Until I Die

“You should probably come back with us to La Maison,” I said to Georgia. As I helped her to her feet, I glanced up at Vincent, who was back, slipping his coat on as he stood over us. He shook his head and gave me a helpless shrug. I had forgotten about Jean-Baptiste’s injunction against my sister’s visiting the house. Damn his rules.

  “I’d rather go straight home,” she said, solving my quandary.

  “I’ll walk the two of you to a taxi,” Vincent offered, helping her along. Georgia was shaking so hard she could barely stand.

  “Is Arthur going to be okay?” she asked, addressing Violette directly for the first time that night.

  “He will be dormant in a few days. After that his wound will heal,” she responded with the assurance of someone who had lived through this type of experience before.

  Once on the main street, Vincent packed us into the back of a taxi. “Go straight home—don’t stop anywhere along the way,” he called as the taxi drove off.

  Jules was waiting outside our building when we arrived. He opened the taxi door and helped us out, and then leaned in to pay the driver. “I heard you were incredible,” he said, leading the way to our front door.

  “What?” I asked, confused.

  “Superhero Kate, fighting off the numa,” he replied, admiration glowing in his eyes. He swung his arm around my shoulder and pulled me to him.

  Having been so worried about Georgia and Arthur, I had completely forgotten about my performance in the alley. I fought a numa, I marveled. And this time I did it without Vincent possessing me. I shook my head in wonder, before glancing back at Jules and admitting, “It wasn’t me who killed him. Vincent did the honor.”

  “He told me you kept the guy at bay until he was able to get to you. That’s pretty amazing for only a couple of months’ training. But then again, I was already fully aware of your awesomeness.” He murmured this last part as he opened the door. Georgia staggered silently past him into the front hall and pressed the button for the elevator.

  “She was so close to being killed,” I said. “Arthur barely got to her in time to save her life.”

  “Vincent told me.” Jules nodded. “Make sure she rests the next couple of days. She’ll be pretty weak—Arthur will be getting all her energy.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “So … you don’t know all our secrets yet!” Jules responded with a wry smile. “Just ask Vincent about energy transfer. And make sure Georgia rests while she gets over her shock.”

  He turned to leave, stepping down from the door to the pavement.

  “Hey, what happened to your date?” I asked.

  “I’ve got my priorities,” he said, running his fingers through his hair in a debonair gesture. “And keeping you alive, Kates, is a bit higher up on my list than a late date with a pretty signorina.”

  “Glad to know you care.” I smiled and, hesitating for just a second, stepped down from the doorway and gave him a good old American hug before turning to follow my sister.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I PEEK ED INTO GEORGI A’S ROOM THE NEXT MORNing. She was sitting propped up in bed, flipping through a music magazine. Her hair was sticking straight out, and her regular peaches-and-cream complexion was verging on kiwi-and-stale-milk.

  “There you are,” she said as I plopped down on the end of her bed. “You’re usually up at the crack of dawn.”

  “Yeah, well, fighting monsters in a dark alleyway at midnight seems to have taken a bit out of me,” I said, my shoulder muscles burning as I cautiously tested them. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like warmed-over crap,” she said. “I have absolutely no energy and was hoping you’d come in so I could hit you up for breakfast in bed.”

  “Is that right?” I exclaimed, laughing. “Well, I guess I can accommodate, seeing you were two inches from being taken out by an evil zombie last night.”

  “And rescued by a good zombie?” She smiled.

  “If you want to get technical, yeah,” I said with a grin, and then got up and walked to the door. “Jules warned me that you’d probably be in shock and should rest. I would spend some quality time in the bathtub if I were you. It’s my personal choice for posttraumatic stress. But first, I’ll get us breakfast.”

  I returned five minutes later with a tray for both of us, and sat on the floor with my back against Georgia’s dresser while I ate a bowl of cereal. She munched pensively on her toast for a few minutes and then said, “So tell me more about this Arthur guy.”

