“But I’ve only been here a half hour,” she says, sitting up. She looks uncertain.
“Don’t worry. I’ll pay you for the whole three hours,” I say. She nods, satisfied, and begins getting dressed as I follow Vincent. We walk quickly toward the Saint-Paul Métro station.
You’ve got exactly a minute and a half, Ambrose says as we jog down the stairs.
“Who’s up this time?” I ask Vincent.
“Well, it was Ambrose’s turn to die, but he saved that kid two days ago,” Vincent replies.
“What’s it been for you—a year?” I ask.
Vincent nods.
“My last was March. So you can take it,” I offer.
No one’s going to take it if you don’t get your butts down there stat, says Ambrose as we emerge out of the hallway into the platform area.
“There he is—the guy who was with Lucien,” Vincent says, and points to a man in a suit who is blatantly crying.
That’s our jumper, verifies Ambrose.
The man places his briefcase on the platform and lowers himself down onto the tracks. “Now!” I say, and Vincent gets ready to run. But before he can, we hear a girl screaming behind us. Someone else has noticed the man on the tracks. I’m stunned to see that it’s Kate. She’s pointing to the guy and freaking out. Vincent looks at me. I know what he’s thinking. “Let’s go,” I say.
Vincent runs for Kate, and I jump down onto the tracks. The man is sobbing, holding his head in his hands as the rush of wind announcing an oncoming train blows me back a step. The train rounds a corner and bears down on him as I run between the tracks to get to him. He’s half a platform away: I’m not sure I can reach him in time.
The train appears, and to me it is like a dragon, solid, shining, and enormous: the yellow headlights its eyes and the wailing horn its battle shriek. It’s like St. George versus the dragon, I think, but this time the dragon wins.
The man lets out a terrified bleat, and with no time to spare, I push him to the other side of the tracks—to safety. And in my final second, I turn to see Vincent trying to shield Kate so she won’t see me die. The train is upon me, sparks flying, brakes screeching as the driver tries to avoid the inevitable.
No time to dive out of its trajectory. This is the way of my kind, I think. Death is a welcome mistress, but damn, is she brutal.
I brace myself for the split second of wrenching pain that I will experience as the impact takes my life. Vincent’s eyes meet mine. I touch my fingers to my forehead in salute to my kinsman, and then I die.
SIX
WHEN MY MIND AWAKES, THE HOUSE IS QUIET. I sweep through the floors, see who’s around, and stop when I see Vincent alone in his room. He’s stretched out on the floor throwing chunks of bread into the fire and watching them spark. An untouched tray of food sits in front of him. He must have skipped dinner, if Jeanne brought him room service.
What’s up? I ask, knowing the answer has something to do with her.
“Jules. You’re back. That Métro crash looked pretty painful. I hope you get extra bonus points for it.” His voice is mournful. I know he’s glad to “see” me, but something’s definitely wrong.
I stay silent and finally he says, “Kate says she never wants to see me again.” He crushes a piece of bread into a tiny ball before jettisoning it into the flames. “She thought something was wrong with me since I didn’t seem upset about you dying.”
A completely normal reaction, seeing she is human and we are immortal, I reply.
“But Jules,” he says, rolling over onto his back and staring at the ceiling. “She’s different from anyone else I’ve ever met. I haven’t felt this for a girl since Hél—”
Whoa, whoa, whoa, I say, cutting him off. You have officially entered the danger zone. You should be thanking your lucky stars that Kate dumped you. What if she had fallen for you, and you had to reject her? That would be rough, man. Rule number one with the babes is don’t ever hurt them. Make them think it’s they who broke up with you. And in your case, that has actually happened. Saves you from having to be an asshole later on.
“But what if there was a way,” he begins, ripping crumbs off the mangled baguette in his hand.
There is no way, I say. Okay, there are rare examples you hear about from time to time at a convocation. A handful of stories from way back when. But man, who would want that? They grow old while you stay young? It’s not natural.
“We’re not natural,” Vincent says in a dead voice.
