Inside the World of Die for Me

by Amy Plum

  THE WAREHOUSE

  The bardia’s headquarters in New York. Jules moves here after he leaves his Paris kindred in hopes of distancing himself from his feelings for Kate.

  Amy says: I based the Warehouse on a real building in Williamsburg called the Austin, Nichols and Company Warehouse. I give some of the building’s actual history in the novella: it was built in 1914–15 in the “Egyptian Revival Style” by architect Cass Gilbert, who also designed the amazing Woolworth Building in the Wall Street neighborhood. The warehouse actually does have railway tracks in the basement, freight elevators, and piers that lead out to the river, so I’m not making any of that up!

  I discovered the building when I lived in Williamsburg. A boyfriend of mine lived there, just after it started to be converted into apartments. It was the most amazing living space I’d ever seen: everything made of concrete . . . so ultramodern, it was fascinating to me. I remember walking with my dog down those huge, empty hallways, and hearing the sound of her claws tapping on the concrete echo through the corridor in a very zombie-apocalypse kind of way. All these hipsters lived there, and there were some crazy parties. One I remember had glass globes containing Siamese fighting fish hanging from the ceiling—it was a surreal experience.

  Address: 184 Kent Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11249

  CHAPTER 5

  DELETED SCENES

  THERE ARE SO MANY REASONS FOR AN AUTHOR to delete scenes from a book. Some are cut for pacing. Sometimes you come up with a better idea and the scene ends up on the trash heap labeled “not quite good enough.” And sometimes the editor gives the author a reality check and very diplomatically says, “This isn’t feeling quite right yet.” Which translates as, “REALLY????” or “That is hands-down the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read. Try again.” For whatever reason a scene is taken out, it is sometimes fun to go back later and see how an idea developed. I (almost) always think, “Thank the gods that didn’t stay in.” I hope you enjoy these scenes that, for one reason or another, didn’t quite make it into the final books.

  DIE FOR ME OUTTAKES

  DELETED PROLOGUE

  Ten days after I got my driver’s license, my parents died in a car wreck.

  And suddenly my life transformed from a not-terribly-exciting color film—about a girl living with her sister and parents in a nice Brooklyn suburb where nothing much happens but everyone’s reasonably happy—into an old black-and-white horror film where you never know what’s going to happen next but, based on the creepy organ music, it can’t be good.

  Images from those first couple of parentless days are burned permanently into my memory. . . .

  The school principal arriving in the middle of chemistry to pull me out of class: instead of the Evil Overlord expression he usually wears, he looks like he just got slapped, and his flickering, nervous eyes refuse to meet my own.

  Georgia sitting there in the principal’s office waiting for me: her vivacious, freckled face is as pale and drained of blood as if she had just been pulled out of a vampire attack instead of AP English.

  The policewoman, who was probably assigned to break the news to us because of her gender: She looks slightly constipated as she drily informs us that we are now orphans. Her male partner sits behind her, the apologetic look on his face implying he would have done a much better job.

  Auntie Mel flying in from Kansas just hours later: Her disheveled hair, tearstained cheeks, and outstretched arms reaching for us as she runs through our front door make her look like a soprano in some tragic opera standing amid a pile of dead bodies, belting out her aria as if her life depended on it.

  Those freeze-frames from the first day are as clear as if they had been printed movie-poster size, ready to be studied minutely over and over again by my searching eyes.

  Remembering it now, that day seems to have gone by in seconds flat. And then someone pressed “Slow Motion” and all of a sudden time began to stretch on eternally as I numbly stumbled around a house crowded with relatives. Besides a lot of background noise, the film becomes mostly silent at this point, since I was in too much shock to add any dialogue to the script besides, “I’m fine,” “No, thanks,” and “I’ll be in my room.”

  Whole chunks of film from the next few weeks are missing. Sometimes people remind me of something that happened during that time, and I don’t have a clue about what they’re referring to.

