If she could only see what I wanted now, she would eat her words.
Shifting my eyes from the passing boats to Vincent, sitting motionless by my side, I studied his profile as he looked out at the water, lost in his own thoughts. It wasn’t even a choice. Who was I trying to fool? I had made my decision the first time I saw him, whatever my rational mind had tried to convince me of since then.
I leaned toward him. Reaching up with one hand, I swept my fingers down his arm, running their tips along his warm skin. He turned his head and looked at me with a longing that made my heart skip a beat. I brushed my lips against the bronzed surface of his cheek and braced myself to have the strength to say the words I knew I must. “I can’t, Vincent. I can’t say yes.”
His eyes showed pain, despair even, but not surprise. My answer was the one he had expected.
“I’m not saying no, either,” I continued, and he visibly relaxed. “I’m going to need some things if we’re going to see each other.”
He let out a low, sexy laugh. “So you’re making demands, are you? Well, let’s hear them.”
“I want unlimited access.”
“Now that sounds interesting. To what, exactly?”
“To information. I can’t do this if I don’t understand what I’m getting into.”
“Do you need to know everything right away?”
“No, but I don’t want to feel like you’re hiding anything either.”
“Fair enough. As long as it goes both ways.”
A slight smile lifted the corners of his perfectly sculpted lips. I looked away, before I lost my courage.
“I need to know when I’m not going to see you for a while. When you do the death-sleep thing. So that I won’t worry that I’ve driven you off with my mortality. Or my incessant questions.”
“Agreed. That’s easy enough to schedule, when things are normal. But if something were to happen to . . . throw things off . . .”
“Something like what?”
“Do you remember being told about how we stay young?”
“Oh. Right.” The awful image of Jules jumping in front of the train returned to my mind’s eye. “You mean if you were to ‘save someone.’”
“Then I would be sure to get word to you from one of my kindred.”
I remembered hearing him use that word before. “Why do you say ‘kindred’?”
“It’s what we call one another.”
“Kind of medieval-sounding, but okay,” I said skeptically.
“Anything else?” he asked, looking every bit like a naughty schoolboy waiting to be given his punishment.
“Yes. It doesn’t have to be right away, but . . . you have to meet my family.”
Vincent laughed outright, a rich sound that startled me with its amusement and relief. Leaning toward me, he took me in his arms and said, “Kate. I knew you were an old-fashioned girl. A girl after my own heart.”
I let myself melt into his embrace for a few seconds, and then pulled back and assumed the most serious expression I could muster. “I’m not committing to anything, Vincent. Just to the next date.”
All of a sudden I felt that the old me—the pre-car-wreck Brooklyn me—was outside looking in at the new me, the me that not even a year ago had been forced to instantly grow up. The me who had been battle-scarred by tragedy. I was amazed to witness myself sitting next to this breathtaking guy and speaking those cautious words to him. How on earth had I morphed so quickly into this levelheaded person? How could I be sitting there, stoically laying down conditions for something that I wanted more than anything I’d ever had?
Self-preservation. Those two words came to my mind, and I knew what I was doing was right. My whole being had been torn to shreds when I lost my parents. I didn’t want to open myself up to falling for Vincent and risk losing him, too. Deep down I knew I had barely survived my parents’ “disappearance.” I might not survive another.
Chapter Sixteen
“LET’S WALK,” VINCENT SAID AND, HELPING ME to my feet, held his arm out for me to hold. We strolled as we watched boats plow past us through the dark green water, leaving frothy wakes behind them and sending large, rolling waves clapping against the stones under our feet.
“So how did you . . . die? I mean the first time,” I asked.
Vincent cleared his throat. “Can I wait until later to tell you my story?” he asked, sounding uncomfortable. “I don’t want to completely weird you out by talking about who I used to be before having the chance to show you who I am now.” He shot me an awkward smile.
“Does that mean I don’t have to tell you about my past either?” I lobbed back.
“No,” he groaned. “Especially since I’ve barely started to figure you out.” He paused. “Just please, don’t ask me yet. Any other question, just not that.”
“Okay, how about . . . why do you have a photo of me next to your bed?” I prodded.
“Did that creep you out?” he said, laughing.
“Yeah, kind of,” I admitted. “Although I saw it about a second after I found you dead on your bed, so the creep factor was already pretty high.”
“Well, Charlotte and I had to fight over that one,” he said. “Did you notice the photos on my walls?”
“Yes. On Charlotte’s, too. She said they were people she had saved.”
He nodded. “They’re our ‘rescues.’ And after we saved you, we both laid claim to your picture.”
“How’s that?” I asked, confused.
“Well, you know that day at the café when you almost became a bit of Paris history?”
I nodded.
“Charlotte waved you over, which is why you moved in time to avoid the falling stone. But I’m the one who told her it was about to happen.”
“You were there?” I asked, stopping in my tracks and staring up at him.
“Yes . . . in spirit. Not in body,” Vincent said as he pulled me along with him.
“In spirit? I thought you said you aren’t ghosts.”
