“No offense, man, but you know it’s true,” says Ambrose, unapologetically.

Charlotte has been grinning mischievously, like she’s already plotting my future social life. She lunges back in for another smothering hug. Ambrose wraps his arms around both of us.

Gaspard has been standing, hands behind his back, studying this reunion with a slight grin on his lips and eyebrow raised, like he’s witnessing a curiosity. Now, he steps around the person-sandwich I’ve become and gives Bran a couple of formal cheek kisses. His raven black hair makes him look as though his grooming routine is limited to sticking his finger in electrical sockets. “Good to see you, old friend. I assume your journey was without incident?”

“The TGV is a thing of wonder,” Bran says. “I would much rather take a high-speed train than maneuver my old station wagon through the streets of Paris.”

“And Louis,” Gaspard says, turning to me. “You look better than when I saw you last time.”

“Less dead,” I say.

Gaspard lost his longtime partner, Jean-Baptiste, in the Final Battle. The numa had killed him and burned his body—the only way to permanently destroy a revenant. Even though I barely know Gaspard, I can see how deeply it must have affected him. The lines in his face seem etched by sorrow instead of age.

“How is Louis’s aura?” he asks, turning to Bran.

As a Flame-finger, or healer specializing in revenants, Bran can see things we can’t. Like auras. Or volant spirits. But I’ll get to that later.

He studies the space around my head, which feels weird, but trust me, I’ve gotten used to it. “The red threads have completely disappeared. But he does not yet have the golden aura of a bardia. That won’t happen until his first rescue. He is, I suppose you would say, a blank slate of a revenant.”

And there it is. The whole source of my anxiety in a nutshell. I’m not yet one of them. It’s a fact. But from the way Charlotte and Ambrose stand, each with an arm around me, they don’t seem to care.

“Good, good.” Gaspard inspects me like I’m a scientific specimen. Which I guess I am, seeing as I’m the first numa to have “transitioned” during any of their lifetimes.

“You are welcome here, kindred,” he says. “We are pleased that you are moving in.”

“Thank you,” I say, bending in a formal bow before I can catch myself. Ambrose chuckles and my face gets hot. Where did that come from? I think. I’m pretty sure I’ve never bowed in my life. Gaspard brings out the Louis XIV in me.

As he starts up the stairs with Bran, he calls, “Ambrose, would you let everyone know Bran and Louis have arrived and that we will convene in the library?”