by Amy Plum
22. Lucien
23. Two swords, crossed
24. Guns and swords
25. A strawberry
26. A lock of Vincent’s hair
27. Ambrose and Jules
28. On a rowboat ride on the Seine to the Eiffel Tower
29. The Catacombs
30. Jules possessed him.
LEVEL 2
1. Lilacs
2. “Katie” and “Katie-Bean”
3. When Charles tried to commit suicide by going to the numa, he put his kindred in danger.
4. When a child Charles tried to save died, and Jean-Baptiste forbade him from stalking the mother.
5. Arthur had Kate kicked out of a house meeting because she was human.
6. Pizza and a movie
7. Le Corbeau (The Raven)
8. The book Immortal Love
9. When Vincent fought off the numa threatening Kate at Papy’s gallery
10. Sad Girl
11. The Warehouse
12. La Sainte-Chapelle (the same chapel where Georges and Chantal’s wedding was held)
13. Vincent and Charlotte. Vincent (volant) future-saw what was going to happen and had Charlotte gesture for her to come over.
14. American School of Paris
15. Charlotte’s room
16. Jean-Baptiste and Gaspard
17. Vincent
18. White lilies because they stand for death
19. Breakfast at Tiffany’s
20. Jean-Baptiste
21. Saint-Paul
22. They see the light from an animating revenant
23. On Jean-Baptiste’s private plane
24. Saving humans from a fire, posing as a fireman
25. mon ange, ma belle, and mon amour
26. Brooklyn and Manhattan
27. Vi
28. Louis
29. She cut off her right pinkie finger.
30. He is in love with Kate.
LEVEL 3
1. It was a signal to revenants that the bearer was a human who knew what they were and could be trusted.
2. One in Papy’s gallery and one in the library of La Maison
3. The wedding of Georges and Chantal, two bardia
4. Sacré-Coeur
5. The Light Way was absorbing energy from humans the bardia saved. The Dark Way was absorbing numa energy from killing them. Both ways eased the urge to die.
6. rue du Bac
7. A black tuxedo
8. Brooklyn (first lived in Fort Greene and then Williamsburg)
9. Frosty
10. In the Paris sewers
11. Megalithic/prehistoric standing stones
12. They were not allowed anywhere the revenants had a permanent address.
13. Unlimited access to information about revenants, to know when he was dormant, and that he meet her family.
14. “Things aren’t always as they appear, Kate.”
15. Les Deux Magots
16. He brought Mamie flowers from Christian Tortu and Papy a bottle of Château Margot wine.
17. December 9
18. “I’m yours.”
19. He threw a knife at Jean-Baptiste’s portrait.
20. Digging her fingernails into her palms
21. He wanted to make sure Kate’s family was trustworthy, he wanted to ask Kate about seeing Charles at the club, and he wanted to ask Kate to talk to Vincent because he was miserable without her.
22: Silk ball gown, handbag that matched the gown, season tickets to the Opéra Garnier, and fencing lessons from Gaspard
23: She convinced him to follow the Dark Way.
24: In tattoo form on the inside of his wrist
25: La Morgue
26: In the wall paintings in the guérisseurs’ archives
27: When he shook hands with Jean-Baptiste
28: She had claustrophobia and had to go through a long underground tunnel to get there.
29: A hand painted with flame shapes at the tip of each finger
30. Rosco
HARDCORE
1. Goderic and Else
2. Janus
3. Valérie
4. The riots of 1968
5. Fernand Léger’s Card Players
6. “Paris is the safest city on earth.”
7. Dispersion, re-embodiment, seeing auras, and diminishing a revenant’s urge to die
8. Abelard and Héloïse
9. The Bolshoi Ballet performing Prince Igor
10. Claudia and Kimberly
11. The pyramid means life after death, its three corners signify the three days of dormancy, the flames represent the revenants’ aura and the only way they can be destroyed, and the circle represents immortality.
