Until I Die

FOURTEEN



I AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING, EAGER, FOR ONCE, to jump out of bed and head to the breakfast table. My Papy was there, eating a fresh croissant and drinking coffee from a bowl—which is what hot breakfast drinks are usually served in. Not mugs. Bowls that you hold with both hands as you drink your hot chocolate or coffee. Unless you’re drinking an espresso. And then it’s in a ridiculously tiny cup.

Grabbing my own bowl, I poured it half-full with coffee and half with the hot milk that Mamie kept in a pan on the stove, and sat down across from my grandfather. “Papy, if you ever need someone to gallery-sit, in case you have a meeting or something, I’d be happy to.”

I tried to say it as nonchalantly as possible, but my grandfather eyed me worriedly. “Isn’t your allowance enough, ma princesse?” I cringed. That was my dad’s nickname for me. It had been over a year since he had died, but whenever Papy called me that, it gave my heart a little stab.

Papy noticed. “Sorry, dear.”

“It’s okay. And I wasn’t offering because I want you to pay me. I just thought it would be fun. And I could bring my homework.”

Papy lifted his eyebrows. “Well! I’d never get an offer like that from your sister. But coming from an art lover like yourself, I know you’re not just trying to be helpful!” He smiled. “In fact, I have a meeting this afternoon—an appraisal of some Greek statuary at a collector’s house on the Île Saint-Louis. I was planning on closing the gallery, but if you wanted to come after school …”

He didn’t even have to finish his statement. “I’ll be there!” I said enthusiastically.

Papy’s smile was still quizzical, but I could tell he liked the idea. “See you then,” he said, rising and patting me fondly on the shoulder. He put on his coat and headed upstairs to say good-bye to Mamie, who had gotten an early start in her restoration studio on our building’s top floor.

I smiled to myself as I bit the end off a croissant, humming with pleasure as I did. I had probably eaten hundreds of croissants in my life, having spent every summer here as a kid. And, even so, every time I ate one it was like a pastry revelation. I pulled off a flaky strip and popped it into my mouth and then chased it with a sip of steaming café crème.



The fifteen minutes it took for Papy to show me what I needed to know about the gallery seemed to last for hours. But finally he was stepping through the front door into the bright sunlight and giving a good-bye salute with his old-man hat as he disappeared down the street.

As soon as he was out of view, I left the hushed semidarkness of the gallery for the brightly lit office space behind. Visitors had to ring the doorbell to be buzzed through the front door, so I reasoned I wasn’t being negligent if I spent a little time away from the desk.

It didn’t take long for me to work my way through Papy’s gallery library. Most of the books were auction catalogues or twentieth-century scholarly books on art and architecture through the ages. With my recently gained research experience, I could tell they wouldn’t contain anything about revenants.

I popped back to the front of the gallery to make sure no one was waiting outside the door, and then made my way to the other side of the space, where Papy had his private viewing room. Switching on the spotlights in the tiny, sumptuous space, I cast around for anything that might be of interest. A few ancient volumes sat on a side table with gloves and a magnifying glass positioned next to them. I slipped the gloves on and opened one of the books. It was a historical document, with lists of goods and dates next to them—it seemed to be a king’s or lord’s account of tributes paid to him. I turned a couple more pages. More of the same. And neither of the other books had anything of interest.

I stood and thought for a moment. Since Papy dealt only with artifacts, sculpture, and metalwork, when he bought entire estates he often passed the most valuable books and manuscripts to his book dealer friends to sell for him. But during his busy buying seasons, there was often a stash of inventory he hadn’t had time to go through, especially the books and prints he would be handing off. I made my way to his stock closet in the back hallway and turned the handle. Locked.

Papy always carried his keys with him, but maybe he kept spares somewhere in the gallery. I returned to the front desk, dug through a couple of drawers, and found a small key taped to the side of one of them, near the back. Carefully unpeeling it, I returned to the closet and breathed a sigh of relief as it slipped easily into the lock.

Inside stood a stack of four boxes labeled ESTATE, MARQUIS DE CAMPANA. Papy had scribbled the purchase date on the side of the box: a few days ago. Knowing him, he had probably put the estate’s most important pieces up front and stored the miscellaneous items until he had a chance to research them one by one. I pulled a box out of the closet and opened it. Tiny bundles wrapped in cloth … miniature metal god figurines, I saw as I unfolded one. I rewrapped it and quickly replaced it.

The second box was full of tiny plastic zip-lock bags holding bits of ancient jewelry and carved stones—the type that would be set in a ring. Intaglios, I remembered Papy calling them, and picked one up to discover a figure of Hercules wearing the lion skin carved into an oval jade. Although I had been around Papy’s objects since I was a baby, I never failed to feel a frisson of wonder when I held something made over a thousand years ago.

I knew what the third box held before I even reached inside. My heart beat faster as I opened the flaps. The smell of musty paper poofed out, and I looked down to see a collection of old books. More like hand-bound manuscripts. And though the most fragile ones were in plastic bags, a few sturdier volumes lay loose between them.

Books from a Roman antiquities collector … now this could be promising. I picked the first one up. It was an old printed book in German, with engravings of Greek and Roman statuary. I placed it carefully on the floor and reached in for a small book with decorative shapes and swirls tooled into the reddish brown leather cover.

It was the size of the illustrated prayer books I had seen in the Louvre, but much thinner, and as I opened it I saw that it was a hand-penned manuscript, written in the gothic handwriting of medieval monks. I remembered reading about illustrated manuscripts. Some monks spent their whole lives copying books and decorating them. Before the printing press, copying was the only way multiple examples of a book could be made.

