I Should Die

fell all over themselves to include him, adopting him immediately.
    It felt like I had never left. And at the same time, everything had changed. My life was in France now, with my grandparents. And Vincent.
    “Do you think you’ll come back?” Kimberly had asked. And for the first time, I actually tried to imagine it. I realized with sadness that, besides my friends, I had nothing else to come back for.
    When Vincent and I finally left, everyone promised to come visit—if their parents let them—during the summer. But as soon as my friends were gone, my mind switched from their world—a world of homework and proms and college applications—back to my own. One where my safety was at risk because of an evil undead medieval teenager. For the hundredth time, I had the weirded-out feeling that I was living in a novel. In a scary, suspenseful story that I couldn’t guess the end of for the life of me.
    “It’s here,” I said, as we stopped in front of a pretty brownstone, three blocks from where we had left my friends. I stood before the gate and stared at my home. The house I had grown up in.
    After my parents’ death, my grandparents hadn’t wanted to sell our childhood home, so they were renting it until Georgia and I decided what to do with it. But the previous renters had moved out the month before, and it was empty, the windows dark.
    I had wanted to come. Now that I was here, I wasn’t sure I wanted to face the material evidence that my family—as it had been—was no more.
    “If you don’t want to go in, you don’t have to,” Vincent said softly, sensing my hesitation.
    Encouraged by his calm, strong voice, I opened the latch on the cast-iron gate and pulled him into the yard with me. But instead of climbing the steps to the front door, I headed to a teak bench against the garden wall. I sat down and pulled my knees close to my chest, hugging them to me.
    Leaning back, I closed my eyes and was transported to the yard of my childhood. The same smell of wet stone and wood. The background noise of cars driving on the busy avenues at either end of my street. I was ten again and completely engrossed in Anne of Green Gables , curled up on my bench: my very own time-and-place machine.
    “ Mon ange , scoot up just a bit,” I heard, and I opened my eyes to see Vincent standing above me. I wiggled forward, and he wedged himself into the bench behind me, easing me back to lean against him and wrapping his arms around me. And sitting there cocooned in Vincent’s body, I felt safe enough to revisit my memories and say one last good-bye to my parents.

THIRTY-ONE
    ON THE WAY BACK TO THE HOTEL, VINCENT AND I stopped at a bookstore and spent the next half hour loading up on English-language books. It was the perfect break between the emotion of visiting my home and the formality of dinner with the rest of our group.
    When we arrived at the restaurant, Theo was sitting alone at a table in the corner. I sat down across from him. “So where is everyone?” I asked, as Vincent took the chair between us.
    “Your grandfather and Monsieur Tândorn send their excuses—they were too tired to join us. And Jules decided to skip dinner and stay with our kindred,” explained Theo. “He’ll meet you tomorrow at the airport.”
    As soon as our food was in front of us and the server had left, Theo got down to business.
    “To be completely honest, Vincent, I asked the others not to come tonight. I need to talk to you privately, and I assumed you would wish Kate to be with you.”
    Vincent seemed curious but not alarmed, though I had warning bells clanging all over the place in my mind. What could Theo possibly need to say to Vincent that the others couldn’t hear? Judging from the secrecy and his troubled expression, it wasn’t a mere “congratulations on being alive.”
    Theo picked up his napkin and wrung it anxiously for a moment before smoothing it on his lap. He avoided our eyes as sweat beaded on his brow. Finally he spoke. “I promised Jean-Baptiste I wouldn’t talk to you about this, but I cannot send my French kindred into a war with the numa without getting this off my chest.”
    He took a deep breath and began. “I told you I came to Paris after World War Two when you and the numa were battling.”
    “Yes,” said Vincent. “You were the only one of your American group to survive.”
    “That is correct,” affirmed Theodore. “And the numa-bardia conflict ended just before I left.” He leaned