Die for Me (12 page)

Unlike the body laid out a few yards away. It was a little girl, probably the same age as the boy. Her head lay in a pool of blood. A distraught woman sat next to her, screaming unintelligibly.

Oh no,
I thought.
I don't know if I'm going to be able to handle this.
It took all my strength to stay calm and not burst into tears myself. I knew I wouldn't be any help if I started losing it.

And finally, another ten feet away, was a third body—this one adult. I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman because the face was covered in blood. An emergency blanket was draped over the body, which was long past needing it for warmth.
They must be hiding something gory,
I thought, and then my eyes fixed on the girl kneeling next to him.

Unlike the other survivors, Charlotte wasn't hysterical. She was crying bitterly, but her body language communicated defeat rather than shock. Her hands were on the top of the blanket, pressing down on her brother's corpse as if she was trying to keep him from flying up into the air. She looked around when Vincent called her name and, seeing us, stood.

“It's going to be okay, Charlotte,” Vincent whispered once his arms were around her. “You know it is.”

“I know,” she sobbed. “But that doesn't make it any easier. . . .”

“Shh,” Vincent cut her off, holding her against himself in a powerful embrace, before letting her go and handing her gently to me. “Kate came to be with you. She can take you home in a taxi now if you want.”

“No.” Charlotte shook her head, simultaneously reaching out to grasp my hand as if it were a safety net. “I'll wait until you guys get him in the ambulance.”

Vincent turned to me.
Will you be okay?
he mouthed. I nodded, and he left us to walk toward Jean-Baptiste. The two men approached a third ambulance that had just arrived. Ambrose stepped down out of the passenger side of the cab looking as strong and healthy as a model on a gym brochure.

Charlotte had slumped back down to the ground and was running her hand over Charles's blanket as if trying to warm him up with the friction. “So,” I said gently, “if you don't want to talk about it, just say. But what happened?”

She exhaled deeply, her drawn face giving me a hint of what she would look like if she were her true age. She raised a trembling hand and pointed toward the deserted tourist boat. “The boat. It was rented for a children's birthday party. Charles and I were walking nearby, with Gaspard volant, and he let us know before the two children fell in. Charles jumped in and reached the boy just after he went under. He swam him over to me on the shore, where I gave the child mouth-to-mouth. Then he went back for the little girl as the motor was pulling her under. He tried to get her, but the propeller hit her first. And then it got him.”

Her voice was numb as she recounted the story, but as soon as she finished, she began crying softly again, her shoulders shaking against my arm. I felt tears well up in my eyes and pinched myself hard.
Get ahold of yourself,
I thought.
Charlotte doesn't need you crying right along with her.

I looked down the bank toward the water as two police divers emerged. The paramedic standing next to Ambrose noticed them too and walked briskly in their direction. It wasn't until he got a few feet away and they held an object toward him that I began to guess what was going on.

Charlotte felt my body tense and looked up toward the divers. “Oh, good. They found it,” she said in a monotone as the paramedic reached for the plastic bag, half full of bloody water.

I couldn't stop the tears this time, and through the blur I saw what it held. My body went numb and the breath left my lungs as violently as if I had been kicked in the stomach. In the bag was a human arm.

IT WAS WHEN THE PARAMEDICS ZIPPED CHARLES
into a body bag that I lost it. As I watched, the body bag replicated and then there were two. And now it was my own parents I was looking at in the bags, my body having flown across the Atlantic and backward in time to the New York City morgue not even a year ago.

They wouldn't even show me my dad. But I had insisted on seeing my mom, who, with “only” a broken neck, was judged more presentable than my mutilated father. And now I was back in that room, staring at the coral-hued toenail polish on my mother's naked toes. Georgia stood next to me weeping as I tore out strands of my hair and braided them in with my mother's. I knew she would be cremated, and I wanted part of me to accompany her. At that thought, my memories came to an end, but I stayed in the scene, unwilling to leave my mother in the blindingly white room.

“Kate. Kate?” Strong hands turned me until Vincent's face was inches from my own. “Are you okay?”

I nodded, in a daze.

“Why don't you ride in the ambulance and I'll bring the scooter home and meet you there?”

