Until I Die - By Amy Plum Page 0,108

found him yet.

I had seen two missed calls from Mamie and knew I would have to come up with some explanation for not calling her back, but I couldn’t even think about that yet. A life in which I could return to the love and security of my grandparents’ home seemed like part of some other girl’s story. Finding Vincent was the only thing that mattered.

I shivered in the cold, but resisted the urge to go back into the house and ask if there was any news. Someone would surely come tell me if there was. Or would they? For the hundredth time, I felt an overwhelming sense of not belonging. Anywhere. I had been training with the revenants. I knew their secrets and held their symbol around my neck. I was part of their world now, and they were a major part of mine. But I was not one of them.

Neither was I comfortable in the skin of the human teenage girl I had been a year ago. I had gone too far now—out of the world of believing only what you can see and into one where the mystical was mundane.

Vincent had been my link with the revenants. But—if I was honest with myself—without him I would be drifting between the two worlds with no anchor to ground me and no oars to navigate. I pushed that thought out of my head. We’ll get him back, I promised myself.

THIRTY-NINE

THE MOOD AT LA MAISON WAS FUNEREAL. GASpard had pressed his captive numa for further information, but it seemed that Violette didn’t trust her minions with the details of her plans. A couple of other numa had been found in the meantime, and none knew where Vincent had been taken—only that their leader had left Paris with her prize.

I found Ambrose in the armory, sharpening a battle-ax with an old-fashioned grinding wheel. He looked as antsy for action as me.

“What’s all this mean? Where do we look next?” I asked him, unwilling to accept that we were all just … giving up.

“We have no other leads, and no clue of where the numa have taken Vincent. JB, Gaspard, Arthur, and some others are working on a longer-term plan.” His eyes met mine as he turned the wheel, his frustration materialized in the sparks flying from the edges of the ax blade. “Because in the short term, Katie-Lou, there’s nothing else we can do but wait to hear from them.”

I sat with him for a while, and then made my way back upstairs. Dozens of Paris’s revenants moved from room to room like ghosts, speaking in hushed voices and waiting for a phone call that might never happen. The hours passed and there was no news. Yet nobody left. The revenants were quiet, but on the alert. Ready.

Jeanne had insisted on staying. She wandered around, placing trays of finger food on every available surface and cleaning up after everyone.

“Do you want me to make you something special, my little cabbage?” she asked, hugging me for the millionth time since we had returned. I had cried the first time she held me, but my tears seemed to have dried up, leaving numbness in their place.

“I can’t eat, Jeanne.”

“I know,” she said, patting my shoulder. “But I had to offer. It’s the only thing I know to do for you.”

Finally, around midnight, I told Ambrose I was leaving. I couldn’t stand the grave faces and hushed conversations another moment. “I’ll come back. I’m just going to take a walk.”

“Then I’m going with you.”

Shaking my head, I asked, “Ambrose, after the numa hunts that you and Gaspard staged today, do you really think any of them will be hanging around the center of Paris?”

“No, but some of the humans around here can be just as bad.”

I tried to smile. “I’ll be fine. But if you guys hear anything—” I began.

He cut me off. “I will call you. I swear.”

“Thanks, Ambrose.”

I slipped out the front gate and headed toward the river. And when I reached its edge, it was if something possessed my arms and legs and I started running. My hurt shoulder ached with every step, but I ignored it, running from my heart’s pain and my mind’s fear. And even when those emotions were exhausted and the ghosts chasing me were overthrown by a second wind of determination and denial, I continued to run.

I finally came to a stop, leaning over and panting to catch my breath. Beside me, the Pont des Arts