Die for Me

  “You’ve done everything you can,” Vincent said. “You can’t control your sister. Just try to put it out of your mind.”

  Easier said than done.

  After our pizzas were delivered, we moved downstairs to the screening room and plopped down onto a massive old worn-leather couch to watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which Vincent had pulled from their vast movie collection. Sitting there in the darkened room and munching on slices of mushroom and Parmesan, for once I actually felt like Vincent and I were doing something a real, normal couple would do . . . that is, if I didn’t think about what was going to happen to him after midnight.

  I left around nine. He insisted on walking me home, and we strolled along the darkened Paris streets at a snail’s pace. He seemed as weak as if he were actually eighty-seven years old. It was hard to believe that this same guy had been wielding a sword the weight of a couch just a few days earlier. When we got to my door, he gave me a slow, tender kiss and turned to go.

  “Be careful,” I said, not knowing the etiquette of saying good-bye to someone who was going to spend the next three days dead. Vincent winked and blew me a kiss, and turning the corner, he was gone.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  MAMIE HAD ASKED US IF WE WANTED TO HAVE A traditional Thanksgiving dinner, but neither Georgia nor I felt like it. Anything American reminded me of home. And home reminded me of my parents. I asked Mamie if we could treat it like any other day, and she agreed.

  So I spent Thanksgiving Day on my bed reading, trying not to think of my boyfriend, dead on his bed a few blocks away.

  On Friday morning, I walked the five minutes from my house to Jean-Baptiste’s. Standing outside the massive gates, I typed the digicode that Vincent had texted me into the security box and watched the gates swing open.

  Once at the front door, I wasn’t sure whether I should knock or just walk in. As I raised my hand the door opened, and Gaspard stood in front of me, nervously wringing his hands.

  “Mademoiselle Kate,” he said, giving me an awkward little bow. “Vincent told me you were here. Come in, come in.” He didn’t even attempt to give me the bises, and, afraid that my mere presence was giving him a heart attack, I didn’t insist.

  “Any news?” I asked.

  “Sadly, no,” Gaspard said. “Come back to the kitchen. Vincent’s telling me to ask if you want a coffee.”

  “No, no, I just had breakfast. I’m fine.”

  “Ah, okay then. Vincent says if you want to come back to his room, he’s ready to help you with your . . . trig?” Gaspard looked confused.

  “Trigonometry,” I said to him, laughing. And then to the air I said, “Thanks, Vincent, but I left it at home. You get to look over my shoulder for English lit and European history today.”

  Gaspard laughed a nervous laugh. “Vincent says that I should be the one to help you with that. My, my, it’s true, I have been around to see a bit of history. But I wouldn’t want to bore you with my tales.”

  Sensing that helping a teenager with her history homework would be the last way he would want to spend his morning, I politely declined, to his obvious relief.

  “Charlotte’s out, but I’ll let her know you’re here when she returns,” he said, dropping me off in front of Vincent’s door.

  “Thank you,” I responded.

  Vincent’s room was as I had seen it the first time. Windows and curtains closed. Fire cold in the hearth. And Vincent cold on the bed. I shivered as I saw his motionless form behind the gauze bed curtains.

  Shutting the door behind me, I placed my bag on the couch and approached the bed. He lay there completely immobile. Devoid of life. It struck me how different he looked from somebody who was merely sleeping, with their chest in perpetual motion, breath coming in and out of their mouth. Pulling the drapes back, I gingerly sat down on the bed and gazed at him, magnificent even in death.

  “Okay, I feel a bit silly talking to you like this,” I said to the empty room. “Like in a minute you’re going to jump out of the closet and laugh your head off.”

  The room was silent.

  Hesitating, I ran my fingers lightly down his cold arm, trying not to recoil at the inhuman feel of his skin. Then, even more slowly, I leaned over to touch his mouth with my thumb. The skin was cold, but soft, and I thrilled at the sensation of my fingertips against his curved, perfect lips. Encouraged, I caressed his thick, wavy hair with my hand before touching my lips very lightly to his own. I didn’t feel anything. Vincent wasn’t there.