I nodded again and attempted to hold myself together as I wedged myself between Charlotte and the driver in the vehicle's cab.

When we arrived at Jean-Baptiste's house, Jeanne met us at the front door. She took Charlotte away from me, leading her upstairs toward her room in a familiar way that made it clear they had been through this before. Through the hall window, I saw Jean-Baptiste hand a wad of bills to the ambulance driver as Jules carried the unwieldy body bag through the front door and gently placed it on the floor. I succeeded in wobbling my way down the back hallway into Vincent's room, where I threw myself facedown on his bed and let myself sob.

I knew I wasn't crying about Charles's death. That had just set me off. Or boomeranged me backward, more like. And now I felt myself perched at the rim of the same black abyss I had finally managed to crawl out of a few months earlier. I felt the overwhelming temptation to lean forward, just an inch, and let myself fall headlong into its comforting darkness. The thought of letting my mind leave my body behind was tempting. I wouldn't even need to be around to clean up the mess.

Someone sat down on the bed, but I kept my face buried in the pillow. Vincent's warm voice came from above me. “It's okay, Kate. I know it's really hard to see something like that, and I wish you hadn't. You just have to remember that it's not a real—mortal—death. And that it's for a reason. Charles saved a little boy's life by giving up his own. Temporarily.”

His words went in through my ears but stopped at my brain. I couldn't process what he was saying. It just didn't make sense according to everything I'd ever learned or experienced in life. I couldn't just cut off my feelings, knowing that someone was mangled by a boat propeller—even if they were only “temporarily” dead. “Is Charles . . . ,” I started.

“Everyone's fine. Charles's body is back in his room. He'll be in perfect shape in a few days. Charlotte is fine now that she has him back here at home and can watch him heal.” He paused. “You're the only one I'm concerned about.”

I tried to sift through what I had seen and what he had said and to think of it rationally, but everything inside me rejected it. I scooted away from Vincent and pulled my hand from his. I couldn't look at him.

“How can you live like this?” I asked finally, my voice shaking.

“Well, I've had a long time to get used to it,” he said, biting his lower lip.

“Exactly how long?” My voice sounded empty. I knew Vincent had been keeping things from me for a reason, but I resented the fact that I still knew so little about him.

“Do you want to hear this now?” he asked, and sighed.

“I
have
to hear this now,” I responded quietly.

“I was born in 1924.”

I did the math. “You're eighty-seven.”

“No, I'm nineteen. I died in 1942, when I was eighteen. It's been a year since I died rescuing someone, so I'm nineteen now. And the oldest I've ever been is twenty-three. I've never been married. I've never had children. I've never experienced anything that would make me feel much older than I am right now.”

“But you've seen eighty-seven years go by. You've had eighty-seven years of life.”

“If this is what you call
life
,” he said, shaking his head. “But it's a trade-off. I get to act like a guardian angel with a death wish, and in exchange I get a certain version of immortality.” His voice was tinged with something just short of bitterness. Regret, maybe.

He tried to smile, and then looked at me pleadingly. “Please, Kate. Can that be enough truth telling for now? This has been a hard enough day for you without my upsetting you with more science fiction.”

I nodded. He ran his fingers through my hair and pulled an errant lock back, tucking it behind my ear. I flinched at his touch. “What is it, Kate? Please talk to me.”

My thoughts flew in a dozen different directions. Finally I looked at him straight on, steeling myself to say the difficult words.

“I have to be honest. I've never felt like this before. I've never . . .” My eyes searched the ceiling for something that would give me courage to continue, and finding nothing, I sighed deeply before meeting his gaze. “I've never felt this strongly about someone. And if I let myself keep feeling this way about you . . .”

Vincent's face was composed, but his eyes were full of torment as he waited for the verdict that he knew was coming.

I pushed myself to continue. “I can't imagine having to live through what happened today on a regular basis. And when it's your turn, it will be even worse. I can't stand the thought of seeing you die again and again. It reminds me too much of my parents' deaths.”

I choked on my words and began to cry, and Vincent moved toward me, but I held a hand out to stop him. “If I were to end up loving you, I couldn't live like that. In constant agony. Knowing that you were going to be resurrected, or whatever it is that you do afterward, wouldn't be enough to make up for having to live through your death time and time again. You can't ask me to do it. I
can't
do it.”

