Until I Die (3 page)

“Don't think ‘following.' Think ‘accompanying.' And what difference would it make? You're already with Vincent or one of his friends on a pretty consistent basis.”

I studied her face. She wasn't saying it as a criticism. For my super-social sister, it was normal—even preferable—to have people surrounding you 24-7.

“Remember who you're talking to, Georgia? It's me. Your one and only sibling. Who is not queen of the Paris nightlife and actually likes to spend some of her waking hours alone.”

“Well then, just tell Vincent you don't want a babysitter. He worships you as is. Your word should be his command.”

I rolled my eyes. If only. “He actually used the word
chaperone
.”

“Vincent's so hot when he talks like a grandpa,” she joked. “Next thing you know, he'll ask Papy if he can start courting you, then everything will be downhill after that. False teeth. Saggy Y-fronts.”

“Eww!” I laughed, fake-punching my sister on the arm.

From somewhere inside her purse, Georgia's phone started buzzing. She pulled it out and began texting. Then she looked up at me and said, “By the way, Katie-Bean, you look gorgeous in that dress.”

I leaned over and hugged my glamorous, social butterfly of a sister and left her to continue her New Year's Eve socializing.

BEING NEW YEAR'S DAY, THE GARE DE LYON TRAIN
station was practically abandoned. Kamikaze pigeons soared in eccentric looping flight patterns under the massive glass-and-steel ceiling. Our small group of six stood dwarfed in the colossal space, watching Charlotte and Charles board the ultramodern high-speed TGV train that would take them from Paris to Nice in just under six hours. Ambrose loaded a small mountain of suitcases onto the luggage compartment of their carriage as the twins leaned in for hugs from Jules, Vincent, and me and more formal cheek-kisses from Gaspard and Jean-Baptiste.

As a digitized woman's voice announced the train's imminent departure, Charles broke away from Ambrose's crushing bear hug and climbed onto the train without looking back. Charlotte brushed away tears as she turned. “You'll return before long,” stated Jean-Baptiste, a rare trace of emotion tingeing his voice. She nodded mutely, looking like she was struggling not to burst into full-fledged sobbing.

“Email . . . and phone!” I reminded her. “We'll keep in touch—I promise!” I threw her a kiss with both hands as she stepped onto the train and disappeared behind the darkened windows. Vincent draped his arm supportively around my shoulders. I turned so that the twins wouldn't see me cry.

Charlotte was the only girl I had gotten close to since we moved to Paris almost a year ago. It was my fault: I hadn't actively been looking for friends. For half of that time I had been a hermit. Then along came Vincent, and it was like he brought a prepackaged group of friends with him. It hadn't escaped my attention that I preferred to spend time with the undead rather than the living. I tried not to think about what that said about me.

The sound of the conductor's whistle pierced the frigid air. The train shuddered once and then pulled away. Our mismatched group waved at the darkened windows before wordlessly ambling back toward the station entrance. Everyone seemed lost in thought as Vincent's phone started to ring. He checked the display and answered, “
Bonjour
, Geneviève.” After listening for a moment, he stopped in his tracks, his face ashen. “Oh, no. No.”

Hearing his mournful tone, everyone froze and watched him, waiting. “Just stay there. We'll be right over.” He switched the phone off and said, “Geneviève's husband died this morning. He went to bed last night and never woke up.”

The group inhaled as one and stood there, stunned. “Oh, my poor Geneviève,” said Gaspard finally, breaking the silence.

“Has she notified—” Jean-Baptiste began.

“The doctor already certified Philippe as dead, and his body was picked up by the coroner. She would have called earlier, but was afraid that if Charlotte knew, she wouldn't have gotten on the train.”

Jean-Baptiste nodded.

Although Geneviève lived halfway across town and wasn't often at La Maison, she and Charlotte had been friends for decades. Charlotte had once told me that it was hard hanging out with guys all the time. Before I had arrived, Geneviève was the only girlfriend she had, and Charlotte would run off to her house every time she and Charles had a brother-sister spat.

“She hoped that a couple of us could come over to help with the funeral plans. Kate, do you want to come with me?” Vincent asked. I nodded.

“I'll come,” Jules and Ambrose said as one.

“Ambrose, I had hoped to have your services moving Violette and Arthur into their rooms,” Gaspard said. “But of course . . .” He held up a quivering finger, as if he was unsure of the fairness of his request.

Ambrose hesitated, torn, and then relented. “No, you're right, Gaspard. I'll follow you back to the house. Give Geneviève my love, and tell her I'll stop by later,” he said to us, and then, shifting his motorcycle helmet to his other hand, clapped Vincent on the shoulder and strode out, with Gaspard and Jean-Baptiste following close behind.

Jules, Vincent, and I hopped into one of the taxis parked outside the station and within fifteen minutes were at Geneviève's house on a tiny street in the Mouzaia neighborhood of Belleville.

