“Are you cold?” he asked.
“I don’t know if it’s cold or nerves,” I admitted, and held out my hand to show him how I was trembling. He immediately reached out to take me in his arms. “Oh, Kate,” he breathed, kissing the top of my head. I felt him shiver when his lips brushed my hair.
He took my head in his hands, and his words rushed out in a torrent. “I can’t tell you how I’ve struggled during the last few weeks. I tried to disappear out of your life. To let you go. I wanted you to be able to live a normal life, a safe life. And I was almost convinced I had done the right thing until I came to see you.”
“You came to see me? When?” I asked.
“Starting a week ago. I had to see if you were okay. I watched you come and go for days. You didn’t look like you were doing better. You actually seemed worse. And then when Charlotte overheard your sister and grandmother talking at the café, I knew I had been wrong to let you go.”
“What did she hear?” I asked, a bad feeling forming in the pit of my stomach.
“They were worried about you. They talked about depression. About what they should do for you. About whether Georgia should take you back to New York.”
Seeing my shock, Vincent settled me on the couch and sat down next to me. His fingers kneaded mine absentmindedly as he spoke, and the motion and the pressure made me feel more grounded.
“I’ve been talking to Gaspard about this. He knows as much, or maybe more, than Jean-Baptiste about us. About our situation as revenants. I feel I’ve arrived at a solution that we could live with. That wouldn’t demand as much from you. An almost normal existence. Can you listen?”
I nodded and tried to contain my feeling of hope. I had no idea what he was about to say.
“I apologize for not telling you more about myself from the start. I just didn’t want to scare you off. I think that placed a barrier between the two of us. So I want to start from scratch.
“First: my story. I was born in 1924, as I told you, in a little town in Brittany. Our town was occupied soon after the Germans invaded in 1940. We didn’t even try to fight them off. We didn’t have the weapons, and it all happened too quickly to prepare a defense.
“I was in love with a girl named Hélène. We had grown up together, and our parents were best friends. A year after the Occupation began, I asked her to marry me. We were just seventeen, but age didn’t seem to matter in the unpredictable atmosphere of war we lived in. My mother urged us to wait until we were eighteen, so we did.
“Our town was at the mercy of the German garrison stationed nearby, and we were expected to provide them with food, drink, and supplies. As well as . . . other, unofficial services.” I could hear the fury rising in Vincent’s voice as he continued, but I remained silent, knowing that revisiting these memories must be hard for him.
“My parents and I were eating dinner at Hélène’s house the night that two drunk German officers showed up at her family’s door, demanding wine. Hélène’s father explained that they had already turned over the entire contents of their wine cellar to the army, and had nothing left to offer them.
“‘We’ll see about that!’ one of them said, and taking out their guns, they ordered Hélène and her younger sister to strip. Their mother rushed toward the officers, screaming her protest. They shot her, and then turned and shot my mother, who had jumped up to defend her friend. My father was the next to be killed.
“Hélène’s father had lunged behind the door for the hunting rifle he kept hidden there, but before he could take aim, one of the Germans grabbed it from him and shot him in the leg, while the other pistol-whipped me as I tried to jump him. They kept us alive, but only so we could watch, bleeding and handcuffed to the doors. They . . . attacked . . . Hélène and her sister. Hélène put up a fight. They shot her, too.” Vincent’s voice cracked, but his eyes had become as hard as flint.
“The three of us were left to bury our dead. I offered to stay and care for Hélène’s father and sister, but they asked me to go fight our attackers instead. I left that same night to join the Maquis.”
“The Resistance,” I said.
He nodded. “The rural arm of the Resistance. We hid out in the forest during the day and descended on German camps at night, stealing weapons and food and killing when we could.
“One day two of us were arrested in daylight, on suspicion of raiding a weapons shed the night before. Although I hadn’t taken part in the raid, the friend I was with had organized the whole thing. They didn’t have anything on us. But they were determined to make someone pay for the scandal.