I rose abruptly to my feet, wiping my tears away, and stumbled toward the door. He followed me silently down the passageway to the foyer and stood motionless as I picked my coat up off the bench and began struggling with the door handle. Vincent opened it for me and, placing a hand on my shoulder, gently turned me toward him.

“Kate, please look at me.” I couldn't lift my eyes to his face. “I understand,” he said.

I finally looked up and held his gaze. His eyes were hollow. Empty. “I'm so sorry for the pain I've caused you,” he whispered, and dropped his hand from my shoulder.

I turned to go while I still had the strength to leave him, and as the gate swung shut behind me, I began to run.

I MADE IT TO MY ROOM WITHOUT SEEING MY
grandparents or Georgia, and shut myself in. As I curled up into a corner of my bed, time seemed to stop and stand still. I felt torn between the certainty that I had done the right thing and the nagging doubt that in the space of ten minutes I had ruined any chance I might have had for a bright, hopeful future. For love.

Though I hadn't known him for long, I felt that if things continued the way they had been I would fall in love with Vincent. There was no doubt about that. And if this were just the starting point, I knew that it wouldn't be just some lighthearted romance. My heart would be swept away. I was sure of it.

And feeling like that about him, I couldn't risk the pain of seeing him repeatedly injured, killed, or even destroyed. He had said it was possible: His immortality had its limits. After losing Mom and Dad, I refused to lose someone else I loved.

The old dictum was backward. It should be “Better not to have loved at all, than to love and have lost.” I had done the right thing, I reassured myself. So why did it feel like I had made the biggest mistake of my life?

I wrapped myself in a blanket cocoon and inched deeper into misery. I let the pain consume me. I deserved it. I never should have opened myself up.

Hours later, Mamie knocked to tell me it was time for dinner. I took a second to compose my voice, and then yelled, “Not hungry, Mamie. Thanks!” A few minutes later I heard a gentle tapping on the door.

“Can we come in?” Georgia's voice came from the other side, and without waiting for a response, my sister and grandmother tiptoed cautiously into the room. Sitting down on either side of me, they put their arms around me and waited.

“Is it Mom and Dad?” Georgia asked finally.

“No, for once it isn't about Mom and Dad,” I sputtered, half laughing, “at least, not just about Mom and Dad.”

“Is it Vincent?” she asked.

I nodded tearfully.

“Did this . . . Vincent”—I felt Mamie and Georgia look at each other over my head—“do something to hurt you?” Mamie said, running her fingers up and down my back.

“No, it was me. I just can't . . .” How could I possibly explain this to them? “I can't let myself get close to him. It feels like too much of a risk.”

“I know what you mean,” Georgia said. “You're afraid to love someone again. In case they disappear too.”

I put my head on Mamie's shoulder and breathed, “It's too complicated.”

Smoothing my hair back with her hand, and planting a kiss on the top of my head, she responded quietly, “It always is.”

I bought a bagful of novels at an English bookstore, and then retreated into the dark cave of my bedroom, telling Mamie I was “hibernating” for the weekend. She understood, and after leaving a platter set with water, tea, fruit, and an assortment of cheese and crackers on my dresser, she left me alone.

I spent the rest of my day in someone else's story. The rare moments that I put the book down, my own pain returned in burning stabs. I felt like a circus knife thrower's target. If I held my mind immobile, I might avoid being hit by the blades whizzing by my head. From time to time I fell asleep, but was immediately awakened by dark, tortured dreams that, once I awoke, dissolved without a trace.

I couldn't help looking over my shoulder at times, wondering if I might see Vincent lurking in the shadows.
Does he come to see me when he's volant?
I wondered. He could be floating around my bedroom for all I knew. Or maybe not. Maybe it was a case of “out of sight, out of mind” for him, and my outburst had been effective enough to stop him from trying to see me again.
That was what I wanted,
I told myself. Wasn't it?

If I let myself think, that would be the end. So I disconnected my brain and let my body carry on without a mind to steer it. All in all, it seemed like I was pulling it off. I could live without him. I was self-contained. Self-sufficient. Maybe I wasn't happy, but I wasn't sad. I was just . . . there.

