“I know,” he said, spearing a potato with his fork, and then stopped and looked quickly up to see if I had noticed his slip.
“What?” I asked, surprised, and then Ambrose’s words suddenly came back to me. We’ve been checking her out, and she’s not a spy. “You’ve been following us!” Feeling simultaneously flattered and appalled, I pulled my legs back from his and kept to my side of the table.
“No one was following Georgia, just following you. And it wasn’t me. At least after the day we talked at the Picasso Museum. After that, I felt I owed you some privacy. It was Ambrose and Jules; once they knew that I was . . . interested in you, they insisted on making sure you weren’t a danger to us. I never doubted you, though. Honestly.”
“A ‘danger’?” I asked, dismayed.
Vincent sighed. “We have enemies.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s change the subject,” Vincent said. “The last thing I want to do is get you involved in something that could put you at risk.”
“Are you at risk?” I asked.
“We don’t come into contact with them that often. But when we do, it ends in each side trying to destroy the other. So since you asked me to be honest, I have to say yes. But I’ve had decades of experience protecting myself. I don’t want you to worry.”
I suddenly remembered my early morning walk with Georgia along the quay. “The night I saw you dive into the Seine after that girl. People were fighting under the bridge. With swords.”
“Well, then, you’ve already seen them. Those were the numa.”
Even the word sounded evil. I shuddered. “What are they?”
“They’re the same as us, but in reverse. They’re revenants, but their fate isn’t to save lives. It’s to destroy them.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We become immortal when we die while saving someone’s life. They win their immortality by taking lives. The universe seems to like equilibrium.” His smile was bitter.
“You mean they’re resurrected murderers?” I felt a cold blade of panic scrape a path from my stomach to my heart.
“Not just murderers. They all betrayed someone to their death.”
I inhaled sharply. “What? Wait a minute. Do you mean that anyone who dies after betraying someone to their death turns into an immortal bad guy?”
“No, not all. Just some. It’s like us. Not everyone who dies saving someone else is resurrected. I’ll explain some other time—it gets a bit complicated. All you need to know is that the numa are bad. They’re dangerous. And they never die because they keep on killing. Which is facilitated by their line of work: They’re basically glorified mafiosi, running prostitution and drug rings, and in order to have a legal face for their business dealings, they own bars and clubs. Not surprisingly, in their world the opportunity for death and betrayal comes along frequently enough.”
“And those are the . . . things, who were fighting under the bridge that night?”
Vincent nodded. “The girl who jumped. She had gotten involved with them. They drove her to decide to kill herself, and then went along to make sure she followed through.”
“But she looked so young. How old was she?”
“Fourteen.”
I flinched. “So why were you there?” I asked.
“Charles and Charlotte were walking, with Jules volant. Jules saw it before it happened and rushed home to get me and Ambrose. When we got to the scene, the twins held some of the numa off beneath the bridge while the girl . . . well, you saw what happened. I reached her just before she jumped.”
“Did you get the . . . bad guys?” I didn’t want to say the word, it had such an unsettling effect on me.
“Two of them, yes. A couple others got away.”
“So you don’t just save people. You kill people too.”
“Numa aren’t people. If we have a chance to destroy an evil revenant, we do. Humans can always change; that’s why we avoid killing them if we can. There is always a possibility of redemption in their future. But not the numa. They started on their path while they were human. Once they’re revenants, they’re past any hope for salvation.”
So Vincent was a killer, I thought. A bad-guy killer, but a killer nonetheless. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
“And the girl who threw herself off the bridge?”
“She’s fine.”
“Are you obsessed with her?”
Vincent laughed. “Now that I know she’s fine, no.” Under the table, he pulled my legs back between his, and some of the warmth returned. “I’m just lucky revenants can’t read one another’s minds, because Jean-Baptiste would kill me if he knew I had told you about the numa.”
“Security breach?” I laughed.
Vincent smiled. “Yes, but I trust you, Kate.”
“No problem there,” I said. “You probably already know this from your spy network, but I don’t have anyone to tell even if I wanted to. It’s not like I have crowds of friends waiting around to hear my undead gossip.”
Vincent laughed. “No. But you have me.”