The Casquette Girls (65 page)

“Don’t break the curse, then,” Emilio jeered. “I’d rather kill you, hunt down all of those other brats, and break it myself.” Blood spattered from his oozing wound onto my face, making me gag. “Niccolò’s right. You don’t know
anything
. You’re useless to us.”

I tried desperately to move my hands, but he crushed them tighter.

Breathe. Focus. Get hands free.

I willed my vocal cords to work. “I know you don’t care about the curse, Emilio.”

His eyebrows rose with suspicious interest. “Aw, baby, you know me so well.” His faux-sexy, faux-French accent had suddenly returned.

Nicco might have wanted me to break the curse so Gabriel could go free, but I knew Emilio had never truly cared about his brother’s predicament. Since I didn’t know what the Medicis were really after in the first place, the only thing I could do was negotiate. The first thing that came to mind was Gabriel’s desperate fake-out, which had cost Lisette her life
.
Focus on the things you do know: they are looking for something… something to do with Adeline’s fathe
r
.

So, that was my second card to play – and it was a bluff.

“What if I could do something better than break the curse?” I choked out, trying hard to keep my poker face despite the lack of oxygen flowing to my brain.

All movement in the room suddenly stopped, and everyone looked our way. Nicco was not thrilled to see where this negotiation might go.

Emilio scoffed, but allowed my throat to open a little more. I nearly choked, sucking in air too quickly.

“Don’t get any ideas, Emilio!” Gabriel yelled, fighting with the enchanted chains. “Tonight, we’re here to break the curse!”

“Oui, ma chérie?”
He leaned so close I could see the curls of his torn skin slowly beginning to regenerate.

“Adele” – excitement flickered in his Medici-green eyes – “did you bring it?”

“No, I didn’t brin
g
i
t
,” I lowered my voice, “but what if I brough
t
hi
m
?”

“Him?”

A wave of shock passed around the room, landing with a wry smile on Emilio’s wounded face. “And how can you be so certain
le Comte de Saint-Germai
n
would come to save you,
chérie
?”

I strained my neck forward against his palm until my lips swept his ear, and I whispered, “Because he’s right behind you.”

He released me as he spun around.

He was duped for only a few seconds, but when he turned back around, an enormous pair of sparkling spheres puls
ed in the palms of my hands.

“Move the hell away if you want the other half of your face to stay pretty, Emilio!”

He sneered as I pushed the flames towards him and pulled them back again.

“Adele, stay away from him! You’ll only get hurt!” my mother screamed. Nicco and Lorenzo were both restraining her, but she fought them like a lunatic.

It felt completely unnatural to listen to my mother, but hearing her voice brought an unfamiliar, yet welcomed comfort. My intuition listened to her and guided my feet away from Emilio. I had almost reached the other side of the room when he suddenly snorted like a bull and charged me.

I had no choice but to release the perfectly aimed orbits in self-defense. I didn’t even contemplat
e
no
t
killing him.

Then it all happened so quickly.

My mother broke away from Niccolò, tore across the room in a blur, and leapt directly into the line of fire. The flames engulfed
her
instead of her assistant.

Exorcismlike sounds expelled from my raw throat as I ran to extinguish
ma mère,
but Nicco caught me mid-stride and dragged me away kicking and screaming. With my back to the room, he held my waist tightly against a beam until my muscles could no longer fight him and nothing but wisps of air came from between my lips. I sucked in air that reeked of burned hair.

“
Je ne comprends pas.”
I wiped my tears with the back of my hands like a child. “I don’t understand… I don’t—”

With a loud sigh, Nicco moved me to the other side of the beam so I could see my mother lying on the ground. “I’m sorry,
bella
.” The flames were gone, and smoke now rose from her charred body. But what sent me into shock was seeing the middle Medici brother hovering over her with desperate affection.

I sunk towards to the floor in what felt like a million shattering pieces. “I don’t understand,” I repeated as Nicco caught me.

The world as I knew it ceased to exist.

“I’m so sorry you had to find out this way, Adele.”

I couldn’t take in enough air – I began hyperventilating, as my entire psyche unraveled.

Emilio was cradling my mother’s shoulders, gently petting her arms. Below his hands, her skin was charred and blistered… but as I watched, it began to shift back to perfect porcelain. It was regenerating.

I didn’t know which was worse: thinking I’d just killed my mother, or realizing what she really was.

The answers hit me like bullets from a firing squad:

Why she wouldn’t let me live with her in Paris.

Why she only saw me at night.

Her finicky eating.

Her unusual relationship with her “assistant.”

Her mysterious disappearance twelve years ago, abandoning my father.

Abandoning me.

It was all there in front of me, and most of it had been for a while. My mother hadn’t deserted us.

She had
died
.

My mother was a vampire.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t hear. She screamed something to me in French, but it was like I suddenly didn’t understand the language.

Nicco shook my shoulders, also yelling.

Everyone in the room was yelling. My head became very light, and then the dizziness overwhelmed me. Heat radiated from every part of my body. I felt like I was going to spontaneously combust, like the lightbulb in my bedroom.

But I couldn’t stop gaping – the way Emilio held my mother’s head made my stomach lurch. As if she was his child
. Is she his child? Had she killed people? Had she killed the man with the blue eyes?

