Die Once More

by Amy Plum

  “Yeah, well, that good old guy’s lying dormant in the east wing right now,” I say. “Useless as our third man for Brittany.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk about. When do you think we can leave?” she asks, and chews anxiously on a fingernail. Ava’s nervous. She sees me notice and drops her hand and squares her shoulders, slipping back into her armor.

  “We can leave at daybreak if you want,” I suggest. “That way you get to see some of the French countryside. I’m not a half-bad tour guide, I suppose. I’ve been pretty much everywhere.”

  She shakes her head and says, “Now.”

  My eyes widen. “Excuse me?”

  “Sorry,” she says, and her leg is jiggling. “I’m just feeling impatient. I have so much to talk to Bran about, and it would be nice to get going. Like, really soon. Now, if possible.”

  I shrug. “Now works for me. Let me just grab some clothes, and I’ll meet you down in the kitchen. We can pack some stuff from the fridge so we don’t have to eat fast food on the autoroute.”

  “I’ll take care of that,” she says, and in a flash she’s halfway out my door. “Meet you in ten?”

  Americans—always in a rush, I think, while saying, “Ten it is.”

  She closes the door, and I breathe a sigh of relief. I lift up the sketch of Faust to look at my drawing of her, comparing it to the woman who was just standing inches away from me. It is spot on. And there’s something about it. Something a little too true. Sometimes the muse does that when you create . . . drawing, painting, writing . . . she gives you insight into the soul of a near stranger or a clear picture of a situation you couldn’t have known existed. And then when you find out it is true, you know you’ve been used. You’re just a tool of the muse.

  The muse gave me a view into Ava. And something inside me is glad she didn’t see it. With one last look at my portrait of New York, I leave my easel and begin packing my bag.

  ELEVEN

  WE DRIVE FOR THE FIRST HOUR IN SILENCE, AVA flipping through the radio stations until we get too far from Paris to get anything but static and then changing to the iPod Ambrose gave us. His playlists are full of jazz: Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald scat and sing and croon while we drive with the windows down. Ava’s head is tilted back, eyes closed, as she breathes in the fresh morning air of the countryside.

  But after a while, the noncommunication gets old, and I feel like talking. Ava hasn’t said a word since we left. Finally I turn the music down. “So where are you from?” I ask.

  “Are you making conversation?” Ava responds, amusement twinkling in her eyes.

  “Yes, I suppose I am,” I reply. “In fact, I’m the driver and you’re the drivee, which means you’re responsible for keeping me entertained.”

  “There’s the music,” she says.

  “An hour of jazz is quite enough for me, thank you. So, back to the question. Where are you from?”

  She was hoping to brush me off, and my insistence bothers her. She raises her eyebrows defiantly. “I don’t see why I have to tell you my life story.”

  “And I don’t see why you’ve been acting like I’m your own personal public enemy number one since the moment you laid eyes on me.” Wow. I didn’t mean to say that.

  Ava squeezes her eyes shut and pinches the top of her nose. She breathes in and out, and then says, “I’m from Long Island.”

  “I mean your family,” I prod. “Where are they from?”

  She stares at me. “You mean you want to know what race I am?”

  Now I’m afraid. I know about this political correctness thing in the States, and never know which terms are currently acceptable and which will get you slapped. What I wanted to know was the origin of the glowing copper skin, the thick, black, flowing hair that frames her face, the almond-shaped eyes that are . . . I pull my gaze from the road to her face for a second . . . an extraordinary tone between brown and dark green. I wanted to know what factors merged to give her such an original beauty. But something tells me not to compliment her, so I play it safe. “Well, that wasn’t exactly the way I was thinking about it, but sure . . . race . . . ,” I respond carefully. “Why not?”

  She gapes at me for a count, and then bursts out laughing. “Okay, then. One grandma is African American, one grandpa Cherokee.”

  “He must be the Whitefoot,” I say, and she nods.

