If I Should Die (18 page)

THIRTY

A HALF HOUR LATER AND ABOUT SEVENTY BLOCKS
south, we sat in one of my favorite old haunts, the Great Jones Café. Vincent was finishing off a plate of Yankee meatloaf smothered in gravy and I had a bowl of Louisiana jambalaya that was spicy enough to make my nose run. Which helped cover up a crying jag that suddenly overtook me, until I choked trying to swallow my food.

Alerted to my tears, Vincent set down his fork and took my hand. “Kate. It's over. I'm here now. Violette can't reach me anymore.”

“I know,” I said. “But until the second you started breathing, I really didn't know if I'd see you again. I had hoped, but I didn't believe . . . if you know what I mean.”

Vincent's lips curled into a smile. “I do know. But you had enough hope for both of us. Now stop thinking and eat your mush—or whatever that is.”

I laughed, and—like that—I had let it go. I was able to push the horrific past and unsure future aside and focus wholeheartedly on enjoying the present. With my living, breathing boyfriend.

“This is
so good
,” Vincent said, taking a bit of jalapeño cornbread. “I didn't know if I'd ever eat again, and I can tell you, taste buds are something you really miss when you don't have them.”

I laughed. “So you missed food. What else did you miss?”

He raised one eyebrow and giving me a sexy grin, put his fork down on his plate. “I missed this,” he said, running his fingertips up and down my arm, making me shudder.

“Yeah, I kind of missed that too,” I said, trying to look nonchalant as I took a sip of iced tea.

“Just kind of?” Vincent teased.

“Okay, a lot,” I admitted with a sly smile.

“Let's get off the topic of me, and my former inability to satisfy your lust.” My mouth dropped open and he laughed. “No, really. What's it like to be back in your hometown?”

“Well,” I said, considering the question. I put my glass down and crossed my arms, glancing around the room and absorbing my surroundings. “It's actually incredibly surreal. I've been away for a year and a half, but it seems like a lifetime. I don't feel like the same person anymore. Life in Paris is my reality now. It feels like life in New York was a dream. I feel . . . disconnected.”

Vincent placed his hand upward on the table. I unwrapped my arms from my torso and placed my hand in his. He rubbed my palm with his fingertips. “What can you do to reconnect?” he asked softly.

“I had been thinking about that,” I confessed. “There was something I had considered doing. But you don't have to come with me if you don't want to.”

I told him it what it was, and his eyes widened. He leaned back in his chair and shook his head in wonder. “And it only took my resurrection to convince you to do this.”

“I've actually been thinking of it for a while,” I said. And getting out my phone, I made the call I had imagined making for months.

An hour later, we were standing on the front stoop of a Brooklyn brownstone. The door flew open, and my friend Kimberly stood there motionless with a wild look in her eyes before screaming and throwing herself on me. “Kate!” she squealed. “I never thought I'd see you again!” We stood there squeezing the life out of each other for a good minute before she let go and stepped back.

Wiping tears from her eyes, she glanced up at Vincent. “Well, well. Who do we have here?” she asked.

“I'm Vincent,” he said, reaching out to shake Kimberly's hand.

“Uh-uh. I don't think so,” she said, planting her hands on her hips and peering at him skeptically. “Are you the reason Kate has been ignoring her friends ever since she got to France?”

“No, he's the reason I had the guts to reconnect with you after all this time,” I answered for him.

“Well then,” she said, breaking into a smile. “You get more than a handshake!” She flung her arms around him and, while clasping him in a death hug, peeked around his shoulder and mouthed,
Oh my God, he's gorgeous!

 

“I like your friends,” Vincent said, taking my hand as we walked down a side street lined with stately trees and brownstone homes—each nestled behind its own tiny yard.

But Vincent wasn't looking at our surroundings. He was studying me with an unfamiliar glint in his eye.

“What?” I asked.

“Oh, I'm reveling in the fact that I just witnessed a side of you I hadn't previously seen: Historical Kate. What you were like before I met you.”

I smiled, watching our feet tread the same pavement I had walked along for . . . ever since I began to walk. “My friends liked you too,” I responded. “But that was pretty obvious.”

“I'm not sure they'd feel the same if they knew what I am,” he replied.