As we climbed out of the car, I looked around in amazement. Although we were still within the Paris city limits, the streets were lined with little two-story brick houses complete with tiny front yards—instead of the typical multi-floor Paris apartment blocks. We walked through a white picket fence and across a tree-shaded yard to the front porch, where Geneviève waited, leaning on the door frame as if she couldn't stand without its support.

As Jules and Vincent approached, she fell into their arms. “He died in his sleep. I was reading when he went, and didn't even notice,” she confessed in a dazed voice. Her pale blue eyes were shiny with tears and fatigue.

“It's going to be okay,” Vincent soothed, handing Geneviève over to Jules. We followed them down the hall and into a bright, spacious living room. Jules seated her on a white couch as carefully as if she were made of spun glass and then settled in next to her. She cuddled up to him and dabbed at her swollen eyes with a tissue as Vincent and I sat on the floor at their feet.

“What needs doing?” Vincent asked softly.

“Legally? Nothing. Philippe and I have been preparing for this for a while. The house and money is mine—you took care of that paperwork for me a while ago,” she said, nodding tearfully to Vincent.

“A law degree does come in handy when you have to register property and a bank account in a dead woman's name,” he smiled grimly.

“Philippe had already decided on his own funeral arrangements. No church service, no announcement, just a small ceremony among our own at Père Lachaise.”

Only the most famous cemetery in Paris
, I thought with awe, remembering a tour my mother and I had gone on that included the graves of Victor Hugo, Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, and Jim Morrison, among others. Philippe—or more likely Geneviève—must have some powerful contacts to have secured a gravesite for him there.

“I would love a cup of tea,” Geneviève said to no one in particular.

“I'll get it!” I popped to my feet, grateful to be given a task. “Just point me to the kitchen.”

Once there, I lit the gas burner under a kettle and rummaged through the cupboards until I found a teapot, some cups, and a box of tea bags. Framed photos hung on the kitchen wall, and I wandered from one to the next as I waited for the water to boil.

The first was an old black-and-white photo of Geneviève in a wedding dress, being carried in the arms of a tuxedoed man through the front gate of this house. Geneviève's dress and crimped hairstyle dated the picture from around World War II. They were both laughing in the photo, and looked like any other blissful couple on their wedding day.

The next picture showed the same man outside a garage, wearing a light-colored jumpsuit with grease stains on it. He leaned over a car and gave a thumbs-up, holding a wrench in one hand. His face didn't look any different than in the wedding photo—still 1940s or '50s, I was guessing.

I moved to the next photo, which must have been taken in the 1960s—I could tell from Geneviève's Jackie O hairdo. She looked exactly the same, but her husband was graying and his face was that of a man in his forties. Still . . . they could pass for a middle-aged man and his much younger wife.

But not in the following images. The color photographs made their difference in age increasingly obvious. I leaned in to see an inscription written across the bottom of the most recent portrait: “60 years on the millennium. My love for you will last forever. Philippe.” In the photo the man was sitting in a club chair with one of those metal walkers standing beside it. Geneviève was perched on the arm, leaning over and kissing his cheek as he grinned directly into the camera lens. He looked ancient. She looked twenty. And they looked as in love as they had on their wedding day.

I jumped as the kettle began whistling on the stove behind me. I had forgotten where I was as I became gradually sucked into their history—a history full of love and happiness, certainly, but one that had ended as a tragedy worthy of Homer.

When I returned to the living room, carrying the tray with teapot and cups, Jules was pacing around on his cell phone, spreading the news to their friends. Geneviève sat on the couch with her head on Vincent's shoulder, staring off into space.

My boyfriend's eyes were dark as he watched me cross the room and set the tray on a coffee table in front of them. An expression of pain flashed across his face, and I knew we were thinking the same thing. The story of Geneviève and her human husband could one day be ours.

WE STOOD IN THE GRAVEYARD, AMONG THE
tombstones, forty-some dead people and me. A couple of my fellow funeral-goers had even been in their own coffins, deep under several feet of French soil, before they had been dug out by Jean-Baptiste or another like him who had “the sight.”

As Vincent had explained to me, a revenant-in-the-making sends off a light like a beacon shooting straight up into the sky, visible only to those few revenants who have the gift of seeing auras. And if the “seer” gets to the corpse before it wakes up three transformational days later—if they provide food, water, and shelter for the awakening revenant—a new immortal is born. If not . . . ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Although Philippe hadn't met the revenant prerequisite of dying in another human's stead, Geneviève didn't take any chances and waited until the fourth day after his death to bury him. And now she knelt by the graveside, swathed in black crepe and throwing bunches of tiny white flowers down onto the casket.

“Thee only do I love,” came a girl's hushed voice from just behind me. Vincent had left my side to stand next to Geneviève, picking up a handful of dirt and throwing it down among the flowers before giving another mourner his place. I turned to see Violette standing next to me.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“The tiny white flowers Geneviève is throwing—they're arbutus.” She saw my confusion and corrected herself. “I forgot that they do not teach the language of flowers nowadays. That was a staple of a lady's education. Every flower has its own meaning. And arbutus flowers mean ‘Thee only do I love.' Geneviève would be aware of that—that is why she chose them for her one and only love.”

