Die for Me (7 page)

CHARLOTTE LED ME DOWNSTAIRS AND THROUGH
the servants' passageway into Vincent's room. She tapped on the door and, without waiting for a response, led me directly to Vincent's bed. My steps faltered when I saw him sitting up, propped against pillows. He looked very weak and as pale as a sheet. But he was alive. My heart leaped in my chest—as much with excitement at seeing him alive as with fear. How was it possible?

“Vincent?” I asked cautiously. “Is that you?” Which sounded a bit stupid. It looked like him, but maybe he had been possessed by . . . I don't know, some kind of alien being or something. At this point, things were strange enough for me to believe almost anything.

He smiled, and I knew it was really him.

“You're not . . . but you were dead!” I had to force the irrational words out of my mouth.

“What if I told you I'm just a deep sleeper?” his low voice came, slow and with great effort.

“Vincent, you were dead. I saw you. I touched you. I know. . . .” My eyes filled with tears as I had a flashback to the Brooklyn morgue and my parents' bodies laid out on stretchers. “I know what ‘dead' looks like.”

“Come here,” he said. I inched my way toward him, not knowing what to expect. He lifted his arm, slowly, and touched my hand. He wasn't as cold as before, but he didn't feel quite human, either.

“See?” he said, the corners of his lips curving upward. “Alive.”

I stepped back, pulling my hand from his. “I don't understand,” I said, my voice mistrustful. “What's wrong with you?”

He looked resigned. “I'm sorry I ever got you mixed up in this. It was selfish. But I didn't think it would turn out this way. I didn't think . . . at all. Obviously.”

My feeling of general alarm was replaced by a creeping sensation of fear of what would come next. I couldn't imagine what sort of revelation he was going to come out with. But a little voice inside me said,
You knew
. And I realized that I had.

I had known that there was something different about Vincent. I had felt it, even before I saw his photo in the obituaries. It was something just a little east of normal, but too obscure for me to put my finger on. So I had ignored it. But now I was going to find out. A frisson of expectancy caused me to shudder. Vincent saw me tremble and frowned regretfully.

We were interrupted by a tapping at the door. Charlotte rose to open it and moved aside as, one by one, people stepped into the room.

Jules walked up to me first and, gently touching my shoulder, asked, “Are you feeling better?”

I nodded.

“I am so, so sorry for how I handled things before,” he said with remorse. “It was a knee-jerk reaction, trying to get you away from Vince as soon as possible. I was rough with you. I wasn't thinking.”

“Really. It's okay.”

A familiar figure walked up behind him and jokingly pushed him aside. The muscular guy from the river turned to Jules and said, “Trying to hog her for yourself?” and then, bending down to my height, he held out his hand. “Kate, enchanted to meet you. I'm Ambrose,” he said in a baritone voice that was as thick as molasses. Then, switching into a perfectly American-accented English, he said, “Ambrose Bates from Oxford, Mississippi. It's nice to meet a fellow countryman in this land of crazy French people!”

Clearly enjoying the fact that he had surprised me, Ambrose laughed deeply and clapped me on the arm before sitting down next to Jules on a couch and giving me a friendly wink.

A man I had never seen before stepped toward me and gave a nervous little bow. “Gaspard,” he introduced himself simply. He was older than the others, in his late thirties or early forties. Tall and gaunt, he had deep-set eyes and a shock of badly cut black hair sticking up in all directions. He turned and walked away toward the others.

“This is my twin brother, Charles,” said Charlotte, who had stayed by my side as presentations were made. She pulled forward the redhead copy of herself. Bowing and giving my hand a mock kiss, he said sarcastically, “Nice to see you again, now that it's not raining masonry.” I smiled unsurely at him.

I don't know if it was my imagination, or if everyone actually took a step backward, but all of a sudden it seemed like the only people in the room were me and the man I was facing. It was the aristocratic gentleman from yesterday—the owner of the house. Though everyone else had greeted me in a somewhat friendly manner, my host was not smiling.

Standing before me, he bowed stiffly from the waist. “Jean-Baptiste Grimod de la Reynière,” he said, looking stonily into my eyes. “Although the rest of my kindred may reside here, this is
my
house and I, for one, feel that your presence here is very unwise.”

“Jean-Baptiste,” came Vincent's voice from behind me. “None of this was intentional.” He lay back on the pillow and closed his eyes, seeming to have used all his energy with those six words.

“You, young man . . . you were the one who broke the rules by bringing her into our house in the first place. I have never permitted any of you to bring your human lovers here, and you flaunted my injunction most egregiously.”