“Trust me, it wouldn't make a difference to them,” I said, looking up to gauge his expression.

Vincent raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“I mean, once they got over their shock and horror, of course,” I said with faux-seriousness.

We had spent the afternoon going from one friend's house to the next, until we had amassed a posse of six and then adjourned to a local café—our favorite old hangout. I didn't even have to worry about Vincent feeling left out. He was so polite and interested in everyone that my friends fell all over themselves to include him, adopting him immediately.

It felt like I had never left. And at the same time, everything had changed. My life was in France now, with my grandparents. And Vincent.

“Do you think you'll come back?” Kimberly had asked. And for the first time, I actually tried to imagine it. I realized with sadness that, besides my friends, I had nothing else to come back for.

When Vincent and I finally left, everyone promised to come visit—if their parents let them—during the summer. But as soon as my friends were gone, my mind switched from their world—a world of homework and proms and college applications—back to my own. One where my safety was at risk because of an evil undead medieval teenager. For the hundredth time, I had the weirded-out feeling that I was living in a novel. In a scary, suspenseful story that I couldn't guess the end of for the life of me.

“It's here,” I said, as we stopped in front of a pretty brownstone, three blocks from where we had left my friends. I stood before the gate and stared at my home. The house I had grown up in.

After my parents' death, my grandparents hadn't wanted to sell our childhood home, so they were renting it until Georgia and I decided what to do with it. But the previous renters had moved out the month before, and it was empty, the windows dark.

I had wanted to come. Now that I was here, I wasn't sure I wanted to face the material evidence that my family—as it had been—was no more.

“If you don't want to go in, you don't have to,” Vincent said softly, sensing my hesitation.

Encouraged by his calm, strong voice, I opened the latch on the cast-iron gate and pulled him into the yard with me. But instead of climbing the steps to the front door, I headed to a teak bench against the garden wall. I sat down and pulled my knees close to my chest, hugging them to me.

Leaning back, I closed my eyes and was transported to the yard of my childhood. The same smell of wet stone and wood. The background noise of cars driving on the busy avenues at either end of my street. I was ten again and completely engrossed in
Anne of Green Gables
, curled up on my bench: my very own time-and-place machine.

“
Mon ange
, scoot up just a bit,” I heard, and I opened my eyes to see Vincent standing above me. I wiggled forward, and he wedged himself into the bench behind me, easing me back to lean against him and wrapping his arms around me. And sitting there cocooned in Vincent's body, I felt safe enough to revisit my memories and say one last good-bye to my parents.

THIRTY-ONE

ON THE WAY BACK TO THE HOTEL, VINCENT AND
I stopped at a bookstore and spent the next half hour loading up on English-language books. It was the perfect break between the emotion of visiting my home and the formality of dinner with the rest of our group.

When we arrived at the restaurant, Theo was sitting alone at a table in the corner. I sat down across from him. “So where is everyone?” I asked, as Vincent took the chair between us.

“Your grandfather and Monsieur Tândorn send their excuses—they were too tired to join us. And Jules decided to skip dinner and stay with our kindred,” explained Theo. “He'll meet you tomorrow at the airport.”

As soon as our food was in front of us and the server had left, Theo got down to business.

“To be completely honest, Vincent, I asked the others not to come tonight. I need to talk to you privately, and I assumed you would wish Kate to be with you.”

Vincent seemed curious but not alarmed, though I had warning bells clanging all over the place in my mind. What could Theo possibly need to say to Vincent that the others couldn't hear? Judging from the secrecy and his troubled expression, it wasn't a mere “congratulations on being alive.”

Theo picked up his napkin and wrung it anxiously for a moment before smoothing it on his lap. He avoided our eyes as sweat beaded on his brow. Finally he spoke. “I promised Jean-Baptiste I wouldn't talk to you about this, but I cannot send my French kindred into a war with the numa without getting this off my chest.”

He took a deep breath and began. “I told you I came to Paris after World War Two when you and the numa were battling.”

“Yes,” said Vincent. “You were the only one of your American group to survive.”

“That is correct,” affirmed Theodore. “And the numa-bardia conflict ended just before I left.” He leaned forward, clutching his hands together and resting his elbows on the table. “What do you know about how that was concluded, Vincent?”

