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Lawrence and it’s Iroquois. Did you know that?”
    Mom nods.
    “Well, it makes it relevant. It will add to the local flavor of our music. It will bring in diversity.”
    “You should bring in your French roots too, Aude.” Mom pronounces my name properly to emphasize her point.
    I shrug. “Maybe, but French is kind of overdone. Not original.”
    “Well, you’re the music genius. I’m just trying to keep up with you.” She laughs. “Your music makes me happy, especially since I can’t even carry a tune.”
    I laugh at her. A music genius. Wow. She’s full of it. But I wonder where I get my talent from. Is it all me, or is my father musical? I don’t wonder about him very often, just at times like this when I feel I’m missing answers.
    Mom sits up but doesn’t look at me. She appears thoughtful as she stares out my small, frost-covered window. I wonder if she’s thinking about the same thing I am, and then hope she isn’t. As curious as I am, I’ve gone through too much tonight to add this conversation to the list.
    “I think you should do the chanting, Aude. In Mohawk and in French.”
    Mohawk, or Kanien’kéha, as they call it, is the language of the Iroquois nation I was just talking about. I know this because I’ve been researching, but I’m surprised that it seems such common knowledge to Mom.
    “I don’t know if the chanting will work,” I insist. I can’t explain my train of thought. It’s no longer about being strong, I can’t tell her about the attacks because I just can’t face the worry it will bring her.
    Mom notices that I am lost in thought and stands up. “I’ll leave you to it. I think I’m going to call it a night.”
    “Yeah, me too. Night, Mom.”
    “Night, Odd.” She leaves my bedroom, closing the door behind her.
    I get ready for bed and lie there for a while replaying the incident over and over again. Each time remembering things a little differently. Surely, birds didn’t fall to their death all around me. The men’s attack should have shaken me the most, but my hallucinations have shaken me way worse. And then there was the guy on the metro …

5
    Guillaume
    It was late by the time I walked home from the Odd girl’s house. The people who’d lingered until the bars’ and nightclubs’ closing times streamed into the streets. The city called to me. We needed to be reacquainted. Ste-Catherine looked almost alien in parts, yet comfortingly familiar in others, and I tried to reconcile what I saw to what I knew. In some areas, I had to rely on street signs to orient myself, yet other places had not changed in a century.
    Our old home was right next to the tower where we went dormant. The caricatured gargoyle statues on the facade made me snicker as I walked by. I remembered how they ended up there.
    I found Vincent in the back of the apartment building. He sat on the ground, his back against the stone wall, concealed by the shadows of balconies above.
    “Where are the others?” I asked.
    “Antoine is trying to sort out our living arrangements. He insists we have to remain at Le Chateau—you know the creature of habit he is. I think he would have been happy to remain watching … ”
    “And you? How do you feel about this?”
    He shrugged, and then let his small shoulders back against the cold wall. An old cloak covered him and yet he still looked cold. “ I don’t know. I’ve lived my life already; I’m tired. Antoine and I, we’re not like you and Garnier. When the essence comes back, you two just spring up and take things up where you left off. I can’t do that. I don’t know why I would want to do that. What is the point of just a little more borrowed time? We have nothing left. Not even a purpose.”
    Listening to Vincent’s words, it was much easier to imagine him the way I had last seen him, as a mature man who had long passed his prime of life, instead of the eleven-year-old boy who sat in front of me. I leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette.