As I reach for it, he slips it back into his pocket and says, “I’d actually been hoping to catch up with you.” He glances around at the twenty-odd people concentrating on their drawings. “Without disrupting everyone, of course. Do you have time for a break?”
I fold up my sketchbook and, tucking it under my arm, lead him down one floor and to my room. “Tea?” I ask, as he peruses my space, inspecting the paintings and drawings that have accumulated in stacks around the walls and on every available surface. Many show the humans I’ve saved in the past few weeks. The others, well . . .
“With milk,” he responds, and picks up a small portrait of a girl with her arms crossed. I painted it in the style of my old friend Modigliani, kind of an homage to his girlfriend, Jeanne. But instead of Jeanne staring doe-like from the canvas, Kate’s laughing eyes gaze out, and the expression of wry amusement she makes when I tease her curves one corner of her lips.
“This is why,” states Gold, as I set a steaming cup on a table near him and pull a jug of milk from the mini-fridge.
“Why what?” I ask, knowing exactly what he’s talking about.
“Why you stayed. Why over the last two and a half months you’ve been acting like an overachieving Superman who can’t stop rescuing people long enough to breathe. Or in your case, long enough to remember.”
“Do you double as the house shrink?” I ask, lifting my own mug to my lips and blowing off a cloud of jasmine-scented steam.
“I try to avoid that at all costs, actually,” Gold says, chuckling, and glances back down at the painting. “No one here knows what’s wrong with you. You haven’t confided in any of your kindred. Not even Faust, and that boy’s practically spent twenty-four/seven with you.”
“So the welcome reps serve as your spies?” I say, immediately regretting it. Faust has been more than welcoming. He’s been a friend. He’s tried to crack my shell, but I’m not letting anyone in. They wouldn’t want to see the mess inside.
Whatever Gold sees in my face allows him to forgive my rude comment and change the subject. “I suppose this means you won’t be going to Paris for the wedding?” He hands me the ivory envelope, and, thrusting his hands into his pockets, walks to the window. He looks out over the ink-black river toward the hushed lights of the city.
I set my tea down and pull out a creamy card engraved in silvery-blue ink.
Charlotte Violaine Lorieux et Ambrose Bates
ont la joie de vous faire part de leur mariage
le samedi 28 mai
A l’église de la Sainte-Chapelle, Paris
So Ambrose and Charlotte are getting married—I check the date—exactly three months after our epic battle with the numa. The battle Ambrose had to miss because of a wound suffered in a skirmish, just hours before. And the battle where I helped Kate drag Charlotte’s dead body to the side of the arena so that it wouldn’t be scooped up by numa and burned.
I knew, of course, of their newly kindled love. Gaspard has sent me one letter per week—handwritten and mailed through the post—updating me on the goings-on of the Paris kindred.
And Ambrose phoned me once on the cell phone I was issued by my new kindred. He told me he had proposed. That Charlotte had accepted. Of course. Any idiot except Ambrose would have known she’s been in love with him for decades. But for Ambrose this love was a revelation, and the more he talked about it, the wider the pit inside me grew, its emptiness swallowing all my words until finally he just told me he loved me and that they all missed me, and he hung up.
I never wanted love. Until Kate. And now it eats at me from inside, reminding me of how stupid I’ve been. How shallow. All that time wasted, when I could have been happy like Ambrose and Charlotte. Like Vincent and Kate. But what if Kate was the one? She’s the only girl who has ever made me long for permanence. What if she was the one, and I could have done more to let her know? What if I had been honest sooner?
No, she and Vincent were made for each other. That much is clear. I’m just cursed to want what is not meant to be. But damn my heart for switching on—finally—for the wrong person. Now it is an open door, standing wide for nothing . . . for no one . . . and I don’t know how to close it again.
I look up and see that Gold is waiting for a response. “Um, no. I don’t really think I’ll make it to the wedding. Too soon. And I’ve got my work here.”
“Wrong answer,” says Gold. He looks back out the window at his city, before ambling back to me, authority radiating from him. This is his world, and has been for more than a century. I’m just a blip on his radar. Passing through.
“We need you to go.”
“What?” I exclaim. “What’s that supposed to mean? If you want to go to the wedding, I’m sure the bride and groom wouldn’t mind if you took my place.”
Gold looks back at me, the picture of patience. “When you joined us, you agreed to work for the good of the clan. No one can deny the fact that you’ve been doing more than your share of patrolling. But we have other jobs that need to be done, and in this case, you’re the one to do it.”
FIVE
I STAND FROZEN IN DISBELIEF WHILE GOLD PICKS up my jacket and throws it at me. “Here, let’s walk, and I’ll explain along the way.” He plucks the invitation from my hand and pockets it, while I reach to grab my weapon belt.
“You won’t need that,” he says dismissively. “We’re not patrolling.”
“You never know,” I say, and put it on anyway, slipping a short-sword into the holster before shrugging on the leather jacket, which is cut long enough to hide steel. I leave my gun on the table. I carry it when I need to but don’t enjoy how it feels: There’s something dead about it, unlike the almost-living vibration a sword emits.
We walk out of the Warehouse into a breezy May night, the midnight moon scattering disks of gold on the surface of the wind-rippled water. Heading away from the river toward the center of Williamsburg, we move away from the glass-covered high-rises into a neighborhood of three-story brownstones.
While we walk, Gold fills me in on the recent history of New York’s revenants. I have the feeling he’s just passing time so that I won’t press him for details on this special mission, but his words catch my attention, and I let him spin the tale in his old-fashioned roundabout way.
