His eyes lit up as he gazed between us. “But now we know. Don’t you see? The shape of a bird? The five points? It’s just like the markings on your chest.”
I felt my heart stammer as I lifted the lid of the chest just enough for the light to catch the five points engraved inside, each surrounded by strange swirls and shapes, forming a dramatic and foreign landscape. The Cartesian Map. Could it be?
“But Descartes didn’t hide this chest,” I said, remembering the trail of riddles I’d followed in Montreal that had led me to the chest, which was at the bottom of the lake at Gottfried Academy. Riddles that sounded oddly similar to Descartes’s final words. “It belonged to the Nine Sisters. And they were going to destroy it, if the ninth sister, Ophelia Hart, hadn’t betrayed them and hid it for someone to find.”
“The Nine Sisters supposedly found the secret to eternal life,” Theo said. “Right?”
I nodded.
“What if they decoded Descartes’s riddle and found the Netherworld? After they were murdered, the last remaining sister, Ophelia, carved it on the inside of a chest. She could even still be alive.”
The Cartesian Map was their secret. As I traced the engravings on the inner lid, I felt Dante’s breath on the back of my neck, cool and thin. I walked my fingers through the strange landscape etched into the metal. The sweeping lines and symbols that marked the path made me shudder. They didn’t look like they belonged to this world.
“So what was inside the chest?” Theo said.
My eyes flitted to Dante’s.
“Nothing,” Dante said.
Theo gave him a curious look. “It seems awfully strange that the ninth sister would have etched the map into a chest, of all things, without wanting to put anything inside with it.”
“Does your legend say there’s supposed to be something included with the map?” Dante countered.
Theo’s gaze drifted to Dante’s bag. “No,” he said thoughtfully. “It doesn’t.”
Anya broke the silence that followed. “So what exactly does Paris have to do with all of this?”
Theo pursed his lips, a silent acknowledgement that if we were going to keep our secrets, he was going to keep his, too. “I’ll show you once we get there.”
“We?” I said. “Who says you’re invited?”
“I do,” Dante said, surprising all of us. “Under the condition that once we get there, you’ll show us what you know. In exchange, I’ll show you what was inside the chest.”
A crooked grin split across Theo’s face. “Deal.”
We landed in Paris at night, its skyline covered in a swirling winter flurry like a city enclosed in a snow globe. While Theo hailed a taxi, I stood on the curb with Dante and gazed out at the rooftops in the distance—the city so bright that it set the horizon aglow, as if dawn were approaching. I was about to turn around when I felt a wisp of cold air tickle my neck. I froze.
“Do you feel that?” I said.
“What?” said Dante.
“The Undead,” I said, and looked to Anya and Theo to see if they had sensed it. They followed my gaze toward the dark field that flanked the airport.
“I don’t feel anything,” Anya said after a moment.
“Me neither,” said Theo. “Probably just a draft.”
“Yeah,” I said, as Dante picked up my bag. “It must have been in my head.”
I tried to shake the feeling as we squeezed into a tiny taxi, Theo in the front, Anya, Dante, and I in the back, the aroma of vanilla and sweet tobacco clinging to the seats. It was exactly what I had imagined Paris to smell like. Tinny Christmas music played from the radio.
Theo leaned toward us over the passenger’s seat. “So where are we going?”
I stiffened. Wasn’t he supposed to know?
“This was your side of the deal,” Dante said, his voice losing its warmth. “I think you’d better figure out quickly what exactly we’re doing here, because if turns out you lied to me, I’m not going to be generous.” His tone was so callous that it sent a chill through the car.
“Relax,” Theo said, swallowing. “I was just joking. Of course I know where we’re going. But it’s closed now. We have to wait until morning.”
My stomach sank as I realized that even though I didn’t believe him, I wanted to, for without Theo, we were already lost.
Dante ignored him and spoke directly to the driver. “Pourriez-vous nous amener—” he began to say. I was so used to hearing him speak Latin that I didn’t realize the deep voice belonged to Dante until Theo interrupted him, giving the driver conflicting directions.
