Die for Her A Die for Me Novella

“I’m afraid that you have confused me with someone else. My name is Thomas, and I don’t know anyone named Vincent.”
    Kate takes a step toward me, and anger flashes in her eyes. “Jules, I know it’s you. You were in that horrible accident when . . . just over a month ago?”
    I shrug and shake my head.
    “Jules, you have to tell me what’s going on,” she insists.
    People are starting to look at us, and I need to diffuse the situation before Kate goes into a full-out hissy fit in the middle of a public place. But what can I do? I can’t tell her the truth. And she’s not going swallow my obvious charade. I take her gently by the elbow and lead her back toward the bench. “Let me help you sit down. You must be overexcited. Or overwrought.”
    Kate jerks her arm away from me. “I know it’s you. I’m not crazy. And I don’t know what’s going on. But I accused Vincent of being heartless for running away from your death. And now it turns out you’re alive.”
    Kate’s basically yelling now, and I feel beads of sweat forming on my forehead. Everyone in the room is watching us. A security guard walks briskly toward us from the front desk. “Is there a problem here?”
    “No problem, sir. The lady seems to have mistaken me for someone else.”
    “I have not!” Kate hisses, and does this fist-clenching foot stomp like an angry schoolgirl. She huffs off, out the museum door, and I shrug at the guard, who has lost interest now that the storm has passed. As soon as he walks away, I’m off, down the stairs, booking it back out to the car I parked on the rue Rambuteau. I know where she’s going: Vincent had the idiotic idea of taking her back to La Maison after I died, to “calm her down.” If she takes the Métro, I’m going to have to make record time to beat her back to La Maison.
    The worst that can happen is that JB will turn her away at the gate , I think, but I’ve got a really bad feeling about this whole thing. Vincent is volant. If she insists on seeing him, we won’t be able to produce a walking, talking Vincent until tomorrow afternoon. And Kate looked damn well determined as she marched away from me. She’s not the kind of girl who’s going to easily give up.
    Paris traffic is working against me on this all-crucial occasion, and by the time I run in through the front door, Jeanne is arguing with JB about a young visitor he said was waiting in the sitting room with a note for Vincent.
    The sitting room is empty now, except for a handwritten letter signed by Kate. So I rush straight to Vincent’s room, and there she is, standing next to his cold, dead body and freaking out like an actress in a black-and-white horror film.
    I can feel a volant spirit in the room. “Looks like the game’s up, Vince,” I say.

SEVEN
    KATE’S INITIATION INTO LA MAISON HAPPENS the next morning when she sees that Vincent reanimated and we tell her what we are. She handles it better than I would have expected. Not that I expected her to go running, screaming out of the house. But discovering that there is a whole world of undead superheroes existing side by side with the regular human world would freak most people out. Kate takes it in stride. Only a teenager, and she accepts what we tell her with courage and grace. I am officially amazed.
    However, Jean-Baptiste is furious that a human who wasn’t preapproved by him entered our house and learned our secrets. And while he’s chewing Vincent out, Kate actually comes to the kitchen and has breakfast with us—not only a crowd of people she’s just met, but people she’s just discovered are basically monsters. She stands there at the door looking uncertain until Ambrose bids her to “Enter, human,” and laughing, she comes to sit next to me.
    She meets Jeanne, and I can tell that knowing there is another human in the room comforts her. And by the time she digs into the bread and coffee Jeanne serves her, she’s chatting with the group like she’s known us all her life.
    When Gaspard sticks his head in and tells Kate she’s free to go, I leap at the opportunity to walk her out. After she says good-bye to Vincent, I put on my very best nineteenth-century manners, bow, and place her hand on my arm as I escort her to the front door. And when we get there, I do what I’ve been wanting to all morning: I apologize.
    “I’m sorry I was rude before today, you know . . . in my studio and at the museum. I swear it was nothing personal. I was just