I felt my cheeks flame at his words, but wasn't sure which I was responding to: the “human” part or the “lovers” part. Nothing made sense anymore.

“What was I supposed to do?” Vincent argued. “She had just seen Jules die! She was in shock.”

“That was your own problem to solve. You shouldn't have gotten involved with her in the first place. And now you are going to have to clean up your own mess.”

“Ah, lighten up, JB,” said Ambrose, leaning back and casually draping his arms along the entire length of the couch back. “It's not the end of the world. We've checked her out, and she's definitely not a spy. Plus, she's not exactly the first human to know what we are.”

The older man shot him a withering look.

The one who'd introduced himself as Gaspard spoke up in a timorous voice. “If I may be permitted to clarify . . . the difference here is that every other human interacting with us was . . . ah . . . was individually chosen from families who have served Jean-Baptiste for generations.”

Generations?
I thought with dismay. An icy finger brushed its way up my spine.

“Whereas you,” Jean-Baptiste continued with undisguised distaste, “I have known for less than a day, and already you are intruding on my kindred's privacy. You are most unwelcome.”

“Sheesh!” exclaimed Jules. “Don't hold back your true feelings, Grimod. You old-timers really need to learn to open up and express yourselves.” Jean-Baptiste acted like he hadn't heard.

“Well, what are we supposed to do then?” Charlotte said, addressing our host.

“Okay, stop. Everyone,” Vincent said with a shallow breath. “You are my kindred. Who votes that we tell Kate?”

Ambrose, Charlotte, Charles, and Jules raised their hands.

“And what would you have us do?” Vincent directed his question toward Jean-Baptiste and Gaspard.

“That's your problem,” Jean-Baptiste said. He stared me down for another few seconds and then, turning on his heel, strode rapidly out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

“SO,” SAID AMBROSE WITH A CHUCKLE, RUBBING
his hands together. “Majority rules. Let's get this party started.”

“Here,” said Charlotte, pulling a couple of big cushions from the couch to the floor. Sitting down Indian-style on one, she smiled at me and patted the other invitingly.

“It's okay,” Vincent reassured me when I hesitated, and relinquished my hand.

“Kate,” Jules said, “you realize that what we talk about here doesn't go outside these walls.”

Vincent's words were slow and precise: “Jules is right. Our lives are in your hands once you know, Kate. I hate to force that type of responsibility on anyone, but the situation's gone too far. Do you promise to keep our secret? Even if you”—it sounded like he was running out of breath—“even if you leave today and decide never to return.”

I nodded. Everyone waited. “I promise,” I whispered, which was the best I could do with a lump in my throat the size of a grapefruit. Something extremely bizarre was going on here, and I had too few clues to guess what it was. But with Jean-Baptiste's flippant use of the word “human” and Vincent and Jules both apparently having been resurrected, I knew I had gotten myself in deep. It was not knowing what I was deep
in
that was scaring the pee out of me.

“Jules . . . you start,” Vincent said, closing his eyes and looking more dead than alive.

Jules measured up the situation and decided to have pity. “Maybe it would be easier if we let Kate ask us what she wants.”

Where to even start?
I thought, and then remembered what had set everything into such a downward spiral in the first place. “I saw a picture of you and Vincent in a 1968 newspaper that said you died in a fire,” I said, turning to Ambrose.

He nodded at me with a little smile, urging me on.

“So how can you be here now?”

“Well, I'm glad we're starting with the easy questions,” he said, stretching his powerful arms and then leaning toward me. “The answer would be . . . because we're zombies!” and he let out a horrible groan, stretching his mouth open and baring his teeth as he curled his hands into claws.

Seeing my terrified expression, Ambrose began cracking up and slapping his knee with his hand. “Just kidding,” he cackled, and then, calming down, looked at me sedately. “But no, seriously. We're zombies.”

“We are
not
zombies,” said Charlotte, her voice rising with annoyance.

“The correct term, I believe, would be, ah, undead,” said Gaspard in a wavering voice.

“Ghosts,” said Charles, grinning mischievously.

“Stop scaring her, you guys,” said Vincent. “Jules?”

“Kate, it's a lot more complicated than that. We call ourselves
revenants
.”

I looked around at them, one by one.

“Ruh-vuh-nahnt,”
Jules pronounced slowly, obviously thinking I didn't understand.

“I know the word. It means ‘ghost' in French.” My voice shook.
I am sitting in a room of monsters,
I thought.
Defenseless.
But I couldn't afford to freak out now. What would they do to me if I did? What would they do to me even if I didn't? Unless they were the kind of monsters who could erase people's memories, I was in on their secret now.