  Besides the surreal horror of the funeral, things go kind of fuzzy for a while. Like Vaseline was smeared across the camera lens. Luckily, it didn’t matter—I didn’t need to see anything clearly, since my aunt and uncle and our grandparents kind of corralled us in, forming a barrier between my sister and me and the world.

  Christmas was just a few days later. I don’t even remember it happening.

  It’s funny how, at the worst of times, your true nature seems to be magnified. My tendency toward introversion turned me into a snail that had been poked in the head: I pulled into my shell and just hung out deep inside, waiting until the kid with the stick went away.

  Georgia, on the other hand, became even more manic and extroverted than usual, throwing herself into an organizational overdrive. She insisted on personally taking care of all the someone-just-died tasks that you could never imagine even existed.

  It was Georgia who decided that we would move to France to live with our grandparents. When she asked my opinion, she had obviously already decided but magnanimously pretended to give me a choice. “It’s either Paris with Papy and Mamie, Cornfield Kansas with Auntie Mel, or Redneck Mountain Tennessee with Uncle Rhett,” she joked.

  She paused to let the reality of our options sink into my grief-muddled brain. And then, dropping her frenzied über-planner mask, she allowed herself to be human for two long seconds. She looked at me with an expression that she was way too young to assume, gave me a back-patting hug, and asked softly, “So . . . it’s Paris?”

  I nodded, and my life, as it had been, was over.

  The film of my first sixteen years on earth came to an end. The credits began to roll, and I stood up from my seat wondering what kind of lame-o director would end a movie just as it was about to become interesting. It wasn’t until much later that I understood that my story up until then had been nothing but a prequel.

  KATE DESCRIBING PARIS

  It’s hard for me to describe Paris. The city is so beautiful, it takes my breath away.

  But I know that’s being way too vague, so I’ll give it a better try. Paris is like New York if you chop off the top of all the buildings so that nothing is higher than seven or eight stories. Then add at least a couple of hundred years to each building’s age. Mix in a ton of trees and parks and run a beautiful, sparkling river through the middle. Then add over a thousand years of historical events that took place on the same spot where you happen to be standing. And you will have a rough idea of what Paris is like.

  For example, a girl I used to play with when I came to visit my grandparents every summer lived on a street called rue Saint-Antoine. Just in front of her building was a stretch of road that was used in the Middle Ages for jousts. Jousts! As in with horses and lances and knights in armor . . . right in front of her house. I used to sit on the steps of the church next to her building and stare at the street, re-creating the sounds and colors of the medieval tournaments in my mind. If all the ghosts of Paris’s past could suddenly materialize, you would find yourself surrounded by the most incredible people.

  Like on the bridge called Pont Neuf. An old proverb says that the type of people crossing it were so numerous and varied that you couldn’t get from one side to the other without seeing “a monk, a white horse, and a prostitute.” Now that is something I would love to see. I’ve crossed it dozens of times, and the closest I ever came was when I ran into a group of Asian nuns. So I decided to change it to “a businessman talking on a cell phone, a cyclist, and a backpacker.” You’ll definitely see at least one of those when crossing Pont Neuf.

  But the inescapable historic
al face-lift the city’s undergone in the three hundred or so years since the proverb was written hasn’t stopped me from looking—there and everywhere else in Paris—for telltale signs of the ancient city’s past. Coming from the relative newness of New York, all that history squeezed into Paris’s small geographical area has always made me feel light-headed. As if all those invisible jousters, priests, and prostitutes were sucking up the Parisian air around me, leaving barely enough to fill my lungs.

  KATE DESCRIBING PARISIAN CAFÉS

  I’ve always thought of Parisian cafés as their own universes: little islands of civility and warmth dotted throughout the big city. People go there for three main reasons: to eat, drink, and gawk at other people. Besides an occasional glass of wine at dinner with Mom and Dad, I didn’t drink. But drinking in Paris isn’t like drinking in the States. American teenagers seem to drink with the express purpose of getting drunk. They don’t do that in France. “Drunk” is an extreme, and the French don’t like extremes. Nothing too cold or too hot—it ruins the taste, they say. Your Coke is served slightly chilled, but without ice. And you’ll never get a tongue-scalding cup of coffee.

