“I cannot tell you how good it is to see your faces. Much longer without my friends and I would have come to Paris, so thanks for saving me the trip!”
Her eyes shifted from my face to Vincent’s, and she gasped. “Oh my God, Vincent. You look awful!” She raised a finger to trace the bruiselike patches under his eyes. It had been almost three weeks since Vincent had been dormant. He already looked as bad as he did at the end of the last month, and he still had one more week to go.
Though he claimed he was hopeful his experiment was working, I didn’t want it to go on any longer. Next week I would talk to Gwenha?l, and if she had come up with some alternative plan, I would ask Vincent to call off this awful experiment.
“Look at you!” I exclaimed, changing the subject. Her hair had grown out to shoulder length. “I only saw you six weeks ago. How in the world did you grow your hair out so quickly?” I asked, and then laughed, realizing who—or what, rather—I was talking to.
Charlotte giggled. “Geneviève and I haven’t just been on vacation here. And I have a feeling that Vincent and you don’t talk about hair care. When we’re busy saving people, getting all that transferred energy, we have to get a haircut about once a week.”
“Doesn’t your coiffeur catch on?”
“I have four in Paris,” Charlotte responded, “and use them on a rotating basis so no one notices.”
Just one more detail I would never have thought of, I mused, wondering if there would ever be a point where I would stop being amazed and the whole revenant thing would be old hat.
We made our way arm in arm through the small airline terminal and into the early evening darkness outside. It was chilly, but not as cold as in Paris. I took a deep breath. The air had a slightly salty seaside flavor.
Geneviève was waiting for us at the curb in a bright red Austin Mini. She leapt out of the car when she saw us and ran over to squeeze me enthusiastically. “It’s so good to see you!” Leaning in to kiss Vincent, she shuddered. “Vincent, I’ve just got to say it: You look terrible. Let’s get you guys home.” And she hurriedly slid behind the wheel.
Charlotte and I sat in the tiny backseat, while Vincent took the passenger side, his legs folded so tightly that his knees were practically at his chest. Although it was dark, a million tiny lights lit the highly populated coastline between Nice and Villefranche-sur-Mer. We drove along the beach before continuing onto a treacherous-looking two-lane road scaling the sheer cliffs that overlooked the sea.
Twenty minutes after we left the airport, we pulled off the main road onto a steep drive and up to a glass-and-wood house perched on the side of a hill. It looked more like a contemporary art museum than a home.
“Here we are!” crowed Charlotte enthusiastically as we winched ourselves out of the tiny car. “And you got here just in time for dinner.”
“Come in, come in,” said Geneviève, waving us through the front door.
I turned to Vincent, who was watching my face carefully. “This is amazing. Thank you,” I murmured, going up on tiptoes to give him a kiss.
“My pleasure,” he said. It was a strange and new feeling seeing him outside of his regular Parisian setting, and I could tell he was thinking the same about me.
The house couldn’t have been more different from Jean-Baptiste’s h?tel particulier. The architecture’s twentieth-century minimalism was echoed by the furniture: the whole effect meant to emphasize the view outside. I walked across the room and pulled aside a sliding glass door to step out onto an enormous wood terrace balanced high above the ground and facing the sea. We were practically overhanging the ocean. The twinkling lights of the town of Villefranche-sur-Mer stretched out beneath us, wrapped around a U-shaped harbor with a battalion of luxury yachts moored offshore.
“I can’t believe you’re living here,” I said to Charlotte, who leaned against the waist-high guardrail beside me. “It’s like you’ve got front-row seats to the most beautiful place on earth!”
“I know!” she replied, looking out toward the sea. “It’s like living in a dream. I shouldn’t complain about being away from home. It’s just that I miss everyone.”
“Well, we’re here to cheer you up,” I said, wrapping my arm comfortingly around her and realizing with a sharp poignancy how much I had missed having her around. Violette was a fun friend to go out with. But we hadn’t connected the way Charlotte and I had. With Violette, friendship was an effort. With Charlotte it was the most natural thing in the world.
We ate dinner in a glass-enclosed dining room adjacent to the terrace, our chairs arranged in a half circle before the spectacular view.
“So, tell me about Charles,” Charlotte said as soon as we sat down.
“He’s doing well, Charlotte.” Vincent’s voice was both comforting and honest. “Apparently, he met someone from Berlin a few years ago at a convocation and decided to look him up.”