Until I Die

  “I would love a cup of tea,” Geneviève said to no one in particular.

  “I’ll get it!” I popped to my feet, grateful to be given a task. “Just point me to the kitchen.”

  Once there, I lit the gas burner under a kettle and rummaged through the cupboards until I found a teapot, some cups, and a box of tea bags. Framed photos hung on the kitchen wall, and I wandered from one to the next as I waited for the water to boil.

  The first was an old black-and-white photo of Geneviève in a wedding dress, being carried in the arms of a tuxedoed man through the front gate of this house. Geneviève’s dress and crimped hairstyle dated the picture from around World War II. They were both laughing in the photo, and looked like any other blissful couple on their wedding day.

  The next picture showed the same man outside a garage, wearing a light-colored jumpsuit with grease stains on it. He leaned over a car and gave a thumbs-up, holding a wrench in one hand. His face didn’t look any different than in the wedding photo—still 1940s or ’50s, I was guessing.

  I moved to the next photo, which must have been taken in the 1960s—I could tell from Geneviève’s Jackie O hairdo. She looked exactly the same, but her husband was graying and his face was that of a man in his forties. Still … they could pass for a middle-aged man and his much younger wife.

  But not in the following images. The color photographs made their difference in age increasingly obvious. I leaned in to see an inscription written across the bottom of the most recent portrait: “60 years on the millennium. My love for you will last forever. Philippe.” In the photo the man was sitting in a club chair with one of those metal walkers standing beside it. Geneviève was perched on the arm, leaning over and kissing his cheek as he grinned directly into the camera lens. He looked ancient. She looked twenty. And they looked as in love as they had on their wedding day.

  I jumped as the kettle began whistling on the stove behind me. I had forgotten where I was as I became gradually sucked into their history—a history full of love and happiness, certainly, but one that had ended as a tragedy worthy of Homer.

  When I returned to the living room, carrying the tray with teapot and cups, Jules was pacing around on his cell phone, spreading the news to their friends. Geneviève sat on the couch with her head on Vincent’s shoulder, staring off into space.

  My boyfriend’s eyes were dark as he watched me cross the room and set the tray on a coffee table in front of them. An expression of pain flashed across his face, and I knew we were thinking the same thing. The story of Geneviève and her human husband could one day be ours.

  FIVE

  WE STOOD IN THE GRAVEYARD, AMONG THE TOMBstones, forty-some dead people and me. A couple of my fellow funeral-goers had even been in their own coffins, deep under several feet of French soil, before they had been dug out by Jean-Baptiste or another like him who had “the sight.”

  As Vincent had explained to me, a revenant-in-the-making sends off a light like a beacon shooting straight up into the sky, visible only to those few revenants who have the gift of seeing auras. And if the “seer” gets to the corpse before it wakes up three transformational days later—if they provide food, water, and shelter for the awakening revenant—a new immortal is born. If not … ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

  Although Philippe hadn’t met the revenant prerequisite of dying in another human’s stead, Geneviève didn’t take any chances and waited until the fourth day after his death to bury him. And now she knelt by the graveside, swathed in black crepe and throwing bunches of tiny white flowers down onto the casket.

  “Thee only do I love,” came a girl’s hushed voice from just behind me. Vincent had left my side to stand next to Geneviève, picking up a handful of dirt and throwing it down among the flowers before giving another mourner his place. I turned to see Violette standing next to me.

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  “The tiny white flowers Geneviève is throwing—they’re arbutus.” She saw my confusion and corrected herself. “I forgot that they do not teach the language of flowers nowadays. That was a staple of a lady’s education. Every flower has its own meaning. And arbutus flowers mean ‘Thee only do I love.’ Geneviève would be aware of that—that is why she chose them for her one and only love.”

  I nodded blankly.

  “It is tragic,” she continued in her strange old-fashioned speech. I had a hard time following some of it—at times her words came out like she was quoting Shakespeare, but in Old French. “Why anyone would put themselves through such misery is quite simply beyond me. How could she expect anything other than grief, remaining attached to a human?”