  So the typical café-goer will slowly sip a glass of wine or beer, ordering a second one if they decide to stay for a while. The coffee cups all look like they were stolen from a child’s tea set, but people sit there and nurse them for an hour.

  And then there’s the people-watching. It isn’t considered rude in France to stare. So people do. You can’t walk past a café without everyone sitting at the outside tables giving you at least a two-second looking-over. That’s why you never leave your front door dressed in a ratty old sweat suit or anything else you mind being judged in.

  My black jeans, green T-shirt, and Converse tennis shoes guaranteed me invisibility in this land of beautiful people wearing stylish clothes. I passed the minimum level of appearance-acceptability, while simultaneously accomplishing inconspicuousness.

  KATE DESCRIBING HER GRANDPARENTS’ APARTMENT

  If you get out of the Métro (what the subway’s called in Paris) at the stop called rue du Bac, climb up the stairs from the platform to the street, and turn right up a one-lane one-way road, you’re on our street. Walk up the rue du Bac, past a couple of small neighborhood cafés, and some way-too-expensive clothes, interior decor, and antiques stores. If you walk as fast as I do, in five minutes you will reach a park on the left, filled with lush greenery and ancient trees and scattered with green wooden park benches.

  Mamie and Papy’s house overlooks the park from the third floor of a six-story building. Thanks to Papy’s successful antiques business, they own the entire floor, including three bedrooms, a salon, dining room, laundry, kitchen, and Papy’s well-stocked library-slash-office. You may not know, but that’s enormous for a Paris apartment. Georgia and I realized we were lucky.

  During the warmer months, the window boxes overflow with brightly colored flowers, transforming each of the windows into a carefully arranged still-life painting in your peripheral vision. The rooms are all crammed with antiques, artifacts, and paintings, giving the place a fragrance that’s a cross between Musty Library and Furniture Polish. And as you pass the vases of cut flowers that Mamie has scattered throughout the rooms, you walk through a cloud of freesia or lilac or something else delicious, before moving back into the ancient-odor zone. Living with my grandparents is like living in a museum—one where you can touch everything and even carry things back to your bedroom if you want to see them every day when you wake up.

  MONSTER’S BRIDE MINI-CHAPTER

  The following is the over-the-top Gothic mini-chapter that originally followed the eight-word Chapter 28. It was Kate’s final struggle with her doubts about falling for Vincent despite what he was. Cue creepy organ music, floor-to-ceiling velvet curtains, spitting fire, and dusty cobwebs.

  A switch flipped in my head, and all of a sudden I was in Storybook Mode. Here I was, the young, virginal human girl, sitting amid the splendor of the monster’s lair and being seduced by the stranger dressed in the skin of a beautiful young man. But underneath his disguise was the re-animated body of a man who had died sixty-five years ago. A corpse.

  A corpse that had been subjected to numerous violent deaths. A corpse that, when magically moving about, became obsessed by the people it followed. And a corpse that, for three days a month, transformed back into its true form: dead, cold, motionless.

  But sitting inches away from me was a crushingly handsome boy with tears in his eyes and hope radiating from his entire being, solely because I had spoken the word “yes.”

  You’re accepting the role of the Monster’s Bride. My subconscious lobbed this last thought into the forefront of my mind as the horrific Storybook images finally flickered and died. I willfully banished all other nightmarish thoughts from my head and leaned forward to wrap my arms around my boyfriend.

  PRINCESS OUTTAKE

  Georgia whistled as she took a look into Jean-Baptiste’s courtyard. “Not bad!” she murmured, leaving me standing at the gates. “Have fun playing princess in your Parisian castle,” she yelled, a bit too loudly, waving good-bye before turning the corner.

  Vincent was waiting for me at the front door. “So, now you’re my princess?” he joked.