Vincent put his hand on mine, and I began to feel like I had been hit with a mini dose of tranquilizers.
“Stop it with the ‘calming touch’ thing. Just explain. I can handle it.” Vincent left his hand on mine, but the warm fuzzy feeling went away. He smiled guiltily, like he had been caught cheating on an exam.
Without patting myself too much on the back, I felt I was handling things pretty well. Besides learning that the guy I liked was immortal, I thought I was taking the supernatural how-things-work lessons in stride. I hadn’t freaked out. Much. Okay, except when I saw Jules get killed. And found the obituary photos. And came across Vincent “dead” in his bed. All of which were totally understandable freak-out occasions, I reassured myself.
Vincent was talking, so I tried to focus. “I’ll come back to the spirit thing. But what I was saying about me being with Charlotte and Charles—that’s kind of our modus operandi as revenants. We usually travel in threes when we’re ‘walking.’ That’s what we call it when we’re . . . um . . . on patrol. That way if something happens . . .”
“Like it did to Jules in the Métro?”
“Exactly. Then the others will alert Jean-Baptiste, who will make sure we get the body.”
“And how does he do that? Does he have connections at the city morgue?”
I said it jokingly, but Vincent smiled and nodded. “And the police, among other organizations.”
“Handy,” I said, trying not to look surprised.
“Very,” he agreed. “They probably think Jean-Baptiste is some kind of gangster or necrophiliac, but the amount of money he pays for the services he needs seems to make people forget their questions.”
I was quiet, thinking about how complicated the whole undead-lifesaving business must be. And here I had unwittingly crashed their carefully planned party. No wonder I wasn’t on Jean-Baptiste’s invite A-list.
“Charlotte explained about how when we’re dormant our bodies are dead but our minds are still active.”
> I nodded.
“She was oversimplifying a bit. Actually, for the first of our three dormant days we’re ‘body-and-mind’ dead. Everything is turned off, as if we were any other corpse.
“But on day two we switch into another mode—we’re only ‘body’ dead. If we’ve been injured since our last dormancy, our body starts healing itself. And our mind wakes up. For two days our consciousness can kind of . . . detach from our bodies. We can travel. We can talk to one another.”
I couldn’t believe it. There were more “revenant rules.” This can’t get any weirder, I thought. “Floating around outside your bodies? Now I get why Charles said you were ghosts.”
Vincent smiled. “When our minds leave our bodies, we call it being volant.”
“Volant like ‘flying’?”
“Exactly. And while we’re volant we’ve got this kind of refined sixth sense. It’s not exactly fortune-telling, but we can sense when something is going to happen that the others can use to save someone. It’s like seeing into the future, but only for what’s happening close to our immediate location, and only a minute or two past where we are.”
Strike that . . . it does get weirder.
Vincent must have felt the hesitation in my step and correctly guessed that I was getting overwhelmed. He pulled me over to a stone bench by the side of the quay and sat with me, giving me time to process the whole impossible story. Before us, the reflections of the buildings along the river swelled over the surface of the water.
“I know it sounds strange, Kate. But it’s one of the gifts we possess as revenants. One of our only ‘superpowers,’ as you put it. Like when you saw Jules and me in the Métro: There were actually three of us there. Ambrose was volant, and let us know just before that man jumped. Jules said that he would take it, while I shielded you from seeing him.”
Vincent smiled a slightly abashed smile. “Ambrose is also the reason we bumped into you in the Picasso Museum. He saw you from outside and suggested to Jules that we pop inside for ‘a lesson in Cubism.’”
“But how did Ambrose even know who I was?” I asked, incredulous.
“Making me bump into you was Ambrose’s idea of a joke. I had been talking about you to the others, even before we saved you at the café.” He picked up a dead leaf and began crumbling it between his fingers.
“You had?” I gasped, astonished. “What had you been talking about?”
“Ah . . . now don’t you wish you knew?” He smiled slyly. “I can’t give away all my secrets in one sitting. Let me keep at least a shred of my dignity!”
I rolled my eyes and waited for what would come next. But I was secretly thrilled by this revelation.
“In any case, the day you almost got crushed by the falling masonry, I was volant with Charlotte and Charles and saw the building falling apart a minute before it happened. I told Charlotte you had to be moved, and she gestured at you to come over. That’s why we both laid claim to your photo for our ‘Wall of Fame.’” He smiled and shifted his gaze from the now tattered leaf to my eyes, gauging my reaction.
“But why the photos? Are they”—I shuddered—“trophies?”
“No. It’s not like we’re gloating. Or competing. It’s deeper than that,” Vincent said, his smile replaced by a look of unease. “It’s hard not to get kind of . . . obsessed . . . with our rescues, especially the ones we die for. Dying repeatedly isn’t easy. And it’s hard not to want to know what happened to the person you died for afterward. If the near-death experience changed their life. If the sacrifice you made had a butterfly effect for them, their family, the people who know them, and on and on.”
