Die Once More

by Amy Plum

  And then there’s Jean-Baptiste. Although I was never as close to him as Vincent was, I loved and respected the man. I should be there to help support Gaspard in his grief. So there’s that guilt to deal with, along with all the rest.

  Losing Vincent is like losing my right arm. And since Kate has my heart, and I feel spineless for abandoning Gaspard, you could say I’m presently suffering a major lack of body parts.

  The only way I survive is to never stop moving. I make sure I’m always surrounded by others, so I won’t have time to think and end up imploding like a dying star.

  I walk incessantly. I know the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan, my two chosen boroughs, well enough by now to have an accurate street map in my head. I sign up for three four-hour shifts per day. Although that first day was an exception, and New York’s numa are staying suspiciously out of sight, there are enough cases of suffering street people, suicide attempts, domestic violence, and near-fatal accidents to keep me on a continual high from the life force I absorb from these saves.

  “Dude, this isn’t a contest,” Faust says as I trim my hair in my studio mirror. “You don’t get bonus points if you save more humans than anyone else.”

  He has been an impeccable welcome rep. He got me moved into my room at the Warehouse and had it furnished with what I asked for. (I didn’t really care, but he pushed me for details until it ended up looking pretty much exactly like my room in Paris . . . besides the floor-to-ceiling windows with an enviable view of the East River.) He got me weather-appropriate clothes, made sure the armory had what I needed (sending off for some antique swords so I would “feel at home”), and introduced me to our kindred artists—of whom there are many. Seems like every revenant artist in America wants to be here.

  Faust even gamely accompanied me to my first Midnight Drawing Group meeting at the Warehouse. But after Gina, one of our bardia sisters recruited to pose when our human model didn’t show up, perched atop the stool and dropped her robe, Faust’s jaw dropped too. Her response was, “Draw or scram, Faust.” He hasn’t been back since. His third-generation Italian-American upbringing and his stint in the tough-guy New York fire department never prepared him for people like the artists I hang out with.

  It was Gina, drawing next to me one night, who first pointed out that the girl I was sketching looked nothing like the model posing for us on the stool. I didn’t respond—what could I say? Since then no one else has mentioned the fact that every woman I draw is the same. The position matches that of our model, the shadows and light are exactly what they are in our studio, but it is always Kate’s face, always her body. My pencil has its own will, and my fingers are its slaves.

  Late one evening, Gold drops by with a message from Paris. He takes one look at the girl on my drawing pad, and I see things click in his mind. Tearing his eyes from the page, he says, “I have something for you.” He waves a creamy white envelope like a flag.

  As I reach for it, he slips it back into his pocket and says, “I’d actually been hoping to catch up with you.” He glances around at the twenty-odd people concentrating on their drawings. “Without disrupting everyone, of course. Do you have time for a break?”

  I fold up my sketchbook and, tucking it under my arm, lead him down one floor and to my room. “Tea?” I ask, as he peruses my space, inspecting the paintings and drawings that have accumulated in stacks around the walls and on every available surface. Many show the humans I’ve saved in the past few weeks. The others, well . . .

  “With milk,” he responds, and picks up a small portrait of a girl with her arms crossed. I painted it in the style of my old friend Modigliani, kind of an homage to his girlfriend, Jeanne. But instead of Jeanne staring doe-like from the canvas, Kate’s laughing eyes gaze out, and the expression of wry amusement she makes when I tease her curves one corner of her lips.

  “This is why,” states Gold, as I set a steaming cup on a table near him and pull a jug of milk from the mini-fridge.

  “Why what?” I ask, knowing exactly what he’s talking about.

  “Why you stayed. Why over the last two and a half months you’ve been acting like an overachieving Superman who can’t stop rescuing people long enough to breathe. Or in your case, long enough to remember.”

  “Do you double as the house shrink?” I ask, lifting my own mug to my lips and blowing off a cloud of jasmine-scented steam.