I ignore him and continue. Plus Jean-Baptiste has forbidden it for the French kindred. You’re only his second: Until you take his place, he’s the boss.
Vincent doesn’t say anything after that, but I know I haven’t changed his mind. For the next couple of weeks he skulks around, a ball of nerves, watching Kate from afar. Never going close enough for her to catch sight of him, and being careful around the rest of us to look like he’s not stalking her. But I can tell he’s just dying to see her face. And when he catches sight of her at the café or walking home from the Métro station, he looks all tranquil. Like he’s only okay if he knows she’s safe. It’s freaking me out. I have a feeling it’s going to end badly, but there’s nothing more I can say. And in any case, my mind is on other things.
Whenever I die, I’m moody for weeks afterward. Thoughtful. I think about my deaths, run Google searches on those of my rescues who are still alive, see how they’re all are doing. But the most important rescue in any revenant’s life is the very first. The one that turned us from human into bardia. My first save is long gone—he died over half a century ago. But there are vestiges of him in museums around the world, and it comforts me to see the masterpieces he created after I died. Half of Fernand Léger’s oeuvre wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t handed him my gas mask and died in his place.
There is a particular painting of his, The Card Game, that I love to visit, mainly because I’m in it—I admit. But also because it resides just across town at the Musée d’Art Moderne. And since I’m going on a month since reanimation, I make my regular pilgrimage to see it.
The painting depicts a group of soldiers playing cards—soldiers Léger said were from his own battalion. I recognize my pipe, but he made my face look like a robot skeleton. He painted me as an image of death, soon after I died saving his life. The scene takes me back to those endless nights of card playing as we waited for the enemy to shell our trenches. Cards were the only thing that could take our minds off our feeble hold on mortality.
And now death is no longer a concern for me. It is something that I crave. That I welcome. That I need in order to remain immortal. Although Léger was depicting his soldiers as automatons—easily expendable, easily replaced—the metal armor he used to represent our skin seems like a posthumous way of protecting all of us. Of making us less destructible. I know the wars affected Léger deeply, as they did everyone in Europe. But he left visible records of his battle wounds.
That’s enough. I have had my fill of The Card Game—at least for this life cycle. I turn to make my way out of the room, and freeze in place. My heart is pounding like a bass drum.
It’s the situation that every revenant dreads, and the reason bardia who live in small towns have to move every time they die. It’s not supposed to happen in a city of two and a quarter million people! We avoid getting to know the humans in our neighborhood. We avoid making friends with humans at all (okay—temporary girlfriends, but that’s different because they’re . . . temporary). Because if a human sees us die and then recognizes us after we reanimate, we are up shit creek.
But Vincent made a friend. A friend who saw me die. And she is sitting across the room, staring straight at me, her mouth hanging open in incredulity. She gets up from her bench and walks toward me. “Jules!” she says, and her voice is a squeak because she can’t believe her eyes. I have one second of shock before I’m able to pull the mask down over my face.
“Hello,” I say, and cock my head slightly to the side. “Do I know you?”
“Jules, it’s me, Kate. I visited your studio with Vincent, remember? And I saw you at the Métro station that day of the crash.”
I give her the kind of smile you give someone you feel sorry for. “I’m afraid that you have confused me with someone else. My name is Thomas, and I don’t know anyone named Vincent.”
Kate takes a step toward me, and anger flashes in her eyes. “Jules, I know it’s you. You were in that horrible accident when . . . just over a month ago?”
I shrug and shake my head.
“Jules, you have to tell me what’s going on,” she insists.
People are starting to look at us, and I need to diffuse the situation before Kate goes into a full-out hissy fit in the middle of a public place. But what can I do? I can’t tell her the truth. And she’s not going swallow my obvious charade. I take her gently by the elbow and lead her back toward the bench. “Let me help you sit down. You must be overexcited. Or overwrought.”
Kate jerks her arm away from me. “I know it’s you. I’m not crazy. And I don’t know what’s going on. But I accused Vincent of being heartless for running away from your death. And now it turns out you’re alive.”
