Until I Die

Violette told me Arthur had kept in contact with numa from their past life. She said it was from a time when numa and revenants weren’t enemies.”
“What?” Vincent said, incredulous.
But I was on a roll. There was no self-editing for me by this point, no matter how weird it sounded to Vincent. “Actually, I saw Arthur talking to this really iffy-looking guy one day, at La Palette. He could totally have been a numa…. Now that I think back on it, I’m sure of it. He had that weird thing going on in the air around him.”
“What do you mean, ‘weird thing in the air’?”
“You know. They all have that kind of thing around their bodies. Like the few inches around them are in shades of gray. Like they’ve sucked all the color out of the air.”
Vincent hesitated. “You can tell who’s numa and who’s not?”
“Um, yeah. Can’t everyone?”
“No, not humans.” He thought for a second. “Could you tell with Lucien?”
“No. I don’t think so,” I admitted, trying to remember. Besides the time he had a knife pressed up against my sister’s throat, I’d only seen him in a dark nightclub.
“Then it probably has something to do with when I possessed you. Gaspard keeps asking me if you’ve had side effects.”
Impatient with this unrelated diversion, I continued my theory: “So if you told Arthur that I had been to the guérisseur , he could have passed that information on to the numa.”
“Kate …” Vincent’s voice was dark.
“No, not like that. Not on purpose. But if he is in contact with the numa, maybe he let it slip. Maybe he just mentioned it to someone. To the wrong someone.”
“Kate. You sound completely paranoid. I know you’re scared and you’re just trying to figure this all out, but I promise … you are looking in completely the wrong direction.”
“But Vincent, you agree that only revenants know I killed Lucien.”
“The entire revenant community is aware of that. And there are a lot of us. Not just the seven who live in our house.”
I ignored him and continued. “And out of all the revenants, only the ones in your house knew that I went to the guérisseur . And Violette told me that Arthur is in contact with the numa. Who else could it be? And whether or not he meant to put me in danger …”
“Whether or not? Kate, stop right there. None of our close kindred would betray us to the numa,” Vincent said. “I know you’re still angry at Arthur for shaming you in front of the house. And, quite honestly, I am too. But whether or not he is bigoted against humans, he’s good at heart, and he is not stupid. He wouldn’t let your activities ‘slip’ to a numa if—and I seriously doubt this—he is actually in contact with any of them.”
I sighed, wanting to believe him. But I had a feeling. There was just something wrong about Arthur. I didn’t trust him. But I couldn’t say anything else to Vincent about it.
“Kate, don’t worry about this. We’re taking care of everything. Jules is volant tomorrow, so he’s going to come with Jean-Baptiste and me to begin investigating Paris’s revenants on our own … to see if we can find the leak. Ambrose is going to take you and Georgia to school.”
Good plan , I thought, except you’re looking in the wrong place—your “leak” is living under your own roof .
Vincent and I said good night and reassured each other that, although we had to be careful not to provoke my grandfather, we would see each other secretly. But when I hung up, I felt anything but reassured. Not that my recent behavior had been the best example, but I hated sneaking around behind anyone’s back. And knowing that I would be going directly against Papy’s wishes felt like a betrayal of his trust. He had taken Georgia and me in and was doing his best to give us a good life. And I was blatantly disobeying him.

THIRTY-FOUR
     
    AS SOON AS I HEARD GEORGIA GET HOME THAT night, I popped across the hallway and installed myself in her bedroom. “Katie-Bean!” She greeted me with a smile, but her expression quickly rearranged itself into one of concern when she saw my face. “Oh no. What happened?”
“Papy knows.”
“Papy knows what?”
“That Vincent’s a revenant and that I’ve got numa after me.”
“What do you mean, you’ve got numa after you?”
I told her the whole story. The meeting with the guérisseur . The theft at our grandfather’s gallery. The healer’s disappearance. And then the standoff between Papy and