Until I Die

pretending to be remorseful to throw everyone off.”
“That’s enough, Kate. You’re on a one-way train to cuckoo-land.”
“I’m going to prove that he’s the one.”
“Okay. It’s a challenge. I’m going to prove that he’s not. Especially seeing that if you’re right and he’s evil, that will mean I’ll have to cancel my date with him for Saturday night.”
“Georgia!”
“Just kidding,” she said, and then under her breath added, “Not really.”
    A pot of tiny purple-spotted violet flowers sat on the hall table the next morning. Papy lowered his newspaper long enough to nod toward them, and I wondered if he would have been so blasé about it if the card attached had said “Vincent” instead of “Violette.”
    Heard about your frightful experience yesterday. Let’s have coffee later on. Café Sainte-Lucie after school? Kisses, Violette
    I pulled my flower dictionary out of my book bag and found the picture of the flowers—they were oak-leaved geraniums. “True friendship,” I read, smiling as Georgia walked up behind me. “Those are pretty,” she commented, leaning down to smell them.
“They’re from Violette,” I said, watching for her reaction.
“They look like weeds,” she replied, straightening, and went to sit next to Papy at the breakfast table.
“Are you okay?” was all Papy uttered at breakfast, but he said it with a look of concern as he glanced over at Georgia—like he would say more if she weren’t there. If my grandfather thought I wouldn’t tell my sister everything, then he really didn’t know us. Maybe our occasional fights threw him off the scent of just how close we actually were.
A half hour later, we stepped out of the house to see Ambrose waiting for us at the corner, standing next to a black 4x4. “Ladies,” he said in a Barry White voice, and stretching his arms in front of him, cracked his thick neck from side to side. “This way, please.” He opened the door, and I jumped into the backseat. “And the lovely Georgia?”
“All this yummy muscleness first thing in the morning is almost too much for me to take,” she cooed, and gave him a playful wink as she scooted herself into the front seat. I shook my head. If “Flirt” qualified as a foreign language, my sister and Ambrose would both have PhDs in it.
“So where is everyone this morning?” I asked Ambrose as he put the car in gear and headed toward the river.
“Vincent and Jean-Baptiste have gone off to visit the revenants staying in Geneviève’s place. You know … to dig around to see who tipped the zomboids off to your leader-slaying extravaganza. How’s it feel to be Numa Enemy Number One, Katie-Lou?”
“Scary, actually,” I confessed. “I thought that your chauffeuring me around for the last week was pretty useless until yesterday.”
“Does that mean you’re happy to see me for once?” Ambrose said, his teeth gleaming white against the dark-chocolate brown of his skin.
“I’m always glad to see you, Ambrose,” I said, knowing that if the same line had come from Georgia it would have sounded as seductive as Mae West.
“How about your oh-so-tempting medieval friend?” Georgia said.
“I suppose you’re referring to Arthur and not Violette?” Ambrose replied with a chuckle. “They’re both training with Gaspard this morning, before going to visit some of the other kindred on their own. Jules is volant, so I’m going to drop you off at school and walk with him and Gaspard this afternoon before I come back to get you. Stay inside the school gates, will you? We don’t need any drive-by numa action while you wait for me on the street.”
Ambrose watched as we entered the school grounds, and once we were through the doors, he drove off. Georgia turned to me. “Well? I got the intel on what Arthur’s up to. What are we going to do with it?”
“This is our chance,” I said. “We know where he is right now. We can stake out the house and see where he goes when he leaves.”
“You heard Ambrose. Arthur’s supposed to be going somewhere with the Royal Pain.”
“Well, what will it hurt to spy on them for a couple of hours? Besides skipping school, that is. This is our only chance not to be followed by the revenants.”
“Or the numa, for that matter,” Georgia agreed. “Everyone thinks we’re in school. We’ll have to go now—we don’t know how long Gaspard’s kick-ass training lasts.” She glanced around the hallway, and her eyes landed on an