If I Should Die

by Amy Plum

  The apartment was massive and modern, all white walls and hardwood floors with floor-to-ceiling windows and barely any furniture. Stone pedestals held ancient pottery and metal objects: A Greek mask in gold. A bronze Roman helmet. A finely sculpted marble hand the size of a refrigerator. I had seen things like this in museums, protected under heavy glass. But here they were within arm’s reach, tastefully arranged under gallery lighting that made them glow like jewels.

  Papy’s sharp intake of breath indicated that he was just as impressed as I was. Even Jules straightened a bit as he took his hands out of his pockets and went up to touch the exquisitely carved marble shoulder of a nymph. Bran just stood gawking with his regular astounded look, his magnified eyes taking in every inch of the room.

  The door opened again, and in stepped a young blond-haired, blue-eyed man in a white suit. He bowed slightly. “Theodore Gold,” he said.

  “But you’re the doorman!” I exclaimed. He was barely recognizable without the uniform and hat. The perfect disguise, I thought. No one looks a doorman in the face.

  “Yes, I’m sorry about that,” the man said with upper-class, posh-sounding diction that sounded nothing like the strong Jersey accent he had assumed as the doorman. “I value my privacy, and prefer not to depend on others for security. I would rather screen my own guests than risk the outcome of someone else’s error. Although you had a revenant with you”—he nodded toward Jules—“he could have been brought here under duress, used as a hostage if you wanted to get to me.”

  “I take it you are Jules,” he said, greeting him with European cheek-kisses. “Welcome, kindred.”

  “I’m Kate,” I said, and held out my hand for an American-to-American shake. Mr. Gold gave me a warm smile, and to my relief didn’t ask for a clarification of why I was there. I didn’t really feel like launching into an I’m-the-wandering-soul’s-girlfriend conversation.

  Bran was next. “Your tattoo tells me that you are the healer Jean-Baptiste spoke of. I have read of your kind. It is truly an honor to meet you.”

  He turned to my grandfather. “You must be Monsieur Mercier. Gaspard phoned to inform me of your—and your granddaughter’s—connection to the Paris kindred.” So, he knew.

  That’s one less thing to explain, Vincent said to me.

  “You read my mind,” I whispered back.

  “I am Antoine Mercier,” my grandfather confirmed in his beautifully accented English. He peered at the revenant with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity. “But are you Theodore Gold IV? The Theodore Gold? Author of The Fall of Byzantium?”

  The man smiled. “Yes, that was my work.”

  Judging from Papy’s expression, he might as well have just met the pope. “But you are so young! I am in awe that I am actually meeting you. Your grandfather’s book on Roman-era pottery is like my own personal bible.”

  Amusement flashed across Theodore Gold’s face. “Actually, Theodore Gold Junior was also me. As was Theodore Senior. I do try to change my writing style each time to make the whole necessary charade a little more convincing.”

  Papy just stood there gaping.

  Mr. Gold laughed and patted Papy on the shoulder. “Well, I am honored to have fooled someone as well versed in the field as yourself, Monsieur Mercier.”

  My completely unflappable grandfather was still rooted to his spot. “A revenant,” he said. “There is only one Theodore Gold. The whole dynasty of eminent antiquity experts is . . . one person. And you are the G. J. Caesar I have been selling pieces to for the last few decades?”

  “I think I may have actually bought a piece from you before that under Theo Gold Junior’s alias, Mark Aurelius, before I passed the collection down to myself,” Theodore pointed out helpfully.

  “May I sit down?” Papy asked, the color having drained from his face.

  “Please,” said Mr. Gold, gesturing toward a couch. Set before it was a low table with bottles of sparkling water and a platter of mini-cheesecakes.

  “I wasn’t sure if you ate on the plane,” he commented as we all sat. “Now, we have much to talk about. May I guess that the volant revenant I sense is the bardia Vincent that Jean-Baptiste mentioned?” He waited and then nodded his head. “Good. So from what I am told, you are looking for a giant thymiaterion with instructional symbols engraved into the stem.”

