Die for Her A Die for Me Novella

they who broke up with you. And in your case, that has actually happened. Saves you from having to be an asshole later on.
    “But what if there was a way,” he begins, ripping crumbs off the mangled baguette in his hand.
    There is no way , I say. Okay, there are rare examples you hear about from time to time at a convocation. A handful of stories from way back when. But man, who would want that? They grow old while you stay young? It’s not natural .
    “ We’re not natural,” Vincent says in a dead voice.
    I ignore him and continue. Plus Jean-Baptiste has forbidden it for the French kindred. You’re only his second: Until you take his place, he’s the boss.
    Vincent doesn’t say anything after that, but I know I haven’t changed his mind. For the next couple of weeks he skulks around, a ball of nerves, watching Kate from afar. Never going close enough for her to catch sight of him, and being careful around the rest of us to look like he’s not stalking her. But I can tell he’s just dying to see her face. And when he catches sight of her at the café or walking home from the Métro station, he looks all tranquil. Like he’s only okay if he knows she’s safe. It’s freaking me out. I have a feeling it’s going to end badly, but there’s nothing more I can say. And in any case, my mind is on other things.
    Whenever I die, I’m moody for weeks afterward. Thoughtful. I think about my deaths, run Google searches on those of my rescues who are still alive, see how they’re all are doing. But the most important rescue in any revenant’s life is the very first. The one that turned us from human into bardia. My first save is long gone—he died over half a century ago. But there are vestiges of him in museums around the world, and it comforts me to see the masterpieces he created after I died. Half of Fernand Léger’s oeuvre wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t handed him my gas mask and died in his place.
    There is a particular painting of his, The Card Game , that I love to visit, mainly because I’m in it—I admit. But also because it resides just across town at the Musée d’Art Moderne. And since I’m going on a month since reanimation, I make my regular pilgrimage to see it.
    The painting depicts a group of soldiers playing cards—soldiers Léger said were from his own battalion. I recognize my pipe, but he made my face look like a robot skeleton. He painted me as an image of death, soon after I died saving his life. The scene takes me back to those endless nights of card playing as we waited for the enemy to shell our trenches. Cards were the only thing that could take our minds off our feeble hold on mortality.
    And now death is no longer a concern for me. It is something that I crave. That I welcome. That I need in order to remain immortal. Although Léger was depicting his soldiers as automatons—easily expendable, easily replaced—the metal armor he used to represent our skin seems like a posthumous way of protecting all of us. Of making us less destructible. I know the wars affected Léger deeply, as they did everyone in Europe. But he left visible records of his battle wounds.
    That’s enough. I have had my fill of The Card Game —at least for this life cycle. I turn to make my way out of the room, and freeze in place. My heart is pounding like a bass drum.
    It’s the situation that every revenant dreads, and the reason bardia who live in small towns have to move every time they die. It’s not supposed to happen in a city of two and a quarter million people! We avoid getting to know the humans in our neighborhood. We avoid making friends with humans at all (okay—temporary girlfriends, but that’s different because they’re . . . temporary). Because if a human sees us die and then recognizes us after we reanimate, we are up shit creek.
    But Vincent made a friend. A friend who saw me die. And she is sitting across the room, staring straight at me, her mouth hanging open in incredulity. She gets up from her bench and walks toward me. “Jules!” she says, and her voice is a squeak because she can’t believe her eyes. I have one second of shock before I’m able to pull the mask down over my face.
    “Hello,” I say, and cock my head slightly to the side. “Do I know you?”
    “Jules, it’s me, Kate. I visited your studio with Vincent, remember? And I saw you at the Métro station that day of the crash.”
    I give her the kind of smile you give someone you feel sorry for.