Die for Me

by Amy Plum

  “Since it is unseasonably cold today, I was wondering if you’d be up for some of the best hot chocolate in Paris,” he said as he swung his leg over the bike.

  “So now you’re seducing schoolgirls with promises of chocolate? You’re a bad man, Vincent Delacroix,” I laughed as he started the motor.

  “So what does that make you for accepting my offer?” he yelled over the noise of the Vespa as we pulled away.

  “Intentionally gullible,” I said, wrapping my arms around his warm body and closing my eyes in delight.

  Chapter Nineteen

  THAT NIGHT GEORGIA CORNERED ME IN MY ROOM after dinner. “So where’d you disappear to after school? I was waiting for you.”

  “Vincent picked me up after school and took me to Les Deux Magots.”

  Georgia’s eyes widened. “You’ve seen him two days in a row?”

  “Well, today doesn’t really count, being all of fifteen minutes. I had to rush since I have a test tomorrow to study for.”

  “Doesn’t matter! Holy cow, this is getting serious!” She made herself comfortable on the end of my bed. “So. Tell me about this ex-criminal mystery man.”

  “Well,” I said, grasping for things I could actually say. “He’s a student.”

  “Where?”

  “Um, I actually don’t know.”

  Georgia looked at me doubtfully. “What’s he studying?”

  “Ah . . . literature? I think,” I ventured.

  “You don’t know what he’s studying, either? Well, what do you guys talk about?”

  “Oh, just other stuff. You know. Art. Music.” The undead. Immortality. Evil zombies. There was no way I could tell Georgia anything about him.

  Georgia stared me down for a moment and then snapped, “Fine. If you don’t want to tell me about him, that’s okay. You don’t know much about my life either, but it’s not for my lack of trying to include you. I’ve stopped asking you out because I know you’ll say no.”

  “Okay, Georgia. Who are you seeing?”

  My sister shook her head. “I don’t give you information if you don’t give me any either.”

  I reached out for her hand and pled, “Georgia, I’m not intentionally trying to exclude you from my life. You know I’ve a hard time with . . . well, everything. But I’m finally getting back on my feet, and I promise to make more of an effort.”

  “Then you’ll come out with me this weekend?”

  I paused. “Okay.”

  “With Vincent?”

  “Um . . .”

  Georgia shot me a look that said, See?

  “Okay, okay. We’ll go out with Vincent. But not clubbing, Georgia, please.”

  Georgia’s black mood transformed instantly, and she bounced gleefully on my bed. “No club. Fine. How about a restaurant?”

  “Sure. I’ll check to see if he’s around.” More like, if he’s alive.

  “Call him now.”

  “Some privacy, please?”

  “Okay,” Georgia conceded, leaning over and giving me a kiss on my forehead. She walked to the door, and then turned. “Thanks, sis. Really. It’ll be good to have you back.”

  The streetlights were just coming on as we walked up to the subway station. Vincent and Ambrose, who had been leaning back against the magazine kiosk and chatting, straightened up when they saw us. My heart melted into a soppy mess as Vincent walked up and kissed my cheeks, and then, turning to Georgia, gave her his most dashing smile. “And you must be Kate’s legal guardian . . . I mean, sister. Georgia, right?”

  Georgia laughed and exclaimed flirtatiously, “Well, just look at you! Katie sure knows how to choose ’em!” She looked like she wanted to stay right there all night, staring into his eyes.

  “Georgia!” I exclaimed, shaking my head.

  Ignoring me, Georgia looked over Vincent’s shoulder at Ambrose and gave him a flirty wink. “Don’t worry, Katie-Bean. Looks like Vincent has brought someone along to keep me busy. And you would be . . .”

  “Ambrose. Enchanted to meet Kate’s lovely sister,” he said in French, giving me a sideways glance. I understood. If she knew he was American, she’d start asking questions. Maybe too many questions, although I was sure he was used to making up cover stories. “So where are you taking us, ladies?”

  “I thought we’d go to a little restaurant I know in the fourteenth arrondissement,” she said.

  Vincent and Ambrose gave each other a fleeting look, just as Georgia’s phone rang. “Excuse me,” she said, and turned to answer the call.