“My friend had a wife and a child back in his hometown. I had no one. I told them that it had been me, and they shot me in the town square, as an example for the rest of the inhabitants.”
“Oh, Vincent,” I said, horrified, and my hands rose to my mouth.
“It’s okay,” he said softly, pulling my arms down and looking firmly into my eyes. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”
He continued, “The story was in the next day’s papers, and Jean-Baptiste, who was staying in a family home in the area, came to the country ‘hospital’ where they had laid me out. Claiming I was family, he took my body back with him and cared for me until I woke up two days later.”
“How did he know that you were . . . like him?”
“Jean-Baptiste has ‘the sight’—it’s kind of like a radar for the ‘transforming undead.’ He sees auras.”
“Like the New Agey kind of auras?” I asked doubtfully.
Vincent laughed. “Yeah, kind of like those. He tried to explain it to me once. Revenants’ auras have their own color and vibrancy. After their first death, Jean-Baptiste can view revenants from miles away. He said it’s like a spotlight pointed up into the sky.
“That’s how he found Ambrose a couple of years later, after his American battalion was slaughtered on a Lorraine battlefield. Jules died in World War One; the twins in World War Two; and Gaspard in a mid-nineteenth-century French-Austrian war.”
“Gaspard was a soldier?”
Vincent laughed. “Does that surprise you?”
“Wouldn’t he be a bit too nervous for battle?”
“He was a poet forced to be a soldier. Too sensitive a soul to have seen what he did on the battlefields.”
I nodded pensively. “So almost all of you died during wartime?”
“Wartime is just the easiest time to find people who are dying in others’ stead. It must happen all the time, but usually goes unnoticed.”
“So what you’re saying is that there are people dying all over France who could come back to life . . . under the right circumstances.” My head hurt. It was all a bit overwhelming, even after having had more than a month to get used to the idea that the world I lived in was no longer the one I had always known.
Vincent laughed. “Kate, it’s not just a French thing. I’ll bet you walked past a good number of revenants in New York City without knowing that you were crossing paths with a zombie.”
“So why you? I mean, in particular. I would guess that most lifesaving firefighters or policemen or soldiers don’t wake up three days later.”
Vincent said, “We still don’t understand why some people are predisposed to be revenants. Jean-Baptiste thinks it’s something genetic. Gaspard believes it’s merely fate—that some humans have just been chosen. No one’s found proof that it’s anything other than that.”
I wondered if it was magic or nature that had created Vincent and the others. It was getting harder for me to tell the two apart, now that the rules I had been taught were being turned upside down.
Vincent pulled over the table and poured me a glass of water. I took it gratefully and sipped as I watched him pile a few more logs onto the now dwindling fire.
He settled himself onto the floor in front of me. The couch was so low, and Vincent so tall, that his eyes were just underneath mine as he spoke cautiously now, carefully weighing each word.
“Kate, I’ve been trying to fi
gure out how to work with this. I told you that I once lived to twenty-three. That was five years of avoiding the compulsion to die. Jean-Baptiste had asked me to hold out so that I could get a law degree in order to handle the family’s papers. It was hard, but I was able to do it. He gave me that task because he knew I was stronger than the others. And I’ve seen him resisting his own urges for up to thirty-five years at a time. So I know it’s possible.
“The woman you saw me with the other day. In La Palette . . .” Vincent wore a pained look.
“Yes, Geneviève. Jules told me she was just a friend.”
“I hoped you would believe him. I know it must have looked . . . compromising. But I asked Geneviève to meet with me that day so that I could ask about her situation. She’s married. To a human.”
My jaw dropped. “But . . . how?”
“Her original death was around the same time as mine. She had just gotten married. And her husband lived. So when she animated, she went back to him, and has lived with him ever since.”
“But he must be . . .”
“He’s in his eighties.” Vincent finished my thought.
