Until I Die

Arthur. “Ambrose said if she doesn’t need a hospital, get her home to Jean-Baptiste’s.”
“That’s where we’re going,” he confirmed.
“Um … I don’t think so! I’m banned from even entering,” Georgia exclaimed.
“I’m not giving you a choice,” Arthur said firmly. “I’ll call a doctor to meet us there. Better to get you private medical care than to take you to a hospital. And we can get some ice on your face right away instead of having to wait in a crowded emergency room.”
He reached over and laid his hand against her arm. Georgia immediately relaxed, resting her head against the back of the seat. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing, Mr. Tranquilizing Superpowers.”
The edges of Arthur’s mouth curled up. It was the first smile I had seen on his face since the time Georgia had called him geriatric in the café. “Would you like me to stop?” he asked.
“Hell, no,” she replied. “Feels great. I just didn’t want you to think you were pulling one over on me.”
His eyes flitted from my sister’s face to my own, and the smile left his lips.
“I thought it was you,” I said numbly.
“I don’t blame you,” he replied.
We just stared at each other, unspeaking, until I sank back in the seat, testing my painful shoulder and closing my eyes as the horror of the last half hour settled over me.
“What’s wrong?” Georgia asked.
I exhaled deeply. “Oh, Gigi,” I said, using my pet name for my sister from when we were small children. “While you were knocked out, Vincent came. He and Arthur saved you, but the numa … they killed him. And then took off with his body.”
I was able to control myself for exactly one more second before I burst out crying.
“Oh, Katie-Bean.” She pulled away from Arthur and wrapped her arms around me. “Oh, my poor Katie,” she said, her voice wavering as her own tears began to fall.
And as the taxi drifted through the quiet Paris streets, my sister and I sat locked in each other’s arms and wept.
    The doctor was waiting for us when we arrived at Jean-Baptiste’s. Arthur helped Georgia into the sitting room and then left, closing the door behind him. The man asked Georgia a lot of questions about what happened and how long she was unconscious, shined a light in her eye, and finally declared her healthy. He suggested she see a dentist for the loose tooth, and then gave her some instant cold compresses to put on her jaw and a box of painkillers.
My painful shoulder turned out to be a cracked collarbone. The doctor wrapped my chest and shoulders in an Ace bandage and told me to put an ice pack on it to reduce swelling. “You should both rest,” he told us.
Yeah, right , I thought. As soon as I got Georgia home I was going to look for Vincent.
As I led the doctor to the front door, Arthur reappeared with an envelope. He handed it to the man, shook his hand, then pointed him to the front gate.
Turning to me, he seemed to be struggling as his face began to lose its aristocratic coldness. This minor transformation suddenly made him feel like a real person for once, instead of a statue from a wax museum.
“Kate,” he said, “I’m so sorry for what has happened. I should have done more to stop it. But Violette … she’s gone through these strange phases before, and I thought I would be able to bring her around. I had no idea what she was up to.”
“If you even knew she was communicating with the numa, why didn’t you say something about it? You put everyone in danger by staying silent,” I said, feeling a simmering fury at the pit of my stomach. If he had done something before, none of this would have happened.
“Everyone knew Violette had distant ties with the numa. And they all depended on that to get the information they needed. But no one, including me, knew exactly what she was doing.
“When she began communicating with Nicolas, I thought she was using him to get closer to Paris’s numa. So she could taunt them. Flirt with them in a way before we dug in to destroy them. In the past she has enjoyed toying with our enemies before killing them. But when Vincent told me the numa knew how Lucien was slain, I began to suspect she had—unwittingly—given the information away. I never once imagined she was working in conjunction with them.”
I stared at him. He and Violette had been together for centuries. How could he have not known what she was up to? But his actions back at Montmartre, as well as the tortured look on his