I Should Die

impressed. “Incredible. It certainly is tempting to ask to see the rest of the book”—he paused as Bran shook his head—“but I realize that the information it holds must be confidential. I trust you are giving us all of the details you have on the matter?”
    Bran nodded. “I’ve gone through my family’s entire records, and this is the only mention of re-embodiment.”
    “Fine,” Mr. Gold said, clasping his hands together. With his timeless look and white suit, he reminded me of a young Robert Redford in the seventies version of The Great Gatsby . Or a character straight out of an Edith Wharton novel: handsome and wheaten haired, with that tanned just-stepped-off-the-yacht look that very wealthy people have.
    “I understand that time is pressing,” he was saying, “and that Vincent can be called back by the traitor at any time. How long has it been since she let you go?” he asked. “Yesterday before noon,” he repeated, looking at his watch. “It’s eleven p.m. now, so in six hours or so we’ll be coming up on two days, Paris time. Well, let’s hope she doesn’t feel like yanking you back sooner. We will need all of the time we can get to decode the symbols.”
    He tossed back the rest of his glass and stood. “And on that note, we should be going.”
    “Where?” I asked, as we all rose from the table.
    “Why, to see the thymiaterion,” he said.
    “It isn’t here?” I asked, glancing around the room.
    “No, I only keep a few of my favorite objects here. The world’s most complete collection of revenant-themed art happens to reside across the street.”
    “At the Metropolitan Museum of Art?” asked Papy, incredulous.
    “Yes, my dear man,” responded Mr. Gold with a wry grin. “At the Met.”

TWENTY-THREE
    “I’VE NEVER VISITED THE MET AT MIDNIGHT,” I whispered as I followed the others to a side door, far from the main entrance’s grand stairway.
    Has that been a lifelong dream? came Vincent’s words.
    “A whole museum of paintings to myself, yes,” I answered. “A museum full of ancient objects at night, though, has a sky-high creep factor.” I shivered, recalling a frequent childhood nightmare in which the statues in Papy’s gallery all came alive.
    Mr. Gold took out a set of keys, opened a first set of doors, led us through a second set, and then past a seated security guard. He began reaching into his pocket for ID, but the guard just nodded and waved him by.
    “This way,” Mr. Gold said. We crossed a cavernous room filled with ancient pottery perched on stands and protected under glass cases. In a dark corner of the room, we piled onto an open service elevator. Our host waited for the doors to shut tight, fitted a key into the elevator’s control panel, and pressed a button for one of the subbasements.
    As we rode the car down, I couldn’t help but ask, “So how did you get a key to the museum? And access through the employee’s entrance?”
    “I am an employee,” said Mr. Gold, as we exited the elevator. “I am officially the head curator of antiquities, but I’m not around very much. If the same staff sees me over long periods of time, things would seem rather . . . questionable, wouldn’t they?”
    We trailed behind him down several low-lit corridors, and stopped before a double door with a sign marked ARCHIVES . Gold typed a code into a keypad and inserted another key into the lock.
    “Securing a substantial donation to the museum—to the tune of several hundreds of millions of dollars—unsurprisingly convinced the museum to give me private access to this entire area.” He opened the door and flicked on a light switch.
    Before us was an enormous warehouse-size space, beautifully decorated with scattered columns and frescoed walls. Everything was individually spotlit, with additional lighting glowing from panels in the walls and floor. I shivered in astonished delight, and glanced at Papy to gauge his reaction. My grandfather looked like he had died and gone to antiquity-dealer heaven.
    This was the secret collection of revenant art. It must have held thousands of objects ranging from small pieces of jewelry mounted in cases against the wall to giant marble statues of heroes carrying massive weapons and wearing nothing but the signum bardia on cords around their neck.
    “You are three of the only humans to have visited this important historical collection,” Mr. Gold said with a wry smile. “Although I occasionally have revenant visitors