  “I’m nobody’s princess. I’m a strong, liberated woman,” I grumbled, reaching my face up for a kiss. He complied.

  THE CATACOMBS FIGHT

  “There are some decisions that have to be made, and I need to hear what happened, in detail, from each of your perspectives. I’ll start.” [Jean-Baptiste] set the poker against the fireplace and stood with his hands behind his back, looking everything like a general debriefing his troops.

  As Charlotte, Ambrose, and Jules recounted their own parts of the story, with Jean-Baptiste “translating” for Vincent, a tapestry depicting the evening’s events began to weave itself together in my mind. I closed my eyes and could see it as clearly as if I had been there.

  The group arrives a few blocks away from the Catacombs entrance and parks on an unlit side street. Jules and Charlotte set off with their guitar cases for the nightclub, while Ambrose waits in a car with Jean-Baptiste. Everyone is tense, not knowing what to expect.

  Vincent enters the Catacombs to scout for Charles’s body. He returns, telling Ambrose and Jean-Baptiste that the body is in the Crypt of the Sepulchral Lamp, one of the Catacombs’ central rooms. A fire has been prepared, and the room is guarded by four numa with swords.

  “It’s a trap.” Jean-Baptiste confirms all their doubts.

  “But what else can we do?” Ambrose finishes his thought. The men arm themselves and proceed down into the dank blackness of the Catacombs.

  Vincent finds Jules and Charlotte in the nightclub’s basement, forcing their way through a locked door that opens onto the Catacombs. Neither Georgia nor Lucien is at the party, they report: A bartender informed them that Lucien had left a few minutes earlier. Vincent says he’s found Charles’s body, and, after unloading their cases and arming themselves, the two revenants and volant spirit make their way through the darkness.

  They arrive to find Jean-Baptiste and Ambrose tied to columns inside the crypt on either side of the lamp, a giant stone chalice set high on a pedestal with a fire blazing up from inside its cup. Charles’s hacked-up body lies crumpled on the floor a few feet away, not far from the immobile forms of two dead numa.

  “We were waiting for you,” a voice says, and an evil-looking figure steps from the shadows, swinging a massive mace toward Charlotte. She dodges easily and with a lightning movement lodges a throwing star deep into his right cheek. He screams and lunges toward her. She runs him through with a spear, lodging the blade tip between the soft stones and spiking him securely against the wall.

  The fourth guard has forced Jules against a wall of skulls, knocking several to the ground as he goes for Jules’s neck with a machete. Just then another numa silently slips into the room behind Charlotte, puts a sword to her throat, and comman
ds his kinsman to stop. “They must not be killed,” he says, a flash of gold glinting from his teeth. “Lucien specified that we must keep them alive until he returns.”

  “Just this one,” the numa holding Jules begs, poking the machete into the revenant’s chin.

  “No,” the other responds, securing Charlotte’s wrists with rope. “Orders were clear. Not until he gets back with the head.”

  “With what head?” Jean-Baptiste murmurs, and then yells, “Vincent—quickly! Go back home!”

  The newcomer curses and shoves Charlotte against a pillar.

  “So,” says Ambrose, “you’re not supposed to kill us? Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place?” And he bursts free from his bonds, lifting his swords from the ground near his feet. “Slice ’em, dice ’em, numa sushi,” he chants as he works with both hands at once, swinging the swords like turbines, making short work of his two remaining enemies.

  “Thanks, man,” says Jules, wiping the blood off his punctured chin.

  Ambrose frees Jean-Baptiste and then nods toward the five numa bodies on the floor. “Shall we burn them?” he asks, a bit too gleefully for the circumstances.

  “No time,” says Jean-Baptiste. “We’ve got to follow Vincent back home. If Gaspard fails to hold Lucien off, he might return with two heads rather than one.”

  Ambrose picks up Charles’s body, slings it over his shoulder, and they leave the Catacombs, hacking their way through another half-dozen numa on the way out. Ambrose, going before the rest and using only one arm to fight, receives most of the injuries.