  “Not our favorite neighborhood,” said Ambrose in a low voice.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “It’s kind of ‘their’ turf. You know, those people I was telling you about. The ‘other team,’” Vincent said, glancing up to make sure Georgia hadn’t heard.

  “What can they do to us outside, in a busy neighborhood, with two humans along?” asked Ambrose. He stared off into space for a second and then nodded his head and turned to me. “Jules said to tell you, ‘Hi, beautiful.’”

  “Hey, watch it!” Vincent said.

  “He says, ‘Whatcha going to do about it?’” Ambrose said, poking Vincent.

  “Jules is volant . . . here? Right now?” I said in amazement.

  “Yeah,” Vincent said. “We’re not on official business tonight, of course, but he insisted on coming along. Said he didn’t want to miss out on all the fun.”

  “Can I talk to him?” I asked.

  “When we’re volant we can be heard only by other revenants—not humans. So Jules can hear what you say out loud, but he can only respond through me or Ambrose,” Vincent said. “But you’ll want to be careful.” He gestured toward Georgia, who was getting off the phone.

  “Too bad,” she said. “I had a couple of friends who were going to join us, but they’re not able to come.”

  “Shall we?” asked Ambrose, holding his arm out formally for Georgia to take. She laughed delightedly, draping her arm through his, and they headed down the stairs.

  Once they were out of earshot I said, “Hi, Jules!”

  Vincent laughed and said, “Looks like someone’s got a bit of a crush.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Jules wants me to tell you that it’s a shame you have to fall for someone as boring as myself. He wishes he could take my place and show you how well an older man can treat a lady.” He talked back to the air. “Yeah, right, buddy. What are you, like twenty-seven years older than me? Well, at the moment we’re both nineteen, so back off.”

  I did a quick mental calculation. Jules had told me he was born at the end of the nineteenth century. So Vincent must have been born in the 1920s. I smiled as I pocketed that information for later. If Vincent wouldn’t tell me anything, maybe I could figure some of it out for myself.

  We got out of the subway near the sprawling Montparnasse Cemetery and walked up a pedestrian-only street that was packed with bars and cafés. We stopped in front of a restaurant that had a crowd of about twenty people standing around outside. “This is it!” Georgia said enthusiastically.

  “Georgia, look how many people are waiting. It’ll take forever before we can get a table.”

  “Have some faith in your big sis,” she said. “A friend of mine works here. I bet I can get us a table right away.”

  “Go ahead. We’ll wait for you out here,” I said, leading Vincent and Ambrose across the street and out of the crowd. We leaned up against a closed shop front and watched as Georgia worked her way through the swarm of people.

  “Your description of her was right on the nose.” Vincent smiled as he put his arm around me and squeezed my shoulder affectionately.

  “My sister, the phenomenon,” I said, enjoying the hug.

  Ambrose stood on the other side of me, watching the crowd and nodding to some rhythm in his head, when suddenly he stopped and looked hard at Vincent. “Vin, Jules said he sees the Man in the neighborhood. Just a few blocks away.”

  “Does he know we
’re here?” Vincent asked.

  Ambrose shook his head. “Don’t think so.”

  Vincent pulled his arm away and said, “Kate, we’ve got to get out of here. Now.”

  “But Georgia!” I said, looking toward the glass door. I could see my sister inside, chatting with the hostess.

  “I’ll get her,” said Vincent, and began pushing his way through the crowd.

  Just then, two men who had been walking past bumped hard into Ambrose, pushing him violently against the wall. He groaned and tried to grab for them, but the men dodged him and walked quickly away as he slumped to the ground.

  “Hey! Stop!” I shouted at them, as they turned a corner. “Someone stop them!” I yelled at the crowd of people across the street. People turned and looked in the direction I was pointing, but the men had disappeared from view. The whole thing had happened so quickly that no one had even noticed.

  “Vincent!” I called over the crowd. Vincent turned and, seeing my alarm, began to work his way back to me.

  “Ambrose, are you okay?” I said, squatting down next to him. “Did that guy . . . ,” I began, but stopped, seeing that his shirt was ripped from his neck to his chest and drenched in blood. He wasn’t moving.