  I set my bowl on the ground. “Oh no, Georgia. Please do not tell me you’re crushing on Arthur just because he saved your life last night.”

  “I didn’t say I was crushing on him. I’m simply interested in who he is. Will you allow that, Miss Protector-of-the-Undead?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I don’t really know much about him. He and Violette knew each other in life—she was one of Anne of Brittany’s ladies-in-waiting, supposedly, and he was one of her dad’s counselors … at least that’s what Charlotte said. Which would mean they’re aristocrats.”

  “Oh believe me, it shows.” Georgia smirked.

  “They both died around 1500, so he’s really ancient. And they’ve been living in isolation in this Loire Valley castle for a really long time.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Honestly, Georgia, I don’t know,” I conceded. “After he said that humans shouldn’t be allowed in revenant meetings—right in front of me—I haven’t really felt like getting to know him. The chip on my shoulder’s pretty much superglued there.”

  Georgia smiled. “Are he and Violette … together?”

  “I thought they were. She acts really possessive of him. But Vincent said it’s platonic. Platonic but codependent. Sounds like a healthy relationship.”

  “He looked really hot in that T-shirt last night,” Georgia mused, taking a sip of coffee.

  “Georgia!” I shouted. “You have a boyfriend. And plus, you’ve said it before yourself: You don’t do dead guys. You’re not even allowed in their house!”

  “I’m not doing anything,” she said. “Especially not today.” She leaned back against her headboard, looking a little weaker than before.

  “I can’t even believe we’re having this conversation,” I said, shaking my head. “He’s five hundred, for God’s sake! Plus he has this love-hate relationship with humans. There’s no way he’d look twice at you.”

  Oh no, I thought. That was totally the wrong thing to say to my sister. She was going to see him as a challenge now. I changed the subject fast. “Anyway, what’s wrong with good old Sebastien?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with him,” she said, gazing dreamily at the ceiling. Her expression suddenly changed to alarm. “Nothing except … oh my God, Kate. I ditched him last night and never called! Quick—bring me my phone. It’s in my bag.”

  I picked up the breakfast tray as she was babbling some ridiculous explanation of why she hadn’t shown last night to Sebastien’s voice mail. At least she was still concerned enough about him to make an effort, I reassured myself. The interest in Arthur was just one of those hero-worship infatuations. Knowing Georgia, she’d forget about it by lunchtime.

  Vincent and I sat side by side, peering at the over-the-top gore of Géricault’s famous painting The Raft of the Medusa. He had convinced me to take him to the Louvre, even though it was a weekend and packed with people. “I want you to teach me about art so I can understand why you’re so affected by it,” he had said. Which was so romantic that before it was even out of his mouth, I was pulling him down the street in the direction of the museum.

  We sat in one of my favorite rooms—one that contained melodramatic historical paintings on canvases as big as king-size beds. The sensational scene before us seemed oddly appropriate as a backdrop for a discussion about undead superpowers.

  “So what’s the story with this energy transfer thing?” I asked.

  “Energy transfer?” Vincent repeated, confused, his eyes glued to the s
cene before us. He seemed to be studying it in a problem-solving way. The decomposing bodies didn’t seem to bother him—I could tell he was just juggling the geometry of the live humans in his mind to strategize how many he could save in one go.

  “Yeah. Jules mentioned it last night. He said something like Georgia would be weak because Arthur would have her energy. What’s that mean?”

  Vincent tore his gaze from the painting. “Well, you know why we die for people?”

  “Besides out of the kindness of your nonbeating hearts?” I joked. Vincent took my hand and held it to his chest. “Okay, your beating undead heart,” I corrected myself, reluctantly pulling my hand away. “If you die saving someone, you reanimate at the age you lost your human life. It’s a compulsion meant to preserve your immortality, right?”

  “Right,” Vincent said. “But you know we only die occasionally—maybe once a year in times of peace. Most of our ‘saves’ don’t necessarily involve dying. Did you ever think about why we would spend our immortal lives watching over you if there wasn’t a solid enticement? Whatever you’ve heard about superheroes, none of them are out saving the human race just because they’re really nice guys.”