  Bran explained about his family’s records, and retrieving the book from his bag, he read the passage aloud.

  Mr. Gold looked impressed. “Incredible. It certainly is tempting to ask to see the rest of the book”—he paused as Bran shook his head—“but I realize that the information it holds must be confidential. I trust you are giving us all of the details you have on the matter?”

  Bran nodded. “I’ve gone through my family’s entire records, and this is the only mention of re-embodiment.”

  “Fine,” Mr. Gold said, clasping his hands together. With his timeless look and white suit, he reminded me of a young Robert Redford in the seventies version of The Great Gatsby. Or a character straight out of an Edith Wharton novel: handsome and wheaten haired, with that tanned just-stepped-off-the-yacht look that very wealthy people have.

  “I understand that time is pressing,” he was saying, “and that Vincent can be called back by the traitor at any time. How long has it been since she let you go?” he asked. “Yesterday before noon,” he repeated, looking at his watch. “It’s eleven p.m. now, so in six hours or so we’ll be coming up on two days, Paris time. Well, let’s hope she doesn’t feel like yanking you back sooner. We will need all of the time we can get to decode the symbols.”

  He tossed back the rest of his glass and stood. “And on that note, we should be going.”

  “Where?” I asked, as we all rose from the table.

  “Why, to see the thymiaterion,” he said.

  “It isn’t here?” I asked, glancing around the room.

  “No, I only keep a few of my favorite objects here. The world’s most complete collection of revenant-themed art happens to reside across the street.”

  “At the Metropolitan Museum of Art?” asked Papy, incredulous.

  “Yes, my dear man,” responded Mr. Gold with a wry grin. “At the Met.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  “I’VE NEVER VISITED THE MET AT MIDNIGHT,” I whispered as I followed the others to a side door, far from the main entrance’s grand stairway.

  Has that been a lifelong dream? came Vincent’s words.

  “A whole museum of paintings to myself, yes,” I answered. “A museum full of ancient objects at night, though, has a sky-high creep factor.” I shivered, recalling a frequent childhood nightmare in which the statues in Papy’s gallery all came alive.

  Mr. Gold took out a set of keys, opened a first set of doors, led us through a second set, and then past a seated security guard. He began reaching into his pocket for ID, but the guard just nodded and waved him by.

  “This way,” Mr. Gold said. We crossed a cavernous room filled with ancient pottery perched on stands and protected under glass cases. In a dark corner of the room, we piled onto an open service elevator. Our host waited for the doors to shut tight, fitted a key into the elevator’s control panel, and pressed a button for one of the subbasements.

  As we rode the car down, I couldn’t help but ask, “So how did you get a key to the museum? And access through the employee’s entrance?”

  “I am an employee,” said Mr. Gold, as we exited the elevator. “I am officially the head curator of antiquities, but I’m not around very much. If the same staff sees me over long periods of time, things would seem rather . . . questionable, wouldn’t they?”

  We trailed behind him down several low-lit corridors, and stopped before a double door with a sign marked ARCHIVES. Gold typed a code into a keypad and inserted another key into the lock.

  “Securing a substantial donation to the museum—to the tune of several hundreds of millions of dollars—unsurprisingly convinced the museum to give me private access to this entire area.” He
opened the door and flicked on a light switch.

  Before us was an enormous warehouse-size space, beautifully decorated with scattered columns and frescoed walls. Everything was individually spotlit, with additional lighting glowing from panels in the walls and floor. I shivered in astonished delight, and glanced at Papy to gauge his reaction. My grandfather looked like he had died and gone to antiquity-dealer heaven.

  This was the secret collection of revenant art. It must have held thousands of objects ranging from small pieces of jewelry mounted in cases against the wall to giant marble statues of heroes carrying massive weapons and wearing nothing but the signum bardia on cords around their neck.

  “You are three of the only humans to have visited this important historical collection,” Mr. Gold said with a wry smile. “Although I occasionally have revenant visitors drop by on appointment. How much do you know about revenant history?” he asked me.