“If you go back to the root of the word, it actually means ‘one who returns' or ‘one who comes back,'” offered Gaspard pedantically.

Though the room was warm, I found myself shivering. They all stared at me expectantly, as if I were their group science project: Would I blow up or just kind of fizzle out? Charles hissed, “She's going to freak and run away, like I said.”

“She's
not
going to freak and run away,” argued Charlotte.

“Okay, everybody out,” came Vincent's voice, more forceful than it had been so far. “No offense, but I'd rather talk to Kate myself. You guys are making a mess of the whole thing. Thank you for your votes of confidence, but please . . . go.”

“Impossible.” The room fell silent as everyone stared at Gaspard. His voice lost its authority and he began picking at his fingernail. “I mean to say, if I may,” he stuttered self-consciously, “Vincent, you cannot take over the task of informing the human, I mean Kate, yourself. We are all affected by this breach. We all need to be aware of what information she has . . . and doesn't have. And I will have to give a full account to Jean-Baptiste afterward. Before she is allowed to leave.”

My tenseness eased just a fraction.
They're going to let me leave.
That knowledge became my light at the end of the terrifyingly dark tunnel.

“I might, ah, also point out that you're too weak to even sit up,” Gaspard continued. “In your condition, how can you be expected to handle the explanation of something of such importance to us all?”

The silence lasted a full minute while everyone watched Vincent. Finally he sighed. “Okay. I understand. But for God's sake, try to behave yourselves.” He looked over to me and said, “Kate, please come sit with me. At least it will give me an illusion of having some control over the situation.”

Getting up, I walked to the bed and watched as Vincent effortfully lifted his arm and grasped my hand in his. The instant our skin touched, I felt the same peace that I had when Charlotte touched me in her room. I was awash in a tide of calm and safety, as if nothing bad could happen so long as Vincent held my hand. This time I knew it had to be some kind of supernatural trick.

I sat down gingerly on the side of the bed, watching Vincent's face as I did. “I'm not in pain,” he reassured me, keeping hold of my hand as I sat next to him.

“Okay, Kate, first of all, you're touching me,” Vincent said for the room to hear. “So I'm not a ghost.”

“And we're not
true
zombies,” Charles said with a grin, “or he would have already eaten your face off.”

Vincent ignored him. “We're not vampires or werewolves or anything else that you should be afraid of. We're revenants. We aren't human”—he paused, summoning his strength—“but we're not going to hurt you.”

I tried to compose myself before saying to the room in as steady a voice as I could muster, “So you're all . . . dead. But you look alive. Except for you,” I said, hesitating as I glanced at Vincent. “Although you look better than you did last night,” I conceded.

Vincent was grave. “Jules, could you tell Kate your story? It's probably the best way to explain. Gaspard is right: I can't manage it myself.”

Jules caught my gaze and didn't let go. “Okay, Kate. I know this is going to sound incredible, but I was born in 1897. In a small village not far from Paris. My dad was a doctor, and my mom a midwife. I showed artistic talent, so at age sixteen they sent me to study painting in Paris. My schooling was cut short when I was drafted into the war in 1914. I fought the Germans for two years, until, in September 1916, I was killed in action. Battle of Verdun.

“And that would be the end of my story . . . if I hadn't woken up three days later.”

The room was silent while I tried to wrap my mind around what he had said. “You woke up?” I finally managed. The boy I faced looked no older than twenty, but was claiming to be over a hundred years old.

“Technically he ‘animated,'” offered Gaspard, holding up a thin finger to make his point, “not ‘woke up.'”

“I came back to life,” Jules clarified.

“But how?” I asked in disbelief. Vincent's grasp on my hand bolstered my courage. “How could you just come back to life, unless you weren't really dead in the first place?”

“Oh, I was dead. No question about that. You can't be in that many pieces and live through it.” Jules's grin turned to a look of regret as he saw me blanch.

“Give the lady a break,” said Ambrose. “We're laying this on her all at once.” He looked at me. “There's this special . . . what should I call it? Not to sound too
Twilight Zone
, but ‘law of the universe,' right? It says that if, under certain circumstances, you die in the place of someone else, you will subsequently come back to life. You're dead for three days. Then you wake up.”

“Animate,” corrected Gaspard.

“You
wake up
,” insisted Ambrose, “and, except for being as hungry as hell, you're just like you were before.”

“Except that after that you don't sleep,” added Charles.

“Have you ever heard of TMI, Chucky?” Ambrose asked, clenching his hands in exasperation.

