I Should Die

believe we had come this far only to run into an unsolvable problem.
    “Maybe Violette kept some of his ashes. For some sort of use?” Bran suggested doubtfully.
    No , I heard Vincent say. To both suggestions. I was there afterward. And I saw one of Violette’s people sweep my ashes into a bag and dump it in the trash. It was one of the more horrifying things I’ve experienced .
    I transmitted this to Papy and Bran, and they both fell silent.
    “Ashes,” I said, thinking it through. “That must be what the symbol of the box represents.”
    Papy nodded. “And do you remember the carved image on the side of Theodore’s funereal urn? The man with the torch held a box in his other hand. It makes sense. Ashes were kept in stone boxes—such as the boxlike urn presenting that very re-embodiment scene.”
    I chose a muffin from the bread basket and munched in silence while the men studied the picture. “Bran, what was your poem again?” I asked.
    He turned the paper over to show the verse already transcribed onto the page: That’s what he and Papy had been studying when I arrived. I read it out loud:
     
Man of clay to man of flesh
Immortal blood and human breath
Traces do the spirit bind
Flames give body ghost and mind.
     
    I studied it for a minute and said, “Where Papy’s poem mentions ‘ashes,’ Bran’s mentions ‘traces.’”
    “Well, I translated the original Breton word as ‘traces,’ but it also means ‘remains,’” Bran said, interest flickering in his eyes.
    “Ashes. Remains,” I said, my brain working at double speed. “The ceremony needs something of Vincent to bind his spirit to the clay figure. Otherwise his spirit is dispersed.”
    And then it hit me. “I have something!” I shouted, rising to my feet and tugging at the cord around my neck. From under my shirt, I pulled the pendants that I never took off: the signum and the memento mori that Jeanne had given me. The men looked at me quizzically as I held the locket toward them. “It holds a lock of Vincent’s hair.”
    Adrenaline coursed through my veins, making me want to sprint back to the Met, dragging Papy and Bran with me, to try the ritual again. I couldn’t believe I had been wearing the missing puzzle piece around my neck for the past few days.
    “Where did you get that?” Papy asked.
    “Jeanne gave it to me. She keeps locks of hair from all of the revenants in her care in these little boxes.”
    “How strange,” remarked Bran.
    “Her mother did it and her grandmother, too. It’s, like, a family tradition.”
    Papy pounded the table in excitement. “Which, quite obviously, started because of something like this,” he said. “Jeanne didn’t even know what she was doing by keeping the custom going, and perhaps neither did her mother or her grandmother. But somewhere along the way, a revenant keeper began that tradition in case remains were needed for this re-embodiment procedure. Fascinating!”
    “So we found it!” I said, touching Papy’s hand and willing him to come with me. “We found the solution. We better get over to Mr. Gold’s to let him know.”
    “I have his number,” said Papy. He took out his cell phone and began dialing.
    Within a half hour we were all standing around the burner again, Jules having taxied over from Brooklyn the moment Mr. Gold called. A big exhaust fan was sucking up the smoke from the torch. Now that it was daytime, Mr. Gold was concerned that passersby on the street above or in the museum, once it opened, would smell the fire. The whole mess from the water mixing with the clay the day before had been cleaned up during the night. I suspected that was Mr. Gold’s work.
    I sat down next to Jules, who was looking distinctly green.
    “Are you okay?” I asked.
    “I’m not that excited about cutting my arm open again,” he said, using a tiny scissors to carefully clip the stitches he had been given the previous night. “Vincent’s worth it—of course. But I’ll try to slash the same place so I won’t have two major wounds to manage until I’m dormant in a couple weeks.”
    “How was last night with your New York kindred?” I asked.
    “Good,” he said, eyeing me with an expression that said he didn’t feel like talking about it.
    “Did you know anyone at the house?” I persisted.
    “Yes. There were a couple of guys who came to Europe for a convocation about ten years ago.” He sighed and looked back down at his stitches, clipping another of the tiny black