  I immediately thought of Violette. Of her and Arthur holding out until their sixties until they died for someone, and then only doing it because Jean-Baptiste needed them. They didn’t seem to love their job, to say the least.

  Vincent turned his body toward me and linked his fingers through mine. “Imagine that everyone has this kind of life energy inside.”

  I nodded, picturing all the tourists walking around the room with a glowing cloud inside them.

  “So you know how, when someone’s been in a near-death situation, they sometimes suffer post-traumatic shock? Well, try to picture it as that energy, or life force, being temporarily sucked out of them.”

  Remembering my own brush with death the previous year, I said, “After I barely escaped being crushed by the side of the café, I was pretty weak and shaky for a couple of days.”

  “Exactly,” Vincent said. “So if a revenant is responsible for the rescue, the energy or strength that has been figuratively ‘sucked out’ of the would-be victim is literally infused into the revenant for the hours or days that it takes the human to recover.”

  I thought about it for a minute, and then stared at him in surprise. “So when you and Charlotte rescued me, you guys got my energy? And same for Arthur with Georgia?”

  Vincent nodded.

  “And what about the girl who almost got run over by the truck the other day? I saw her afterward, sitting in shock by the side of the road.”

  “Which is why I was able to stand up and walk away from the accident scene,” he confirmed. “That transfer of energy makes us physically stronger. Our muscles, hair, nails, everything goes into overdrive. It’s a rush—like a hit of power for us.” He watched for my reaction.

  “So, basically what you’re saying is that I’m going out with a druggie zombie with a death wish. Who used me for my energy. Well”—I gave him as serious a look as I could muster—“I guess I could do worse.”

  Vincent’s laugh turned several heads, and we stood to leave before we drew any more attention to ourselves.

  “So Arthur’s going to be okay?” I asked as we passed the gigantic tableau showing Napoleon’s coronation.

  “Yep, thanks to Georgia loaning him her strength, among other reasons”—and at this, Vincent turned his eyes from mine in an incredibly suspicious gesture—“he’s actually not in any pain and has his full strength.”

  What was that about? I thought, my curiosity piqued. But I had to drop the thought to refocus on what he was saying.

  “But his wound won’t heal completely until he’s dormant. And since it’s pretty serious, he’ll probably be laid up in bed a whole day after he awakes.”

  “Why?”

  “The more severely wounded you are before dormancy, the longer it takes you to recover,” he stated, shrugging as if it were mere logic. “If a severed limb is reconnected during dormancy, we could need another day or two of recovery after awaking. Regenerating body parts lays us up for weeks.”

  Eww. Although I wanted to know everything about the revenants, sometimes the details Vincent gave me fell into the TMI category. Like now. I tried not to visualize what he had just said, and thought instead about the repercussions. As we walked out of the museum and headed toward the bridge crossing the Seine to our neighborhood, I mulled it over.

  The revenant-human relationship was symbiotic—to say the least. Humans relied on revenants (however unknowingly) as we would on doctors or emergency workers: to save our lives. Revenants needed humans not only to keep them existent, but to ease the emotional and physical pain imposed by their particular lifestyle. Or deathstyle, rather, I thought in a flash of morbidity.

  Without revenants, humans would still exist … many would just die a lot earlier. Without humans, revenants would cease to exist. Not to mention that they started out human in the first place.

  The system had been working for a long time. Problems only arose when something out of the ordinary happened. Like a human and a revenant falling in love. And, once again, my mind returned to our plight. If I was going to see the guérisseur—that is, if I ever showed up when she happened to be there—I needed to know what to ask. Since Vincent was in an explaining mood, I decided to dig a bit deeper.

  “So, how does it work? Can a revenant ever die—of natural causes—and just … stop existing?”

  “Strictly speaking, it’s possible,” he said. “But no one can withstand the temptation to sacrifice themselves at the end.”