  The words came out almost flippantly, and then Violette turned to me with her mouth in an O and eyes wide. “Kate. I am so sorry! You blend in so well with all the revenants here, I completely forgot you were not one of us. And with you and Vincent being …” She grasped for words.

  “Together,” I said bluntly.

  “Yes, of course. Together. Well, it is so very, very … pleasant. Please forget that I said anything.”

  Violette looked like she was on the verge of tears, she was so embarrassed. I touched my hand to her shoulder and said, “Don’t worry. Really. Sometimes it’s hard for me to remember there’s any difference between me and Vincent.” Which was kind of a lie, since that difference was almost always on my mind. But she seemed mollified and, after nodding gratefully at me, stepped forward and bent down to scoop up her own handful of grave dirt.

  There was a stir as Vincent held his hand up to quiet the crowd, who had begun conversing softly among themselves. “Excuse me, friends,” he called out. “There is something that Geneviève wanted to read you herself, but she has asked me to take her place. It was a favorite passage of hers and Philippe’s from the book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy. She said it helped to keep them ‘in the day.’”

  He cleared his voice and began reading.

  “‘Time wastes too fast …. the days and hours of it … are flying over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return more—every thing presses on—whilst thou art twisting that lock,—see! it grows grey …’”

  Vincent looked up and caught my eye and then, looking troubled, returned to the page and continued.

  “‘And every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to make!’”

  My heart lurched in my chest. Not just symbolically—it caused actual physical pain. The passage seemed to have been written for me and Vincent. My worst fear about our future had been spelled out in the poetic lines that he was reading like a dirge.

  This could be us, I thought once again. Whatever happened, we seemed damned by fate. Even if Vincent suffered through the agony it would cause him to resist dying and grow old with me, someday he’d be like Geneviève, a beautiful teenager standing by his elderly lover’s grave.

  And why am I even thinking about growing old with someone? my internal voice of reason protested indignantly, making me feel like a sappy idiot. I’m just a teenager! How do I even know what I will want five years from now, much less sixty? I couldn’t help it, though. The tragedy felt real and immediate, and I couldn’t throw it off with rational explanations.

  Irrational and premature grief raked my heart, forcing stinging tears to my eyes. I had to get out of there. I had to escape from this crushing reminder of mortality’s final result. I backed slowly out of the assembly, hoping no one would notice my flight.

  Once I was clear of the group, I strode quickly away, pausing briefly to look over my shoulder. No one had seen me leave. Everyone faced Vincent, who was now hidden by a sea of black suits. I myself was lost for a minute in a mob of passing tourists, holding up maps that pointed out the celebrity graves. “Edith Piaf, two aisles over and one up,” called a guide leading a group of American teenagers. Just a year ago, that could have been me, I thought, looking at a smiling, carefree girl my age. I let myself
be swept along with them until I was a safe distance away from the funeral.

  Not caring what direction I was heading, I plunged deeper into the acres of graves. A cold rain began to pelt down like frozen darts, stinging my skin, and I ducked into a little Gothic-style structure carved in stone.

  The roof was supported only by pillars, giving me shelter from the rain, but leaving me exposed to the cold wind. I hunched down next to an aboveground tomb topped by two statues lying side by side, their hands pressed together in eternal prayer on their marble bed. After a moment of casting around in my memory, I remembered where I was—I had stopped here on the walking tour with my mother. It was the tomb of Abelard and Héloïse. How fitting, I thought, that on today, of all days, I end up at the grave site of France’s most famous tragic lovers.

  At the base of the monument, I sat with my knees up pressed against me, pulling my coat around my legs to shield me from the elements. I felt more alone than I had in months. Drying my face with the edge of my sleeve, I took a couple of deep breaths and tried to think things through in a rational manner.

  I had to concentrate on the here and now. Why was I so afraid?