  “I try to avoid that at all costs, actually,” Gold says, chuckling, and glances back down at the painting. “No one here knows what’s wrong with you. You haven’t confided in any of your kindred. Not even Faust, and that boy’s practically spent twenty-four/seven with you.”

  “So the welcome reps serve as your spies?” I say, immediately regretting it. Faust has been more than welcoming. He’s been a friend. He’s tried to crack my shell, but I’m not letting anyone in. They wouldn’t want to see the mess inside.

  Whatever Gold sees in my face allows him to forgive my rude comment and change the subject. “I suppose this means you won’t be going to Paris for the wedding?” He hands me the ivory envelope, and, thrusting his hands into his pockets, walks to the window. He looks out over the ink-black river toward the hushed lights of the city.

  I set my tea down and pull out a creamy card engraved in silvery-blue ink.

  Charlotte Violaine Lorieux et Ambrose Bates

  ont la joie de vous faire part de leur mariage

  le samedi 28 mai

  A l’église de la Sainte-Chapelle, Paris

  So Ambrose and Charlotte are getting married—I check the date—exactly three months after our epic battle with the numa. The battle Ambrose had to miss because of a wound suffered in a skirmish, just hours before. And the battle where I helped Kate drag Charlotte’s dead body to the side of the arena so that it wouldn’t be scooped up by numa and burned.

  I knew, of course, of their newly kindled love. Gaspard has sent me one letter per week—handwritten and mailed through the post—updating me on the goings-on of the Paris kindred.

  And Ambrose phoned me once on the cell phone I was issued by my new kindred. He told me he had proposed. That Charlotte had accepted. Of course. Any idiot except Ambrose would have known she’s been in love with him for decades. But for Ambrose this love was a revelation, and the more he talked about it, the wider the pit inside me grew, its emptiness swallowing all my words until finally he just told me he loved me and that they all missed me, and he hung up.

  I never wanted love. Until Kate. And now it eats at me from inside, reminding me of how stupid I’ve been. How shallow. All that time wasted, when I could have been happy like Ambrose and Charlotte. Like Vincent and Kate. But what if Kate was the one? She’s the only girl who has ever made me long for permanence. What if she was the one, and I could have done more to let her know? What if I had been honest sooner?

  No, she and Vincent were made for each other. That much is clear. I’m just cursed to want what is not meant to be. But damn my heart for switching on—finally—for the wrong person. Now it is an open door, standing wide for nothing . . . for no one . . . and I don’t know how to close it again.

  I look up and see that Gold is waiting for a response. “Um, no. I don’t really think I’ll make it to the wedding. Too soon. And I’ve got my work here.”

  “Wrong answer,” says Gold. He looks back out the window at his city, before ambling back to me, authority radiating from him. This is his world, and has been for more than a century. I’m just a blip on his radar. Passing through.

  “We need you to go.”

  “What?” I exclaim. “What’s that supposed to mean? If you want to go to the wedding, I’m sure the bride and groom wouldn’t mind if you took my place.”

  Gold looks back at me, the picture of patience. “When you joined us, you agreed to work for the good of the clan. No one can deny the fact that you’ve been doing more than your share of patrolling. But we have other jobs that need to be done, and in this case, you’re the one to do it.”

 
; FIVE

  I STAND FROZEN IN DISBELIEF WHILE GOLD PICKS up my jacket and throws it at me. “Here, let’s walk, and I’ll explain along the way.” He plucks the invitation from my hand and pockets it, while I reach to grab my weapon belt.

  “You won’t need that,” he says dismissively. “We’re not patrolling.”

  “You never know,” I say, and put it on anyway, slipping a short-sword into the holster before shrugging on the leather jacket, which is cut long enough to hide steel. I leave my gun on the table. I carry it when I need to but don’t enjoy how it feels: There’s something dead about it, unlike the almost-living vibration a sword emits.

  We walk out of the Warehouse into a breezy May night, the midnight moon scattering disks of gold on the surface of the wind-rippled water. Heading away from the river toward the center of Williamsburg, we move away from the glass-covered high-rises into a neighborhood of three-story brownstones.

