I Should Die

was tempted by the possibility of meeting the mystery collector and getting a glimpse at his collection. But this desire was overshadowed by his worry for me.
    Jules bustled into the room, looking like someone was pushing him. “Vincent informs me that I’m leaving ASAP for New York?” he said, looking around at us, confused.
    “Yes. Go pack,” Gaspard said, hanging up the phone. And Jules was off—no questions asked—back out the door and up the stairs to his room.
    Gaspard came over and looked Papy in the eye. “Your decision, sir?”
    Papy took a deep breath, glanced at me, and then said, “My granddaughter and I will go.”
    “You will need this, then,” Gaspard said, and handed Papy a small wooden box. Inside was a gold chain looped through a pendant: A flat gold disk engraved with the circle, triangle, and flames. “It is yours to keep, to signal to others that you are trusted by us.”
    “I recognize the symbol,” Papy confirmed.
    “If you wish to return home and pack a bag, a car will be waiting outside your building in two hours,” Gaspard stated, all business. “I will ask Arthur and Ambrose to walk you and your granddaughters home.” My grandfather nodded his assent and Gaspard left to find Georgia and our revenant guardians.
    “Do you have one of these, too?” Papy asked, as he looped the chain over his head and tucked the pendant into his shirt.
    I hesitated, but heard Vincent’s voice say: You can show him .
    I pulled mine out and Papy’s eyes grew wide at the dollar-coin-size gold disk. He reached out tentatively, fingering the edging of bright gold pellets and studying the flame-shaped design around the triangular sapphire. “You have been wearing that . . . out on the street?” he asked, his voice tremulous.
    “Well, yes. I mean, underneath my clothes,” I said. His expression made me feel like I had done something crazy, like running naked through the streets of Paris.
    Papy struggled to contain his awe, muttering, “I’m not even going to tell you what that is worth, princesse . How rare that piece is. Because if I did, you probably wouldn’t dare wear it again.”
    I heard Vincent chuckle in my mind, and I smiled. “It’s just a thing , Papy.”
    “Yes, Kate. A thing that guarantees you the revenants’ protection. But it also serves as a symbol of what you mean to them. And if they chose this particular signum to represent your value—to display the care they are investing in you—I couldn’t come close to competing with the protection that I myself can offer. It means you’re priceless.”
    My grandfather smiled at me tenderly and gave my hand a squeeze. “I’m officially outclassed, princesse .”
    “It’s not a contest, Papy,” I said, smiling. “It’s a group effort. And now you’re one of the group.”
    Papy took my arm and led me out of the room. “Then let’s get this show on the road.”

TWENTY-TWO
    WE LEFT PARIS FROM CHARLES DE GAULLE AIRPORT at eight p.m., and through the magic of minus-six time zones arrived at JFK Airport at ten in the evening. I barely slept—whether from anxiety or excitement, I couldn’t tell. Probably the two. Papy and Bran both dozed off as soon as we were in the air. Jules talked quietly to Vincent in the back of the plane and, after a while, settled in with a book.
    A driver was waiting for us at arrivals with a handwritten sign that read “Grimod.” Piling our luggage onto a cart, he ushered us to a waiting limo outside. Snow lay inches thick on the ground, and an icy wind made me pull my coat tighter as I dodged ice patches on the sidewalk.
    We were silent on the ride into Manhattan. I felt a strange numbness as I watched the twinkling city lights grow closer through the limo window. And it wasn’t only from the lack of sleep and jet lag. It was because I was back.
    Back to where I had grown up. Back to where I had lived for sixteen years—my entire life—with my mother and father, gone to school, learned to drive, kissed my first boy. This place was fact and Paris was fiction. So why did everything feel so surreal? I had an inkling that my numbness was covering something else: distress, perhaps. Or maybe reawakened pain I wasn’t ready to face.
    Bran peered out the window with wide eyes, taking in the vista with slack-jawed awe. He let out a little gasp when the spotlit Empire State Building came into view. Papy asked, “Is this your first time to America?”
    “It’s my first time out of