  “Wait, I thought the older you get, the less you suffer,” I said, confused.

  “Up to a point, and then when the time for a regular human death approaches, it’s like the pendulum suddenly swings back and the suffering is greater than ever.” I shivered, and noticing, Vincent put his arm around me and pulled me close as we continued to walk.

  “Gaspard told me once about this Italian revenant he knew—Lorenzo something. The guy was centuries old and barely felt the pull of dying anymore. At one point, all the deaths and rescues he had experienced in his existence got to be too much and he decided to sequester himself. He went and lived like a hermit in this isolated hilltop retreat. And it wasn’t until decades later that he had a message brought to his kindred that he needed help.

  “They came and got him—he was in his eighties by then—and had to help him find someone to save. He said that his physical and mental suffering had come on like a tidal wave—within the space of a few days. The craving to sacrifice himself for someone was too great to let him just lie down and die, which was all he wanted.”

  We were both silent for a long time as the implications for our own story sank in.

  Whether or not Vincent or I found a way to keep him from suffering, we couldn’t avoid one of several tragic endings. And if he managed to live as long as I did, someday he would get to that point that no revenant could pass—at eighty years old, or whenever. He would sacrifice his life for someone else’s and wake up three days later at eighteen. I would die and he would remain immortal. There was no getting around it.

  Sensing my hopelessness, Vincent pulled me to the side of the bridge. We stood hand in hand, watching the water surge forward in tiny, quickly moving whirlpools. The perfect metaphor for the unstoppable flow of time.

  TWENTY-THREE

  THE NEXT DAY, VIOLETTE TEXTED ME AT SCHOOL, asking if I wanted to go to a movie that night.

  Me: Too much homework. Sorry!

  Violette: Then how about coffee?

  Me: Perfect! After school. Sainte-Lucie.

  Violette: I’ll see you there.

  I smiled, thinking of how her English was coming along. She was actually using contractions! In just a few short weeks, she had begun to sound more like a normal teenager and less like a dowager duchess. And when I heard her speak French with the others … well, she definitely was pi
cking up more “street” expressions.

  She was already seated when I arrived at the café, and stood to greet me with a huge smile on her face. Kissing my cheeks, she exclaimed, “Kate! You were so amazing Saturday night!”

  We sat down, and she continued to gush, but in a softer voice so the people nearby couldn’t hear. “I still can’t believe how well you fought after just a couple months of training. We told Gaspard about it, and although he insisted he couldn’t take any credit, I could tell he was really proud.”

  “You were pretty awesome yourself!” I said, meaning it. “That guy was so much bigger than you, and he never even had a chance.”

  She waved away the praise like it had been nothing. “So … what did you think about Vincent? Wait—monsieur?” She flagged down a passing waiter so I could order a hot chocolate. I leaned back in toward her.

  “He was incredible. I’m glad he got my numa when he did, though. I don’t know how much longer I could have fought him off.”

  She hesitated, watching me.

  “What?” I asked, her expression planting a seed of worry in my chest.

  “He didn’t seem to be operating at one hundred percent, I thought,” she replied quietly. “He has those circles under his eyes. And he’s so sallow-looking. I mean, he battled like the expert fighter he is, but he just didn’t seem to have much physical strength.”

  I looked down at the table. “You’re right, Violette. I mean, I’ve only seen him in practice, but he could probably have taken those guys on by himself if he weren’t …” My voice trailed off.

  “In bad shape.” She finished my sentence for me, and touched my hand. “That’s what I thought. But I wanted to get your reading on it since I don’t know how he usually performs. I hadn’t realized how much his project was affecting him until I saw him fight. Don’t worry about it, though. Things will get better,” she said gently. “But how about you. Any progress?”

  “Zilch,” I answered.

  She pursed her lips pityingly and sighed. “Don’t worry, Kate. I’m sure things will get better.” Although she didn’t look it. Unsure. Worried. Troubled, maybe. But I didn’t see “sure” anywhere on her face.