“Menez-nous à la rue Chartreuse, s’il vous plaît,” he said, in an immaculate accent.
The driver shot Dante an impatient glance in the rearview mirror.
Theo turned to Dante. “I’m not lying to you, okay? So let me do the talking.”
After a moment, Dante nodded.
As we pulled away from the curb, I turned and cast one last glance at the darkened field by the airport. Had the sensation just been a chill? I focused on the field, searching for that cool wisp again, and I thought I noticed headlights blink on in the distance, pull away from the curb, and drive after us. Was it just another taxi? I watched the lights bob behind us until we turned onto a highway, where they got lost in the sea of cars zipping around us.
We drove in circles, whizzing through roads crowded with tiny European cars that looked like toys, down winding streets lined with cafés, and finally through cobblestoned alleys crowded with pigeons, our car splashing through slushy puddles. Every so often I gazed over my shoulder, unable to shake the feeling that we were being followed.
“What are you looking at?” Anya asked as I studied a car behind us, its driver nothing more than a dark silhouette beneath a hat. But before I could point him out, he turned down a side street. I must have been seeing things.
“Just the city,” I said.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Anya said.
I realized then how long it had been since I had taken a moment to admire the beauty around me. “I suppose it is.”
We turned down an alley off the main road. There, the streetlamps looked dimmer, the buildings run-down and dark. A shudder passed through the car. The air suddenly felt colder, the strands grasping at my neck as though we were driving past a cemetery. But there was none in sight.
“What is that?” Anya said to me.
Death. It enveloped the street, seeping up from the ground, down from the buildings, in through the alleyways. There had to be a tomb nearby. A church, a graveyard—something.
We pulled up in front of a crumbling hotel, its facade streaked with water stains. I immediately didn’t like it—the cracked windows, the blown bulb in one of the decorative lamps out front, the rat scurrying in front of the door. Death reached out from its walls in long, cold tendrils.
Theo leaned into the backseat. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I know this place. The owner owes me a favor. And the bad sensation you’re feeling? That is what’s going to muffle our presence,” he said, looking pointedly at Dante.
“Where did you get that?” Anya asked, as Theo took out a wad of euros from his pocket and counted out a few bills for the driver.
“Merci,” Theo said, and opened the door. Once we were outside, he explained. “I nabbed it from the woman standing in front of us in the customs line.”
“You stole it?” Anya said, but I only rolled my eyes. I had warned them about what Theo was like, and they chose not to listen.
“How else were we going to pay for the cab?” Theo asked with a shrug, and without waiting for an answer he picked up his bag and walked into the hotel. It was a musty old place that might have looked decent decades ago but had since fallen into disrepair. A few sagging couches lined the lobby. Anya collapsed onto one of them and fiddled with the chess table beside her, a half-finished game abandoned on top.
Theo and the rest of us approached the front desk and rang a small bell. An attendant in a red unifo
rm appeared from the back room. “Bonsoir,” he said. “Comment puis-je vous aider?”
Theo began to tell him that he knew the owner and needed a last-minute room. The attendant asked for his name.
“Theodore Healy,” he said.
The attendant squinted at him, then removed an envelope from beneath the desk and handed it to him.
Surprised, Theo opened it. I could just make out Monsieur’s familiar handwriting. He skimmed the words, the smile fading from his face.
“What is it?” Anya asked from the couch, but Theo looked too stunned to answer.
The hotel attendant called out to us, and asked if we wanted our luggage taken upstairs.
Theo barely registered the question. Instead, his eyes darted to the window as though he were suddenly aware of someone watching us. Dante slipped the note from Theo, who didn’t seem to care.
After reading it, Dante folded it up and turned to the attendant. “Pardonnez-nous pour un moment,” he said, his voice calm, and nodded to us. “Let’s go,” he said under his breath, and led Theo and the rest of us toward the door.
