I Should Die

me. I didn’t sacrifice myself for anyone.
    And then, with an icy chill of realization, I remember the scene in Violette’s room at the Crillon when I offered to be her first human kill—for her to take me instead of Vincent. What had her words been?
    I hear them as clearly as if she were standing in the room next to me. “Now isn’t that a charming gesture? One might even say a self-sacrificing offer. How benevolent of you, Kate.”
    Violette tricked us. She planned the whole thing so that I would die for Vincent. But why?
    I check my body to see if I feel differently—and I do. It’s in the way my heart beats more slowly and the sluggish pace that my blood pumps through my veins. But that could be because I’m dying. Bleeding to death.
    No, something else has changed. Though I am weak and parched, it’s like there’s a sun—a flaming ball of white-hot energy—inside me that’s radiating through my pores. There was my body’s response, a painful physical reaction, when Violette and Louis entered the room that warned me numa were near. And then, there are their auras. The colorless penumbra I saw around numa before I died has been replaced by haloes of red mist, just like the guérisseur artists had presented around numa in their cave paintings. I see auras like they did. I have changed. I am no longer human.
    “No!” I manage to scream before my voice gives out. I yank at my bonds again, kicking and pulling and thrashing my head around, until I finally give up and begin crying. No, not crying, sobbing. Weeping. The tears run down the sides of my face, and I try to lift my hands to wipe them away before remembering that I am bound.
     
    Something pinches my arm. Hard. I open my eyes to see Violette’s face hovering above mine. “It seems you passed out,” she says in a practical voice. “A typical symptom of animating after such a violent death.”
    “Why are you keeping me here?” I growl. I wish I could get my hands free so I could gouge her eyes out with my fingernails. “You used me as bait to get to Vincent—he was standing right there in front of you. What could you possibly want with me?”
    “Why?” she repeats, tapping her chin with her finger. “Because you, Kate, are the Champion. And I, Violette, want your power. It’s as simple as that.” She turns to Louis. “Get the Champion some more water, please. We can’t have her dying off before she comes into her true power.” Louis leaves the room.
    I had thought through every possible response she might give me, but this is one I had not expected. I stare, incredulous, as Violette pulls up a chair to the bed and sits down next to me.
    She’s lost it , I think. Though she was questionably stable before, all of this power has driven her completely insane . “You’re crazier than I thought,” I say.
    “Well, now, that would be one point of view,” she responds. “Another would be that I am very shrewd. Observant. Discerning, even. You see, my gamble that you were a revenant has already proven correct. And if Vincent isn’t the Champion, which became all too clear when the power transfer failed so miserably”—she unconsciously rubs her amputated finger with her other hand, eyes narrowing when she remembers it’s not there—“then there was a very good chance that it was you.”
    I gape at her, uncomprehending, and she huffs impatiently. “The prophecy says that the Champion has anterior powers of communication, persuasion, and perception. I didn’t understand that until I considered the word ‘anterior’ as meaning ‘before becoming a revenant.’ Having the gifts while you were still human.
    “Thinking of it like that, the communication part was obvious. I thought Vincent was special for communicating with a human while he was volant, but it was the other way around. You were the one who was special.”
    She scoots her chair around so she can watch my reaction as she speaks. “You had the kindred at La Maison eating out of your hand, including Jean-Baptiste, who doesn’t deal with any human he doesn’t have to. Vincent went against his better judgment to see you, and you wormed your way into the hearts of the rest of Paris’s revenants. I would call that anterior powers of persuasion .
    “And then I remembered that the night before our little scuffle up on Montmartre, Vincent had asked me if you could possibly have begun to see numa’s auras just from spending time with revenants. I told him no. But if you