Kate’s basically yelling now, and I feel beads of sweat forming on my forehead. Everyone in the room is watching us. A security guard walks briskly toward us from the front desk. “Is there a problem here?”
“No problem, sir. The lady seems to have mistaken me for someone else.”
“I have not!” Kate hisses, and does this fist-clenching foot stomp like an angry schoolgirl. She huffs off, out the museum door, and I shrug at the guard, who has lost interest now that the storm has passed. As soon as he walks away, I’m off, down the stairs, booking it back out to the car I parked on the rue Rambuteau. I know where she’s going: Vincent had the idiotic idea of taking her back to La Maison after I died, to “calm her down.” If she takes the Métro, I’m going to have to make record time to beat her back to La Maison.
The worst that can happen is that JB will turn her away at the gate, I think, but I’ve got a really bad feeling about this whole thing. Vincent is volant. If she insists on seeing him, we won’t be able to produce a walking, talking Vincent until tomorrow afternoon. And Kate looked damn well determined as she marched away from me. She’s not the kind of girl who’s going to easily give up.
Paris traffic is working against me on this all-crucial occasion, and by the time I run in through the front door, Jeanne is arguing with JB about a young visitor he said was waiting in the sitting room with a note for Vincent.
The sitting room is empty now, except for a handwritten letter signed by Kate. So I rush straight to Vincent’s room, and there she is, standing next to his cold, dead body and freaking out like an actress in a black-and-white horror film.
I can feel a volant spirit in the room. “Looks like the game’s up, Vince,” I say.
SEVEN
KATE’S INITIATION INTO LA MAISON HAPPENS the next morning when she sees that Vincent reanimated and we tell her what we are. She handles it better than I would have expected. Not that I expected her to go running, screaming out of the house. But discovering that there is a whole world of undead superheroes existing side by side with the regular human world would freak most people out. Kate takes it in stride. Only a teenager, and she accepts what we tell her with courage and grace. I am officially amazed.
However, Jean-Baptiste is furious that a human who wasn’t preapproved by him entered our house and learned our secrets. And while he’s chewing Vincent out, Kate actually comes to the kitchen and has breakfast with us—not only a crowd of people she’s just met, but people she’s just discovered are basically monsters. She stands there at the door looking uncertain until Ambrose bids her to “Enter, human,” and laughing, she comes to sit next to me.
She meets Jeanne, and I can tell that knowing there is another human in the room comforts her. And by the time she digs into the bread and coffee Jeanne serves her, she’s chatting with the group like she’s known us all her life.
When Gaspard sticks his head in and tells Kate she’s free to go, I leap at the opportunity to walk her out. After she says good-bye to Vincent, I put on my very best nineteenth-century manners, bow, and place her hand on my arm as I escort her to the front door. And when we get there, I do what I’ve been wanting to all morning: I apologize.
“I’m sorry I was rude before today, you know . . . in my studio and at the museum. I swear it was nothing personal. I was just trying to protect Vincent and you . . . and all of us. Now that it’s too late for that, well, please accept my apology.”
She watches me quizzically, as if she’s trying to decide whether I’m serious or not. And then she picks up her bag and slings it over her shoulder. “I totally understand,” she says. And she gives me a lips-closed smile with a teasing sparkle in her eye. “I’m a mere mortal. What else could you do?”
This girl is oozing with graceful charisma, like a teenage Audrey Hepburn, and I totally get what Vincent sees in her. Knowing she’ll probably be around a lot, I really pour on the charm.
I press my hand to my chest. “Whew—she forgave me.” And I step toward her so that only a few inches of space separate us. “You’re sure you don’t need me to walk you home?” I say, lifting an eyebrow and giving her my most flirtatious smile.
She refuses, but blushes deeply—hot pink spreading across her cheeks. As usual, I feel a wild rush of success. I love flirting more than food. Or even fighting. And evoking a blush is one of the most satisfying results I can hope for.
I like this girl, I find myself thinking. I’m actually looking forward to her being around.
The next week Vincent comes home two days in a row with this grin on his face that’s got to mean he’s been hanging with Kate.
