in the alley saying that she was warning me and not threatening me.

“Nothing really,” I lied. “When I found Adeline’s necklace, there was also a letter she had written to her father but never sent. It described the night she met Monsieur Jean-Antoine Cartier. The night she met you.” Lying to him hurt me more than I could have imagined, but something deep inside pushed the words out.

I quickly glanced at Blanche, who was using the spatula as a mic and riffing trills. “Why do they expect me to break the rest of the curse? I don’t know anything about spells!”

“Well, if Adeline’s dead, then it’s your curse now—”

“I don’t want any of this!” I whispered loudly, leaning across the table.

He jerked forward in his seat, his nose suddenly brushing mine. “Do you think I did?”

Despite keeping my gaze fully locked on the green eyes, only inches away from mine, I knew his fangs were extended because my fingers ached.

The song ended, leaving a moment of silence. And then the soft sounds of air pushing in and out of his nostrils sent a shiver down my spine.

His mouth stayed shut, but I saw his fangs retract. We both sank back to our leather cushions. I sat on top of my hands for a minute.

His words about murder being inconsequential rang in my head. Given that the only
other
way to break the curse was death, telling him that I
couldn’
t
actually break it on my own didn’t seem so smart.

“You’ll figure it out,
bella
. When you woke up yesterday, you didn’t know that you could throw fire to defend yourself from a vampire—”

“So, you also want me to break the curse?”

“I usually let my brethren clean up their own messes, but I’m not fond of my family members being cursed.”

“Gabe,” I whispered.
Had he been one of the vampires trapped in the attic?
Of course. He had been on the ship with the casquette girls. “Shit.”

“There’s
no
more time, Adele. I cannot control what will happen – not that I haven’t been trying. Peopl
e
wil
l
die in retaliation if you don’t break the curse.”

The look on my face must have made him pause. His words became softer.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,
bella
. You didn’t even know you were breaking the curse – not that I am upset about it breaking – but I’m sure you had help, unbeknownst to you. I may not be a witch, but I have lived long enough to know that sometimes unexplainable things happen, especially when Mother Nature is involved.”

“The Storm.”

“
S
i
.”

His foot knocked into mine. I was surprised when he didn’t immediately pull it back. Over the next few moments, our legs slowly crept into each other’s and locked together. The bend was awkward but somehow still felt perfect. I knew that he could feel my pulse speed up – a small smile hid under his serious disposition.

“I won’t let anything happen to you, Adele.” His eyes dragged from the table to mine.

“One Hurricane Es-pec-i-al,” Blanche said, dropping a single plate with a mound of eggs dripping in gooey cheese, and a mysterious, powdered-sugar-dusted log. “
Bon appetit
e
.
” He placed a fork next to each of us, not knowing we only needed one.

“Wow, Blanche, you really outdid yourself.”

“This really is… special,” said Nicco.

“Always, baby.”

“What is this?” I poked the long lump of fried dough. “A Twinkie?”

Blanche opened his mouth—

“No Twinkie jokes!” I yelled.

He mimed zipping his lips. “Yeah, baby, that’s a fried Twinkie. You know that shit’ll survive the apocalypse.”

Gross
. I waited for Blanche to return to the grill before I pushed the sponge of fried preservatives to the side and tried to separate some of the egg from the cheese.

“This is something you have to explain to me,” Nicco said, suddenly serious. He straightened up quickly, and our still-intertwined legs pulled me down the leather seat until my ribs hit the table. Had the tabletop not been there, I would have slid right on top of him. I wished it hadn’t been there.

“What?” I was fully intrigued by somethin
gI
could explain to
hi
m
.

“This stuff you Americans eat. This American cheese. Is it good? It looks like—”

“Plastic,” we both said simultaneously.

As the last syllable came out of my mouth, a series of latent memories buried deep in my subconscious between “jet
lag” and “too much to drink” pounded through my mind like a flashing camera bulb:

Plastic cheese.

Half-James Dean, half-Italian Vogue.

Leather jacket.

Innocent smile… deceptively innocent.

Fork. Clank. Coffee mug on top of a ten-dollar bill.

The waitress yelling, “Don’t worry, honey, I’ll bring ya a new one.”

The room began to spin.

“Adele?”

“Adele?”

“Addie? He-llo! Girlfriend, you in outer space right now. Here ya go.” Blanche handed me a fork.

When I looked down, I realized mine was missing.

“Try not to take my eye out with this one, m’kay?”

Clutching the fork, I nodded my head, and he walked back to the grill.

Breath
e
.

I looked back at Nicco.

