Die for Her A Die for Me Novella

man . . . you need to get a hold of yourself. Or I’ll talk to Jean-Baptiste.”
    He fixes me with this soulful look like he’s dying inside. “Jules. I can’t help it.”
    I exhale. “It’s okay, Vince. But we’re not following her home. She’s fine. Let’s go check out the park.” And he follows me up the boulevard toward Luxembourg Gardens looking like a boy who has been punished but is trying to be brave about it.
    For the next couple of weeks he stops following her, at least when I’m around. I don’t want to ask Charles or Charlotte or even Ambrose where he goes when they are with him. I don’t want to call attention to it. Jean-Baptiste would be breathing down his neck if he found out, and we all know how unpleasant that can be.
    And then it happens. We’re at the Café Sainte-Lucie with Ambrose, sitting at our regular table, when Vincent’s lips curve into a slow smile. I turn to see what he’s staring at, and there she is, Sad Girl, sitting at a corner table, reading. She has this rapturous expression as she reads, like there is nothing she loves better than sitting outside, turning pages. Her berry-red lips are quirked up into an unself-conscious smile.
    “Great,” I moan, turning back around. Ambrose leans over to see who we’re looking at and exclaims, “Hey, isn’t that . . .”
    “It’s the girl,” Vincent says. “But she’s not as sad as before.”
    “Well, well, well,” Ambrose says, folding his arms across his broad chest. “Why don’t you go over and talk to her?”
    “And say what?” Vincent scoffs.
    “She seems to like reading. Tell her you’re in a book club and invite her to join.”
    “A book club with one member. Good one, Ambrose. She’s really going to buy that,” Vincent remarks dryly.
    “Naw, Jules and I could come and pretend we read the books too,” Ambrose says with only a soupçon of humor.
    “I don’t need to pretend I read books,” I interject.
    “Man, movies trump books any day,” Ambrose counters, leaning back in his seat.
    “We are not having this conversation again,” I say, but glancing over at Vince, I see he’s not listening. He’s lost in the girl. And Ambrose has the gall to look amused by the situation.
    Sad Girl starts hanging out there regularly, at the same table in the far corner of the café terrace. Which, of course, means that what used to be our few-times-a-week coffee break becomes an everyday ritual. Sometimes twice a day, from what I gather from Charlotte and Charles. But I have more important things to worry about than Vincent and his obsessions. Lucien, the numa leader, and his crew have been setting off mini catastrophes all over town. Over the last few months, the numa have gotten more and more active, and JB and Vincent are wondering what the numa chief has up his sleeve.
    We saved a potential suicide from him a couple of weeks ago. She was fourteen and pregnant, and Lucien had convinced her that life wasn’t worth living. As usual, he and his crew tagged along to see the deed done. To revel in their repulsive glee at having tricked yet another human to her doom.
    I was volant, walking with Charlotte and Charles, and foresaw what would happen. I flew to fetch Vincent and Ambrose as reinforcements just as Charlotte and Charles began fighting Lucien’s henchmen. Vincent didn’t get to the girl in time to touch her—to pass her his calm—but dove into the river right after she jumped and saved her. Charlotte and Charles killed two numa under the bridge, but Lucien and another got away while Ambrose was fending off some curious passersby.
    After that incident, Lucien seems to lay low. A couple of weeks pass without our catching sight of him or his men. Although all I want to do is escape to my studio and paint, I find myself spending most of my free time babysitting Charles, who is once again in one of his existential crises: Why are we here? Why couldn’t he have just died and stayed dead? Why is he forced to live out this existence that he never chose? Sad Girl is completely off my radar.
    So I am unprepared when Vince and I pass the café one morning and see her sitting at her usual table. “I could use a little caffeine fix about now, how ’bout you?” Vincent says, eyes glued to her face.
    It’s useless to resist. I follow him onto the terrace, where he takes a table a few rows away from hers on an aisle she will have to pass when she leaves. I spend the next half hour trying to ignore the fact