Until I Die

TWENTY-SIX



WHEN GEORGIA AND I LEFT OUR BUILDING THE next morning to see Jules waiting for us in his car, my heart did a little leap. Vincent must have already left. I checked my phone to see his good-bye text, and the heart-leap became a staccato patter. Today was my day.

“So what’s up with the chauffeur service?” I asked as I jumped into the front with him while Georgia settled in the back.

“Vincent would have been here this morning, but he had a flight at six a.m. Which means he was at the airport at five.”

“Good thing you guys don’t sleep,” I said.

From habit, Jules’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror to see if Georgia had heard. And then I saw him remember—She already knows—and he relaxed again.

He does think of me as one of them now, I mused, and I smiled as I touched the pendant hidden under my shirt.

“That’s actually not my question. What have we done to deserve a ride to school? Were there more numa attacks during the night?”

I meant it as a joke, but Jules’s unchanged expression informed me that I had hit the nail on the head. “No!” I gasped.

“Yes, two other revenant homes in the Paris area were ransacked—one last night and the other early this morning, both times when the occupants were out.”

“So what’s that have to do with us?” piped up Georgia from the backseat. “Not that I don’t appreciate door-to-door service to high school, of course.”

Jules peered at Georgia in the mirror. “That attack after your boyfriend’s concert, followed a week later by four break-ins by our enemies, all adds up to the fact that the numa are back in action. And Vincent is worried that you, Kate, could be a target.”

“Why me?”

“The numa know he’s JB’s second, and they know you’re with him. Kidnapping you—or worse—would be the perfect way to provoke him. Vincent just wants someone to keep an eye on you until he’s back and can do it himself.”

That was a lot to process. “I feel like saying that I can fend for myself. But after facing off with those guys in the alley, I think I’ll just thank you for the offer and shut up about it.”

“So, Jules,” Georgia said, leaning forward, “not that I’m not appreciative that you are protecting my sister from evil murderous zombies. But since that conversation’s run its course”—she paused for effect—“Kate tells me that Arthur is a writer.”

To my dismay, my sister had not given up on her crush on Arthur. And ever since she and Sebastien had broken up the previous week, she had mentioned the revenant at least once a day.

“He asked about you, actually,” Jules said matter-of-factly.

“He did?” Georgia purred. “Do tell!”

“He was just wondering if you had recovered from the trauma of your numa attack. He saw you on the street the other day and said you looked well.”

“Looked well? I wonder if that means ‘looked hot’ in fifteenth-century speak?”

“And she’s off,” I murmured, drawing a laugh from Jules.

“No offense,” he continued, “but I think what interests him is that Violette seems to hate you so much. It provides entertainment for that otherwise dull practically-married-without-benefits life of his.”

“Mmm … benefits,” Georgia said, rolling the word around in her mouth like it was candy. “Be sure to mention to Arthur that I’m single again, you know, when the topic of me comes up.”

I shook my head, and Jules burst out laughing. As we pulled up to the school, and Georgia got out of the car, I leaned over to him. “Can you wait for a minute?” He nodded, looking confused, as I stepped out of the car.

“Georgia, I’m skipping today. Can you cover for me?”

My sister eyed me curiously. “This is so unlike you that I’m assuming it must be of vital importance. Like Nancy Drew–style sleuthing for questionably existent healers kind of importance. Hmm. What’ll you swap for my silence?” She smiled craftily.

“Okay, okay. I’ll make sure Jules puts in a good word with Arthur.”

“Make it a date with Arthur, and I’ll write you a sick note signed by Mamie.”

I laughed—“I’ll see what I can do”—and turned to get back into the car.

“Hey, Kate,” Georgia called, her voice serious now. I hesitated. “Be careful, whatever it is that you’re doing.”

“Promise,” I said, throwing her an air-kiss and lowering myself into the passenger seat.

“What’s up, Kates?” Jules said unsurely, fiddling with the radio dial.

“A day trip,” I said.

That got his full attention. “Where to?”

“To Saint-Ouen.”

“You’re skipping school to go to the flea market? Does Vincent know you’re doing this? Wait … don’t tell me. Of course he doesn’t or you’d wait till he got back to go.”

“Did Vincent ask you to guard me today?” I asked. Jules nodded. “Well, I’m going to Saint-Ouen. So you can either drop me off at the Métro station or take me there yourself. Whatever your guard-sense feels is right.”

Jules’s lips formed an amused smile. “Kates, has anyone ever told you that you are one persuasive girl? Are you on the debate team at school?”

I shook my head.

“Pity,” he said as he put the car in gear. Swinging it around to face Paris, he gunned the motor and we were off.





“Jules?”

“Um … hmm?”

“How did you die?”