  I picked up a shiny black stone from the base of the tomb and rolled it around in my palm until it was warm. Then I set it on the ground next to my foot to mark Point One of my List of Fears: Even if Vincent was able to resist dying, it would mean decades of emotional and physical pain for him. It was cruel and selfish of me to expect him to endure that, and all because of my own weakness.

  I picked up another stone and placed it next to the first. If Vincent couldn’t hold out, I would have to deal with the constant specter of his ravaged corpse every time he died for someone.

  I felt my brow wrinkle and placed shiny black stone number three by the pair on the ground: If—even after that—I was able to stay with him and learned to live with the trauma of his deaths, he would be the one watching me age. And then die.

  The three black stones looked like ellipses, waiting for something else to follow. Well, I could add to my List of Fears the revenants’ one occupational hazard: Another vengeful numa like Lucien could come after Vincent to destroy him—and succeed this time. Then I would be the one left alone.

  Stop it, Kate, I ordered myself. Aging and death were still far away, and I would deal with that when the time came. That’s if we stayed together. Which, being realistic, wasn’t certain no matter how much I wanted it to be. Mortal couples have a hard enough time making things work.

  As for the rest, it was no use trying to second-guess what would happen. If I didn’t try to project into an unknown future, I could handle the here and now. I had been handling it … just not for the last hour or so.

  Stay in the present, I thought. In the present, Vincent and I were fine. And right here and now, all I wanted to do was go home. Making that simple decision made me suddenly feel more in control. I pushed myself up against the cold stone into a standing position, and began texting Vincent to tell him I had left before he started searching for me.

  I had just keyed in his name when I heard the sound of crackling leaves. Tensing, I glanced around, but saw only gray headstones and monuments stretching out for miles.

  A sudden movement caught my eye. As I saw a cloaked figure step out from behind a tomb a few yards away, an irrational panic gripped me. I couldn’t see his face, but his hair was a wavy salt-and-pepper—dark brown mixed with gray—and he was as tall as me. I absorbed this in a second, as I went into automatic fight mode, calculating how to best defend myself against his height and weight.

  But without looking my way, he turned and walked off among the gravestones. I exhaled, relieved, as my brain registered the fact that it was just a man. A man in a long fur coat who was walking away from me. Not toward me. A man. Not a monster, I thought, chiding myself for freaking out about nothing.

  As I watched his form disappear among the graves, I rose out of the defensive stance I had subconsciously taken. Just as I lifted the cell phone back to finish my text, a strong hand gripped my shoulder.

  I let out a yelp as I turned to see a pair of dark blue eyes staring angrily into my own. “Kate, what do you think you’re doing?” Vincent said, his voice sounding all strangled in his throat.

  “What am I doing? You almost gave me a heart attack sneaking up on me like that!” I pressed my chest with my hand as if that could still its frantic beating.

  “I wasn’t sneaking up on you,” he said frostily. “I wouldn’t have even known where you were if Gaspard weren’t volant. He returned to get me after following you here. You could have been in serious danger.”

  Even though Vincent couldn’t have known how unnerved I’d been by the man in the fur coat just moments ago, my fear transformed to anger in a split second. “Danger? Here? In broad daylight? From what? Psycho Jim Morrison fans? Falling tombstones?”

  “From numa.”

  “Oh, please, Vincent. We’re in the middle of a major tourist site. Père Lachaise is practically Disneyland for the Dead. It’s not some Buffy soundstage with vampires rising out of the ground every time someone turns around.”

  “Kate, we are on high alert right now. No one knows where the numa are or what they’re up to. This would be exactly the type of event that they would jump at to attack us. Dozens of revenants in one place at one time? It would be their dream situation. That’s why we all came armed.” He held aside his coat to show me a sword at his waist and knives strapped to his thighs.

  That shut me up.

  “Why did you go wandering off by yourself?” The fear having left his voice, his expression now showed unsettled confusion.