  While we walk, Gold fills me in on the recent history of New York’s revenants. I have the feeling he’s just passing time so that I won’t press him for details on this special mission, but his words catch my attention, and I let him spin the tale in his old-fashioned roundabout way.

  “In the sixties and seventies,” he says, hands thrust into his pockets as he digs back in his memory, “New York’s numa were out of control. Violence was at a high, and anarchy reigned. The city was the undisputed murder capital of America. That’s when we bardia decided to reorganize, and instead of continuing our traditional role in the city—that of saving humans on an individual basis—we decided to infiltrate the system. During the next decade, we focused on placing bardia in roles of authority, both in the government and in the city’s administration: police, fire, emergency services. Things started to turn around in the nineties.

  “Of course, we never ran for office—didn’t want the visibility. But today, behind each and every fire chief, police commissioner, councilman, and even mayor, there is significant bardia influence. Have you heard about a mayor called Giuliani, who ‘single-handedly’ cleaned up New York City during his eight years in office?”

  I nod. “Even in France we heard of him.”

  Gold chuckles. “Some say he went too far. Took some of the city’s character away along with its sex shops and illegal street vendors. Maybe so. But that entire initiative can be credited to a bardia named Tristan Fielding, a friend of mine from my human days. When we were alive, in the nineteenth century, the gangs of New York were terrorizing the Lower East Side. More than a hundred years later, some of the same numa who had been involved in that crime scene were still making trouble.

  “While the New York administration cleaned up the human mess, we took out most of the numa population: either running them out of town or destroying them. And the balance swayed in our favor for a good ten years. Until September eleventh, 2001.”

  I can’t help but shudder when he says that date. It’s as if the numbers hold a dark power when spoken together. Pure evil. “Faust told me that more bardia were made on that day than any other in New York’s history.”

  Gold nods. “We’ve got two seers here—me and Coleman Bailey, who sat next to you at the council meeting. The two of us kept busy for days and had the entire kindred working along with us. Too bad we can’t see when numa are created. Could have destroyed them before they were even animated.”

  “I thought there were only a dozen or so hijackers. Don’t tell me they animated after being incinerated in the tower fires!” I say.

  “No, they were gone, as far as we can tell. But evil draws evil, and the slaughter of human lives that happened that day acted like a magnet for our enemies. But more importantly was the one behind it all. Most men who engineer mass killings have a core of evil in them that comes from somewhere subhuman. Whether numa himself or advised by numa, you can bet the architect of 9/11 had close links to our enemies.”

  “Are you talking about . . . ,” I begin.

  Gold looks around like he’s worried someone’s listening, although the street we’re walking down is empty, and most houses we pass completely dark. “Why do you think there was no photo or DNA evidence of his death released to the public? Buried at sea? Right. After his head was chopped off and his body incinerated, perhaps. Gunshots aren’t enough to kill a numa overlord. Our men in the Pentagon made sure he was good and gone and not rising from the grave three days later.”

  “Bardia in the Pentagon?” I ask, truly astounded.

  “Like I said, our style here is to infiltrate and advise. Not just in New York, but all over America,” Gold says with a grin.

  I am speechless. I honestly had no idea. This country is a millennium younger than ours, but man, do they know how to handle their own.

  We turn onto a quiet side street, just one block long, nestled between two larger avenues. The brownstones here look homey, and the street is squeaky clean, like its inhabitants take pride in their hidden haven.

  “All that is to say,” Gold says, as we walk up a set of concrete steps to a green door with a big number 16 in brass letters in the middle, “the numa population has exploded here since 2001. Things seem to be coming to a head, and something has to be done. Something like what happened in Paris. That’s why we need you to go there.” Gold turns from me and rings the doorbell.

  “But,” I begin, and then I stop, because the door is opening and above us stands Frosty, in all her copper-skinned, raven-haired glory. I haven’t seen her since the drug bust and have a feeling that that isn’t a coincidence. I know she’s been around—she’s obviously been avoiding me.