I nodded blankly.

“It is tragic,” she continued in her strange old-fashioned speech. I had a hard time following some of it—at times her words came out like she was quoting Shakespeare, but in Old French. “Why anyone would put themselves through such misery is quite simply beyond me. How could she expect anything other than grief, remaining attached to a human?”

The words came out almost flippantly, and then Violette turned to me with her mouth in an O and eyes wide. “Kate. I am so sorry! You blend in so well with all the revenants here, I completely forgot you were not one of us. And with you and Vincent being . . .” She grasped for words.

“Together,” I said bluntly.

“Yes, of course. Together. Well, it is so very, very . . .
pleasant
. Please forget that I said anything.”

Violette looked like she was on the verge of tears, she was so embarrassed. I touched my hand to her shoulder and said, “Don't worry. Really. Sometimes it's hard for me to remember there's any difference between me and Vincent.” Which was kind of a lie, since that difference was almost always on my mind. But she seemed mollified and, after nodding gratefully at me, stepped forward and bent down to scoop up her own handful of grave dirt.

There was a stir as Vincent held his hand up to quiet the crowd, who had begun conversing softly among themselves. “Excuse me, friends,” he called out. “There is something that Geneviève wanted to read you herself, but she has asked me to take her place. It was a favorite passage of hers and Philippe's from the book
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
. She said it helped to keep them ‘in the day.'”

He cleared his voice and began reading.

“‘Time wastes too fast . . . . the days and hours of it . . . are flying over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return more—every thing presses on—whilst thou art twisting that lock,—see! it grows grey . . .'”

Vincent looked up and caught my eye and then, looking troubled, returned to the page and continued.

“‘And every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to make!'”

My heart lurched in my chest. Not just symbolically—it caused actual physical pain. The passage seemed to have been written for me and Vincent. My worst fear about our future had been spelled out in the poetic lines that he was reading like a dirge.

This could be us
, I thought once again. Whatever happened, we seemed damned by fate. Even if Vincent suffered through the agony it would cause him to resist dying and grow old with me, someday he'd be like Geneviève, a beautiful teenager standing by his elderly lover's grave.

And why am I even thinking about growing old with someone?
my internal voice of reason protested indignantly, making me feel like a sappy idiot.
I'm just a teenager! How do I even know what I will want five years from now, much less sixty?
I couldn't help it, though. The tragedy felt real and immediate, and I couldn't throw it off with rational explanations.

Irrational and premature grief raked my heart, forcing stinging tears to my eyes. I had to get out of there. I had to escape from this crushing reminder of mortality's final result. I backed slowly out of the assembly, hoping no one would notice my flight.

Once I was clear of the group, I strode quickly away, pausing briefly to look over my shoulder. No one had seen me leave. Everyone faced Vincent, who was now hidden by a sea of black suits. I myself was lost for a minute in a mob of passing tourists, holding up maps that pointed out the celebrity graves. “Edith Piaf, two aisles over and one up,” called a guide leading a group of American teenagers.
Just a year ago, that could have been me
, I thought, looking at a smiling, carefree girl my age. I let myself be swept along with them until I was a safe distance away from the funeral.

Not caring what direction I was heading, I plunged deeper into the acres of graves. A cold rain began to pelt down like frozen darts, stinging my skin, and I ducked into a little Gothic-style structure carved in stone.

The roof was supported only by pillars, giving me shelter from the rain, but leaving me exposed to the cold wind. I hunched down next to an aboveground tomb topped by two statues lying side by side, their hands pressed together in eternal prayer on their marble bed. After a moment of casting around in my memory, I remembered where I was—I had stopped here on the walking tour with my mother. It was the tomb of Abelard and Héloïse.
How fitting
, I thought,
that on today, of all days, I end up at the grave site of France's most famous tragic lovers
.

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.

I stared at him for a moment, and then glanced at the statues next to us—the tragic lovers lying side by side. Vincent turned to see what I was looking at, and comprehension dawned on his face. He closed his eyes as if to block out the image.

“I had to leave the funeral, Vincent. I couldn't take it,” I began to explain. But the sorrow and the rain and cold and fright all seemed to gang up on me at once, and my words stuck in my throat.

“I understand,” he said, putting his arm around me and pulling me away from the tomb. He turned me to face him. “It's freezing and you're drenched. Let's get out of here.”

I couldn't help but peer over my shoulder as we left. There was no trace of the cloaked man—he was long gone—but now that Vincent had mentioned numa, it made me wonder why I had had such a strong reaction to the man's appearance. Could a numa have been following me through the graveyard?

It didn't matter now, I decided, and would only freak Vincent out if I said something about it. I put it out of my mind, and pulled my boyfriend closer.