My mind tried to wrap itself around the thought of the beautiful blond woman married to a man old enough to be her great-grandfather. I couldn’t imagine what her life must be like.
“They’re still madly in love, but it’s been a hard life,” Vincent continued. “She wasn’t able to control her urges to die, and her husband encouraged her to follow the fate she was dealt as a revenant. He’s proud of her, and she dotes on him. But soon enough it’ll be his turn to die, and she’ll be alone. It is one option, but not one that I would ever ask someone else to endure.”
Vincent leaned forward and took my hands in his. They were warm and strong, and his touch sent a rush of excitement coursing through my body that lodged in my heart. “Kate,” he said, “I can stay away from you. It would be a miserable existence, but I could do it if I knew you were happy.
“But if you want to be with me, too, I can offer you this solution: I will resist dying for as long as I am with you. I’ve talked to Jean-Baptiste, and we’ll figure out a way for me to handle it. I won’t put you through the repeated trauma of living through my deaths. I can’t do anything about the fact that you will be without my physical presence for three days a month. But I can control the rest. And I will. If you decide to give me the chance.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
WELL? WHAT COULD I SAY?
I said, “Yes.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
WE SAT ON THE FLOOR CUDDLED UP NEXT TO each other, facing the fire. “Are you hungry?” Vincent asked.
“Actually, I am,” I confessed, surprising myself. I hadn’t had much of an appetite for about . . . three weeks.
While he went to the kitchen, I phoned my grandmother. “Mamie, would you mind if I skipped dinner? I’m going to eat out.”
“From the tone of your voice, would I be correct in guessing that this is about a certain boy?”
“Yes, I’m at Vincent’s house.”
“Well, good for you. I hope you can clear this all up and join us again in the land of the living.” I flinched. If only she knew.
“We have a lot to talk about,” I said. “I might be out late.”
“Don’t worry, darling Katya. But remember you have school tomorrow.”
“No problem, Mamie.”
My grandmother paused for so long that I wondered if she had hung up. “Mamie?” I asked after a few seconds.
“Katya,” she said slowly, as if pondering something. Then, in a decisive voice, she continued, “Darling, forget what I just said. I think it’s better to get things sorted out than to try to be sensible about getting a good night’s sleep. Does Vincent live with his parents?”
“With his family.”
“That’s good. Well, if you decide to spend the night, give me a call so I won’t worry.”
“What?” I exclaimed.
“If it means having to take a sick day, then that’s fine. You have my permission to stay at his family’s house . . . in your own bed, of course.”
“Nothing’s going to happen between us!” I began to protest.
“I know.” I could hear her smile through the headset. “You’re almost seventeen, but you are older than that in your head. I trust you, Kate. Just take care of things and don’t worry about coming home for me.”
“That’s very . . . progressive of you, Mamie,” I said, paralyzed with amazement.
“I like to think I’m up with the times,” she joked, and then said ardently, “Live, Katya. Be happy. Take risks. Have fun.” And she hung up the phone.
My grandmother just gave me permission to have a sleepover with my boyfriend. That takes the cake for weirdness-of-the-day, I decided. Even more than Vincent’s pledge not to die for me.
He returned with a huge tray of food. “Jeanne comes through for us once again,” Vincent said, laying the tray down on the table. It was piled with thinly sliced charcuterie, saucissons, cheeses, baguettes, and five or six different kinds of olives. There was bottled water, juice, and a pot of tea. Exotic fruits were piled in a bowl, and tiny macaroons in different colors were stacked in a pyramid on a high-stemmed cake plate.
I popped a tiny ball of fresh goat cheese into my mouth and chased it with a sliver of oil-drenched sun-dried tomato. “I feel spoiled,” I said dreamily, leaning my head on Vincent’s shoulder. It felt so good to touch him after three weeks with only my pillow to hug.
“Good. That’s exactly what I want you to feel. The only way I can compensate for this extraordinary situation is to make it up to you in an extraordinary way.”