  Evidence: Her face lights up when she sees Gold, but when I step from the shadows behind him, out comes the permafrost.

  “Ava, my dear, how good to see you,” says Gold, and steps up to give her a good old American hug. So. Frosty Whitefoot has a first name. Trust old-fashioned Gold to fly in the face of current convention and use it.

  He lets go of her and turns toward me. “You remember Jules Marchenoir,” he says.

  “Yes. We walked together his first week. Took down those numa on Bushwick,” Ava says stiffly, putting her hands on her hips as she stares down at me.

  “Oh yes, I had forgotten,” says Gold. “May we come in?” Even he has noticed her reaction to me and is waiting, puzzled, for her to stop body-blocking the door and invite us in.

  “Of course,” she replies, shaking her head as if clearing a fog, and steps aside to let us pass. She shuts the door and double-bolts it before ushering us into a large room with mid-century minimalist couches arranged around an old-fashioned fireplace.

  One of those dogs that looks like it has a full-on shaggy mustache lies on a rug in front of the chimney, and upon seeing us rolls onto its back to have its belly rubbed. Gold obliges, adjusting his white suit in order to squat down, and baby-talks to “Vera” as he proceeds to massage the blissed-out pooch into dog heaven.

  Gold’s obviously been here before—he doesn’t give the room a second glance—but I am mesmerized by its contents. Art. Everywhere. I can’t help myself: I have to look, and wander from picture to picture, inspecting them carefully. There are several examples of pop art by artists whose names sound vaguely familiar. A framed Velvet Underground poster hangs on one wall, signed, To Ava, my one true love (among many), Lou and under that, Sisters in crime: Ava + Nico. A Salvador Dali sketch stands framed on a table: a nude woman with a bouquet of flowers instead of a head, with the dedication, To the divine Ava, scrawled underneath.

  And above the mantel is the pièce de résistance: a giant silkscreen of Ava’s head by Warhol himself. In it, a patterned turban hides her hair, and her chin is raised as if in defiance. With her dark-copper skin, high cheekbones, and almond-shaped eyes, she looks like some sort of native warrior: but native to where, it’s not clear.

  “Who were you?” The words leave my lips before I can stop them.

  “Doesn’t matter,” she says, and Gold looks up abruptly from the dog-fest. He looks as confounded by her b
rusqueness as I am.

  “Ava was a part of Andy Warhol’s Factory—she was his favorite for a couple of years,” Gold says, before she shoots him a look that forbids him to spill more. “Now, of course, she is a well-respected art historian, specializing in American art of the sixties and seventies. Not much of an overlap with my own specialty of antiquities, of course, but we historians stick together.”

  He smiles up at her, breaking her stoniness enough to let a fond smile shine through. It’s obvious: They aren’t just kindred. They are friends.

  Gold stands and straightens his suit. “Well, this isn’t a social call, my dear, so let’s get down to business. Jules was invited to the wedding of two of his Paris kindred. It’s taking place in just under two weeks.

  “On the way here, I explained the history behind the heightened numa presence in New York. I explained that we fear things coming to a head like they did in Paris, and that it might end in a deciding battle.” It’s obvious from the looks on both of their faces that this is a topic they have discussed at length. Gold is just letting Ava know how much he’s told me. He crosses his arms, all business.

  “I have spoken to some others, and we want you to accompany Jules to Paris, to gather as much information as you can from our French kindred about recent advances they’ve made, especially interviewing the guérisseur, Bran, as to anything that may give us an advantage in an upcoming struggle. If it is deemed necessary, you could make an official request in the name of the council that the Champion return to help us.” A look passes between them. There’s something they’re not telling me. Probably a lot of things they’re not telling me. But that’s not what’s bothering me at the moment.

  “Listen, Gold. Why do you need me to go?” I say. “Why can’t you accompany Ava to France? I’m not”—ready—“prepared to travel. I’m still assimilating to life in New York and would rather delay my return until I’m totally comfortable here.” That’s a load of crap, and both Ava and Gold know it, but it’s all I can think of at the moment.