Until I Die

crowd. And I noticed several other couples among the revenants who were hugging or kissing.
Some do find love , I thought.
Charlotte had told me that Ambrose and Jules were players, dating human girls but never getting serious with anyone. Jean-Baptiste didn’t exactly encourage revenant/human relationships—he banned all human “lovers,” as he put it, from the house. Besides a few police officers and ambulance drivers the revenants had in their pocket—and a few other human employees like Jeanne, whose families had worked for Jean-Baptiste for generations—I was the only outsider who had been taken into their confidence and allowed into their home.
Since the enforced secrecy of their existence pretty much ruled out the possibility of their dating a human, finding someone among their own kind was the only possibility for love. And, as Charlotte had said, there weren’t a lot of revenants around to choose from.
An hour later the crowd began thinning, and I told Vincent I was ready to go home. “We have to wait for Ambrose,” he said, draping my coat around my shoulders. My heart fell a little. I had been dying to ask him about being Jean-Baptiste’s second and the whole “Champion” thing. But it looked like that would have to wait, since I doubted he would want to discuss it in front of Ambrose. Jules was right about Vincent’s modesty. Bragging wasn’t his style.
“Do I need two bodyguards?” I joked as we headed out the front door toward the gate.
“Three,” Ambrose responded. “We’ve got Henri, an old friend of Gaspard’s, along playing guard-ghost.”
“Oh, right. Bonjour , Henri,” I said out loud, thinking, Okay, that felt weird .
As I had learned a few months ago, for three days each month the revenants returned to a dead state, which they called being “dormant.” The first of those days they might as well be stone-cold dead. But for the next forty-eight hours their minds were awake and could travel. This was being “volant.” When they were out looking for humans to save, revenants walked in pairs accompanied by a volant spirit who, seeing a few minutes into the future, could tell them what was about to happen nearby.
“All this security for me?” I said, smiling as I took the arms of my two embodied escorts. “I thought Gaspard said I was getting better at fighting.”
“Ambrose and Henri are here for my safety as much as for yours,” Vincent reassured me. “Tonight might be the moment the numa finally decide to attack. It would make tactical sense, with most of Paris’s revenants grouped together in one building. But even if they don’t, there are enough drunk weirdos wandering around on New Year’s Eve to make things interesting.” Vincent smiled his crooked smile and pressed a button next to the gate.
The automatic lights flicked on, and I looked up and waved at the security camera. If anyone ever bothered to look at the video, they would see me wearing an evening dress worthy of a red carpet, accompanied by two handsome men in tuxedos. Not bad , I thought, for a girl who never had a real date until a few months ago!
The moon was like a spotlight, casting molten silver onto the ancient trees lining Paris’s streets. Couples in formal dresses and suits made their way home from their own celebrations, giving the town a festive, holiday feel. The mouth-watering smell of baking pastry dough wafted from a boulangerie whose pastry chef was conscientious enough to stick to his early-morning baking hours on a holiday. Danger was the very last thing on my mind as I squeezed Vincent’s arm.
But a couple of blocks from my house, the casual manner of my companions suddenly changed. I glanced around, failing to notice anything dubious, but both were on the alert. “What is it?” I asked, watching Vincent’s features harden.
“Henri’s not sure. Numa would be heading straight for us, but these guys are acting weird,” he said, exchanging a glance with Ambrose. They immediately picked up the pace. We jogged across the avenue, my high heels making me decisively more wobbly than my usual Converses would have. As we headed down a side street toward my grandparents’ building, I wondered what would happen if we were set upon by the revenants’ enemies.
“Numa wouldn’t do anything in public, would they?” I asked breathlessly, yet remembering how a couple of them had stabbed Ambrose outside a restaurant a few months earlier.
“We never fight in front of humans … if we