We had been stuck in traffic on the Périphérique for a half hour. Up to now our conversation had consisted of small talk—which meant in the revenants’ case things like how Ambrose and Jules had recently saved people in a tourist bus that drove into the Seine. But I had been wondering this for a while, and sitting in gridlock felt like the perfect time to ask.

“I mean, you told me you died in World War One,” I continued, “but did you die saving one particular person, or was it more the abstract fact that you were defending your countrymen as a soldier?”

“There aren’t any abstracts in becoming a revenant,” Jules replied. “Just fighting in a war doesn’t count. If it did, there’d probably be a lot more of us.”

“So who did you save?”

“A friend of mine. I mean, not exactly a friend, but another artist whose group I hung out with in Paris before the war. Name was Fernand Léger.”

“The Fernand Léger?” I gasped.

“Oh, you’ve heard of him?” There was no hint of sarcasm in his voice.

“Come on, Jules. You know I love art.”

“Well, he wasn’t as famous as the others in his group: Picasso, Braque, Gris.”

“He’s famous enough for me to know him. And wasn’t it his gallery at the Museum of Modern Art that I saw you hanging out in last summer? You know … when you pretended you were someone else because I recognized you from the subway crash?”

Jules grinned at the memory. It was his postmortem appearance that had sent me running back to Jean-Baptiste’s house to apologize to Vincent, only to find him dead on his bed. Which led me to my discovery of what he was. A historic day in the life of Kate Mercier, to be sure.

“Yeah, he’s got an unrecognizable portrait of me hanging in there. Not very flattering. I look like a robot. Actually more like a robot-skeleton. Which is understandable, I guess, since I was dead by the time he painted it.”

“Are you talking about The Card Players?” I asked in awe.

“Yeah. There was a lot of downtime in between fighting. We played a lot of cards. After the war, when I was volant this one time, I overheard him telling someone that the soldier on the right was the one who saved him. But I still can’t see a resemblance for the life of me.” Jules cracked a smile at his own joke.

“How did it happen? I mean the saving bit?”

“Gave him my respirator during a German mustard-gas attack. Once I was down, the enemy came through and shot all of us who were on the ground.”

What an awful way to die, I thought. Although I was horrified, I tried to make my voice sound matter-of-fact so that he would keep on talking. “Why did you do it?”

“I was young and he was an older, established artist. I respected him. Worshipped him, in a way.”

“Even so, how many starstruck kids would give up their life for their hero?”

Jules shrugged. “I’ve talked about it with other revenants. We all feel like in our human life there was something inside us that was almost suicidally philanthropic. It’s the only characteristic we all have in common.”

He was silent after that, leaving me to wonder if I would have what it took to give my life for someone else. I suppose it was something I wouldn’t know until I was there, on the spot—looking death in the face.

Twenty minutes later, we pulled into a parking lot a few blocks away from Le Corbeau.

“Are you going to tell me what this is about?” Jules asked for the fortieth time.

“Nope,” I said as we got out of the car. Spying a tiny café nearby, I gestured to it and said, “But you can wait for me there.”

“The answer to that command is ‘Non, madame la capitaine.’ Not on your life am I letting you go on some unknown errand—one you obviously don’t want Vincent to know about—on your own. You guilt-tripped me into bringing you here by appealing to my sense of duty in guarding you. Now you’ve got to live with what you asked for.”

We stared each other down for a few seconds. But when I saw he wasn’t going to budge, I nodded, and we began walking in the direction of the shop. It was actually nice to have him along, because I was starting to feel nervous—unsure of how I would handle things when I got there.

From a block away I could see that the lights were on, and my heart started pounding like crazy. The carved raven atop the sign seemed to regard us menacingly as we neared. We came to a stop outside the door, and Jules turned to me with the most incredulous look on his face. “You dragged me halfway across Paris to buy a”—he peered at the window display, and then back at me—“a plaster Virgin Mary?”

“No.”

“Then what?” He glanced back. “A Pope John Paul night-light? Kate, what the hell are we doing here?”

“The question is, ‘What am I doing here?’ and the answer is, ‘It’s none of your business, Jules.’ I’m sorry for dragging you along, but there’s something I need to do. And I would rather you wait out here.”

“What?” Jules shouted.

“I have to talk to the owner about something. If I’m wrong about it, I’ll be back out in a second. If I’m right, it might take a little more time. But it’s something I want to do myself.”

“Kate, I honestly don’t know how Vincent puts up with you. You are … infuriating.”

“But you’ll do what I ask?”

Jules ran his hand through his curls, looking very unhappy. “I’ll give you fifteen minutes. If you’re not out, I’m coming in to get you.” And he stalked off to sit on the step of a boarded-up storefront across the street.