I pulled mine out and Papy’s eyes grew wide at the dollar-coin-size gold disk. He reached out tentatively, fingering the edging of bright gold pellets and studying the flame-shaped design around the triangular sapphire. “You have been wearing that . . . out on the street?” he asked, his voice tremulous.
“Well, yes. I mean, underneath my clothes,” I said. His expression made me feel like I had done something crazy, like running naked through the streets of Paris.
Papy struggled to contain his awe, muttering, “I’m not even going to tell you what that is worth, princesse. How rare that piece is. Because if I did, you probably wouldn’t dare wear it again.”
I heard Vincent chuckle in my mind, and I smiled. “It’s just a thing, Papy.”
“Yes, Kate. A thing that guarantees you the revenants’ protection. But it also serves as a symbol of what you mean to them. And if they chose this particular signum to represent your value—to display the care they are investing in you—I couldn’t come close to competing with the protection that I myself can offer. It means you’re priceless.”
My grandfather smiled at me tenderly and gave my hand a squeeze. “I’m officially outclassed, princesse.”
“It’s not a contest, Papy,” I said, smiling. “It’s a group effort. And now you’re one of the group.”
Papy took my arm and led me out of the room. “Then let’s get this show on the road.”
TWENTY-TWO
WE LEFT PARIS FROM CHARLES DE GAULLE AIRPORT at eight p.m., and through the magic of minus-six time zones arrived at JFK Airport at ten in the evening. I barely slept—whether from anxiety or excitement, I couldn’t tell. Probably the two. Papy and Bran both dozed off as soon as we were in the air. Jules talked quietly to Vincent in the back of the plane and, after a while, settled in with a book.
A driver was waiting for us at arrivals with a handwritten sign that read “Grimod.” Piling our luggage onto a cart, he ushered us to a waiting limo outside. Snow lay inches thick on the ground, and an icy wind made me pull my coat tighter as I dodged ice patches on the sidewalk.
We were silent on the ride into Manhattan. I felt a strange numbness as I watched the twinkling city lights grow closer through the limo window. And it wasn’t only from the lack of sleep and jet lag. It was because I was back.
Back to where I had grown up. Back to where I had lived for sixteen years—my entire life—with my mother and father, gone to school, learned to drive, kissed my first boy. This place was fact and Paris was fiction. So why did everything feel so surreal? I had an inkling that my numbness was covering something else: distress, perhaps. Or maybe reawakened pain I wasn’t ready to face.
Bran peered out the window with wide eyes, taking in the vista with slack-jawed awe. He let out a little gasp when the spotlit Empire State Building came into view. Papy asked, “Is this your first time to America?”
“It’s my first time out of France,” Bran responded, unable to tear his eyes from the sights outside.
“How about you?” I asked Jules, who was leaning back against the headrest, watching without emotion as our limo crossed the Manhattan Bridge high above the East River.
“The farthest I’ve been is Brazil,” he said, swinging his eyes lazily over to meet my own before shifting them back away. He had been acting differently ever since the Kiss. Distant. He sat as far away from me as possible on the trip to the airport and on the plane. Normally he would have been by my side chatting his head off with both me and Vincent.
He was obviously avoiding me. Understandably so. I had barely seen him since Saturday—two days ago. There was a definite sense of discomfort between the two of us. I deeply wished it would go away and things would return to normal. I loved Jules. Just not in that way. But being Vincent’s best friend, he would always be a big part of my life.
My mind slipped back to the scene in his bedroom, as I tried to see it from the outside. From my point of view, it had felt like I was kissing Vincent. My eyes were closed and that’s what I had seen in my mind. But now the picture that came into focus was of me in Jules’s arms, the two of us holding each other in a desperate attempt to get closer.
Glancing up at Jules, I saw that he was watching me, and my cheeks ignited as I banished the image from my mind. He held my gaze—he knew what I was thinking, I could tell—and then closed his eyes and laid his head back against the seat.
Kate, are you okay? I heard Vincent say.
“Yes. Just tired,” I responded, and then glanced quickly at Papy. He was trying not to look annoyed: Hearing me talk with Vincent volant freaked him out. He claimed it was rude to carry on a conversation that others couldn’t join, but I knew it was really because he hated seeing his granddaughter talk to the air.