Then it dawned on me.

“Nicco?”

“Si, bella?”

“You didn’t kill those students.”

He looked down at me and gently shook his head.

My heart ached as I looked back at him in shock. For a split second, the chaos in the room seemed to freeze around us – and I regretted all of this. I didn’t want to die. I wanted to be with Niccolò forever. And I wanted forever to be longer than the next five minutes.

What have I done?

Emilio yelled in Italian to his cousin, and Lorenzo twisted Nicco around straight into his fist, cracking his nose. Enraged, Nicco grabbed an old rake from the floor and went after him.

Now that I was alone, Emilio rose from my mother’s side, snarling.

I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything anymore. I didn’t understand anything anymore. I wanted this all to go away.

No. I wanted to kill him.

My half-broiled mother leapt towards Emilio’s feet, and he spun around in confusion.

“Stop it, Emilio!
Arrêt
e
!
She’s my daughter!”

He bent down and yelled something to her in French, something about killing me. In response, she knocked him to the floor and jumped on top of him.
Ma mèr
e
had apparently not partaken in the moonshin
e.

Emilio dug his hands into her charred chest. Flesh that I had burned.

She screamed in agony, but didn’t budge. She looked directly at me. “I’m so sorry, Adele. Get out of here, now!”

“Break the curse, Adele,” Emilio boomed. “Or I am going to kill you, and then your mother!”

“Never, Emilio! You’re a monster!”

“Je suis désolée,
”
my mother apologized to Emilio, despite still straddling him and baring her fangs in his face. “
Échapper-toi maintenant!
”
She screamed to me,
“Get out, now!”

I raised my hands, stole the rake from Nicco, and bent it around Lorenzo’s neck, anchoring him to the wall.

“Grazie, bella,
”
Nicco said, looking back at me.

Lorenzo laughed from beneath the shackle and spat, “
Chiaroscur
o
worthy of a gilded frame the two of you are.”

Nicco looked at him sharply, but retracted his fangs.

I ignored them and ran towards the door. If there was a chance of surviving this pit of predators, then I wanted it. If I could get the door open, I knew Nicco, my mother, and I could defeat Emilio and escape. It wasn’t the original plan, but I didn’t care.

“Niccolò Giovanni Battista Medici, you’d better stop her,” Emilio commanded from across the room. “You shame our family’s name!”

I looked back over my shoulder at Nicco, who was standing in the middle of the room, breathing heavily like he might implode – he was the only one left unrestrained. Gabriel echoed Emilio’s command as I turned back to the escape route.

My hand touched the doorknob, and suddenly Nicco was pressed up against my back.

“Do you trust me,
bella
?” he whispered into my ear.

My entire nervous system felt like it was short-circuiting. Every primal instinct told me to fry him, but my intuition consumed me. There was only one thing I was sure of in this supernatural world where nothing made sense.

“Yes,” I gasped, turning around.

Before the syllable was out, his hands wrapped around mine, and I knew something was wrong.

His grip was too tight.

A sharp edge pressed into my palm as he pulled me from the door.

“I knew you would crack in the end!” yelled Gabe. “You are a Medici after all!”

“Whhh… what are you doing?” I dug my heels into the ground, but he squeezed my hands and pulled, forcing me to stumble.

His eyes begged me for forgiveness, but I was unable to accept that I had made the wrong decision.

“What are you doing, Niccolò? Stop.”

We were back to the middle of the room. He began to turn on his heel and spin me around.

“How could you?” I choked out with tears.
This is not happening. This is not happenin
g
.

“Adele, please stop resisting; it will hurt so much less if you stop.”

“What?”

“I’m so sorry,
bella
,” his voice cracked. “But there is no other way.” He gained momentum, and my feet left the ground.

“No, Nicco!” I screamed as he let go of my hands and flung me towards the ceilin
g
.

Never trust a vampire.

My right shoulder crashed directly into the fifth window, and I went straight through the bricks, shattering the window for the second time. His pitch was so fierce, I continued to soar upwards.

I yanked the stake from my corset and hurled it back towards the window – my death was imminent, but I’d be damned if it would be in vain. Adeline’s spirit stayed with me as the metal zipped through the air and snapped the shutter closed, just as it had been for the last three centuries.

My last glimpse had showed my mother attacking Nicco. He didn’t resist. The entire building trembled, and I knew the curse was restored.

The moment of solace didn’t last long – Nicco’s pitch peaked.

The stars held my heart as gravity plunged my body back down to Earth, twisting, turning, faster and faster. Images from my subconscious flooded like waves crashing ashore: all those times I had used magic as a kid, every metallics lesson my father had taught me, every story Ren had told me, every clue that my mother was a vampire.

The signs had always been there. I just hadn’t been open to them.

My vision blurred. I told myself I was getting what I deserved for being so
naïve
.

Knowing that it would all be over in a few seconds didn’t make my broken heart ache any less.

Niccolò let go of my hands.

I jolted to consciousness as my back made contact.

The sensation was strange – the impact was not as painful as I thought it would be. But then again, maybe my mind was so numb with shock now that my body had become impervious to pain.

Or maybe the impact did kill me and I’m already dead?