“It’s like using remote control!” Ambrose agrees. “The numa can make the possessed human do anything they want.”

“It has to be small-scale,” Vincent muses. “How many numa still exist in our area of France?”

The others look puzzled.

He explains. “A revenant can’t be too far away from the human they want to possess. Like maximum a hundred miles. A volant spirit can’t just materialize wherever it wants. They have to physically travel to the person. So, these can’t be numa spirits from far away flying in to do a job in Paris. Their body has to be located within a hundred miles of Paris. How many can there be, just a few years after we wiped them all out? Not more than a couple dozen at best.”

“I agree,” Gaspard says. “Depending on who is dormant when, they probably only have a handful of volant spirits they can use at once. Which is enough to carry out a targeted attack, but not to replace all of the numa there used to be in Paris with humans.”

“Unless they can actually do what they’re saying, and turn these people immortal,” Uta jokes. “Because if so, they could build an actual Numa Army like M promises.”

“You can’t turn a human into a revenant,” Charlotte says. “Let’s say you manage to manipulate someone into enacting the behavior that leads to a revenant’s animation: dying for someone and becoming a bardia. Or dying after betraying someone to their death and becoming a numa. Only a few of these people would have the genetic predisposition, or whatever it is, to become a revenant. Otherwise, you would have a lot of dead humans.”

“Unless there was a way to modify a human’s genetic makeup to transform them into a latent revenant,” Gaspard says. “Which, of course, is ridiculous.”

“Oh!” I blurt out, as something dawns on me. A memory is forming from back in my numa days.

“Louis, you’re as white as a sheet,” Kate says.

“Oh no.” I press my fingers hard against my temples. My head swims as a scene from the darkest days of my past returns.

“What is it?” Vincent asks.

“I just remembered something that happened when I was with Violette,” I say. “I overheard her talking to Nicolas about working on a way to transform people into revenants.”

“What?” Ambrose asks.

“A fairy tale!” Gaspard insists.

“Vi talked about some weird things, but I never heard her talk about that,” Arthur says.

“She read about it in an old manuscript,” I insist. “Something about a revenant leader in the past who tried to raise an immortal army to fight the Romans. All I can remember is that he had a Flame-finger working on the transformations. Violette wanted to discover that technique and use it to build her numa base.”