“Vincent, it’s amazing just being here with you. I don’t need anything else.”
He smiled and said, “We’ll see about that.”
As we ate, something Jean-Baptiste had said earlier in the day popped into my mind.
“Vincent, what happened to Charles?”
He was silent for a moment. “What did Jean-Baptiste tell you?”
“That Charles threw a knife at his portrait and ran away.”
“Yeah. Well, that was the end of the story. It started with the boat wreck and just got messier.”
“What happened?”
“Well, the day after the rescue, when his mind woke back up, Charles had Charlotte help him track down the mother of the girl who had died. He started following her around in volant form, wallowing in the guilt of not having saved her child. After he reanimated a couple of days later, he began stalking the woman. Leaving presents at her door. Taking flowers to the funeral home. He even attended the little girl’s funeral.”
“Very creepy.”
Vincent nodded. “Charlotte was worried and told Jean-Baptiste the whole story. He sat Charles down and forbade him to see the woman. He even mentioned sending the twins to one of his houses in the south, to distance Charles from the situation until he got his head back together.
“And that’s when Charles flipped. He was out of control, ranting about how unfair the whole thing was. How he didn’t want to be a revenant for eternity, forced to sacrifice himself for people he didn’t even know, and exiled if he tried to get involved in their lives. He blamed Jean-Baptiste for feeding and caring for him after he woke up, and not letting him die ‘as nature intended’ after he was shot. And that’s when he threw the knife.”
“At least he didn’t throw it at Jean-Baptiste!”
“He might as well have, the way it hurt JB. Then he stalked out of the house, and Charlotte just about had a nervous breakdown.” Vincent paused. “We’re sure he’ll come back once he gets it out of his system.”
“He seems to have had a chip on his shoulder even before the boat accident,” I said.
“Yeah. He’s always been the most existentially minded of all of us. Not that I haven’t thought long and hard about our purpose here. He’s just had the hardest time accepting it.”
That would explain a lot, I thought, feeling a l
ittle bit sorry for Charles.
“When did he leave?”
“Two days ago.”
“That’s when I saw him,” I said. “Friday night, a bit after midnight.”
“That’s what Jean-Baptiste said. So . . . you were out clubbing without me?” He gave me a teasing smile. I could tell he was trying to lighten the atmosphere by changing the subject.
“I was attempting to dance my sorrows away.”
“Did it work?”
“No.”
“Maybe it would work if I were there,” he said smugly. “Should we go out dancing some night?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen a dead guy dance. Think you can keep up with me?” I joked, and in response Vincent grabbed my shoulders and leaned forward to press his lips firmly against mine.
My senses were instantly concentrated into those few tiny millimeters of our skin that were touching. And then he broke the connection, leaving my heart pounding in my throat, as if the kiss had yanked it up out of my chest.
“I take that as a yes?” I panted.
“I missed you,” he said, and leaned in for more.
* * *
“It’s late. You should be getting back,” Vincent said after a couple of hours of lying on the couch and cuddling and catching up on all my nonevents.
“Actually, I have special permission from Mamie to stay at your family’s house tonight, if I need the time to patch things up with you.” I felt a wicked grin spread across my face.
“What?” From his look of surprise, it seemed I had finally told him something shocking instead of the usual vice versa. “I’ve got your grandma on my side? Will wonders never cease?”
“I’m not sure it’s exactly on your side; it’s more on my side. Or maybe even hers. She doesn’t want me to waste away from misery under her own roof.”
Vincent laughed. “Well, we wouldn’t want to misuse Mamie’s trust. You can take my bed. I don’t need it anyway.” He winked. “Anything to spend more time with ma belle Kate.”
I melted inside.
While he concentrated on getting the fire restarted, I got up and wandered around his room, looking at his things for more clues as to who this mystery boy really was. When I reached his bedside table, I froze. Where my photo had stood was a small pot of flowers.