Until I Die

with me. Although I knew that if she had, I would have felt bad for going behind Vincent’s back to get the information. Her small white hand reached out and touched my own.
“Don’t worry about Vincent, Kate. He can take care of himself.”
Then it’s something dangerous , I thought. Even if she hadn’t meant to, she had told me something I didn’t know. Now, more than ever, I was determined to find another solution.
A week and a half ago at the ballet, Vincent had said he needed six weeks to see if his experiment had the potential to work. And if it did, I could only imagine that he would continue with it. Which meant I had just over a month to find an answer to an impossible situation. I just hoped that nothing bad would happen to Vincent before I did.
    I jumped as the study door opened, positioning myself in front of the open box on Papy’s desk.
“It’s just me,” Georgia said as she walked into the room, closing the door quietly behind her.
I exhaled, relieved that I wouldn’t have to lie to Papy about why I was trolling through his library. He would be overjoyed that I was using it. But knowing his enthusiasm for books, he would be too interested in exactly what I was looking for.
“So what treasure of Papy’s deserves a full body block?” she asked, her eyes flitting to the book behind me. I stepped aside to let her see.
“You’re reading something in German?” she asked, surprised, as she flipped through a couple of pages.
“I’m not actually sure it’s even German,” I said, tapping the German dictionary sitting next to it. “Unless it’s an old form. It could be a Bavarian dialect, for all I know.”
Georgia looked confused. “It’s sunny out—for once—and you’re spending your free time indoors reading an ancient Bavarian book because …” She turned another page to a hand-drawn illustration of a devil-like beast: red skin, horns, and claws. “Ah … monsters. May I guess that this has something to do with the particularly hot undead guy you suck face with on a regular basis?”
I leaned tiredly against the desk and nodded. “This is the last book. I’ve gone through everything in Papy’s library that could have something to do with revenants, and found only one that mentioned them. And it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.”
“What are you looking for?” Georgia asked, as I carefully put the book back in its box and slid it into the empty space in the bookcase.
“Honestly? If it were possible, I’d love to find a way to turn Vincent back into a human again. But since it’s not, I’ll settle for any information that might make things easier for us.”
“Hmm,” Georgia said pensively. “Normally I’d tease you for talking about magic, except for the fact that we’re referring to a reanimated dead guy here, so—hey—I guess anything is possible. Seriously, what exactly are you hoping to find?”
“Vincent told me that the time he resisted dying for a few years—when he got his law degree—he tried yoga and meditation to help ease the symptoms. Gaspard had read in some Tibetan revenant manuscript that that could help. Except it didn’t. So I figure I might as well see if I could find something Gaspard didn’t already know about. Like an herb or potion or something.”
“Hmm,” said Georgia, looking off into some invisible dreamworld. “Or maybe bathing naked in the Seine under the light of the full moon”—she glanced up quickly—“in which case, definitely tell me when and where your voodoo’s going down!”
I laughed. “Hey, you’ve got Sebastien! I’m sure you could persuade him to skinny-dip in the Seine if you tried hard enough.”
“Of course I could,” she said with faux haughtiness. “But who wants a boyfriend with ringworm?”
Georgia was working her big-sister charm on me again. When we were younger, if there was ever anything I needed help with that was beyond her capabilities, she tried the next best thing: distracting me.
“Speaking of boyfriends, we should go out together some night. Vincent hasn’t even met Sebastien. And you’ve been spending all your girl time with zombie Marie Antoinette.” My sister made a face. Once she disliked someone, nothing would make her change her mind.
“She’s actually really nice,” I said, defending Violette.
“She called me an ‘ungrateful human,’” Georgia countered. “That kind of says it all, as far as I’m concerned.”
“She’s just old-school,” I said,