I Should Die

EIGHTEEN



PAPY WAS SETTING THE TABLE WHEN I GOT HOME. Hearing me close the front door, he glanced up anxiously. “Oh, good, you’re home, princesse,” he said.

My grandmother popped her head out from the kitchen. “Has the healer discovered anything?” she asked. “Georgia caught us up on today’s goings-on.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Bran is studying his family records. It’s a lot of material, and he won’t let anyone else look at it.”

“Understandable,” Papy said, nodding sagely to himself. “Are there still guards outside?” he asked.

“Yep. There are two bardia sitting in the park across the street, watching the building,” I confirmed. “And Charlotte walked me home.”

“It feels like we’re under lockdown,” Papy commented a bit begrudgingly. “A couple of them followed me home from work today, too. I’m not actually sure we need all of this security. You girls do, of course, but it’s not like they have any interest in me or your grandmother.”

“Just be glad for it. With all of this strangeness, one can’t take too many precautions. And whatever is going on, we still have to eat,” said Mamie from the kitchen, before yelling, “Georgia. Your sister’s home. Time for dinner!” She appeared carrying a tray with a huge steaming puff pastry shaped like a fish. “Saumon en croûte, served with carrots in curried butter,” she announced.

“Mamie, that’s gorgeous! Did you make it?” I asked, the combined odors of the baked pastry and steaming salmon making me realize how hungry I was.

Mamie made her tutting sound. “I worked all day, dear Katya. This was made by Monsieur Legrande,” she said, referring to the fine food boutique down the street. “But I’m sure he made it with love.” She winked.

“I’d eat it even if he made it with lust,” announced Georgia as she entered the room, “although picturing a lustful Monsieur Legrande . . . ick.” She wrinkled her nose.

Papy rolled his eyes. “À table, everyone.”

“Any word on the research, Katie-Bean?” Georgia asked as she sat down, but it was just a formality. She knew I would have phoned if anything important had happened.

I shook my head.

“Well, even though a solution hasn’t been found, you must be relieved that Vincent is free for a few days, at least,” Mamie said, setting the dish down and skirting around the table to wrap me in her arms. “And that healer seems to know a lot about the revenants. He’ll find a solution, I’m sure,” she said soothingly.

We took our places around the table, and after Mamie wished us a bon appétit, everyone tucked into the delicious food.

“I was actually wondering if you had come across the topic of re-embodiment,” I mentioned, hoping that Papy would latch on to the topic without much prompting. My bet paid off. I could see his thoughts racing.

“Re-embodiment,” he said. “Infusing a spirit into an inanimate object. Now that’s an interesting idea.” He tapped his chin. “I mean, there is the symbolic re-embodiment in the Christian Eucharist—transforming the communion wafer and wine into the actual body and blood of Christ. Which was probably based on the Egyptian ‘divine bread’ ritual performed by the priests of Osiris. But I can’t think of an example where there was a re-invention of a body and then possession with a soul.”

“How about Frankenstein?” suggested Georgia with a helpful expression.

“Georgia. Shush,” urged Mamie, spearing a carrot and placing it delicately in her mouth as if demonstrating for Georgia what she should be doing instead of spouting out disturbing ideas.

“No, I mean it. That’s an example of a body that was created pretty much from scratch, and then electrocuted to give it a spirit.”

“I think that the electrocution part just animated the reassembled body parts,” debated Papy. “It didn’t give the monster a soul.”

“I distinctly remember him playing by a river with a little girl and crying,” insisted Georgia. “You can’t cry if you don’t have a soul.”

“Um, can we pull the conversation away from horror movies and back to real life?” I asked, posing my silverware on my plate as I watched Georgia pop more salmon in her mouth. The idea of sewn-together body parts apparently didn’t affect her appetite. “I doubt the revenants are going to reassemble a Vincent-shaped body and then wait for a lightning storm to shock him into existence,” I said.

“Wouldn’t have to,” responded Georgia, holding her fork up to make her point. “Nowadays you could probably do it with defibrillators.”

I squeezed my eyes shut in frustration.

“Georgia?” Mamie asked.

“Yes?”

“Please shut up.”

“Okay.” My sister shrugged as if to say we would regret not having listened to her.

I turned to my grandfather. “Although Monsieur Tândorn remembers his family’s records mentioning something on the topic, I thought I’d ask you anyway, since you’re my resident expert on every strange bit of mythical lore under the sun.”

Papy nodded at me, acknowledging my words, but still lost in his own thoughts. “There is the whole concept of the golem in Jewish folklore . . .” And he was off throwing out bizarre stories that he theorized might have fact buried within the fiction. The rest of us listened—me rapt, Mamie and Georgia trying to follow but losing interest before we finished dessert.

After dinner, I followed Papy to his study, where he sat down behind his desk and began stuffing tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. He waved at me to close the door—ostensibly so that Mamie wouldn’t know that he was smoking, but we both knew she was fully aware. This charade was a symbol of his gratefulness that she allowed him to carry on with his not-so-secret vice.

“So tell me more about what this guérisseur said about ‘re-embodiment,’” he requested.

“Well, the way he mentioned it, it was as if he expected the revenants to know about it. He said it was used for revenants who had been destroyed against their will and who were trapped as wandering souls.”

“It must be an extremely rare occurrence, since you would think that if numa attacked a bardia, they would burn them immediately in order to destroy both body and spirit.” He lit the pipe and puffed on it until the flame caught. “Unless they had some nefarious plot like Violette’s.”

“That’s exactly what Gaspard said.”

Papy thought for a moment. “How old is the oldest of the Paris revenants?”

“Jean-Baptiste is Napoleonic. Jeanne said he was two hundred and thirty. But Arthur, the one who was Violette’s protector, is something like five hundred.”

“And he wasn’t aware of this re-embodiment possibility?”

“No,” I responded.

“So, if none of the revenants are aware of it, that must mean that the story predates the year 1500. How long is Bran’s lineage?”

“Well, the book that the numa stole from your gallery—Immortal Love—mentioned his family, and that dated from the tenth century.”

“Hmm. This line of guérisseurs, who happen to be specialists on revenants, have been passing down their family secrets since at least the Middle Ages. No wonder both the numa and the bardia wanted to get their hands on them. They must possess a veritable wealth of information.”

He puffed on his pipe for a few seconds, and then leaned back in his chair and eyed me. “What we can deduce is that if this process of re-embodying wandering bardia souls actually exists, it fell out of revenant lore and oral history well before the sixteenth century. So we are looking for ancient examples, which falls within my area of specialty. I certainly don’t recall coming across anything like this in direct reference to revenants, but I will begin to put my mind to it.”

I watched my grandfather jot down a couple of notes onto his leather-edged blotter, and felt overwhelmed with gratefulness. I hadn’t specifically asked him to help. But he had jumped right in and taken on the task. Because he loved me.

And he also loved a good treasure hunt, his treasure of choice being esoteric knowledge of ancient things. Like revenants. Whatever it was, I was glad he was on board.

“Thank you, Papy,” I said, walking around the desk to hug him.

“Don’t worry yourself, ma princesse. But tell me as soon as you know what is in the guérisseurs’ account so I can start my research with as much information as possible.”

“I will,” I promised, and left my grandfather alone in a cloud of pipe smoke and musings about immortality.