  “And my mom’s side is Dutch, Scottish, Irish, I think there’s even a French Huguenot in there. I am the American melting pot,” she says, with not a little bit of pride.

  “You’re New York,” I murmur.

  “What?” she asks.

  “Nothing.”

  We ride in silence for a moment while I savor the information she’s given me. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a one-on-one conversation with a woman that didn’t consist of logistics in rescuing a human, and I’ve forgotten how the give-and-take feeds me. Every tidbit she offers is like honey . . . a piece of herself. Especially from this woman who gives nothing away. At least to me. Which reminds me . . .

  “So why do you hate me?” I ask.

  Her lightheartedness disappears, only to be replaced by the habitual coldness. Not quite as glacial as before, I note. But it would still qualify as refrigerated.

  “I don’t hate you,” she says, sighing. “I just hate your type.”

  “My type,” I huff. “And just what would that be?”

  “A rake. A scoundrel,” she responds.

  “Now just a moment,” I say, hitting the button on my door to roll up the windows. I need to hear this. “What are you talking about?”

  “As I’ve said before, your reputation precedes you,” Ava says, and now all warmth is gone. Her arms are crossed, and she is as closed as a safe.

  I think back to the council meeting, where I saw her first. “Is this about what Harlem Riots guy said about me seducing half of London at the last convocation?”

  “That was just one of the plethora of stories I had already heard.”

  “Plethora? You heard a plethora of stories about me?” I ask, voice raised.

  “Showgirls, politicians, even a princess, from what I heard,” she says crisply. “No one is immune to the wiles of Jules Marchenoir.”

  I pull the car to the side of the road, put it in park, and unstrap my seat belt so that I can face her. “Okay. For one thing, you Americans must have way too much time on your hands, or way too little happening in your own country, if all you have to discuss is the love lives of your foreign kindred.”

  She shrugs. “The French have always fascinated us, I admit. Especially those who live up to all the worst stereotypes.”

  “All the worst—” I exclaim. “Just what the—” I feel like I’m choking, I’m so angry.

  “Water?” Ava says coolly, and hands me a bottle of Evian from the bag she packed.

  I take it, twist off the top, guzzle half of it, and then pour some in my hand and splash it on my face. I don’t care if I get Ambrose’s leather upholstery wet. I need to cool down.

  “Better?” Ava asks with a grin.

  “Stop it with the smugness,” I say, and she gives me a look like she just won the grand prize by getting under my skin.

  I take a deep breath and say, “Okay, first of all, I am not a rake. I have never treated a woman disrespectfully. I have never lied, cheated, or misled a woman about my intentions or commitment. Yes, I have seen a lot of women in my life, but I have treated them all impeccably, made them each feel like royalty—including the princess—and made sure that each of them . . . every one . . . thought that it was her choice not to see me again.”

  “I have a very hard time believing that,” Ava says, eyes narrowed.

  “Ask my kindred. Hell, ask the ladies in question . . . those who are still alive. I have no doubt in my mind that each and every one of them would remember me with fondness. Maybe even with pity at ‘breaking my heart.’”

  Ava is silent.

  “Besides, why the hell do you care?
” I say with raised voice. “Are you some kind of feminist crusader who has to protect your poor hapless sisters from the evil wiles of men? Trust me, Ava, the women I’ve known have not been weak. I have preyed on no one. They’ve all been as strong as me, if not stronger.”

  There’s a look on her face that I can’t interpret—a look of hurt and pride and defensiveness all at once. And then, suddenly, I understand.

  “Something bad happened to you.”

  “Yes,” she responds.

  “It had something to do with the Factory,” I say, remembering her reaction on the plane.

  “Yes.” She pauses, deciding whether she’s going to tell me, and then says, “If I’ve judged you unfairly—”

  “Oh, believe me, you have,” I interject.

  “Which I haven’t yet made my mind up about,” she continues, “I owe you an explanation for my—”

  “Vehemence,” I suggest.