12. Thomas
13. Dragon
14. Oak, grass, wood fires, and years and years of memories
15. “You are a psychotic bitch.” (spoken to Violette)
16. Communication, persuasion, and perception
17. Ten
18. Signum bardia, a flame, a knife with drops of blood, a fan, an amphora or a pot, the flame-fingers’ symbol (a hand with a flame above each finger), and a box
19. The aura of a normal revenant is “an aura like a forest fire,” while the Champion’s aura “blazes like a star on fire.”
20. Where Kate pressed the lock of Vincent’s hair into the shoulder of his clay doppelgänger, she left a bluish tattoo-like fingerprint.
21. A floor-length, pewter-colored gown that Georgia helped her choose
22. Nicolas and two guards (Paul and Alain)
23. Any New York bardia animated over twenty years can be on the council.
24. A constipated grasshopper
25. The signum bardia that Vincent gave to her, the “forget-me-not” locket that Jeanne gave to her, and her parents’ wedding rings that Mamie gave to her before she went into battle.
26. After saving someone, the revenant is allowed to go back and photograph their rescue. Then they can go in volant form twice to check up on them, and afterward can Google them to their heart’s content. This is to keep them from stalking their rescues.
27. Attack of the Mole People
28. Vincent, Ambrose, and Henri (volant)
29. When they were on the sunbed on the roof of La Maison
30. A Kleenex
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I COULDN’T HAVE CREATED THIS BOOK WITHOUT the help of my assistant extraordinaire, Kayla Canfield, who read and reread and re-reread the series in order to help me find the juiciest tidbits to include. When she confided in me that the characters had begun to feel like people she knew in real life, I knew she had crossed over into the Revenant Zone and was therefore worthy of working with our favorite undead superheroes.
Much gratitude to my editors Tara Weikum and Chris Hernandez for green-lighting the idea for a Die for Me compendium. Chris provided much-needed guidance as we assembled such a huge and varied assortment of information, and was his usual amazing self as he edited my ideas and words!
Merci to my long-suffering copyeditors Valerie Shea and Alexandra Alexo, who caught all sorts of embarrassing snafus before you could see them, and remembered details from the books that had completely slipped my mind. I’m glad someone out there can read a calendar correctly.
Mags Harnett created the beautiful calligraphy quote from Papy’s bestiary, and Brennon Leman whipped out the cute illustrations on very short notice. Thank you both for your artistic contributions! Suzanne Satow, Lisa Steiner, and Mina Witteman jumped in to help me with some last-minute location photos. Ellen Lindén-Urnes and I sat on her couch in St. Tropez for two hours as she listened to me read out the trivia questions and helped me sort them from easy to hard. Big kudos for that! She and Emma Axen then beta-read the character profiles and trivia questions and gave me valuable feedback. Much thanks to these two amazing teen readers!
My gratitude to Amanda Bøch and Léatitia Brière for taking the final quiz questions on a test drive and sharing their thoughts
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And finally, and as always most importantly, thank you to my readers, who voted on what they wanted to be included in the book: the quotes, the outtakes, the food, and all the rest. As usual, your enthusiasm and undying support is what ferried this book from idea to page. I am so grateful.
EXCERPT FROM AFTER THE END
READ ON FOR A LOOK AT
AMY PLUM’S AFTER THE END
1
JUNEAU
I CROUCH LOW TO THE GROUND, PRESSING MY back to the ancient spruce tree, and raise my crossbow in one hand. Keeping my eye on the precious shard of mirror embedded in my weapon, I inch it out from behind the tree. In the reflection, I spot something moving behind a cedar across the snowy clearing.
From the cracking of branches to my right, I sense that another foe lurks nearby. I can’t see him. Can’t see his inevitable scars and pockmarks—damage from the nuclear radiation. But I know he’s there. I’ll have to take my chances. You have to be tough to survive an apocalypse.
I leap from behind the tree, duck as I see a missile hurtling toward me from a low scrub of holly bush, and simultaneously shoot in front of me. I hit the ground and roll, leaping back to my feet.