“I’ve said something to offend you?” He sounded genuinely concerned. “Are you okay?”

Was Nicco at the Waffle House? In Alabama
?
I stared at him for another moment – he absolutely was that guy. My body tensed.
Dammit! I knew he looked familiar. What the hell?

“Adele, what’s wrong?”

Ren’s words about no such thing as a coincidence repeated over and over in my head.
Is Nicco stalking me
?
Suddenly uneasy, I tried my best not to recoil so he wouldn’t think I was on to something.
If I am on to something.

“Are you okay?” he repeated.

“No. I mean, yes, I’m okay. No, you didn’t say something to offend me.”

“You’re lying. I can hear your heart racing.”

“My heart’s racing for a lot of different reasons right now.” I tried my best to mimic one of Désirée’s sultry smiles.

“Oh, really?” He leaned closer over the table, pushing my tease.

Never trust a vampire.

I fell back into the booth. “American cheese, it’s kind of an acquired taste.”

His brow crinkled. He knew I was still lying – and he seemed to be upset by it.

“Are you sure you’re okay? Or is there something else on your mind?”

And that’s the first time I had the thought:
What if the curse wasn’t meant to be broken
?
I poked the eggs, trying to think of something to cover for my sudden nervousness. “I do have a question.”

“Go on,” he said with confidence and leaned even further across the table.

“The Carter brothers, John and Wayne… the story Ren told on the tour.” I looked up at Blanche to make sure he was still preoccupied. “John Carter?
Monsieur Jean-Antoine Cartie
r
?
” As the words left my mouth, a gigantic flame shot up from the grill, causing a high-pitched yelp from Blanche.

My eyes fluttered to the grill, but Nicco’s absorbed gaze never left me.

“
Si
.
My brother and I,” he said quietly. “It was the depression. Everyone rationed.”

I had to consciously keep my mouth from gaping at his flippant response.

“Those weren’t really my best years,” he added.

Is he really comparing saving half a potato to stringing people up and slowly bleeding them to deat
h
?
I barely heard the words come out of my mouth as I asked him something trivial about life in the French Quarter during the prohibition. I swallowed a few bites of egg and slowly drank my coffee, trying not to rouse suspicion.

“People always want what they can’t have,” he said, a bit lost in his own thoughts.

“Nicco?”

“
Si, bella?”

“If Gabe spent the last three hundred years locked in the Ursuline Convent, then how was he rationing people with you during the Depression?”

“It wasn’t Gabriel roaring through the nineteen-twenties with me.” He sighed. “It was my other brother, Emilio.”

I wheezed as I swallowed my last sip of coffee incorrectly. “You have another brother?”

“
S
i
,
although, we’re a bit estranged now. That’s also why I am eager to get Gabriel back.”

I felt like I had been bitten by a snake and the venom was slowly coursing through my veins, taking over the function of each organ. At the bar last night, Émile had been sitting at the table with Gabe’s crew
. Is he really Emilio Medici? My Émile? My mother’s assistant Émile
?
I suddenly felt very tiny, like a pawn in a life-size game of chess where the stakes were real.
How many wrong moves had I made, unaware that I was even a player?

Player.

I had been played.

How could I have been so stupid?
Energy streamed through my system like fire, burning out all the venom. All the fear.

The worry that he’d lost me now shone in Nicco’s eyes. He didn’t know how or why, but he knew everything had changed. Why did he care?
Did
he care? Or maybe he just needed something from me?
What had he needed Adeline for all those years ago? Was it really only passage and a meal ticket aboard a shi
p
?

There had been nothing coincidental about their happenstance meeting. It had all been so perfectly romantic. So calculated.

“And Adeline, do tell your father I called, si’l vous plaît…”

When had Adeline realize she was just a pawn?

Suddenly the idea of trapping the players in the attic made the corner of my lips gently twitch. My palms burned.

Then I looked back up at Nicco and just wanted it all to go away. It was so easy to get lost in his stories, in his smiles, in his leather…

When I told him I had to go home, the disappointed look on his face seemed genuine.

* * *

Engulfed in paranoia, I ran from room to room, inside our empty house, locking the windows and doors. Not that it really offered much protection, but it made me feel better.

“Philosophically, most vampires believe any creature should be able to find asylum in its own home…
”
Asylum? Maybe… Solace? No.

For weeks I had felt like I was being watched – now I knew I had been. By Émile. By the blonde woman. By Niccolò. And by the crow, who had followed us from the bar, to the diner, and then to my home, and who had patiently waited in the shadows while I flirted with a monster.