  She looks surprised, and then accepts it. “Okay . . . vehemence.” She sighs. “So . . . the Factory. I was a student, studying art history at NYU. I wasn’t an artist myself, but all my friends were artists, writers, musicians. It was New York in the sixties, and the city was practically exploding with creativity and a crazy kind of try-anything quest for expression.”

  I nod. That was like the Paris of my human days . . . I know exactly what she’s talking about.

  “The first time I was brought to Andy’s, he latched onto me. Called me his muse. His ‘It Girl.’ He filmed me. Painted me. Wanted me around all the time. Introduced me to everyone who was anyone, and they made me the toast of the town. I lapped it up, the instant celebrity. But Andy had other favorites, of course, and one of those was an artist named Rosco.”

  The moment she says his name, I know who she’s talking about. And I can predict how the story’s going to go. Badly. At best.

  “He was incredibly handsome and so charismatic. Everyone wanted to be around him all the time. So he and I were”—she presses the tips of her index fingers together—“the It Couple. We were at all the parties. He was the king of the downtown gallery scene, and I was his queen. He was crazy about me, and I was madly in love with him. After a year, he asked me to marry him. I said yes.”

  She pauses and takes a sip of her water. “On the surface things seemed too good to be true. But underneath, things were already spiraling out of control, only we were living at such a frenzied pace, I didn’t even realize it. You’ve heard of Andy’s parties, right?” she asks.

  “Sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll,” I answer honestly. No two ways about it. The Factory was all about debauchery.

  She nods, and I sense a weight of regret. “Were you into it too?” I ask.

  “I wasn’t into the worst of it. But . . .” She studies her hands for a moment before looking back at me. “Not all of us were angels before we grew our wings.”

  She’s right about that. You don’t become a bardia from living a pure human life. You become it by sacrificing yourself to save someone. Which is, I assume, the part she’s about to get to.

  “We had this party at a big old abandoned theater in the Bronx. The place was dilapidated. The party had been going all night, and everyone was pretty out of it. There were too many people standing on this one balcony, pretty high up. It was like this theater box that would seat ten, but there were thirty people crowded on it. I was on the ground floor, waving up to Rosco, when I saw the supports start to crumble. Pieces of plaster were coming off and falling to the ground. I screamed at him to get everybody off, but he couldn’t hear me, and no one else would pay attention. Like I said, everyone was wasted.”

  Ava looks out the window, remembering. “I book it up three flights of stairs and try to tell people what’s happening, but they won’t listen. I start pulling them off, and they’re all yelling at me, including Rosco. And then the balcony’s floor cracks and everyone makes a rush for the door, and suddenly it’s just me and this one girl who’s so strung out she can barely stand, in a crumbling theater box leaning out over the floor thirty feet below. Rosco’s standing one foot on, one foot off, holding his hand out to help us, and I’m trying to pass the girl to him, but she’s so high she doesn’t know what’s going on. The moment he grabs her, the floor gives out, and I fall to my death. Broken neck, plus crushed by falling masonry. I got the double whammy.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper, because there isn’t anything else to say.

  “Theodore saw my light,” she says. “Corpse-napped me from the mortuary before they could cremate me. Funeral director didn’t want to get in trouble, so he didn’t tell anyone my body was missing and gave my parents someone else’s ashes.

  “The first time I was volant—just weeks after I died—I went to find Rosco. And I found a lot more than I had bargained for. He was with the stoned girl from the party. He had been with her for a long time; they were engaged. And there were others. Lots of others.”

  “He wasn’t a rake,” I say, “he was a psychopath.” I want to reach for her, to touch her hand . . . offer her some comfort, but I can tell she doesn’t want that.

  “Yeah, well. I was afraid I was going to have to stay away from Manhattan for longer—so he wouldn’t see me. But he died a few years later from an overdose, and most of the others I knew either did the same or scattered by the eighties. By then, I was used to my little haven in Brooklyn and was happy to have a river between me and anything to do with the limelight.”

