The Casquette Girls (Book 1)

19. La Fille à La Cassette

"Oh, to be young again and have so many gentleman callers fawning all over me," Ren said with an exaggerated southern accent.

"No one is fawning over me." I laughed. "I have even less of a life post-Storm than I had pre-Storm, which I didn't think was possible."

"Oh, child, you're growing into quite the ingénue, aren't you?"

I ignored the comment. "Can I ask you something, Ren?" Nervousness flooded from my stomach all the way to my shoulders, making them tingle. "How much of that stuff do you believe?"

"There you go, changing the subject. That means you are sweet on one of them. Which is it? I'm gonna guess the Yankee. You two bicker too much to actually dislike each other."

"Ren!"

"So, it's the foreign fox?"

"Stop! I'm serious. It's important!"

"D'accord, d'accord. How much of that stuff do I believe?" He twisted the end of his mustache. "Well, I believe bits and pieces of it all. Legends are legends for a reason; they don't just appear out of thin air. But over the years, they morph. They evolve to serve a purpose of the time."

"But what about the stories you just told? The Carter brothers, the casquette girls, the filmmakers . . ."

"You mean the vampire stories?"

"Oui."

"In the words of the great Monsieur Baudelaire, 'The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist.'"

I began to twist the ring around my finger.

"Why so serious, darlin'? What's the mat—?"

"I-think-I-opened-the-attic-window-at-the-Ursuline-Convent," I garbled.

He looked at me blankly for a moment. "Why on earth would you think that, bébé?"

"It was right when we got back into town. I had just discovered a dead body and cut my hand, and his blue eyes were just staring at me, and I ran. When I stopped in front of the convent to catch my breath, the shutter started flapping, only there was no wind—"

He put his hand on my shoulder and pulled me into a narrow alleyway. "Breathe, darlin'."

"I didn't mean to trespass. It was like the window pulled me in, and before I knew it, I was in the courtyard. I didn't touch anything, I swear—the shutter flapped itself until it came crashing down! The window shattered, and . . ."

"And?"

The last words rushed out of my subconscious in a shrill whisper. "And something flew out!" I froze, admitting to myself for the first time what had happened that morning: something had come out of that window. I knew it.

He looked at me with a serious but sympathetic expression. "What flew out? Some kind of monster?"

"Well, no . . . maybe . . . I don't know! It was raining, and it all happened so fast, and my hand was bleeding all over the place—I didn't see anything, but I swear I heard something, Ren. And I felt it."

The fear that flicked in his eyes made me instantly regret telling him. "You don't really think there were vampires trapped in the attic, do you?" I asked.

"Calm down, bébé. There's no way you opened that window. Stop worrying your pretty little head." His acting skills were no longer as convincing, but I appreciated him trying to comfort me. "I'm sorry if the story spooked you."