  “Vincent has told me some stories. And Gaspard has mentioned things from time to time. But my overall comprehension is probably pretty lacking.”

  You’re being modest, Vincent said. I happen to know you’ve read everything you can get your hands on.

  I didn’t respond. The less Mr. Gold thought I knew, the more he would tell me.

  We walked slowly toward the other end of the large hall. Though Jules, Papy, and Bran were looking around as we walked, they were all listening in on our conversation.

  “Well, considering the project we are about to undertake, it would be useful to give you a quick history of both revenants and our guérisseur friends.” His voice took on a storytelling pitch, and I could tell he had told this tale before, although I guessed it was to new revenants, and not to human outsiders.

  “Ever since man existed, there have been bardia and numa. But in ancient times they were worshiped as heroes and reviled as demons. Both lived among humans as either their guardians or, in the case of numa, dangerous but effective allies for men who sought power at any cost.

  “Before modern medicine, healers, known in France as guérisseurs, were much more common and well respected among their fellow men. Since guérisseurs’ powers developed in accordance to the needs of the communities around them, a small percentage of them developed powers to help revenants with their own specific requirements.”

  Bran stopped looking around and began paying full attention to Mr. Gold’s story, drinking in every word.

  “Like the bayati—humans with paranormal abilities who were later called saints—revenants around the world began being persecuted with the rise of major world religions. In Eastern countries some were able to hide themselves among mortal holy men and shamans. But not in the Western world. It was at this point—after being hunted and destroyed on a massive scale during the fourth century—that revenants withdrew from the mortal world.”

  This fit in with what I already knew, and explained a lot of what I had seen in the flame-fingers’ archives. I began to wonder if the word “archives” didn’t apply as much to the images as they did to the few books and objects I had seen. The wall paintings explained the story Mr. Gold was telling in a much more memorable way.

  I drank in every word as he continued. “In order to facilitate the revenants’ disappearance from human awareness, the bardia launched a concerted campaign to hide revenant-themed art and literature that was common enough in the Roman times and before. The numa were on board with this, having lost just as many of their own number in the religious persecution.”

  Mr. Gold stopped in front of a statue of a man lying on a bed. Hovering over him was a woman with a tattoo identical to Bran’s etched into her forearm. She was passing her hands over the dead-looking man.

  It’s probably a dormant revenant, came Vincent’s words, and I nodded, agreeing.

  “As guérisseurs became increasingly scarce,” Mr. Gold continued, gesturing toward the statue, “the number who possessed gifts aiding revenants diminished, and revenants’ knowledge of them fell out of the common use. I, however, am in possession of some ancient tablets that spell out some of the gifts of these guérisseurs.” He turned to Bran. “You can see our auras, can you not?”

  “Yes,” Bran affirmed. “The practicing guérisseurs of my family can see both human and revenant auras. It is easy to distinguish between the two.”

  He glanced at me as he said this, and I smiled. “I remember your mother saying that Jules had the aura of a forest fire,” I said, thinking back to the different haloes depicted in the cave’s wall paintings.

  “Yes,” Bran said. “That is their defining trait to us. Which is indicated in the symbol of the signum bardia.” He pointed to the flames on the marble woman’s tattoo.

  “You can diminish a young revenant’s need to die,” continued Mr. Gold.

  Bran nodded. “Apparently that is true, but my late mother was not able to find instructions to the actual procedure in our family records.”

  Our host considered this.

  “Why would that be useful for a revenant?” Papy asked.

  “Some revenants fell in love with humans and desired to age at the same rate as their partners,” explained Mr. Gold matter-of-factly. Jules caught my eye and grinned, while out the side of my eye I saw Papy stiffen. I didn’t dare look at him, wishing Mr. Gold would skip on to the next part.

  “There is also the fact that in ancient times, when the population of the world was smaller, revenants who lived in unpopulated areas might not often find the occasion to rescue humans. They could visit guérisseurs to ease their pain.”

