The Romeo Catchers (Book 2)

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.