I fold up my sketchbook and, tucking it under my arm, lead him down one floor and to my room. “Tea?” I ask, as he peruses my space, inspecting the paintings and drawings that have accumulated in stacks around the walls and on every available surface. Many show the humans I’ve saved in the past few weeks. The others, well . . .
“With milk,” he responds, and picks up a small portrait of a girl with her arms crossed. I painted it in the style of my old friend Modigliani, kind of an homage to his girlfriend, Jeanne. But instead of Jeanne staring doe-like from the canvas, Kate’s laughing eyes gaze out, and the expression of wry amusement she makes when I tease her curves one corner of her lips.
“This is why,” states Gold, as I set a steaming cup on a table near him and pull a jug of milk from the mini-fridge.
“Why what?” I ask, knowing exactly what he’s talking about.
“Why you stayed. Why over the last two and a half months you’ve been acting like an overachieving Superman who can’t stop rescuing people long enough to breathe. Or in your case, long enough to remember.”
“Do you double as the house shrink?” I ask, lifting my own mug to my lips and blowing off a cloud of jasmine-scented steam.
“I try to avoid that at all costs, actually,” Gold says, chuckling, and glances back down at the painting. “No one here knows what’s wrong with you. You haven’t confided in any of your kindred. Not even Faust, and that boy’s practically spent twenty-four/seven with you.”
“So the welcome reps serve as your spies?” I say, immediately regretting it. Faust has been more than welcoming. He’s been a friend. He’s tried to crack my shell, but I’m not letting anyone in. They wouldn’t want to see the mess inside.
Whatever Gold sees in my face allows him to forgive my rude comment and change the subject. “I suppose this means you won’t be going to Paris for the wedding?” He hands me the ivory envelope, and, thrusting his hands into his pockets, walks to the window. He looks out over the ink-black river toward the hushed lights of the city.
I set my tea down and pull out a creamy card engraved in silvery-blue ink.
Charlotte Violaine Lorieux et Ambrose Bates
ont la joie de vous faire part de leur mariage
le samedi 28 mai
A l’église de la Sainte-Chapelle, Paris
So Ambrose and Charlotte are getting married—I check the date—exactly three months after our epic battle with the numa. The battle Ambrose had to miss because of a wound suffered in a skirmish, just hours before. And the battle where I helped Kate drag Charlotte’s dead body to the side of the arena so that it wouldn’t be scooped up by numa and burned.
I knew, of course, of their newly kindled love. Gaspard has sent me one letter per week—handwritten and mailed through the post—updating me on the goings-on of the Paris kindred.
And Ambrose phoned me once on the cell phone I was issued by my new kindred. He told me he had proposed. That Charlotte had accepted. Of course. Any idiot except Ambrose would have known she’s been in love with him for decades. But for Ambrose this love was a revelation, and the more he talked about it, the wider the pit inside me grew, its emptiness swallowing all my words until finally he just told me he loved me and that they all missed me, and he hung up.
I never wanted love. Until Kate. And now it eats at me from inside, reminding me of how stupid I’ve been. How shallow. All that time wasted, when I could have been happy like Ambrose and Charlotte. Like Vincent and Kate. But what if Kate was the one? She’s the only girl who has ever made me long for permanence. What if she was the one, and I could have done more to let her know? What if I had been honest sooner?
No, she and Vincent were made for each other. That much is clear. I’m just cursed to want what is not meant to be. But damn my heart for switching on—finally—for the wrong person. Now it is an open door, standing wide for nothing . . . for no one . . . and I don’t know how to close it again.
I look up and see that Gold is waiting for a response. “Um, no. I don’t really think I’ll make it to the wedding. Too soon. And I’ve got my work here.”
“Wrong answer,” says Gold. He looks back out the window at his city, before ambling back to me, authority radiating from him. This is his world, and has been for more than a century. I’m just a blip on his radar. Passing through.
“We need you to go.”
“What?” I exclaim. “What’s that supposed to mean? If you want to go to the wedding, I’m sure the bride and groom wouldn’t mind if you took my place.”
Gold looks back at me, the picture of patience. “When you joined us, you agreed to work for the good of the clan. No one can deny the fact that you’ve been doing more than your share of patrolling. But we have other jobs that need to be done, and in this case, you’re the one to do it.”
FIVE
I STAND FROZEN IN DISBELIEF WHILE GOLD PICKS up my jacket and throws it at me. “Here, let’s walk, and I’ll explain along the way.” He plucks the invitation from my hand and pockets it, while I reach to grab my weapon belt.
“You won’t need that,” he says dismissively. “We’re not patrolling.”
“You never know,” I say, and put it on anyway, slipping a short-sword into the holster before shrugging on the leather jacket, which is cut long enough to hide steel. I leave my gun on the table. I carry it when I need to but don’t enjoy how it feels: There’s something dead about it, unlike the almost-living vibration a sword emits.
We walk out of the Warehouse into a breezy May night, the midnight moon scattering disks of gold on the surface of the wind-rippled water. Heading away from the river toward the center of Williamsburg, we move away from the glass-covered high-rises into a neighborhood of three-story brownstones.
While we walk, Gold fills me in on the recent history of New York’s revenants. I have the feeling he’s just passing time so that I won’t press him for details on this special mission, but his words catch my attention, and I let him spin the tale in his old-fashioned roundabout way.
