“Let’s get some food in front of us first,” Ambrose interjects before she can answer, “then they can tell us everything.” He carries over the tray of garlic bread and rips off a fist-sized piece to put on his plate.

I’m agog. Everyone’s acting like it’s a totally normal thing for the Head of France’s revenants to be feeding a child in bardia headquarters, the same place from where we’re planning an attack on the forces of evil.

The child stabs Vincent—scary Vincent—in the hand with her spoon to get his attention. Not only does it work, but he smiles and says how clever she is.

Mind. Officially. Blown.

From everything Bran taught me, revenants can’t procreate. The three days a month we’re dead pretty much guarantees that. Everything in our body stops during that time, which makes it impossible to host life. So, this can’t be Vincent’s child. Or anyone else here, except...

“Jeanne, is this your baby?” I ask, since she’s the only human in the room. I immediately feel like an idiot because everyone turns and stares at me like...an idiot.

“My little Louis!” Jeanne squeals, setting the lasagna on a cooling rack and bustling over to give me the bises. “You are here! The last time I saw you, you had an arrow sticking out of your forehead. It was lodged in there so firmly that I couldn’t pull it out and—”

“You had to call me to help,” Ambrose finishes for her.

I try not to dwell on the mental image of an arrow sticking out of my skull.

Jeanne continues. “To answer your question, she is three, cheri, so she is not a baby. And, although I do have a granddaughter her age, she is not mine.”

“Odette is ours,” Kate says, walking out of the pantry with a bowl of strawberries. She plops it down in front of the baby...toddler...whatever...and says, “Vincent and I adopted her.”

“Adopted?” I ask, stunned. But who would adopt to a revenant? Then, remembering that Kate can read my thoughts, I try to quash the idea before I offend her.

Kate gives Vincent a look that says, Stop being so unfriendly and talk.

Vincent scoots his seat back and wipes apple sauce off his hand. “It was a private adoption,” he says, not quite looking at me, but at least talking. “I was engaged when I was human. Hélène, my fiancée, was murdered. This is the great-great-grandchild of her sister. I’ve been keeping an eye on the family over the years.”

This is another thing I’ve learned about revenants—stalking the living is one of our driving forces, as well as a weakness. It made Charles to try to commit suicide by handing himself over to the numa.