  “Am I taking advantage of the situation,” I whispered, wondering if he was there to hear me, “since you couldn’t say no even if you wanted to?”

  Though the room remained silent, I was possessed by the strangest feeling—like someone was writing on a tablet in my mind. It felt like a great effort was being expended. Like an enormous weight was being shifted. And then these two words slowly materialized in my head: I’m yours.

  “Vincent, was that you?” I asked, startled. My body felt like a tree strung with a million Christmas lights that had all been switched on at once.

  “Okay, if that was you, it kind of freaked me out. But that’s fine. And if it wasn’t you, then I must be completely losing it from hanging out with a dead guy. Thanks a lot for compromising my sanity,” I said, feigning sarcasm, but badly, since I was shaking.

  I could almost feel a sensation of amusement drifting through the room, but it was so feeble that I assumed I was making it up. “Now you’re making me paranoid,” I said. “Before I start doing a Joan-of-Arc-hearing-voices impersonation, I think I’ll work on my history homework.”

  Silence.

  Leaving the bed curtains open so that I could see him, I went to sit on the couch, digging my books out of my bag and spreading them on the coffee table.

  It was then that I noticed an envelope sitting on his bedside table. I saw my name written in Vincent’s beautiful script, and pulled a sheet of thick paper from inside. It was embossed with the initials VPHD centered at the lower edge, and encircled with a border of vines and leaves. Kate, it started.

  I’m not always the best at expressing myself to you, so I’m taking advantage of the fact that I will be completely unresponsive when you read this, and therefore incapable of messing things up.

  I want to thank you for giving me a chance. When I first saw you, I knew I had found something incredible. And since then all I’ve wanted was to be with you as much as possible.

  When I thought I had lost you, I was torn between wanting you back and wanting the best for you—wanting you to be happy. Seeing you so miserable during the weeks we were apart gave me the courage to fight for us . . . to find a way for things to work. And seeing you happy again in the days we’ve been back together makes me think I did the right thing.

  I can’t promise you an ordinary experience, Kate. I wish I could transform myself into a normal man and be there for you, always, without the trauma that defines my life as “the walking dead.” Since that isn’t possible, I can only reassure you that I will do everything in my power to make it up to you. To give you more than a normal boyfriend could. I have no idea what that will mean, exactly, but I’m looking forward to finding out. With you.

  Thank you for being here, my beauty. Mon ange. My Kate.

  Yours utterly,

  Vincent

  What do you do after reading the most romantic love letter—the only love letter, for that matter—you’ve ever received?

  I walked over to the bed and, climbing up onto its high mattress, sat down beside Vincent’s body. I cupped his cold face with my warm hand and then, stroking his hair with my fingers, began to cry.

  I cried for the loss of my former life. For the days when I would wake up in my old room, walk down the stairs, and see my mother and father sitting at the breakfast table waiting for me. I cried because I wouldn’t ever see them again, and my life would never be the same.

  I thought of how, after all that loss, I had found someone who loved me. He hadn’t sa
id it, but I had seen it in his eyes, and read it in the words he had written. My normal world was gone, in more ways than one. But I had a chance for happiness in a completely new one. A world better suited to science fiction and horror films, perhaps, but also one where I could find tenderness, friendship, and love.

  Although I still longed for my old life, I knew I had been given a second chance. It was right here, suspended like a ripe fruit in front of my eyes. All I had to do was reach out my hand and take it. But first I had to let go of what I was grasping in white-knuckled fear: the past.

  I was being offered a new life in exchange for the old. It felt like a gift. I felt like I was home. I opened my hand and let go. And then I cried until my swollen eyes drifted shut and I fell asleep.

  * * *

  When I awoke an hour later, I didn’t know where I was for a few seconds. And then I felt Vincent’s cold body by my side, and I was suffused with an overwhelming sense of peace that made me feel stronger than I ever had before.