  Oh, please help him not be dead, I thought.

  I had seen more violence in the last year than I had in my entire life. I asked, not for the first time, Why me? Teenage girls aren’t supposed to be on such familiar terms with mortality, I reasoned bitterly, while a feeling of panic rose from the pit of my stomach. I knelt next to his motionless form. “Ambrose, can you hear me?”

  Someone began walking over to us from the crowd. “Hey, is he okay?”

  Just then Ambrose shuddered and, leaning forward on both hands, began lifting himself off the ground. As he rose, he closed his jacket, effectively hiding the blood on his shirt, although there was already a pretty big puddle on the ground. “Oh my God, Ambrose, what happened?” I asked. I put out an arm to support him, and he leaned heavily on me.

  “Not Ambrose. It’s Jules.” The words came from Ambrose’s lips, but his eyes stared blindly ahead.

  “What?” I asked, confused.

  Vincent finally reached us. “It’s Ambrose,” I said. “He got stabbed or shot or something. And he’s delirious. He just told me he was Jules.”

  “We have to get him out of here before they come back with reinforcements for his body,” Vincent said to me in a low voice, and then said more loudly, “He’s fine, he’s fine . . . thanks!” to the small group of people who were now coming to our aid. He grasped one of Ambrose’s arms and draped it around his shoulder.

  “But what about Georgia?” I gasped.

  “Whoever did this saw you standing with Ambrose. It’s too dangerous for you here.”

  “I can’t leave my sister,” I said, turning to make my way through the crowd to get her.

  Vincent grabbed my arm and pulled me back to him. “She was inside the restaurant when they attacked. She’s safe. Come with me!” he commanded, and I took Ambrose’s other arm and pulled it across my back. He was walking, but seemed very weak. We got to the end of the block, and Vincent hailed a taxi and maneuvered us inside before slamming the door. I peered down the street as we pulled away. No sign of Georgia.

  “Is he okay?” asked the driver, looking in his rearview mirror and checking out the massive man slumped over in his backseat.

  “Drunk,” Vincent responded simply, pulling off his sweater as he spoke.

  “Well, make sure he doesn’t throw up in my cab,” the man said, shaking his head in disgust.

  “What happened?” Vincent asked me quietly in English, glancing up to see if the driver could understand. He handed his sweater to Ambrose, who unzipped his jacket and stuck it under his shirt. He leaned his head against the seat in front of him.

  “We were just standing there when two guys shoved him up against the wall. They ran off before I even knew what was happening.”

  “Did you see who did it?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  Ambrose said, “It was two of them. I didn’t see it happening ahead of time or I would have warned you.”

  “It’s okay, Jules,” Vincent said, placing his hand reassuringly on Ambrose’s back.

  “Why did you just call him Jules?”

  “Ambrose isn’t in there. It’s Jules,” Vincent said.

  “What? How?” I asked, gripped by horror as I jerked away from the slumping form next to me.

  “Ambrose is either unconscious or . . . dead.”

  “Dead,” responded Ambrose.

  “Is he going to . . . come back to life?” I asked, horrified.

  “The cycle resets when we’re killed. Day one of our dormancy starts the second we die. Don’t worry—Ambrose will reanimate in three days.”

  “So what is Jules doing? Possessing him?”

  “Yes. He wanted to get Ambrose out of there before our enemies could come back and take the body.”

  “You can do that, I mean, possess someone?”

  “Other revenants, yeah, under certain circumstances.”

  “Like?”

  “Like if their body’s still in good enough shape to move.” Seeing my bewilderment, he clarified. “If they’re in one piece. And rigor mortis hasn’t set in.”

  “Eww.” I grimaced.

  “You asked!” He glanced up at the driver who, judging by his lack of interest, was oblivious to the gist of our conversation.

  “How about humans?” I asked.

  “If they’re alive, yes, but only with their permission. And taking into consideration that it’s very dangerous for a human’s mental state to have two minds active in there at once,” he said, tapping his forehead. “They’d go insane if it went on for long.”

  I shuddered.