School was a welcome relief. It helped the days pass by in numb monotony. Finally, returning home one day, I realized in a rare jolt of clarity that it had barely been two weeks since I had left Vincent standing in his doorway. It had felt like months. I had been congratulating myself for completing a marathon when I was hardly past the starting line.

As I climbed the Métro steps onto my street, I was surprised to see a familiar figure leaning against a nearby phone booth. It was Charlotte. When she spotted me, her pretty face lit up. “Kate!” she cried, skipping up and leaning forward to kiss me on both cheeks.

“Charlotte. What a surprise!” I smiled, glancing around curiously to see if she was with someone else.

“Waiting for Charles. And here he is,” she said, her eyes fixing on the subway stairs behind me.

Charles walked up, all his limbs intact, looking healthier than ever but in a much fouler humor. He scowled when he saw me. “What's the human doing here?” he asked.

“Um, I have a name. And to answer your question, I live here,” I responded defensively. “You're not the only person in Paris who uses the rue du Bac Métro.”

“No, I mean, what are you doing here with Charlotte?”

“I just ran into her. Accidentally.”
Why am I making excuses to this obnoxious adolescent?
I wondered, annoyed with myself.

“I thought that since you ditched Vincent, we'd never see you again.”

“Well,” I said, pasting a fake smile across my face, “here I am. So, Charlotte, it was nice to see you. Gotta go.”

I turned to walk away, but Charles shouted after me. “You just can't get enough of us dead guys, huh? What do you want now? You want us to save your life again? Or are you going to lead us into a death trap like you did Ambrose?”

“What are you talking about?” I yelled, spinning to face him.

“Nothing. I'm talking about nothing. Just forget I ever said a word,” he spat. Thrusting his hands into his jeans pockets, he turned and stalked off.

Charlotte looked at me apologetically.

“What was that about? What did I do?” I gasped.

“Nothing, Kate. You didn't do anything. Don't worry, it's all Charles's problem.”

“Well then, why did he attack me like that?” I was still motionless with shock.

“Hey, do you want to walk down to the river?” she asked, ignoring my question. “I was kind of hoping I'd run across you at some point, seeing we're neighbors and all. Not that I haven't seen you around, of course. I just didn't feel like it was appropriate to run down the street after you.”

“Don't tell me you were following me,” I said, half joking.

Charlotte didn't answer, but grinned at me like a cat.

“What?
Have
you been following me?”

“Don't worry, Vincent didn't ask me to. It's just that following people is what we do, and when we're doing it nonstop, it's hard not to follow people who interest us.”

“
I
interest
you
?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Let's see. Well, you're the first girl Vincent has fallen for since becoming a revenant. Which already qualifies you as fascinating to the rest of us.”

“I can't talk about . . . him,” I began to protest.

“Okay. We will avoid the topic of Vincent completely. Promise.”

“Thanks.”

“You also interest me because . . .” For once she looked much younger than her fifteen-year-old body. “I had kind of been hoping you would be a friend. Before you left, that is. It's a bit lonely hanging out with guys all the time. Thankfully Jeanne is there, or I'd probably have already lost it.”

My expression must have been quizzical, because she hurriedly went on to explain. “It's not like I can go out and make friends with just any human. They wouldn't understand. But since you already know what we are . . .”

I gently cut her off. “Charlotte, I am incredibly flattered that you want to be friends with me. I really like you, too. But I'm still so upset about Vincent that if I hung out with you and we ran into him, it would be too hard on me.”

She looked away and nodded her head nonchalantly, as if already distancing herself from me.

“I thought you hung out with Charles most of the time,” I said.

“Oh, he's off on his own a lot lately,” she said, trying to sound flippant but not managing very well. Her voice trembled as she continued, “So recently I've found myself a bit more on my own than I'm used to.” Her attempt to look brave was ruined by the tear I noticed coursing down her cheek as she turned away.

“Wait!” I said, grabbing her hand, and pulled her back to face me.

Staring at the ground, she brushed away another tear. “I'm sorry. Things have just been kind of . . . hard lately.”

