Chapter 2
Being a part of Jean-Baptiste's merry band of revenants had always prevented me from getting into too much trouble. I committed only a fraction of the mischief I might have otherwise, so engaged was I in saving Paris from the misdeeds of the numa. There was barely time for much else. I painted when I could and I spent time in the company of some lovely girls who kept loneliness and despair from creeping in when they might otherwise have overwhelmed me, but mostly, I tried to fulfill my destiny. Without JB's guidance, my volant spirit would most likely have been hanging out in Katy Perry's dressing room or engaging in some other completely hedonistic and unworthy pastime. As it was, I was too busy while volant to dream of such things, instead serving as fortune-teller-on-patrol with my kindred while we walked the streets of the city. Seeing into the future, just around the corner of the present moment, I was able to guide their good deeds like a veritable undead Boy Scout. In this way, I tried to make my mark on the world, searching the streets for souls in need of rescue. That we were all also searching for that little hit we all craved was another matter entirely, and one I don't think bears discussion in this context.
A volant spirit may travel where it pleases, and while my body was dormant, it had pleased my volant spirit to be near Kate. After Violette committed Vince's body to her twisted funeral pyre, I felt a sense of obligation to protect Kate, in whatever way I could. However, it was not obligation alone that drew me to her. I don't think she ever knew I was there—she could not hear me the way she had heard Vince. But I knew I was there, watching, vigilant, ready to sound the alarm if she was ever threatened, and this gave me a sense of purpose and a sense of peace.
I won't pretend I wasn't tempted to spend all of my free time drifting at the foot of her bed, watching her sleep, listening for sighs that might indicate that she was dreaming, but I couldn't bring myself to violate her privacy that way. I spent most of my time on her street or sometimes on her balcony, surveying the surrounding area, looking for anyone who seemed threatening. I tried to tell myself that I owed this to Vince—that he would want me to do whatever I could to protect this girl who had won his heart since he was now unable to perform this duty himself. While that was true, it was only part of the motivation for my new hobby. The rest of my Kate-watching derived from the sharp pain I felt when I was not near her. My insistence on spending as much time as possible away from La Maison to serve as Kate's spirit-bodyguard was as much selfish as it was altruistic, easing my own pain as I tried to guarantee her safety (a setup that Georgia might call a "win-win" as she always seemed to have a completely irreverent, very American, and wholly appropriate turn of phrase in her back pocket to apply to any situation at a moment's notice). It was also partly to blame for my slow recovery after my most recent reanimation.
We bardia try to stay near our bodies as the time to reanimate approaches, within the same room if possible. It's not a process that catches us unawares—there is a sort of buzzing that occurs when the spirit is closing the gap in time until it can inhabit its dormant body again. That buzzing gets stronger, more obvious as the time draws closer and finally culminates in what I can most accurately describe as almost an electric shock, akin to having a Taser applied to your skin. Typically, when a volant bardia feels the buzzing intensify, he knows it is time to go home. Not being near your body does not prevent reanimation but it does have consequences. It's as if a cord is attached at one end to our volant spirit and at the other end to our body. The cord begins to tighten and reels us back in so that we may inhabit our familiar flesh again in a sort of metaphysical tug-of-war. The further away a spirit wanders from its dormant body, the harder it becomes to tug it back. This results in some profound weakness and exhaustion once we reanimate. My spirit being reeled back from Kate's balcony (where I had certainly not been peeping through her windows, except maybe just a little) had left me in my current state: weak, drained, and pissy.
Food definitely helped in the recovery of not only my strength but also my spirits after three days of disembodiment, but I was having a hard time stomaching what was, I'm sure, the delicious breakfast Jeanne had made for me. Typically, I could eat enough for three people after reanimation but this time, I seemed to have some angst-induced anorexia. I had eaten my typical light snack immediately upon awakening and then a few wedges of pear that had been sliced and left in my room (Jeanne always managed to find the ripest, softest pears in Paris for me), but since then, nothing. I knew I was compounding my problem and that I was unlikely to recover my full strength in a reasonable amount of time if I didn't eat, but I was just too distracted.
I tried to refocus on my breakfast after helping Jeanne with her bit of crockery (the canister, she told me, was to hold flour. Though she already had a canister of flour sitting on her countertop, she needed a second because she found she was running through flour much more rapidly with the frequent visitors we were now seeing at La Maison. The new social schedule necessitated a larger number of scones, cakes and croissants than ever before. Her light chatter about baking and the flour consumption of the house might have normally made the situation feel normal and routine but today, it only seemed to illustrate how out of sorts my own thoughts were compared to our normal routine). One bite of scrambled eggs with Gruyère was all I could manage before I finally gave up pretending I had an appetite.
"Ridicule," I grumbled, snarling at my plate of wasted food.
Disgusted, I raged at myself internally. Jules Marchenoir behaving like a teenaged girl in the throes of her first crush? Ambrose would laugh until he suffocated if he could have seen me. I tried to tell myself that I could not allow my mood and my appetite be dictated by a pretty face, but it felt like a farce. I was trying to convince myself that it was as simple as a little crush even though I knew it was much, much more.
The universe, it seemed, had a sense of humor. It saw fit to arrange it so that Vince, single since the second World War, and myself, never seriously attached to anyone (even as a human), would both fall in love, not only at the same time, but with the same girl.