Read I Should Die for Free Online Page A

shook his head in despair. “Gonna get you a cell phone holder that I can chain to your wrist. Vincent would kill me if he knew I let you anywhere near Violette.”
    “Um . . . Vincent knows,” I said.
    “What?” everyone exclaimed at once, except for Bran, who asked, “Who is Vincent?”
    “The one I talked to you about on the phone last week,” I replied.
    “The one suspected of being the Victor?” he asked.
    I nodded, and then said to the others, “He talked to me when we were standing outside Bran’s cellar door.”
    “What did he say?” Arthur asked, making a sharp turn to avoid a red light.
    “He said he was bound to Violette. And that she had come looking for Bran because the power transfer hadn’t worked.”
    “Well, that clears up why the brutes detained me,” Bran said. “Although after killing my mother, I don’t see why they’d expect me to volunteer to help them.”
    “Um, I’m guessing that’s the reason they beat you up,” Georgia pointed out helpfully. “The whole point of coercion is that it doesn’t require volunteers.”
    “Regardless, they would never have gotten it out of me,” Bran insisted stubbornly, and then wincing from some unseen injury, laid his head back on the seat and closed his eyes.
    “Good man.” Ambrose leaned over the seat and patted Bran reassuringly on the knee before turning to Arthur. “Dude, can’t you drive this thing any faster?” he urged in a low voice. “Skeletor back there is fading fast.”
    I watched Bran for a moment, wanting to ask him about Vincent—to see if he knew anything about disembodied spirits. His mother had mentioned family records when I had asked her to help Vincent resist dying. She had told me her line of healers knew some of the revenants’ secrets, and she would check their accounts to see if she could help us. I wondered if Bran knew everything his mother had. But seeing his exhaustion and battered face, I knew this wasn’t the time to ask.
    In a record ten minutes we were entering the gate at La Maison, where a welcoming committee waited by the front door. Jean-Baptiste and Gaspard stood on either side of a concerned-looking Jeanne, who made a rush for the car as we pulled up.
    Georgia and I helped shift Bran out, then followed as Arthur and Ambrose supported him, his arms propped around their shoulders. They got him to the front door, where Jean-Baptiste waited. “I’ll be fine,” Bran reassured his bodyguards, and they carefully set him down as he extended a shaking hand toward JB.
    “ Bonjour ,” he began, but as his fingers touched the revenant leader’s hand, a bright light, like a camera flash, exploded between them, causing everyone around to shield their faces. I blinked several times before the spots began clearing from my vision, and saw that Bran had gone stiff. He let out a deep moan, his head fell forward, and he sank unconscious to the ground.
    “Are you okay?” Gaspard yelped, rushing to JB’s side. The revenant leader blinked a few times and shook his arm out experimentally.
    “What the hell was—” Georgia began, but was cut off by Jeanne, who had leapt into emergency mode. “Up! Get him up!” she commanded, and Ambrose scooped Bran’s floppy form into his arms. Carrying him to Vincent’s room, he deposited him carefully on the bed. Jeanne was there in an instant, applying cold wet cloths to Bran’s head and wrists. Within seconds his eyelids were fluttering open.
    “Where am I?” he mumbled. Jeanne handed him his glasses, which had fallen when he had. Pulling them on with shaking hands, he peered anxiously at our faces, looking downright startled when he saw me.
    “What is it?” I asked, glancing around to make sure he wasn’t looking at someone else. His astonished look—like he didn’t recognize me after I had spent the last couple of hours scurrying around underground Paris with him—was freaking me out.
    He kept staring for a few seconds, blinking a few times with his