I Should Die

shrug. “See what he has to say.”
    “Good luck,” I said, and leaned up on my tiptoes to kiss him.
    “I hope you’re not too lonely tonight,” he whispered, and gave me a wink that made a whole swarm of bees start buzzing in my belly. I closed the door behind me, and heard him say through the glass, “ Bonne nuit, ma belle ,” before turning and disappearing from view.
     
    During the night everything changed.
    I was awakened by the repeated ringing of my phone. Finally I picked it up and saw that Georgia had called four times. I dialed her back.
    “What is important enough to wake me in the middle of the night?”
    “It’s ten a.m., Katie-Bean.”
    “Not in New York it’s not.”
    “Listen. I’m over at La Morgue. You have to get over here. Now.” My sister sounded breathless.
    “What’s going on?”
    “When I got here for my fight training, Gaspard was gone. He and Jean-Baptiste took off. As in left town. For good!”
    “No!” I gasped, sitting straight up in the bed.
    “Yes.”
    “I’ll be right there,” I said. Jumping out of bed, I dialed Vincent’s number as I threw some clothes on.
    “ Mon ange . You’re up.” He sounded so calm, I wondered if my sister had been mistaken.
    “I just got this freaked-out phone call from Georgia, who claimed that JB and Gaspard have left.”
    “Yes, I was going to tell you myself, but I thought you’d want to sleep in. Clearly Georgia didn’t agree.”
    “Well, here I am, wide-awake. You can tell me now,” I said, wedging the phone between my shoulder and ear while I pulled my jeans on.
    “Trust me—it’s not an over-the-phone kind of conversation,” he replied. “I’ll send Ambrose over to get you.”
    I left a note for Papy and Mamie telling them where I was going, and raced down the stairs. Ambrose was already there, standing outside my door discussing something serious with Geneviève when I emerged. “You’ve got to tell me what happened!” I said as they fell into place on either side of me.
    “No can do, Katie-Lou,” Ambrose said, scanning the streets for signs of numa as we made our way to La Maison. “With news this big, Vincent’s going to want to tell you himself.”
    I wanted to push him for info, but didn’t know how much Vincent had revealed to his kindred. Would he try to cover for JB? Or had he told the bardia about their leader’s betrayal?
    We arrived to find a house full of revenants. It felt like a flashback to one week ago, when Paris’s kindred had assembled to await news of where Violette had taken Vincent. But instead of the grave atmosphere of the previous gathering, a feeling of shock hung heavy in the air. Some faces showed disbelief and others bitter disappointment, and people were talking in whispers.
    Ambrose led me upstairs to the library, where Vincent waited. As soon as the door shut, Vincent’s stiff pose relaxed. Shoulders slumping, he wrapped his arms around me and buried his face in my hair.
    “What happened?” I asked. Not knowing how to comfort him, I combed his tousled black locks back from his face.
    “I confronted him. And he confessed. It’s exactly how Theodore explained it. JB made a deal with Lucien, and has been paying for protection ever since in the form of his Paris properties.”
    “Oh, Vincent,” I said, my throat clenching as I saw how upset he was.
    “He said he only did it for us. That he felt we were on the brink of defeat. That the losses we had taken were too drastic and he wanted to protect the kindred that were left: his chosen few family members, among them me, who he thought was the Champion. He thought I would rise up and lead the kindred to a final defeat and that his compromise would be justified in the end. He admitted that after a few decades he regretted it, but he was in too deep and couldn’t bring himself to tell us about it.”
    “I’m sorry,” I murmured, wrapping my arms back around him.
    “You should have seen Gaspard,” Vincent continued, running his fingers distractedly up and down my spine and nuzzling my hair. “I think he was hurt the most, discovering that JB had hidden something from him for all those years. But he stuck with him. They’ve gone into self-imposed exile, and JB named me the head of the bardia,” Vincent said flatly.
    I drew back to look him in the face. “What?” I exclaimed.
    “He named me head and Charlotte my second.”
    It shouldn’t have felt like such a shock. Vincent had been Jean-Baptiste’s second. It