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?”