Until I Die

THIRTY-EIGHT



I HELPED GEORGIA HOME, THANKING MY LUCKY stars that Papy was at work and Mamie nowhere to be seen. I got her into bed, where the pain medication she had taken a half hour before kicked in. She began falling asleep before I even left the room. As I closed the door, she called after me in a dozy voice, “You’ll get him back, Katie-Bean. I just know it.”

By the time I got back to La Maison, the troops had been dispatched. Jean-Baptiste informed me that Ambrose had taken a search party to the man-made caves that honeycombed beneath Montmartre. Not only had Violette met the numa at Sacré-Coeur, but several of the Paris revenants reported numa sightings in the area, so it seemed a logical choice.

Jules, volant, had accompanied a group led by Gaspard, following another tip in the south of Paris.

The two remaining revenants sat in the library, trying to draw up some kind of strategy. Arthur eagerly volunteered his knowledge of Violette and her habits. He had already informed JB about the most important fact: that Violette’s plan was to capture the Champion and overthrow Paris’s revenants. But since he had caught only that end of the conversation between Violette and Vincent, I started at the beginning and told them the whole story. And after that, I recapped everything else I knew. I explained every detail about my contact with Gwenhaël and Bran. I recounted every question that Violette had ever asked me about Vincent, and the information—however intentionally misleading it had been—that she had given me about the Champion and her stories about the numa.

Jean-Baptiste took notes, and when I was finished, he thanked me in a way that meant I was excused to go. I stood, watching him and Arthur for a moment, until the older revenant looked back up at me expectantly. “What else can I do to help?” I asked him. Over the last hour, my despair had transformed into a burning determination, and if I left them, I didn’t know where I would go.

“There’s nothing we can do now,” the older man said gravely, “except hope that our teams come up with something.”

“But I want to do something. I need to do something.”

“You have fulfilled your role, dear Kate. You alerted Ambrose as soon as it happened. You took care of your sister. You gave me some very valuable information. Now the only thing you can do is wait.” His tone was sympathetic but practical as he turned back to his notes.

He was just as duped by Violette as the rest of us, I realized, and left the two revenants in the library to work out their own penance for having been so blind.



News came a couple of hours later. A numa had confessed to Gaspard’s group that Violette and some others had taken Vincent’s body out of the city and were headed south. Upon being informed, Ambrose’s group returned—with a huge haul of weapons they had taken from a freshly deserted numa hideout.

I was waiting for them outside, seated on the edge of the angel fountain.

“What do you think she’ll do?” I whispered as Ambrose sat next to me, dressed from head to toe in Kevlar and black leather.

“Katie-Lou, regarding Violette, I don’t know what to think anymore.”

“If she burns his body today …”

“He’ll be gone. If she waits until he’s volant tomorrow or the next day, and destroys him after he leaves his body, his spirit will remain on earth. Or, if she gets in touch with us in time, and we can offer her something she wants badly enough, she might be willing to barter for his body. That’s what we will focus on, little sister. Don’t even think about the other options.”

He leaned over and gave me a tender kiss on the cheek. “That’s from Jules. He says to tell you, ‘Courage, Kates. We’ll find your man.’”

I wiped a tear away and thanked them both, as Ambrose left to report to Jean-Baptiste. I stayed, watching the moon rise in a spectacularly starry sky. In Paris the stars are usually invisible, unsuccessfully competing with the city’s lights. But tonight they were luminous, offering a breathtaking display for us mortals below. I was transported back to the months after my parents’ death, where at every turn I felt like nature was mocking my despair with its beauty. How could the world go on—how could this twinkling celestial extravaganza take place—when Vincent was helpless in the hands of his enemies? Nothing made sense.

In need of a reality check, I took my phone out of my bag and texted Georgia.



Me: Are you okay?

Georgia: Pain drugs = good. Told Mamie & Papy I got

mugged.

Me: OMG!

Georgia: Said you went to a friend’s house after school, so

you weren’t with me.

Me: What did they say?

Georgia: They’re freaking and want you home.

Me: I can’t. We haven’t found him yet.

I had seen two missed calls from Mamie and knew I would have to come up with some explanation for not calling her back, but I couldn’t even think about that yet. A life in which I could return to the love and security of my grandparents’ home seemed like part of some other girl’s story. Finding Vincent was the only thing that mattered.

I shivered in the cold, but resisted the urge to go back into the house and ask if there was any news. Someone would surely come tell me if there was. Or would they? For the hundredth time, I felt an overwhelming sense of not belonging. Anywhere. I had been training with the revenants. I knew their secrets and held their symbol around my neck. I was part of their world now, and they were a major part of mine. But I was not one of them.

Neither was I comfortable in the skin of the human teenage girl I had been a year ago. I had gone too far now—out of the world of believing only what you can see and into one where the mystical was mundane.

Vincent had been my link with the revenants. But—if I was honest with myself—without him I would be drifting between the two worlds with no anchor to ground me and no oars to navigate. I pushed that thought out of my head. We’ll get him back, I promised myself.