Ava looks out the window, remembering. “I book it up three flights of stairs and try to tell people what’s happening, but they won’t listen. I start pulling them off, and they’re all yelling at me, including Rosco. And then the balcony’s floor cracks and everyone makes a rush for the door, and suddenly it’s just me and this one girl who’s so strung out she can barely stand, in a crumbling theater box leaning out over the floor thirty feet below. Rosco’s standing one foot on, one foot off, holding his hand out to help us, and I’m trying to pass the girl to him, but she’s so high she doesn’t know what’s going on. The moment he grabs her, the floor gives out, and I fall to my death. Broken neck, plus crushed by falling masonry. I got the double whammy.”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, because there isn’t anything else to say.

“Theodore saw my light,” she says. “Corpse-napped me from the mortuary before they could cremate me. Funeral director didn’t want to get in trouble, so he didn’t tell anyone my body was missing and gave my parents someone else’s ashes.

“The first time I was volant—just weeks after I died—I went to find Rosco. And I found a lot more than I had bargained for. He was with the stoned girl from the party. He had been with her for a long time; they were engaged. And there were others. Lots of others.”

“He wasn’t a rake,” I say, “he was a psychopath.” I want to reach for her, to touch her hand . . . offer her some comfort, but I can tell she doesn’t want that.

“Yeah, well. I was afraid I was going to have to stay away from Manhattan for longer—so he wouldn’t see me. But he died a few years later from an overdose, and most of the others I knew either did the same or scattered by the eighties. By then, I was used to my little haven in Brooklyn and was happy to have a river between me and anything to do with the limelight.”

“But you haven’t really left it behind. You still write about it,” I say. “The expert on Warhol and his crowd.”

She shrugs, but I can tell I hit a sore spot. “It’s a type of redemption, I suppose,” she concedes, her voice breaking slightly. Her eyes are glassy, but she’s not letting herself cry. “I guess I’m still trying to figure it all out.”

Seeing that she’s done talking, I start the car and pull back out onto the highway. “I understand the vehemence now,” I say after a moment.

She gives a little laugh. “Yeah. I’m sorry about that. I misjudged you.”

I nod. “Apology accepted. Does this mean that I am now free from the stink-eye?”

“If you promise never to call me Frosty again,” she says with a smile.

I gasp. “When did I—”

Ava cuts me off. “During our standoff with the numa. Ryan heard you muttering it under your breath.”

“The traitor!” I say. “He’s never walking volant with me again.” I glance over at her, and she’s laughing. Not crying. This is a good thing.

“No stink-eye, no Frosty,” I promise.

“Deal,” she agrees, and reaches over to turn up the music.

TWELVE

WHEN WE ARRIVE AT BRAN’S, A REVENANT BOY meets us at the gate. Although I never met Louis—he was dead, killed by Violette, by the time I arrived at the battle—it can’t be anyone else. The turncoat numa’s bloodred aura has mellowed into a deep golden color, a visual effect I’ve never seen before.

Vincent told me all about him last night: how, when he animated after sacrificing himself for Kate, his aura had already begun to change. Bran took him under his wing and whisked him far away from the city, and any numa who might target him as a traitor, until Louis’s transition to bardia could be complete. Whatever he’s doing seems to be working. The bitter, hopeless kid Vincent described is nowhere to be seen in the smiling boy unlatching the gate for us.

We steer into a courtyard lined with apple trees and rosebushes. The ancient stone house at the end of the drive is entirely covered in purple-flowered wisteria vines.

“Bienvenue,” Louis says as we step out of the car. He gives me the bises, and then walks around to Ava. “Welcome, I am called Louis,” he says, and shakes her hand. “This is all I know to say in English,” he admits, with a comically strong accent.

“Et vous le parlez parfaitement,” she replies in impeccable French, and gives him one of her blinding smiles. The kid doesn’t stand a chance: One look and he’s under her spell.

I stand there speechless for all of a second, and then say, “Wait a minute, Ava. You speak French?”

She smiles. “Oui.”

“Well, why didn’t you tell me?”

“You didn’t ask,” she says simply. She lets Louis pick up her bag, and when he holds out his arm, she laces hers through it and walks with him toward the house.

After hours in the car, I need to stretch my legs, and, instead of following them inside, take a path around the house to what I think must be the backyard.

And what I see when I emerge from the curtain of trailing wisteria vines stops me in my tracks. Bran’s house was built on the edge of a field of standing stones. The stones of Carnac: five-thousand-year-old megalithic menhirs lined up in rows and columns, like a prehistoric graveyard. France’s version of Stonehenge is in Bran’s backyard.

I don’t know why I’m surprised. He comes from a line of mystical guérisseurs that stretches back many generations. What better place for a magical healer to grow up than on a place thought—by those who believe in such things—to be one of earth’s energy centers?

Through the morning mist, I spot a lone figure trudging between the menhirs toward me. He raises an arm in welcome, and I walk down into the stones to meet him. There’s no mistaking Bran: wild black hair, scarecrow figure, and bottle-thick glasses magnifying his owlish eyes. Although his appearance hasn’t changed in the last few months, there is an easiness to his stride that he didn’t have in Paris. Brittany is obviously his land. He belongs here.

We reach each other, and he leans in to give me the four bises traditional in the countryside. “Just dropped my boys off at a friend’s house,” he says, gesturing toward the town on the far end of the field of stones. “That’ll give us some time to talk alone.” We head back toward the house.