Die for Me

Papy stood to get Vincent’s coat. After thanking my grandparents for the evening, Vincent stepped out into the hallway. I followed, taking my coat and closing the door behind us.

“What—” I began.

Vincent put a finger to his lips, and we maintained a tense silence until we got outside. As soon as the door shut behind us, he grabbed me by the shoulders and looked intently into my face. “Your sister is in grave danger.”

My confusion transformed into alarm. “What are you talking about? What’s wrong with Lucien?”

“He’s my sworn enemy. The leader of the Paris numa.”

I felt like someone had picked me up and thrown me against a brick wall. “Are you sure we’re talking about the same person?” I asked, refusing to believe it. “Because when I met him—”

“You met him?” Vincent choked. “Where?”

“At that club where I went dancing with Georgia.”

“The same place you saw Charles?”

“Yeah—in fact, Charles was talking to him outside when I left. I don’t see—”

“No. This is terrible,” Vincent said, shutting his eyes.

“Vincent. Tell me what’s going on,” I said, a sick feeling rising in my throat. If Lucien was a monster, what did that mean for my sister? I shivered as I thought of the kiss Georgia shared with Lucien that night in his club. She obviously didn’t know about his dark side. Georgia couldn’t see past her own nose when it came to discernment. As my mom lamented once when a boyfriend of Georgia’s was arrested for burglary, “She can’t ever see the bad in people. Your sister’s not stupid, she just doesn’t possess an ounce of intuition.” This time that flaw could be fatal, I thought.

Vincent pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Jean-Baptiste? Lucien’s got Charles. I’m sure. Yeah . . . be there in a minute.”

“Please! Talk to me!” I begged him.

“I have to get home. Can you come with me?”

“No.” I shook my head. I had to go back and clean up the mess that Hurricane Vincent had left for my family.

“I have to go,” he said.

“Then I’ll walk you home,” I insisted. “You can tell me on the way.”

“Good,” he said, taking my hand as we began walking down the lamp-lit streets toward his house. “So, Kate. You know how there’s a bad guy in every story?”

“I guess.”

“Well, Lucien’s the bad guy in my story.”

“What do you mean your story?” I ventured uneasily. “I mean, is it just a case of the two of you being on opposite sides of the good-and-evil divide?”

Vincent shook his head. “No. It’s me against him. We have a long history.”

“Wait,” I said, putting together the puzzle pieces in my mind. “Is he the one you guys are always referring to? ‘The Man,’ or whatever?” I paused, thinking. “Was it Lucien you saw at the Village Saint-Paul . . . and who Jules spotted nearby when Ambrose got stabbed?”

Vincent nodded.

“Who is he?” I asked.

“As a human, during World War Two, he was part of the French Militia, or la Milice, a paramilitary force formed by the German-controlled French government to fight the Resistance.”

“The Vichy regime?”

Vincent nodded. “Besides executing and assassinating Resistance members, the Milice helped round up Jews for deportation. They were famous for their torture methods: They could extract information and confessions from anyone they captured.

“To be honest, they were more dangerous than the Gestapo or SS, since they were one of us: They spoke the language, knew the topography of the towns, and were friends and neighbors of the people they betrayed.” Vincent looked me in the eyes. “It was a dark time for my country.”

I nodded and remained silent. We crossed a tree-lined avenue and continued toward his house.

“Lucien betrayed hundreds, or indirectly, thousands, of his own countrymen to their deaths, torturing and murdering his way up through the organization’s ranks. He quickly became a top man in the Vichy regime’s information and propaganda ministry.

“In June of 1944, a group of Resistance fighters, dressed as members of the Milice, broke into the Ministry of Information building where Lucien and his wife had been moved for their safety. It was late at night. They found the couple in their bed and killed them.”

My jaw dropped. It seemed like he was telling the story from personal experience. “Were you one of them?” I ventured.

Vincent nodded. “Along with a couple of other revenants. The rest were humans who didn’t know what we were.”

“But Lucien was still human then. You told me revenants try not to kill humans.”

“Our order was to capture and imprison Lucien until he could be tried by the authorities for his crimes. But one human in our group had had his family killed by Lucien himself, and he couldn’t restrain himself. He shot them both.”

I shuddered at the gory scene reenacted in my mind. In stories like this, you always want the bad guys to be taken out. But thinking about the actual act: to be shot with his wife . . . in his bed. It was too horrible to consider.

“Lucien remembered our faces from that night, and when he came back as a revenant, he hunted us down. He succeeded in killing the majority of the humans who had taken part in the assassination, and was eventually able to destroy the other two revenants involved. I’m the only one left. We’ve come up against each other on several occasions, but he’s never managed to kill me. Nor I him.”

“Then why in the world would Charles have been talking to him?” I asked.

“This is what you have to understand about Charles. He’s not a bad kid. He’s just messed up. I told you he’s had a hard time accepting our fate. It’s a difficult existence, continually living and dying. When you save someone and see them go on to have a good life, it makes it all feel worthwhile. But sometimes things don’t turn out like that.

“The person you rescued from a suicide attempt tries again and succeeds. The kid you save in a drug deal gone bad doesn’t see it as a reason to mend his ways and returns to the mess he was in before. That’s one reason Jean-Baptiste doesn’t want us following our rescues’ lives too closely.

“But one of the worst feelings is when you try and fail. Charles couldn’t save the little girl. He saved the other child, but he can’t focus on that success. He is obsessed with his failure. And its consequences on the child’s mother.

“He has a good heart,” he continued softly. “Maybe too good of a heart. But this was the final straw for him. The only reason I can think of that Charles would go to Lucien is because he can’t cope with our lifestyle any longer. He wants to die. If he puts himself in their hands, all he has to do is ask them to kill him and burn his body. And they’d be all too happy to comply.”

“He’s committing suicide?” I stopped walking, horrified by the thought of Charles delivering himself to his death.

“That’s what it looks like.” Vincent took my arm and pulled me forward. We were almost there.

“If Lucien is a vicious killer, then . . . what about Georgia?” Charles’s story was heartbreaking, but all I could think about at the moment was the danger my sister could be in.

“What’s their relationship?” Vincent asked.

“It seems like they’re kind of dating.”

“Do you think it’s serious?”

“Georgia doesn’t do serious.”

Vincent thought about it. “Lucien is always surrounded by women, and he would have no reason to kill someone like Georgia. If she doesn’t let herself get sucked into his clan and their activities, then the worst she probably risks is getting used and dumped by him.”

Well, that’s comforting, I thought, not at all comforted. She’s swapping spit with a homicidal maniac, but if she doesn’t get too involved, she should be fine. Although I was still frightened, Vincent’s words had made me feel less panicky. It was true: Georgia never got too involved in anyone besides herself.