At the base of the monument, I sat with my knees up pressed against me, pulling my coat around my legs to shield me from the elements. I felt more alone than I had in months. Drying my face with the edge of my sleeve, I took a couple of deep breaths and tried to think things through in a rational manner.
I had to concentrate on the here and now. Why was I so afraid?
I picked up a shiny black stone from the base of the tomb and rolled it around in my palm until it was warm. Then I set it on the ground next to my foot to mark Point One of my List of Fears: Even if Vincent was able to resist dying, it would mean decades of emotional and physical pain for him. It was cruel and selfish of me to expect him to endure that, and all because of my own weakness.
I picked up another stone and placed it next to the first. If Vincent couldn’t hold out, I would have to deal with the constant specter of his ravaged corpse every time he died for someone.
I felt my brow wrinkle and placed shiny black stone number three by the pair on the ground: If—even after that—I was able to stay with him and learned to live with the trauma of his deaths, he would be the one watching me age. And then die.
The three black stones looked like ellipses, waiting for something else to follow. Well, I could add to my List of Fears the revenants’ one occupational hazard: Another vengeful numa like Lucien could come after Vincent to destroy him—and succeed this time. Then I would be the one left alone.
Stop it, Kate, I ordered myself. Aging and death were still far away, and I would deal with that when the time came. That’s if we stayed together. Which, being realistic, wasn’t certain no matter how much I wanted it to be. Mortal couples have a hard enough time making things work.
As for the rest, it was no use trying to second-guess what would happen. If I didn’t try to project into an unknown future, I could handle the here and now. I had been handling it . . . just not for the last hour or so.
Stay in the present, I thought. In the present, Vincent and I were fine. And right here and now, all I wanted to do was go home. Making that simple decision made me suddenly feel more in control. I pushed myself up against the cold stone into a standing position, and began texting Vincent to tell him I had left before he started searching for me.
I had just keyed in his name when I heard the sound of crackling leaves. Tensing, I glanced around, but saw only gray headstones and monuments stretching out for miles.
A sudden movement caught my eye. As I saw a cloaked figure step out from behind a tomb a few yards away, an irrational panic gripped me. I couldn’t see his face, but his hair was a wavy salt-and-pepper—dark brown mixed with gray—and he was as tall as me. I absorbed this in a second, as I went into automatic fight mode, calculating how to best defend myself against his height and weight.
But without looking my way, he turned and walked off among the gravestones. I exhaled, relieved, as my brain registered the fact that it was just a man. A man in a long fur coat who was walking away from me. Not toward me. A man. Not a monster, I thought, chiding myself for freaking out about nothing.
As I watched his form disappear among the graves, I rose out of the defensive stance I had subconsciously taken. Just as I lifted the cell phone back to finish my text, when a strong hand gripped my shoulder.
I let out a yelp as I turned to see a pair of dark blue eyes staring angrily into my own. “Kate, what do you think you’re doing?” Vincent said, his voice sounding all strangled in his throat.
“What am I doing? You almost gave me a heart attack sneaking up on me like that!” I pressed my chest with my hand as if that could still its frantic beating.
“I wasn’t sneaking up on you,” he said frostily. “I wouldn’t have even known where you were if Gaspard weren’t volant. He returned to get me after following you here. You could have been in serious danger.”
Even though Vincent couldn’t have known how unnerved I’d been by the man in the fur coat just moments ago, my fear transformed to anger in a split second. “Danger? Here? In broad daylight? From what? Psycho Jim Morrison fans? Falling tombstones?”
“From numa.”
“Oh, please, Vincent. We’re in the middle of a major tourist site. Père Lachaise is practically Disneyland for the Dead. It’s not some Buffy soundstage with vampires rising out of the ground every time someone turns around.”
“Kate, we are on high alert right now. No one knows where the numa are or what they’re up to. This would be exactly the type of event that they would jump at to attack us. Dozens of revenants in one place at one time? It would be their dream situation. That’s why we all came armed.” He held aside his coat to show me a sword at his waist and knives strapped to his thighs.
That shut me up.
“Why did you go wandering off by yourself?” The fear having left his voice, his expression now showed unsettled confusion.