  I stared at him for a moment, and then glanced at the statues next to us—the tragic lovers lying side by side. Vincent turned to see what I was looking at, and comprehension dawned on his face. He closed his eyes as if to block out the image.

  “I had to leave the funeral, Vincent. I couldn’t take it,” I began to explain. But the sorrow and the rain and cold and fright all seemed to gang up on me at once, and my words stuck in my throat.

  “I understand,” he said, putting his arm around me and pulling me away from the tomb. He turned me to face him. “It’s freezing and you’re drenched. Let’s get out of here.”

  I couldn’t help but peer over my shoulder as we left. There was no trace of the cloaked man—he was long gone—but now that Vincent had mentioned numa, it made me wonder why I had had such a strong reaction to the man’s appearance. Could a numa have been following me through the graveyard?

  It didn’t matter now, I decided, and would only freak Vincent out if I said something about it. I put it out of my mind, and pulled my boyfriend closer.

  SIX

  BEFORE MEETING VINCENT, MY DAYS ALL SEEMED to speed by like one of those passage-of-time visual metaphors in movies that show pages falling off a calendar. But lately, every day seemed significant: The first time Vincent met my grandparents. The first movie date (Holy Grail, where Vincent earned major points by quoting the best bits in English right along with me). Our first New Year’s together.

  Today was my last day of freedom before school resumed post-holidays, marking exactly one year and one semester to go before my high school education was officially over. Which made it another significant day. So of course I planned on spending it doing the thing I loved most.

  I flitted down our building’s creaky wooden staircase with a feeling of elation buoying my footsteps. The whole day stretched out in front of me like a new country to explore. With my favorite person.

  I caught sight of him as soon as I stepped out the door. Shaking my head in disbelief, I jogged to the park across the street and pushed through the metal gate.

  “What are you doing? I thought we were going out for breakfast,” I laughed, pointing at the picnic blanket he was lying on, with wicker basket and thermos by his side.

  “You can’t get much more ‘out’ than this,” Vincent responded, his eyes hidden by mirrored sunglasses.

/>   His languid smile did its regular job on me: It was as if an invisible hand took my insides and squeezed. Hard. It happened every time. And it made me wish that I could freeze-frame the moment and stand there feeling that delicious, squeezy feeling for the rest of my life.

  Inhale and then exhale, I reminded myself. I tore my gaze away from his face and noticed that he was cocooned in a warm coat, wool scarf, and knitted cap, with his dark hair waving out from underneath. He lay back on his elbows, propped on the blanket that was spread across the frozen grass.

  “Let me get this right. We’re having a picnic in January in the freezing cold?” My breath came out in a warm puff of mist as I stood above him, hands on my hips.

  He pulled off his glasses, and the amusement in his eyes warmed me more efficiently than a bonfire. “I thought we could have a day of doing things we’ve never done before. I’ve never had a picnic in January. Have you?”

  I shook my head and, bemused, sank down onto the blanket next to him.

  “Perfect,” he concluded. “Since it has to be something that neither of us has ever done, this totally counts.”

  I glanced up at the people walking by: mainly businesspeople carrying briefcases and backpack-wearing tourists out for an early start. They all stared at us as if the park was a circus and we were its freak-show headliners, and a few laughed out loud. Vincent said, “I hope you don’t mind spectators,” and then leaned forward and took my face in his hands, kissing me.

  “I think I can deal.” I grinned, and then shivered as he let me go.

  “We’ll make it a speed-picnic,” he promised, unwinding his scarf and double-wrapping it above my own.

  We munched on croissants that were baked exactly how I love them: crunchy on the outside, light as air inside, with an inner core of doughiness. The café au lait was hot enough to warm my insides, and I sipped the supersweet freshly squeezed orange juice while Vincent caught me up on the news of how Charles and Charlotte were settling in the south. “We were talking about a road trip to take them more boxes, but JB claims he needs me here,” Vincent complained, popping the end of his croissant into his mouth.