“Well, we inflicted greater damage on the numa than they did us. They called for a ceasefire. Jean-Baptiste passed an order that we were not to purposefully hunt the numa down. It would be seen as aggravating the situation, which could result in another war flaring up. He recently revoked that order after Lucien ended the peace treaty by breaking into our residence and trying to destroy me.”

Theodore eyed him for a moment, as if deciding whether Vincent was telling the whole truth, and then nodded. “That is the tip of the iceberg. What actually happened is not quite that cut-and-dry, unfortunately. It was Jean-Baptiste who was in fear for your numbers, not the other way around. When he felt that your kindred were at risk of being decimated, he went to Lucien to broker a peace agreement—letting the numa name their terms.”

Vincent raised an eyebrow and looked skeptical. “JB . . . made a deal with Lucien?”

Theodore nodded. “Jean-Baptiste didn't want any of you to know what he was doing, so he took me—an outsider—to act as his second. To this day, none of your kindred, not even Gaspard, are aware of what happened during that meeting.”

A chill crept up my spine, as my thoughts traveled from,
A peace agreement with the numa. What's wrong with that?
to
Negotiations with the enemy kept secret from one's kindred. Not so good.
It was hard to believe that Jean-Baptiste would meet with Lucien and hide it from his kindred. He must have been truly desperate to save them from destruction. But still . . .

“I didn't know where Jean-Baptiste was taking me until we got there,” Theo continued. “He swore me to secrecy afterward, saying that the survival of France's revenants depended on my silence. I left France that same day and haven't been back to Paris since. When Jean-Baptiste phoned me earlier this week, I hadn't spoken to him for decades.”

Vincent sat back, looking like he had been slapped. “I'm sorry, Gold. I just can't believe that.”

“It must somehow ring true to you, because you're not angry. Or defensive,” Theodore stated, studying Vincent's face. “I think you do believe it. You just don't want to.”

Vincent lowered his head to his hands. “What were the terms of the agreement?” he asked, without looking up.

“Both sides agreed that their permanent places of residence would not be attacked.”

Vincent looked up and eyed Theodore doubtfully. “But the numa don't keep permanent places of residence.”

“Yes, they do. That was the other part of the agreement. As the party declaring defeat, Jean-Baptiste surrendered several of his properties to Lucien. The house in Neuilly. Several apartments in central Paris. An entire apartment building in the République neighborhood.”

No. It couldn't be true. Jean-Baptiste giving his properties to the numa. Not only letting them live in his homes, but . . . hiding them? I could understand making concessions in order to save his clan, but giving shelter to the enemy and not informing his own people? That went way beyond mere negotiations. That felt more like treason.

Vincent looked as upset as I was. He took his napkin off his lap and crushed it between his hands. “That's not true,” he said, shaking his head in denial. “He rents those out.”

Theodore smiled sadly at Vincent. “Who takes care of those rentals? Does he ever send any of you to check on the places?”

“No, he manages those properties himself,” replied Vincent hesitantly.

“And when Jean-Baptiste retracted his ban on wantonly killing the numa, did he mention that that was where they might be found?”

“No,” stated Vincent, hanging his head in defeat. “Those would be the last places we would look.”

“Quite understandably, he hasn't wanted you to know about his deal. It's his pride on the line. He's gotten too far into this mess and can't get out without bringing shame on himself. And on the phone the other day, he said that he expected me not to bring up ‘old business.' Which I haven't until now. But I can't in good faith let you return to Paris oblivious of what was done.

“It's not the danger of the numa having secret safe houses that bothers me. It's the fact that you will be following a leader who has double dealt behind his own people's backs. Who has not laid all of his cards on the table for his own people to see—despite the danger it could bring to them.” Theo picked up his water glass, took a drink, and then set it firmly on the table.

“A leader who makes secret deals with the enemy should not be in the position of making decisions for his kindred at this crucial moment. If Violette is determined to overthrow the Paris revenants—with the Champion's power or without—she is a great danger. And you will need someone you can all trust with your lives to lead you in this fight.”

He leaned forward until Vincent met his eyes. “I know that Jean-Baptiste is like a father to you,” he said. “But I charge you, Vincent Delacroix, with relaying this information to your kindred. Otherwise, when the time comes and the battle begins, their blood will be on your hands.”