Die for Me

“Vincent,” I said, without thinking. His name felt natural coming from my mouth, like I had been saying it all my life.

“So you followed me,” he said, looking grim.

My head began to spin as a throbbing headache materialized just above the nape of my neck. “Ow,” I groaned, reaching back and massaging it with my hand.

“Drink this, then put your head back between your knees,” Vincent instructed. He placed the cup to my lips, and I threw it back in one gulp.

“That’s better. I’m just taking this cup back to the café next door. Don’t move, I’ll be right back,” he said as I closed my eyes.

I couldn’t have moved if I had wanted to. I couldn’t even feel my legs. What happened? How did I get here? And then the memory came back to me, crushing me with its horror.

“Do you feel strong enough to take a taxi?” Vincent was back, squatting down to bring his face level with mine. “You’ve had quite a shock.”

“But . . . your friend! Jules!” I said, incredulous.

“Yes, I know.” He furrowed his brows. “But we can’t do anything about that now. We need to get you away from here.” He stood up and signaled a taxi. Lifting me to my feet and supporting me with a strong arm across my shoulders, he picked up my bag and walked me to the waiting car.

Vincent helped me inside, and scooting in beside me, he gave the driver an address on a street not far from my own.

“Where are we going?” I asked, suddenly concerned. My rational mind tapped me on the shoulder to remind me that I was in a car with someone who had not only just watched his friend die in front of a speeding train, but looked as calm as if it happened every day.

“I could take you to your house, but I’d rather take you to mine until you calm down. It’s just a few streets away.”

I can probably “calm down” better at my own house than at yours. My thought was interrupted as the meaning of his words clicked in. “You know where I live?” I gasped.

“I’ve already confessed to following around our neighborhood’s new American imports. Remember?” He flashed me a disarming smile. “Besides, who followed who into the Métro today?”

I blushed as I wondered how many times he had seen me as I wandered, oblivious that I was being watched.

And then the memory of Jules in the Métro returned and a tremor shook me. “Just don’t think. Don’t think,” Vincent whispered. At that moment, my emotions felt tugged in two opposite directions. I was frightened and confused by Vincent’s indifference to Jules’s death, but I desperately wanted him to comfort me.

His hand lay casually on his knee, and I had the strongest desire to grab it and press it to my cold face. To hold on to him and avoid slipping deeper under the wave of fear that threatened to engulf me. Jules’s fate echoed too loudly of my own parents’ accident. I felt like death had followed me across the Atlantic. It was trailing along in my wake, threatening to take everyone I knew.

And as if Vincent had heard my thoughts, his hand slid across the seat and pulled my fingers from where they were wedged between my knees. As he folded my hand inside his own, I was instantly enveloped in a feeling of safety. I leaned my head back against the headrest and closed my eyes for the rest of the drive.

The taxi came to a stop in front of a ten-foot-high stone wall set with massive iron gates. Their bars were fitted from behind with black metal sheets that tastefully blocked any view of what was inside. Thick wisteria vines draped over the edges of the wall, and a couple of stately trees were visible behind the barrier.

Vincent paid the taxi driver, then came around to my side and opened the door for me. He walked me up to a column embedded with a high-tech audiovisual security system.

The lock clicked after he typed the security code into a keypad. He pressed the gate open with one hand and pulled me gently behind him with the other. I gasped as I took in our surroundings.

I was standing in the cobblestone courtyard of a hôtel particulier, one of those in-town castles that wealthy Parisians built as their city dwellings in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This one was built of massive honey-colored stones and peaked with a black slate roof with dormer windows spaced evenly along its length. The only time I had actually seen one of these buildings up close was when Mom and Mamie took me with them on a guided tour.

In the middle of the courtyard stood a circular fountain carved in granite, its dark gray basin big enough to swim a few strokes across. Over the splashing water stood a life-size stone figure of an angel carrying a sleeping woman in his arms. Her body was visible through the fabric of her dress, which was worked so finely by the sculptor that the heavy stone was transformed into the finest gauze. The woman’s fragile loveliness was offset by the strength of the male angel carrying her, his massive wings curving protectively over the two figures. It was a symbol combining beauty and danger, and it cast a sinister aura across the courtyard.

“You live here?”

“I don’t own the house, but yes, I live here,” Vincent said, walking me across the courtyard to the front door. “Let’s get you inside.”

Remembering the reason we were there, the sound of Jules’s body being crushed by a ton of metal resonated in my ears. The tears I had been holding back began to flow.

Vincent opened the ornately carved door and led me into an enormous entrance hall with a double staircase winding up either wall to a balcony overlooking the room. A crystal chandelier the size of a Volkswagen Beetle hung over our heads, and Persian rugs littered a marble floor inlaid with stone flowers and vines. What is this place? I thought.

I followed him through another door into a small, high-ceilinged room that looked like it hadn’t been touched since the seventeenth century, and sat down on an ancient stiff-backed couch. Holding my head in my hands, I leaned forward and closed my eyes. “I’ll be right back,” Vincent said, and I heard the door close as he left the room.

After a few minutes I felt stronger. Resting my head against the couch, I studied the imposing room. Heavy drapes at the window blocked the daylight. A delicate chandelier, which looked like it had originally been set with candles instead of the flame-shaped electric bulbs it now held, threw out just enough light to illuminate walls that were crowded with paintings. A dozen faces of bad-tempered, centuries-old French aristocrats frowned down at me.

A servants’ door hidden in the back wall swung open, and Vincent walked through. He set a massive porcelain teapot in the shape of a dragon and a matching cup onto the table in front of me next to a plate of paper-thin cookies. The fragrance of strong tea and almonds wafted up from the silver tray.

“Sugar and caffeine. Best medicine in the world,” Vincent said as he sat down in an upholstered armchair a few feet away.

I tried to pick up the heavy teapot, but my hands were shaking so hard I only succeeded in making it clatter against the cup. “Here, let me do that,” he said as he leaned over and poured. “Jea

I blanched at his small talk. “Okay, stop. Just stop right there.” My teeth were chattering: I couldn’t tell if it was my shattered nerves or the dawning fear that something was very wrong. “Vincent . . . whoever you are.” I’m in his house and I don’t even know his last name, I realized in a flash before continuing. “Your friend just died a little while ago, and you are talking to me about”—my voice broke—“about coffee?”

A defensive expression registered on his face, but he remained silent.

“Oh my God,” I said softly, and began crying again. “What is wrong with you?”