  I heard a noise and turned to see Charlotte poking her head through the door. “I stopped by before, but you were asleep. Are you up now?”

  “Yes,” I said, sitting up and slipping off the bed.

  “Oh, good.” She slid inside and closed the door. “You’ve been crying,” she said after kissing my cheeks.

  I nodded. “I’m fine now. But you don’t look so hot yourself.”

  Charlotte’s normally radiant glow had turned sallow, and all the life that seemed to be popping and sparking around her before had disappeared. She looked sad and exhausted. “It’s Charles,” she said.

  “Still no word?” I asked, pulling her down to sit next to me on the couch.

  She shook her head, bereft.

  “I’ve tried calling him a million times. I’ve left dozens of messages. We’ve put all the numa-controlled locations under surveillance, have paid our tipsters, and even raided an old warehouse where we thought they might be holding him. And we’ve found nothing.”

  “I’m sorry.” Not knowing what else to say, I rubbed her shoulder comfortingly.

  “He’s my twin, Kate. We’ve never been apart except for when we’re dormant. I feel like I’ve lost a half of myself. And I’m really afraid for him.”

  I nodded. “Vincent told me what he suspected.”

  “I just don’t understand,” she whispered, shaking her head.

  She leaned in toward me, and I hugged her slender frame against my own.

  “Vincent’s been leaving us alone for the last few minutes, but he says he wants to be part of the conversation now.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  She nodded, listening to him, and her eyes welled with tears.

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “He said, ‘We’re all lost souls here. It’s a good thing we’ve got each other.’”

  Vincent’s right, I thought. Even though I’m not a revenant, I fit right in. I took a package of Kleenex out of my book bag and handed one to her.

  She dabbed her eyes, and then looked at me, surprised. “Vincent says that he talked to you this morning, and that you heard!”

  “So I wasn’t imagining it!” I said, awestruck. “Ask him what he said.”

  “He said he told you, ‘I’m yours.’”

  “That’s it!” I said, jumping up off the couch and glancing over at his body before realizing for the millionth time that he wasn’t there. “But how is that possible?” I asked her. “He told me once that revenants can only communicate with other revenants when they’re volant.”

  Charlotte listened, then said, “Vincent says that he’s been studying up since then. That it’s rare but has been reported in cases where a human and a revenant have been together for years and years. Geneviève is the only revenant we know like that. And her husband can get impressions of what she wants, but he can’t actually hear words.”

  “But we’ve been together for weeks, not years,” I said doubtfully. “How can it work for us?”

  “He says he has no clue, but wants to try again,” Charlotte said excitedly.

  “Okay,” I said, walking over to the bed.

  “No, come over here,” Charlotte said. “It will just distract you to look at his body. He says to close your eyes and block everything else out. Like you do at museums.” I smiled as I remembered the art-induced trance he had spotted me in at the Musée Picasso. I closed my eyes and breathed slowly, letting the room’s tranquillity permeate my body. Slowly I began to feel the same sensation I had before. Of someone trying to write letters in my mind.

  “What are you hearing?” she asked me.

  “I’m not hearing anything. I’m kind of seeing something . . . like someone is writing words.”

  “He says you’re trying to visualize. Stop using your inner eye and use your inner ear. Like if you were listening to music that you heard coming from far away. Try to sharpen it and tune in.”

  I concentrated, and began to hear a kind of swishing noise, like the wind through leaves, or a kind of static.

  “He says to stop trying so hard and just be,” said Charlotte.

  I relaxed, and the static turned into a rustling noise like a plastic bag being blown around in a breeze. And then I heard it. Pont des Arts.

  “Pont des Arts?” I said out loud.

  “You mean, the bridge crossing the Seine?” Charlotte asked, confused, and then nodded. “Vincent says it was the site of a very important event.”

  I laughed. “Um, yeah. That would be the first time we kissed.”

  Charlotte’s sad face brightened. “Oh my God. I always knew Vincent would be terribly romantic once he found the right person.” She leaned back onto the couch, lacing her hands over her heart. “You’re so lucky, Kate.”

