Until I Die

something. If I’m wrong about it, I’ll be back out in a second. If I’m right, it might take a little more time. But it’s something I want to do myself.”
“Kate, I honestly don’t know how Vincent puts up with you. You are … infuriating.”
“But you’ll do what I ask?”
Jules ran his hand through his curls, looking very unhappy. “I’ll give you fifteen minutes. If you’re not out, I’m coming in to get you.” And he stalked off to sit on the step of a boarded-up storefront across the street.

TWENTY-SEVEN
     
    I PUSHED THE DOOR SOFTLY. WHEN IT DIDN’T budge, I put more force into it, practically bursting into the shop when the sticky door finally gave way. I glanced around self-consciously to see a room chock-full of stuff, even more crowded than the window displays. And from the looks of things, I could tell they had put the cheap inventory in the windows—probably to discourage theft—because surrounding me were the most interesting objects I had ever seen outside a museum.
A very old ivory Madonna—the sway in the hip on which she balanced her child following the natural curve of the elephant tusk—sat next to an ornate box—a reliquary—with a realistic metal finger attached to the lid. Old coins with images of saints on them, antique rosaries hanging from every available protrusion, and crucifixes made of precious metals and stones. Although each piece was individually beautiful in its own way, with all of them amassed chaotically together in such a small space, the place felt seriously creepy. Like a tomb stocked with goods for the afterlife.
I stared at the front desk for an entire second before I realized that someone was behind it—staring right back at me. He stood so unnaturally still that when he spoke, I jumped. “ Bonjour , mademoiselle . What can I do for you?” he said in a slightly accented French.
My hand flew to my heart. “I’m sorry,” I gasped. “I didn’t see you there.”
His head tilted slightly sideways at my words, as if he found the idea of someone being surprised by a speaking statue curious. What a strange man , I thought. With his slicked-back, dyed-black hair and the huge eyes that projected surreally from bottle-thick glasses, he looked like a cartoon version of the store’s avian namesake. Serious creep factor , I decided, shuddering.
“Um … someone told me that I could find a guérisseur here?” I said, my voice coming out embarrassingly timid.
He nodded oddly and stepped from behind the desk to display a skeletal frame dressed in strange, old-fashioned clothes. “My mother is the guérisseur . What ails you?”
I thought of my conversation with the woman in the next-door shop and blurted out, “Migraines.” There was something about this man—about this whole situation—that made me very nervous. If meeting the revenants was like traveling to a strange new country, this made me feel like Neil Armstrong, touching his toe to the virgin surface of the moon.
He nodded in comprehension and lifted a stick-figure arm to gesture toward a door at the back of the room. “This way, please.”
I wove my way through stacks of old books and waist-high statues of saints, and then followed him up a steep and winding set of stairs. He disappeared through a door on the landing, and then reappeared, waving me inside. “She will see you,” he said.
Upon entering the room, I noticed an elderly woman sitting by a fireplace in a worn green chair, knitting. She glanced up from her work and said, “Come, child,” nodding to an overstuffed armchair facing her own. As I stepped into the room, the man left, closing the door behind him.
“I hear you suffer from migraines. You are young for that type of affliction, but I have cured children as little as five years old. We’ll fix you right up.”
I settled myself in the chair.
“Now tell me about the very first time you experienced this problem,” she said, continuing her knitting.
“Actually, I don’t have migraines,” I said. “I came to talk to you about something else.”
She looked up, curious but not surprised. “Do tell, then.”
“I found this really old manuscript. Immortal Love , it was called. It talked about a guérisseur living in Saint-Ouen who had special abilities regarding … a certain type of being.”
Although I had planned my speech ahead of time, it wasn’t coming out right. Because now that I was here, I wasn’t at all sure of myself. Even though everything seemed to point