Die for Her A Die for Me Novella

. . .”
    “Yep, Vin’s stalking her,” Ambrose finishes for me.
    I didn’t mean to be that direct. I just wondered if Ambrose noticed the change in Vincent too. But I know he’s right. Our surveillance walks seem to lead past rue du Bac more and more often, and each time we spot Sad Girl, Vincent insists on waiting until we “see her safely home.”
    “We’re not Boy Scouts,” I reminded him the third time. “We’re not here on earth to help little old ladies across the street. No one’s threatening to harm her, and she’s not going to commit suicide.”
    “I know,” he replied. “But something’s different about her. Something’s wrong.”
    “Well, it’s not anything you’ll be able to fix.”
    Vincent nodded, accepting what I said, but not liking it. He stared up at the side of the building until a light went on in a third-floor window, and then visibly relaxed, knowing she was safely back in her room.
    “Who else lives in the building?” I asked, testing him.
    Without thinking twice, Vincent said, “First floor: family with two small children and a dog. Second floor: geriatric couple, three teacup terriers. Third floor: our mystery girl, another teenage girl a bit older than her, and two elderly people. Fourth floor: family with baby and basset hound. Fifth floor’s empty. And the top floor has lights on during the daytime. Someone in the building probably works up there.”
    “You’ve been watching people come and go,” I said.
    He nodded, looking guilty.
    “That’s not our job.”
    He ran his hand through his hair, stopping halfway through to yank on it in frustration. “Don’t tell anyone,” he said.
    “I won’t. But, man, you gotta stop. You haven’t even saved the girl and you’re getting obsessed. Flashing amber light, dude.”
    He shrugged, looking miserable. “She’s a mystery.”
    “. . . that can be left unsolved,” I added.
    But the problem is solved for us, because a week later, she’s gone. Disappears just like that, overnight. And part of Vincent goes with her. For the two days a month that he’s volant, he keeps disappearing. I have an idea of where he is. Haunting the empty third floor of a certain apartment building. But he never says anything and I don’t ask. He just keeps getting more and more distant, closing in on himself.
    March and April are busy months. We intervene with several suicide attempts (and unfortunately fail to rescue one), stop a few hit-and-runs before they happen, and rescue several victims of our enemies. (Not all revenants are good like we bardia—our evil twins are called “numa.”) Through all of this Vincent has this kind of vacant air about him, and you know he is thinking about Sad Girl.
    So I know something has happened when, in early June, Vincent returns from walking with Charlotte with his face lit up like the Eiffel Tower. “What’s up?” I whisper to Charlotte as Vincent flits around the kitchen like his Chuck Taylors sprouted wings.
    “A girl. Human,” she says.
    “Long, dark hair, pale skin, blue-green eyes?” I ask.
    “That’s the one,” Charlotte confirms, stealing a glance at Vincent, who happily spoons a mountain of sugar into his coffee.
    The next day I’m patrolling with Vincent when we spot her, and end up following her from her building to a cinema on the rue Champollion that’s screening Les 400 Coups . She’s changed since the last time I saw her. Her skin is lightly tanned and she no longer looks skeletal. She has been eating, obviously, and it looks good on her. She’s still sad, but definitely looks stronger.
    “Okay, man, she’s safely in the theater. Can we go now?”
    “Have you ever seen Les 400 Coups ?” Vincent asks, his face total innocence.
    “About fifty times. If you recall, we went to the premiere together in 1959. And no, we are not going to stalk her into the cinema just to watch the back of her head for an hour and a half.”
    An hour and a half later, we step out of the cinema, blinking in the sunlight as the girl walks ahead of us, making her way back home.
    “You know what?” I say, not even attempting to mask my sarcasm. “That movie hasn’t changed a bit in the last twenty years.”
    Vincent thrusts his hands in his pockets and does his hunched-over walk as we follow Sad Girl down the boulevard Saint-Michel. I grab his arm and yank him to a stop. “Vince. Dude. No more. This is getting unhealthy. I’m not going to say anything to the others about it, but