  “Don’t think about it, Kate. It rarely ever happens. It’s just something we do in the most extreme situations. Like this one.”

  “What . . . am I creeping you out, my darling Kates?” the words came from Ambrose’s lips.

  “Yes, Jules,” I responded, wrinkling my nose. “I can honestly say that I am completely creeped out right now.”

  “Cool,” he said, a smile forming on Ambrose’s lips.

  “Jules, bad time to joke around,” Vincent said.

  “Sorry, man. It’s not often I get to do magic tricks for a human, though.”

  “Can you just concentrate on slowing down the bleeding if at all possible? This driver’s going to freak if we mess up his backseat,” Vincent whispered.

  “So, if they already killed him, why would those guys want to come back for his body? Why would they even kill him in the first place, if they know he’s just going to come back to life three days later?” I asked Vincent, ignoring their surreal conversation.

  Vincent seemed to weigh whether or not he should tell me. And then, looking at Ambrose’s body half slumped over on mine, he whispered, “It’s the only way we can be destroyed. If they kill us, and then burn our body, we’re gone forever.”

  Georgia was furious. And I didn’t blame her.

  By the time we got to Vincent’s house, we had fought it out by text.

  Georgia: Where are you guys?

  Me: Ambrose sick. Had to take him home.

  Georgia: Why didn’t you come in and get me?

  Me: Tried to. Couldn’t get through the crowd.

  Georgia: I seriously hate you right now, Kate Beaumont Mercier.

  Me: I am SO SORRY.

  Georgia: Saw some friends here who rescued me from complete humiliation. But I still hate you.

  Me: Sorry.

  Georgia: You are NOT forgiven.

  Vincent and I tried to help Ambrose, but he righted himself after getting out of the taxi and brushed our hands away. “I’ve got it now. Damn, this guy is heavy. How can he even move with all these lumpy muscles all over the place?”

  When we got to the door Vincent turned to me, looking conflicted.

  “I think I’ll go
home,” I said, beating him to the punch.

  He looked relieved. “I can walk with you if you can just wait a few minutes for us to get him settled.”

  “No, I’ll be okay. Really,” I said. And curiously enough, I meant it. Through all the horror and weirdness of the evening, I felt strangely okay. I can handle this, I thought to myself, as I walked out of the gates toward my grandparents’ house.

  Chapter Twenty

  GEORGIA SULKING IS NOT A PRETTY SIGHT. Although I had apologized a million times, she wasn’t speaking to me.

  Things were pretty uncomfortable around the house. Mamie and Papy tried to ignore the fact that anything was wrong, but on the fifth day after my unforgivable crime, Papy pulled me over and said, “Why don’t you come see me at work today?” He glanced over at Georgia’s brooding silhouette and gave me a significant look, as if to say, Can’t talk here. “It’s been months since you’ve stopped by, and I have a lot of new inventory you haven’t seen.”

  After school I headed directly to Papy’s gallery. Walking into his shop was like entering a museum. In its muted light, ancient statues were lined up facing one another from either side of the room, and glass cases displayed artifacts shaped in pottery or cast in precious metals.

  “Ma princesse,” Papy crowed when he saw me, shattering the room’s opulent silence. I flinched. That was my dad’s pet name for me, and no one had called me that since his death. “You came. So, what looks new to you?”

  “Him, for starters,” I said, pointing to a life-size statue of an athletic-looking youth stepping forward with one foot and holding a clenched fist tightly down by his side. The other arm and his nose were missing.

  “Ah, my kouros,” Papy said, walking over to the marble statue. “Fifth century BCE. A true prize. The Greek government wouldn’t have even let it out of the country nowadays, but I bought it from a Swiss collector whose family acquired it in the nineteenth century.” He led me past a jeweled reliquary in a glass case. “You never know what you’re getting these days, with all these iffy provenances.”

  “What’s this one?” I asked, stopping in front of a large black vase. Its surface was decorated with a dozen or so reddish-colored human figures in dramatic poses. Two armored groups faced each other, and in the middle a fierce-looking naked man stood at the head of each army. They held spears toward each other in a face-off. “Naked soldiers. Interesting.”