I guess I'm not the only one with problems,
I told myself, my resolve crumbling as I saw the sadness on her face. “Okay, yeah. Let's walk to the river.” Her empty eyes met my own, and she managed a glimmer of a smile as she took my arm and we walked down the street together.

As we neared the water, I pointed out an antique taxidermy shop. “My mom and I used to always go in there,” I said. “It's like a zoo, except all the animals are dead. Now I can't even pass by without thinking about Mom. I haven't dared go in, in case I had a meltdown right there in the middle of all the stuffed squirrels.”

Charlotte laughed—the response I had been hoping for. “That's how I felt too after my parents died. Everything reminded me of them. Paris felt like a ghost town to me for years after,” she said as we walked down the steps to the quay.

“Your parents died? I mean, before you did?” I asked, the hole in my heart beginning to ache again. We began strolling past a long line of houseboats that were moored to the riverbank.

Charlotte nodded. “It was World War Two. During the Occupation. My parents ran a clandestine press out of our apartment near the Sorbonne, where my father taught. The Germans found it and shot them. Charles and I were at my aunt's house that night, or they probably would have killed us, too.

“We were proud of our parents and wanted to continue in their footsteps. So when we began hearing about the roundups . . .” She paused, then explained, “When the police rounded the Jews up to send them to the concentration camps.” I nodded to show her I understood, and she continued, “We hid some friends from school and their parents in our apartment, in a room with a false wall, where the printing press had been concealed. We secured enough ration cards to feed and clothe the six of us for over a year before a neighbor caught on and reported us.”

I stopped in place. “Who would ever do such a thing?” I said, aghast.

She shrugged and continued, taking my arm and forcing me to move again. “We were able to get the family safely to another hiding place, but Charles and I were caught the next day and shot.”

“I can barely believe that was happening right here in Paris.”

Charlotte nodded. “They say that thirty thousand of us ‘resisters' were shot during the course of the Occupation. At least, that's the official number. Some were actually lawbreakers. But others were innocent bystanders who were taken hostage and killed to revenge their countrymen's acts of resistance.”

“That was so brave of you and Charles to help that family.”

“Well, wouldn't you have done the same? How could we have acted differently?”

We neared a stone bench and sat down.

“I don't know,” I responded finally. “I would hope I would have acted like you did. But there must be very few people who are actually that brave. Maybe that's why you became one of them. I mean, a revenant,” I said.

“That's what Jean-Baptiste thinks. That saving lives was preprogrammed into us. That it came naturally. Who knows?” She paused thoughtfully. “What I
do
know is, now that I can spare others the pain I went through when my parents were killed—by saving lives—it makes the continual trauma of our existence easier to bear.”

I nodded, and watched as she pensively picked at her fingernails. “So what's up with Charles?” I asked finally.

“It's all part of the same story,” she said. “He's had a hard time dealing with his failure to save that little girl's life in the boat accident. For the last couple of weeks he's been . . .” She looked like she was weighing how much to tell me and settled for, “. . . obsessing about it.”

“Will he get over it with time?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I finally told Jean-Baptiste about it this morning. He's going to have a talk with Charles.”

“Maybe that will help,” I offered.

She shook her head, as if unconvinced. “Let's change the subject.”

“Okay,” I said, grasping for a new topic of conversation. “So what's so bad about living with a houseful of hot men? Excluding Gaspard and Jean-Baptiste, that is, who I guess could be called ‘hot' in their own way . . . ,” I trailed off.

She burst out laughing. “Definitely not hot,” she agreed. “There's so much testosterone packed into that air, I'm surprised I haven't grown a mustache just from breathing it!”

Now it was my turn to laugh. It felt foreign to me, as if I were suddenly speaking Chinese. It didn't feel natural, but it didn't feel bad.

Charlotte shot me a wry grin, proud that she had cracked through my armor. “Honestly,” she conceded, “they're all like family to me. We've lived together for decades.

“The revenants out in the countryside have to constantly relocate so that the locals don't recognize them once they've died saving someone. They're always on the move from one of Jean-Baptiste's country homes to another. It suits most of them just fine, but I couldn't do it. These men are all the family I've got, and I could never leave them.”