He laughed uncomfortably. “If we weren’t careful, we could end up stalking them. It does happen. It’s an easy trap for those who aren’t warned. Luckily, Jean-Baptiste has a couple hundred years of being undead under his belt. He keeps us to the ‘Triple-Recon Plan.’” Vincent smirked. “We can go back and photograph our rescue after saving them. Then we can go in volant form twice to check up on them, but no other communication is recommended. After that, we have to satisfy ourselves with Googling them to our heart’s content.”
“So Ambrose pretty much threw that rule out the window when he forced us into the same room at the museum.”
He smiled. “The rules were already a bit screwed up. Like I said, my fascination with you began well before the crumbling building incident.”
Vincent avoided my eyes. Throwing the remains of the mangled leaf into the water, he reached over and covered my hand with his. I heard a warning bell going off in the back of my mind as I sifted through the information he had given me. And then something clicked.
“Vincent, are you saying that even though you didn’t die for me, you became ‘obsessed’ with me after saving my life?”
“More obsessed,” Vincent admitted, continuing to look away.
“So if the obsession is unavoidable, then what makes me different than any of your other rescues? Maybe the reason you like me is that I just happen to live down the street from you and cross your path more often than most. You saved me, but instead of disappearing from your life like all of the others, I kept popping up and fueled the obsession. How do you know that’s not all there is to it?”
He was silent. “That’s it, isn’t it?” I shook my head in dismay. My stomach seized into a knot of despair.
“I was wondering how someone like you could fall for someone like me. How you went from acting like I was just a stupid admirer the first couple of times I saw you to looking at me like I was your dream girl. And that’s the answer. It has nothing to do with me. It’s just some sort of unnatural addiction to lifesaving that goes along with being a revenant.”
I knew it couldn’t be true, I thought to myself.
Vincent lowered his head into his hands and sat like that for a minute, massaging his temples before speaking. “Kate, I’ve saved hundreds of women and have never felt this for any of them. I was interested in you before I saved your life. I admit, the saving part did make you more unforgettable. It kind of sealed my resolution to know you. Maybe I came off as a jerk the first time we talked, but it’s been a long time since I’ve let myself feel anything about anyone. I’m just out of practice at being human. You have to believe me.”
I searched for any hint of deception in his face. He seemed completely sincere. “You have to be honest with me, then, Vincent,” I said. “If you suddenly realize that’s all that I am—a rescue who you’ve managed to get closer to—then I want to know immediately.”
“I will be honest, Kate. I won’t ever lie to you.”
“Or keep things from me that I should know.”
“You have my word.”
I nodded. The sun was already setting, and lights began to appear in the buildings above us, their reflections bouncing off the water like flickering flames.
“Kate, what are you feeling?”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
“Afraid.”
“Let me take you home,” Vincent said, regret filling his voice. He rose to his feet and pulled me up beside him.
No! I thought. And aloud I stammered, “No . . . not yet. Let’s not end today like this. Let’s do something else. Something normal.”
“You mean something besides talking about death, flying spirits, and obsessed immortals?”
“That would be nice,” I said.
“How about dinner?” Vincent said.
“Okay.” I nodded. “Let me just tell Georgia that I won’t be eating at home, though.” I took my cell phone out of my bag and texted: Going out for dinner. Please tell M & P I won’t be too late.
Vincent took my hand and laced his fingers through mine, sending little shock waves through my heart. My phone rang as we got to the top of the steps. It was Georgia.
“Yes?”
“So, who are you going to dinner with?”
“So, why do you want to know?” I smiled, glancing sideways at Vincent.
“Let?
??s just say that I’m taking my role as your legal guardian seriously,” she purred.
“You are so not my legal guardian.”
Georgia laughed. “Who are you with?”
“A friend.”
“V?”
“Actually, yes.”
“Oh my God, where are you going? I’ll come by and just pretend I was in the area so I can get a look at him.”
“No way, and besides, I don’t even know where we’re going yet.”
Vincent gave me a sly smile. “Georgia?” he asked. I nodded, and he reached for the phone.
“Hello, is this Georgia? Vincent here. Should I have cleared this date with you before taking your sister out?” He laughed, and I could tell Georgia was working her irresistible charm on him already.
Finally he said, “No, I don’t think that a meet-the-folks session was in the plans for tonight, but I’m sure we’ll run into each other soon. Why not, you ask?” He winked at me, and I shivered. It was incredible how he affected me. In a dangerous way.
“You’ll have to ask your sister. She’s the one calling the shots.”
Chapter Seventeen
WE SAT FACING EACH OTHER ACROSS A TINY table in a cavelike restaurant in the Marais. Dozens of flickering candles illuminated the space around us. Our legs were crisscrossed under the table, mine resting between his, and the feeling of his body touching mine kept my blood on a constant low boil from the moment we sat down until we left.
I kept trying to fight the feeling that Vincent and I were already a couple. It was our first real date, after all, and, besides the barely believable information Vincent had given me about his monster-hood, I didn’t know anything about him. This was no time to let my guard down. I resolved to keep things light.