“I hit you!” yells a voice from the bushes. I hear a rustling of leaves, and then my friend Nome pops out, her hair glowing like burnished gold against the green and red holly.
“No you didn’t!” I yell back, but then I look down to where she’s pointing. Gooseberry pulp drips off the sleeve of my buckskin parka. “It’s just my arm. It wouldn’t have been lethal,” I say, flicking off the fruit sludge. But I know that though it wouldn’t have killed me on the spot, I would have been injured. And any injury would slow me down. Nome’s gooseberry would have meant my eventual death in the case of a true attack on our village.
Kenai steps from behind the cedar with a moose antler in his hand. He has painted an evil face on the wide part of the horn, and my arrow protrudes from its forehead.
“Bull’s-eye,” he says, and begins to make gurgling sounds as his homemade brigand suffers a painful and drawn-out demise. Trust Kenai to lighten a heavy moment.
The antler’s death throes are interrupted by Nikiski, who runs up with his hands in the air. “Cease-fire,” he yells, and then grins widely to show two missing front teeth. “Juneau, Whit wants you to come see him in the school. Something about hunting. Something about being low on meat. And Dennis wants you two”—Nikiski gestures to Kenai and Nome—“to drop by the library for something about a project he wants you to do.”
“Thank you for that precise and informative message,” Kenai says, ruffling Nikiski’s hair with his hand as he walks past the boy toward the village. “Battle officially over,” he calls behind him. “Brigand slain, but Junebug injured. Ten points to Nome.”
Nome lets out a whoop and then, shoving her slingshot inside her parka, jogs over to me. When she sees my expression, her playful mood deflates. “It’s okay, Juneau. Like you said, it wouldn’t have been lethal.”
I’m silent. She sighs deeply as we begin walking toward the village. “Juneau, you can’t be perfect. You’re going to be clan Sage, not our sole protector.”
“I’d rather be prepared to do both,” I respond.
“You’re seventeen, Juneau. And you’re already carrying the weight of the clan on your shoulders.”
I don’t respond. But inside, I acknowledge it: I’m just a teenager now, but one day the well-being of a few dozen people will be in my hands. It’s a heavy burden—one I know I must carry. Why else would I have been given my gift?
We crest the hill. Before us crouches the Great Ice Bear: Mount Denali, scraping its sugar-white pelt against the sky. And between its foothills and the forest are nestled twenty yurts. The light-colored skins stretched across the roofs and sides of the yurts make them almost invisible against the snow—a necessary camouflage.
It’s been thirty years since the war. My parents and fifteen others escaped in the very last hours, after the first firestorm of nuclear explosions triggered the aftermath . . . the creeping death of radiation and famine and genocide. They came here to Alaska’s unspoiled territory, far from any city that would have been targeted for destruction.
Although little was left in the wake of the Final War, it would be foolish to think we were the only survivors. Over the decades, during their rare scouting trips, the elders have found evidence. Abandoned cars run on the scarce drops of fuel that remained after the oil fields burned. Human trails left just beyond the boundaries of our territory. Sounds from the air of a lone renegade flying machine.
But there haven’t been any new signs found for a long time. Only a handful of close calls since I was born—seventeen years ago. The only deaths have been accidents: one by bear attack, and then my own mother’s death when her sled broke through lake ice.
These are the cautionary tales we are brought up with. Instead of the bogeyman (who terrified my mom as a child), our nightmares are populated with armed brigands roaming the land to plunder what is left. Merciless survivors of the apocalypse, bent upon taking what our clan has worked so hard to preserve: clean food and water and immunity from the radiation and disease that will, in the end, finish off the outside world.
A rebirth. That is what the clan hopes for. What Whit teaches us will happen. But it could take centuries. Millennia. Our goal is survival.
“See you later,” I say to Nome as we arrive, and jog ahead of her toward the school yurt. Once through the door flap, it takes a minute for my eyes to adjust from the blinding reflection of sun on snow to the soft light filtering through the open crown of the yurt and the glow of the schoolroom’s fire.
