Until I Die

TWENTY-NINE



THE NEXT MORNING I AWOKE TO SEE VINCENT lying beside me, watching me sleep. “Bonjour, mon ange,” he said, playing with a strand of my hair. Then, rolling over, he plucked something out of a bowl on the bedside table and, before I could see what it was, popped it into my mouth. I bit down in surprise. And my mouth was filled with the sugary sweetness of a strawberry.

“What—” I began, but couldn’t talk around the berry.

Vincent tried not to laugh. “When I was volant, you made such a big deal about not having to brush your teeth before talking to me that I thought I’d run a better chance of getting a first-thing-in-the-morning kiss if I spared you the indignity of morning breath.”

“So now I have strawberry breath.”

“My favorite,” he responded with a teasing smile.

“Wanna try?” I proposed, and leaned forward for a kiss.

“Mmm,” he said, nodding thoughtfully. “Good. Good. But just for the record, I think I prefer Kate au naturel.”

I laughed and put my arms around him. “This is the best, waking up next to you.”

“We’ve spent the night together,” he replied, “when I’ve been volant.”

“Yeah but I couldn’t do this,” I said, and pressed my lips back to his. He took my head in his hands, returning the kiss, and then, wrapping me in his arms, he pulled me toward him. Our limbs wound themselves around each other’s until our bodies were completely tangled, and I couldn’t feel the point where mine stopped and his started.

His hand moved inside the back of my shirt, and the novelty of his warm skin brushing against mine sparked a powerful longing inside me. I didn’t want him to stop until he had marked every inch of my body with his touch. And as he continued, it felt like I was expanding. Like my body was too small to contain me and I would burst out of my skin like a supernova.

“Kate.” Vincent’s voice sounded like it was coming from a distance. “Are you ready for this? Do you want it to be now?”

“Yes,” I said automatically, and then, opening my eyes, I hesitated. Vincent had sat up and begun pulling his shirt over his head, and I saw that his chest was marked with bruises—bigger, darker facsimiles of the ones under his eyes. And although they didn’t repel me—if anything, they triggered something in me that wanted to take care of him—they were shocking enough to clear away the mist from my passion-muddled thoughts.

We’re both hiding something. The words flashed through my mind with a clarity that made me wonder if they had been spoken out loud.

It was true. We were both keeping something important from the other. And suddenly it seemed dishonest for our bodies to join when our spirits were divided. That’s not how I want this to start, I thought, and as he folded me back into his arms, I said, “Wait, Vincent. I’m not … I’m not ready yet.”

Vincent’s grasp on me loosened. He paused, then moved his mouth next to my ear. “That’s okay,” he said, his hot breath on my skin making me shudder. “I’ve waited this long for you—I’m in no rush. We’ll have all the time in the world.”

We lay there motionless for a few minutes as I savored the sweetness of feeling his body pressed against my own. Finally we eased apart enough to look into each other’s eyes. “Kate. Don’t cry.” Vincent looked concerned.

“I’m not,” I said, and then realized that my eyes were filled with tears.

I wasn’t crying from frustration: My desire for Vincent wasn’t only physical. It wasn’t confined to the here and now. I wanted him, body and soul. And I wanted the hours we had together to be full of life and love and joy at having found each other.

But looking at the boy lying inches from me was like being laughed at by misery and death. Besides the bruises on his chest, his lovely face was marred by the pallor of exhaustion and the circles under his eyes. And although he was still stronger than any boy I knew, his strength had been markedly sapped.

Seeing him waste away before my eyes was making our future feel even bleaker than ever. This was not how things were meant to be. We had avoided it for long enough … now it was time to talk.



“You did what?” Vincent said, aghast.

We sat facing each other in the middle of the bed. I grasped his hands firmly between mine, unsure if my death grip was meant to keep him calm or provide myself with the support I needed to spit the story out.

“Vincent, are you even hearing me? There is a guérisseur. A long line of guérisseurs, actually, who have had a special relationship with revenants. I am positive that Gaspard doesn’t know about them. Because the healer said it had been centuries since her family had even seen a revenant. This is new information. She might actually be able to help us.”

“Kate, how could you even think of doing something like that without me? You could have been in serious danger. This is my world we’re talking about here. A world where death is always present.”

“It’s my world now too.”

That shut him up. And I took advantage of his silence to tell him the whole tale, beginning with finding the references in the books to tracking down the shop to seeing the signum in the guérisseur’s bowl and what followed. As I finished my story, I saw the glimmer in his eye. If it wasn’t an actual glimmer of hope, it was at least a glimmer of interest.

“Okay, Kate. I agree that this could be promising. But I wish you had told me about it before. I can’t help but freak out when I think of you going alone to see someone who could have been a complete wacko. You could have been hurt … or worse. And I would never have known where to find you.”

“Jules came with me,” I said, trying to sound firm, but the confidence that I had begun the conversation with was quickly fading.

“JULES?” Vincent responded, incredulous. “Jules took you to see this guérisseur?”

“Well, he didn’t exactly know where he was taking me—or why—until after it was all over.”

My heart sank as I recognized the expression on Vincent’s face. It was a look of betrayal, as he realized that his best friend and his girlfriend had done something behind his back.

“Vincent, stop!” I insisted. “I talked Jules into it. If there’s anyone you should be mad at, it is me. If it helps at all, Jules was furious and said if I didn’t tell you about it, then he would. I did not do this with the express purpose of deceiving you, Vincent. I did it to help us: you and me.”

“I am already doing everything I can to help us.” Vincent’s eyes flashed with anger.

“What? What is it exactly that you are doing?” I said, my voice rising. “Because from what it looks like to me, whatever you’re doing is causing you more harm than good.”

“That’s because you don’t understand how it’s supposed to work,” Vincent shot back, rubbing his temples in frustration.

I touched his knee. “Then explain it to me.”

Our eyes met, and we held the gaze for a long while before he exhaled. “Fine. Just give me a little time to think. But we’ll talk tonight, I promise.”