“Kate,” Charlotte said softly, “dying and animating are really hard on the human body. It kind of kicks us into a different life cycle. ‘Animated' is a good way to put it, actually. We are so animated when we wake up that we go for more than three weeks without stopping. Then our body shuts down and we ‘sleep like the dead' for three days. Like Vincent just did.”

“You mean, we
are
dead for three—” Charles began, correcting her.

Charlotte interrupted him. “We're not dead. We call it ‘being dormant.' Our body is just kind of hibernating, but our mind is still active. And once our body awakes, we go back to a few more weeks of absolute, but sleepless, normalcy.”

Charles mumbled, “Yeah, right.”

“Well, one could say that that gives the bare bones of the story,” Gaspard said helpfully.

“You were . . . dormant yesterday?” I asked Vincent.

He nodded. “The end of the three days,” he said. “Now I'll be fine for almost a month.”

“You don't look very fine to me,” I responded, staring at his skin's waxy pallor.

“It takes several hours to recover from dormancy,” Vincent said with a weak smile. “For a human it would be like having open-heart surgery. You don't just pop out of the hospital bed as soon as the anesthesia wears off.”

That made sense. If he kept going with the human analogies, I might be able to stomach this whole bizarre scenario a bit better. From the way they were arguing, they clearly weren't used to having to explain their situation. It was up to me to figure things out.

I turned to Jules. “You're over a hundred years old.”

“I'm nineteen,” he said.

“So you never age?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, we age all right. Look at Jean-Baptiste—he died at thirty-six, but he's in his sixties!” said Charles.

“And how old would Jean-Baptiste be if he hadn't . . . you know?” I fumbled for words.

“Two hundred thirty-five,” answered Gaspard without hesitation and, looking at the others, continued, “May I?”

Charles nodded, and the rest stayed quiet.

“After we animate, we age at the same rate as anyone else. However, each time we die, we subsequently reanimate at the same age that we died the very first time. Jules died when he was nineteen, therefore each time he dies, he starts again at nineteen. Vincent was eighteen when he died, but hasn't died for, what's it been now? A bit over a year?” He directed his question to Vincent, but I cut him off.

“What do you mean, ‘each time you die'?” I asked. The spine-chilling icy finger was making another appearance. Vincent tightened his hold on my hand.

“Let's just say there are a lot of people who need to be saved,” said Jules, winking.

I stared at him, struggling to understand what he was inferring. Then my eyes widened. “The man in the subway!” I gasped. “You saved his life!”

He nodded.

“But how—I mean, didn't—” I burst out, not able to form one single thought as a dozen flooded my mind simultaneously. I remembered Vincent diving after the girl, and Charlotte saving me from death-by-crushing.

“You died saving someone, and you keep doing it after death,” I said finally. Maybe I was stating the obvious, but the lightbulb had finally flicked on above my head.

“It's the whole reason for our being,” Vincent said. “We're bound to that one mission for the rest of our existence.”

I stared at him. I didn't even know how to react. My mind was a blank.

“I think it's time to wind down this Q and A session,” Vincent said to the others. “Kate's getting to the information-overload stage. And I'm too tired to continue.”

“You can't tell her—” began Gaspard.

“Gaspard!” Vincent yelled, and then closed his eyes from the effort. “I . . . swear I will not tell Kate anything else . . . of importance . . . without consulting you first. Cross my heart.” Vincent drew an
X
across his chest and glared at the man.

“Well, then,” Ambrose said, getting up. “Now that we're done scaring the human—I mean, Katie-Lou here”—he paced over and clapped me on the shoulder affectionately—“it's time for some grub,” and he walked through the doorway.

Charlotte touched my arm softly as the others left. “Come have breakfast with us. You probably won't be allowed to”—she glanced at Vincent—“leave right away anyway.”

“What time is it?” I asked, realizing I had no clue how long I had slept.

Charlotte looked at her watch. “Almost seven.”

“Seven a.m.?” I asked, astonished that I had fallen asleep in a strange house under such disturbing circumstances. “Thanks, but I think I'll stay and talk to Vincent.”

“You should eat,” said Vincent softly. “Jean-Baptiste's going to come storming through that door in a few minutes anyway, after Gaspard gives him his update.”

“Let me stay with you till then,” I asked. “I'll come find you when Jean-Baptiste kicks me out,” I told Charlotte.

“'kay!” she said with an encouraging smile, and shut the door behind her.

I turned to Vincent. But before I could open my mouth to speak, he stole my words. “I know,” he said. “We need to talk.”