I brush off my moccasins and leave them with my crossbow next to the door. If Whit’s teaching the younger children, it means he’s explaining the Yara. Which before long will be my job. When I was five—just after my mother’s death—Whit tested me and found I was able to Conjure. Besides him and my mother, I am the only one of my tribe capable.
In three years I will undergo the Rite, and will then take his place as clan Sage, as my mother should have if she were still alive. So recently Whit’s left more and more of the clan Readings to me and has begun to show me how he Conjures, being careful what he shows me, since I can duplicate his results with ease.
“Why don’t you join us, Juneau?” Whit asks. The children are seated in a half circle around him. Nikiski’s there—he must have sprinted back—and next to him are Tanaina, Wasilla, and Healy, ready to hear Whit’s lesson, one he repeats for all age groups several times a year. I’ve heard it so many times, I could recite it by heart.
I sit down next to Whit as he pours a layer of ground mica on the floor. The firelight reflects in it, making it sparkle. The young children watch, their attention caught and held by the glistening powder.
Whit etches a large circle with his finger. “This is the earth. Everything in it is a part of the same organism: you, me, the dogs, the ground, the air.” He takes Healy’s hand and blows a puff of air on it, demonstrating wind, causing the four-year-old to giggle in delight. “We live inside a superorganism, and everything within it is connected by a powerful force.”
“The Yara,” the children shout in unison.
Whit pulls a mock-surprised expression and asks, “Have you heard this story before?”
“Yes!” the children yell, laughing gleefully. Whit smiles and unconsciously smooths down the solitary strand of gray hair in his black mane. It’s the one sign of his aging before he found the Yara. Proof that he is the oldest in the clan.
“You’re right,” he concedes. “The Yara is the current that moves through all things. It’s what allows us to Read.” Inside the circle representing the earth, Whit draws concentric smaller circles. “Can you tell me what kinds of things have the Yara flowing through them?” He points to the outermost circle.
Tanaina lifts her hand and blurts out, “People!”
Whit nods and points to the next circle in.
�
��Animals,” Wasilla says, and then adds, “Plants,” as Whit moves to the next circle.
Placing his finger on the innermost circle, he says, “Even the elements—fire, water, air, earth—they all have the Yara running through them.
“Since you are close to the Yara, you can use it to connect with all the other members of earth’s superorganism.” Whit draws lines from the outer “human” circle to those inside. “Even rocks have a memory of what has happened around them. If you can ever get them to talk!” The children laugh again, knowing that speaking rocks are one of Whit’s jokes, even though there is a measure of truth behind it.
“Okay. Today’s lesson is over,” Whit says. The children let loose, tapping their fingers in the mica powder and wiping it on their faces like war paint. Everybody piles outside, and Whit and I head toward his yurt.
“Did Nikiski give you my message?” he asks.
“In his own way,” I say, grinning. “Something about meat?”
“Yes. We’re running low,” he says. “I thought you could handle it, since the rest of the hunters are needed for the clearing of our summer encampment.” Whit’s mouth quirks up into a smile. “I didn’t think you’d mind going on your own.”
My mentor knows me as well as my father does. Besides Ketchikan and Cordova, I’m the best hunter in the clan. And I relish time spent on my own.
We arrive at Whit’s yurt. Beside the door sits a lightweight sled with a mountain of supplies strapped to it and a pair of snowshoes draped across the top.
“I Read the skull for you,” he says. “You’ll find caribou in the south field tomorrow. Get a good night’s sleep and you can be down there first thing in the morning.”
I nod. “I’ll start at daybreak.”
“And be careful not to—”
“—cross the boundary. I know, Whit. I’ll be careful,” I promise.
“All right then. I’m off,” he says, and gathers up his pack from atop his sled.
My father appears from behind the neighboring yurt. “Sneaking away again, Whit?” he teases.
“I hate long good-byes,” Whit responds with a smile. “And I’ll only be gone two weeks.” He turns and straps the sled’s rope across his chest, and disappears down a path in the woods.