  Mr. Gold held his hand up to count off guérisseur gifts. “See auras, pacify the need to die . . . and then there is, of course, dispersion,” he said, displaying three fingers.

  “What is that?” Jules asked.

  Mr. Gold met Bran’s eye and the healer shrugged. “I haven’t heard of it.”

  “In our case, not important,” Mr. Gold concluded. “And the fourth and final gift—as far as I know—is re-embodiment. It was noted in ancient records, but examples are extremely rare.

  “Until Jean-Baptiste mentioned it on the phone this morning, I hadn’t even heard it referred to in contemporary times. And without his suggestion, I would have never guessed that the mysterious symbols on the side of our incense burner had anything to do with it. Now . . . I wonder.”

  He rubbed his chin contemplatively before turning and leading us farther into the room. “Unfortunately, the knowledge of the actual procedure has been lost with time”—he glanced over his shoulder and gave Bran a significant look—“at least to us revenants. Which is why I am glad you are here, guérisseur.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “AH, HERE IT IS: OUR THYMIATERION,” MR. GOLD said as we approached a large bronze piece that looked like a giant golden chalice. Its rim was level with my chin and its bowl was just as big in diameter: A children’s blow-up pool could fit inside.

  Engraved flames licked the entire surface of the stem, which was as wide as my waist. And circling the stem about halfway up was a series of saucer-size circles, each engraved with a different object.

  “As you can see, there are seven symbols,” explained Mr. Gold. “The first one in the series is the signum bardia, which was my indication that this was a revenant-associated piece. And the last in the series, if you follow the circle around to the left of the signum, obviously represents fire,” he said, indicating a circle with a single flame etched inside.

  “A knife with drops of blood,” said Papy, gesturing to another medallion, “and next to that a fan.” He pointed to a symbol of a stick with a spray of feathers attached to one end.

  “This looks like some sort of vase or pitcher,” I said, touching an image of a pottery vessel with two handles on the sides.

  “An amphora or a pot,” Papy said.

  “That is the symbol of my kind,” said Bran, pointing to a circle showing the same hand as was painted on the cave tombs: palm-side forward, fingers spread, and a tiny flame above each finger.

  One
symbol was left. It was an open box, its slablike lid slid to one side. “What’s this one?” asked Jules, who had been watching silently.

  “A box,” Papy said and shrugged. “I don’t recognize it as one of the typical ancient themes.”

  Bran had taken a pencil and was copying the symbols into his book. “The signum and the flame-fingers’ symbols must indicate that the object was used in a ceremony including both revenants and my kind,” he said. “That taken into account, we are left with five symbols in this order: the pot, the knife with blood, the fan, the box, and the fire.”

  “How about water, blood, air, space, and fire?” I asked, tracing the symbols with my finger.

  “Historically, the earthen pot symbol stands for clay or earth,” Mr. Gold said. “Blood might take the place of water as a liquid. So it’s only the box that doesn’t fit in with the four elements.”

  Bran looked thoughtful. “This reminds me of something. Something that is on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t quite reach it.” I glanced at Papy hopefully.

  “Why don’t we leave you to think?” suggested Mr. Gold. “Or you can take a walk around the room and see if something else doesn’t jog your memory.”

  Bran nodded distractedly, and sat down on the floor right there where he had been standing and stared at the giant incense burner as if he expected the answer to fall off it into his lap.

  Papy excused himself and began wandering excitedly from piece to piece, mumbling facts and dates as he went along. Jules was mumbling too, but in his case I could tell his murmurs were part of a conversation. “Theodore,” Jules said, “Vincent and I were just saying that you looked familiar. Have we met you before?”

  Mr. Gold smiled. “Yes. I was in Paris just before World War Two. September of 1939 it was. I came over to help with the evacuation of the Louvre Museum’s collections. My French colleagues and I packed all of the artwork and shipped it to various locations in France to protect it from the invading German army. It was during that time that I met your leader, Jean-Baptiste.”