This wasn’t a masterpiece, like the ones I had seen protected under thick museum glass. It was simple but beautiful, with gold vines and flourishes decorating the edges. The first page was an explosion of leaves and berries, with, at the bottom center, two skulls. Immortal Love, it read in French, and the next page was illustrated with a colorful, naively painted image of a man and a woman in medieval clothing holding hands. And even though the painting was simple, I could tell that the woman was elderly—she was depicted with white hair—and that the man was very young: a teenager.

The image had been painted many centuries ago. Maybe even a millennium. I inspected it carefully, taking in every detail. The woman was old, her posture a little bent. And the man was gleaming with youth and health. I would have thought it was an old lady with her grandson, except for the way they stood hand in hand, their heads slightly inclined toward each other in a gesture of solidarity and affection.

I turned back to the title page. L’amur immortel, I read again, and then saw a subtitle written in spidery letters below. I could hardly make it out; the ink had worn with the centuries, and the old French was difficult to decipher. “A tale … love and tragedy … a bar … and … human …” My heart caught in my throat. Could the word be bardia? There was just enough space for it to be. And a human?

Oh my God, I had found something. My head spun and then cleared abruptly as the gallery’s doorbell buzzed. I got up, a bit wobbly, and raced into the gallery space. A familiar figure stood behind the glass door, tall enough to take up the whole windowpane. He cupped his eyes with his hands so he could see inside. I pressed the door release under the front desk.

“Vincent!” I exclaimed, feeling a twinge of guilt. “How did you know I was here?”

He strode into the gallery, hands in his pockets and an amused look on his face. After giving me a soft kiss, he released me and glanced curiously around the space. “I have my ways,” he said. Doing a Vincent Price voice and raising an eyebrow, he quipped, “I always know where you are.”

“No, really,” I prodded, laughing.

“Well, you see, there’s this thing called a text message,” he said, deadpan. “And I got one from your phone during your lunch break that told me you were gallery-sitting this afternoon.” A hint of a smile curved the corners of his lips.

“Oh, right,” I said, lamely shaking my head. This whole situation with Vincent’s undercover operations was messing with my mind. It was making me paranoid.

“So what are you doing here?” Vincent asked. “This is the first time I’ve seen you in the midst of gainful employ. Not that homework isn’t gainful.”

I was about to open my mouth to tell him the whole thing—to excitedly whip out the book and show it to him—when all of a sudden I hesitated. I didn’t want him to see it … yet. Not until I had actually figured out what it meant. Maybe it was my pride holding me back, but I wanted to see his face when I set the finished puzzle in front of him, complete with valuable information he couldn’t have found somewhere else.

“I was just feeling bored. Thought it would be fun to do something different for a change.”

“Bored?” Vincent looked astounded. “In the past week and a half you’ve gone to a total of four movies with Violette, and you and I have hung out … well, not as much as I’d have liked.” A flash of guilt crossed his face before he forced it to disappear.

“So what are you up to tonight?” I asked.

“The usual boring revenant stuff,” he replied, visibly squirming, and then he sighed and looked me in the eye. “Kate, you know what I’m doing.”

“Not exactly.” I couldn’t help the trace of bitterness in my voice.

Vincent pulled me close and said, “You want to call it off? You say the word.”

“No.” I shook my head, and Vincent wrapped his arms around me. “I love you, Kate,” he whispered. I closed my eyes and nestled in closer to him.

“We’re still on for tomorrow night, aren’t we?” he murmured.

I pulled back from him and smiled. “Pizza and a movie in our own private cinema? I wouldn’t miss it for the world!”

“Yeah, I try to go out in style. Can’t have you forgetting about me for the three days I’m dormant.”

“As if!” Pulling him to the door, I said, “Papy’s due back in a few minutes, and I wouldn’t want him to think I was slacking on the job.”

“Hey, your Papy loves me,” Vincent said.

“He’s not the only one,” I said, and opening the door, I pretended to push him out onto the street. Closing it securely behind him, I blew a saucy air-kiss through the glass. Laughing, he turned and headed up the avenue toward our neighborhood.

I sped back to the office, slipped the small book into my purse, and then carefully put the boxes back into their places in the storage closet. As I locked it, I heard the key turn in the front door and Papy’s voice calling to tell me he had returned.

“I’m in the back,” I called, my voice quivering in my panic. I still had the closet key in my hand. How could I get it back into the drawer without Papy noticing? I walked out to the main gallery, and composing myself as much as possible, I gave him a winning smile and asked how his meeting had gone.

“Top-notch property, ma princesse.” He bustled to the back to hang up his coat. “There’s another dealer bidding for it, though, so I’m not sure it’s mine yet,” came his muffled voice from behind the divider. I quickly peeled a piece of tape off the tape dispenser, pressed the key to the sticky side, slipped the desk drawer open, and reattached it to the spot I had found it. Just as I slid the drawer closed, Papy turned the corner.

“Anything exciting happen while I was gone?” he asked, coming to stand next to me behind the desk.

“Let’s see … the French president dropped by. Brigitte Bardot. Oh yeah, and then Vanessa Paradis came in with Johnny Depp. They bought a million-euro statue. You know, the usual.”

He shook his head in amusement and began scribbling in his appointment book. I kissed him good-bye and tried not to break into a sprint as I headed for the door.