Read Die for Her A Die for Me Novella for Free Online Page B

a café and discovers that Kate’s apparently taking the breakup as hard as Vincent is, and her family is worried.
    She sits across from me on my green couch in my studio, sipping carefully at the steaming mug of tea I’ve made for her. “Georgia even mentioned returning to New York,” she sums up.
    Why does my heart skip a beat when she says that? Kate a whole ocean away? That’ll just about kill Vincent , I think. And then I realize that it’s not just concern for my friend that I’m feeling. I don’t want Kate to go. I want her to come back to us, even if it means that she’ll always be at a distance from me— friends, no more than that , I remind myself. But I do care about her. I even . . . I push the next thought aside and say, “We’ve got to tell Vincent.”
    “Well, that’s what I initially thought. But what can he actually do about it?” she says, concern furrowing her forehead.
    “He’s got to do something,” I reply. “The only reason he’s not fighting to keep her is that he has this misguided view that she’s better off without him. Which may, in fact, be true. But he has a right to know that she’s suffering as much as he is.”
    We leave my studio and zigzag down a labyrinth of cobblestone streets, past medieval wooden beam-and-plaster buildings that are so old that they’re leaning. Charlotte slips her arm through mine and we walk companionably toward the river.
    “Where do you think he could be?” Charlotte asks me after moments of silence. I know automatically who she’s referring to.
    “I think Charles is here. In Paris. Hiding out. Needing some time to himself.”
    Charlotte nods. “I wish he had never met Madeleine,” she mutters. “But he hasn’t fallen in love since her, and it’s been sixty years. I know it’s stupid to think there’s only one right boy or girl out there for each of us, but doesn’t it seem . . .” She trails off, leaving her question unasked.
    “You still love Ambrose,” I say, knowing the answer.
    Charlotte bites her lip. Her emerald-green eyes match the topiary labyrinths in the Hôtel de Sens’s garden. As we pass, Charlotte looks out over the medieval palace’s manicured hedges, and sighs.
    “Have you ever been in love, Jules? I mean, I know you haven’t since I met you. But was there someone before?”
    I shake my head. “No,” I say. And as I say it, Kate’s face comes to mind—her beautiful rose-petal pale skin and deep-as-lakes aquamarine eyes. I push the image from my mind and reach over to ruffle Charlotte’s cropped blond hair, then put my arm around her shoulder for a side hug. “No, Char, I’ve never been in love.”
    Vincent opens his bedroom door, and Charlotte pauses before carefully wrapping her arms around his neck and giving him a supportive hug. “Vincent, you can’t hole up in your room like this. You have to eat. You look awful.”
    She’s right. Vincent’s face is drawn. He looks haggard. In the last two weeks he has lost weight, and there are dark circles under his eyes.
    “Vincent, we have something to tell you,” Charlotte says, and recounts the conversation she overheard.
    The change in Vincent is immediate. It’s like touching a lit match to a pool of kerosene—life flares back up in him and he becomes a man with a mission. “She needs me,” is all he says, and that’s it. He goes to Gaspard and asks for help, urging him to dig up every possible recorded incident of human-bardia relationships from the older revenant’s extensive archives. Vincent’s determined to find a solution. A way to make things work. Since Kate can’t stand to see him die, they decide to explore the most obvious solution: Vincent must find a way to resist dying.
    “What can I do to help?” I ask Vincent.
    “Help me make sure she’s safe,” he replies. I have a talk with Ambrose and Charlotte, and we agree that whoever is out walking will pass by her grandparents’ building, or make sure they’re near the rue du