  We practiced our undead-to-human communication skills for the next half hour, with Charlotte bending over in laughter at my off-the-mark answers and Vincent’s silly exercises.

  “Fight off the . . . lint in bed?” I asked, confused.

  “No, Night of the Living Dead!” Charlotte roared with laughter.

  Finally I was getting most of the phrases right, although I still couldn’t hear a voice that sounded like Vincent’s pronouncing them. It was more like words popping out of the blue. And only a few words at a time.

  “Go get lunch?” I asked finally.

  “Right! That’s good! Vincent says it’s time for a lunch break, and that Jeanne’s waiting for us.”

  When we got to the kitchen, Jules and Ambrose were tucking into a lunch of roast chicken and fries, and Jeanne was sitting next to them, absorbed in their recap of the morning’s scouting mission. She jumped up when she saw Charlotte and me enter the room, and gestured at places already set for us.

  “Hey, guys, Vincent can talk to Kate. You know . . . while he’s volant,” Charlotte said with a smug look on her face.

  Everyone froze and stared at me, but after a second Jeanne came unstuck and announced, “I’m not completely surprised. I’ve always told you that I could feel you all floating around when you’re volant. I can even tell which one of you is there. But no one ever believed me.”

  “That’s impossible!” exclaimed Ambrose in amazement, and to the air said, “No way, Vincent!”

  “Not exactly impossible,” Jules replied. “Vincent told me he had been studying Gaspard’s records for examples of revenant-human relationships and had found a few unsubstantiated accounts of communication.”

  “I know,” Ambrose replied. “He told me that too. But those were just rumors—freak stories. Trust Vincent to push the envelope and try it out for himself.”

  Curious, I asked, “What other kind of ‘unsubstantiated rumors’ are out there? Anything I should know about?”

  Ambrose popped a french fry into his mouth and chewed with a sly smile. “You think of all the scary ghost stories, Katie-Lou, all the weird old wives’ tales, all the fairy tales you’ve ever heard, and then remember . . . they all started with a kernel—or maybe just a grain—of some
thing true. Just be glad you didn’t fall for a vampire.” He shoved another fry in his mouth and then stood, stretching his impressive pecs and biceps, and said, “Jules . . . wanna take a walk on the wild side?”

  Jules wiped his mouth with his napkin and then stood, carrying his plate to the sink. “Thanks, Jeanne. Delicious, as usual.” Jeanne beamed. “Vincent, you coming with us?”

  Will you be lonely? The words popped into my head. I smiled.

  “No, you go on with the boys. It looks like they could use a babysitter,” I replied with a smirk.

  “No way . . . he just talked to you right then?” Ambrose said, mouth agape.

  I nodded and smiled.

  “Lucky man,” Jules said to me, leaning over to kiss my cheeks. “What I wouldn’t give to be in your head.” Instead of the usual quick air-kisses, he took his time kissing both of my cheeks tenderly.

  “Jules!” I gasped, feeling myself blush.

  He stood, looking up in space, and raised both arms as if in surrender. “Okay, okay, man. Hands off, I get it! But it’s not often we get a young pretty human in the house. In fact, it’s never.” He turned to go, and then looked back over his shoulder at me. “Bye, Kates, and just remember . . . I’m completely available for the next couple of days while Vincent is otherwise indisposed.” He winked. My face burning, I turned away, studiously ignoring him as he left the room.

  “What was that about?” asked Charlotte curiously.

  “Honestly, I have no idea,” I groaned.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “ARE YOU STAYING FOR DINNER?” JEANNE ASKED as Charlotte and I left the kitchen.

  “Actually, I hadn’t thought about it, but it would be nice to see Vincent—I mean, hear Vincent”—I paused, shaking my head at the weirdness of what I had just said—“when the guys get back. Yes, I’ll stay, thanks!”

  She nodded, satisfied, and got back to her bustling. We left the kitchen and headed down the hallway.