“So you’re going to keep her to yourself,” I joke with him as we jog down the stairs to the armory. “Finally we’re allowed to have a pretty girl in the house and you’re hoarding her.”
“No, I’m not,” he insists. “Ambrose is going as Kate’s sister’s date with us this Saturday.”
“Um, excuse me,” I say, grabbing a pair of short swords off the wall. “Best friend, here? The guy who is always offering to set you up with hot babes, and you leave me out?”
“Jules. Saturday. You’re volant,” he reminds me as he chooses his own weapon: a Japanese katana.
“Oh, right,” I admit. “But that still doesn’t mean I can’t tag along. You guys could use some ghostly backup if you’re going to be out on the town with two very distracting ladies on your arms.”
Vincent laughs and faces me in a two-handed assault pose. “I knew you’d want to come. I was just waiting for you to ask. You know . . . grovel a bit after treating Kate so rudely.”
I lift my swords. “Dude, I’m done with the groveling, and fair Kate agreed to forgive me my misdeeds.”
“Did she, now?” Vincent asks, looking amused. “I can only imagine the way that you apologized.” And he launches toward me, swinging his sword downward to strike my crossed blades. I pull the short swords apart in an upward thrust, sending Vincent back a step.
“Hey, pouring on the charm is what I do best,” I say between breaths, and ready my stance for his next lunge. “What can I do? The ladies can’t resist me.”
When we meet Kate and Georgia at the Métro station, I immediately see a kindred flirtatious spirit in the sister as she coos over Vincent and Ambrose in turn. The sisters couldn’t be more different in looks, but there’s still something there that says, We share genes. However, it’s Kate who attracts my attention. She’s glowing. Radiant. No trace of Sad Girl left.
Georgia answers her phone, and Vince and Ambrose start talking about whether or not they should go to the place Georgia suggested, which happens to be in a numa-frequented neighborhood.
Hey, Ambrose, I say, interrupting, tell Kate ‘Hi, beautiful’ from her ghostly lothario. He laughs and tells Kate what I said, winning me my second blush in one week.
“Hey, watch it,” Vincent jokes.
Tell her it’s a shame she had to fall for someone as boring as you. Being an older, more experienced man, I know how to treat a lady. Vincent roars with laughter. “Looks like someone’s got a crush,” he says, and then relays my message.
Kate gives this flattered smile as Vincent reminds me that even though I’m technically twenty-seven years older than he is, at the moment, we’re both nineteen.
We take the Métro to Denfert, then walk a few minutes down a pedestrian street to Georgia’s restaurant, only to find a large crowd outside waiting for tables. While Georgia goes in to cajole one of her friends into getting us in, I decide to take a quick spin around the neighborhood. And within seconds I feel that disturbing, about-to-be-sucked-into-a-black-hole feeling that I always get when numa are around. I move toward the source of the unease only to see the numa leader himself—Lucien—walking with two of his men just a few blocks away from where Vince and Co. are standing. I rush back to alert them to the situation.
I’ll go back and watch which way they’re heading, I offer. By the time I return, Ambrose is on the ground, and Kate crouches beside him trying to get him to respond.
I see a pair of numa with a drawn knife heading away from the scene, toward Lucien. A few minutes and they’ll be back with reinforcements. I get closer to Ambrose and see he is dead. There’s no way Vincent will be able to lift him to get him out of here, so I do the only thing I can think of: I possess him.
Talk about heavy. Ambrose weighs a ton. Luckily he has the muscles to go along with the bulk. But I feel like I’m wearing one of those fake sumo costumes—stuck inside a fat suit. Kate and Vincent help me get Ambrose’s body into a taxi.
And that’s when it hits me how special she is. She’s brave enough to stay with Vincent, even knowing what he is. But accepting one of the more bizarre details of our existence with just a wrinkled nose and not a full-on freak-out—now, that’s impressive. It’s been a long time since there’s been an addition to our clan, so new blood, even though it’s human, is a breath of fresh air. I’m looking forward to getting to know this unique specimen of girlhood better. If she weren’t Vincent’s girlfriend . . . But I’m not going to go there.