  “But you haven’t really left it behind. You still write about it,” I say. “The expert on Warhol and his crowd.”

  She shrugs, but I can tell I hit a sore spot. “It’s a type of redemption, I suppose,” she concedes, her voice breaking slightly. Her eyes are glassy, but she’s not letting herself cry. “I guess I’m still trying to figure it all out.”

  Seeing that she’s done talking, I start the car and pull back out onto the highway. “I understand the vehemence now,” I say after a moment.

  She gives a little laugh. “Yeah. I’m sorry about that. I misjudged you.”

  I nod. “Apology accepted. Does this mean that I am now free from the stink-eye?”

  “If you promise never to call me Frosty again,” she says with a smile.

  I gasp. “When did I—”

  Ava cuts me off. “During our standoff with the numa. Ryan heard you muttering it under your breath.”

  “The traitor!” I say. “He’s never walking volant with me again.” I glance over at her, and she’s laughing. Not crying. This is a good thing.

  “No stink-eye, no Frosty,” I promise.

  “Deal,” she agrees, and reaches over to turn up the music.

  TWELVE

  WHEN WE ARRIVE AT BRAN’S, A REVENANT BOY meets us at the gate. Although I never met Louis—he was dead, killed by Violette, by the time I arrived at the battle—it can’t be anyone else. The turncoat numa’s bloodred aura has mellowed into a deep golden color, a visual effect I’ve never seen before.

  Vincent told me all about him last night: how, when he animated after sacrificing himself for Kate, his aura had already begun to change. Bran took him under his wing and whisked him far away from the city, and any numa who might target him as a traitor, until Louis’s transition to bardia could be complete. Whatever he’s doing seems to be working. The bitter, hopeless kid Vincent described is nowhere to be seen in the smiling boy unlatching the gate for us.

  We steer into a courtyard lined with apple trees and rosebushes. The ancient stone house at the end of the drive is entirely covered in purple-flowered wisteria vines.

  “Bienvenue,” Louis says as we step out of the car. He gives me the bises, and then walks around to Ava. “Welcome, I am called Louis,” he says, and shakes her hand. “This is all I know to say in English,” he admits, with a comically strong accent.

  “Et vous le parlez parfaitement,” she replies in impeccable French, and gives him one of her blinding smiles. The kid doesn’t stand a chance: One look and he’s under her spell.
r />   I stand there speechless for all of a second, and then say, “Wait a minute, Ava. You speak French?”

  She smiles. “Oui.”

  “Well, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You didn’t ask,” she says simply. She lets Louis pick up her bag, and when he holds out his arm, she laces hers through it and walks with him toward the house.

  After hours in the car, I need to stretch my legs, and, instead of following them inside, take a path around the house to what I think must be the backyard.

  And what I see when I emerge from the curtain of trailing wisteria vines stops me in my tracks. Bran’s house was built on the edge of a field of standing stones. The stones of Carnac: five-thousand-year-old megalithic menhirs lined up in rows and columns, like a prehistoric graveyard. France’s version of Stonehenge is in Bran’s backyard.

  I don’t know why I’m surprised. He comes from a line of mystical guérisseurs that stretches back many generations. What better place for a magical healer to grow up than on a place thought—by those who believe in such things—to be one of earth’s energy centers?

  Through the morning mist, I spot a lone figure trudging between the menhirs toward me. He raises an arm in welcome, and I walk down into the stones to meet him. There’s no mistaking Bran: wild black hair, scarecrow figure, and bottle-thick glasses magnifying his owlish eyes. Although his appearance hasn’t changed in the last few months, there is an easiness to his stride that he didn’t have in Paris. Brittany is obviously his land. He belongs here.

  We reach each other, and he leans in to give me the four bises traditional in the countryside. “Just dropped my boys off at a friend’s house,” he says, gesturing toward the town on the far end of the field of stones. “That’ll give us some time to talk alone.” We head back toward the house.

  “How are you faring in New York?” he asks, inspecting my face as if he can read the answer there.