“What was that about?” Anya asked.
“Act normal,” Dante said. “We have to leave.” As we stepped into the night, he handed me the note. I read it, Anya’s chin perched on my shoulder.
They are on their way. They know you are coming here. Do not let them find you.
Monsieur
The cold bit at my cheeks as I lowered the page. Dante stood beside me beneath the awning of the hotel, his face barely visible in the shadows.
“Who is he talking about?” I asked. “The Monitors or the Undead?”
Dante ripped the note to shreds and threw it in the waste bin. “We’ll find out soon enough.”
He led us across the street, stealing through the darkness toward a run-down boarding house, where he asked for a room overlooking the street. The attendant grunted in response and disappeared behind the counter to produce two rusty keys. Our room was cramped, the air smelling faintly of an ashtray. Two metal bunk beds stood against either wall. The neon sign outside flickered, casting a red glow over the floor.
Our window overlooked the hotel we had just come from, a pair of decorative lamps flanking the door, one bulb blown, the other flickering, threatening to go dark. We took turns sitting on the sill, waiting for whoever was looking for us to come and collect. But the hours wore on, and save for the occasional passing car, the street remained still. Then it was my turn.
Dante sat beside me in the dim light, sketching in a pad while his eyes shifted between two things: the map on the inner lid of the chest, and me. Behind us, Theo sat sideways on an armchair, his legs slung over the armrest while he whittled away at a bit of wood. Anya sat on the floor, nervously shuffling a deck of tarot cards. I heard her murmur to herself while she laid them out on the floorboards and practiced reading them.
Dante studied me in between strokes of his pencil, sketching my face on the page in his long scrawl. I watched as he drew me, the blunt lines slowly forming my eyes, my hair, my lips. I looked sad, I realized. Older. Without looking up from his work, Dante touched my hand, his cold fingertips tickling mine, as if we were just a normal couple waiting for the sun to rise over Paris. I tried to hold that image in my head when I heard Anya sigh.
Blowing the wood shavings off his pants, Theo leaned toward her. “What are you doing?”
Anya furrowed her brow as she studied the cards laid out before her. “I’m perfecting my tarot readings.”
“Tarot?” Theo said. “What, like palm reading or something?”
“No,” said Anya. “It’s a lot more precise than that. The cards can tell us what lies behind us, what lies directly in front of us that we may not be able to see, and what lies ahead of us. It depicts one version our lives can take.”
Theo swung his legs to the front of the chair, suddenly interested. “One version? What do you mean?”
“All of our possible futures are imprinted on our souls,” Anya said. “They change depending on the choices we make. When done correctly, a reading of the tarot cards is supposed to reveal the path your life will take based on the state of your soul at this very moment. But what the cards tell you isn’t written in stone. The future isn’t fixed; it can always be changed, but that requires a choice.” She fanned the cards out over the table until they formed the shape of a crescent. “It’s all here,” she whispered, staring at them. “Waiting to be turned over.”
“How do you know they work?” Theo said.
“Before I came here, I had a reading of my own. They told me I was going to go on a journey that would change my life forever. The next morning I received the note from Monsieur.”
“Really?” Theo said. “All right, let’s give it a go.”
Anya eyes brightened.
“It can’t hurt, right?”
Anya looked like she was about to disagree, but then changed her mind. “I suppose not,” she said. “Though only the cards can say.” She stacked the deck and held it out to Theo. “Choose a card, and without looking, press it to your forehead.”
Theo leaned back, an amused grin on his face. He chose the card at the bottom of the deck and held it to his head. It was upside down, and decorated with an elaborate illustration of a robed man holding a divining rod over a cup. The Magician it read.
Theo glanced at each of us, trying to make out from our reactions what it read. But Anya barely blinked. “Good,” she said. “Without looking, place the card back into the deck and shuffle it.”
The cards fluttered together.
“Cut the deck three times.”
After he was finished, Anya stacked them back together and sat up straight. “I’m going to lay out your cards in a lifeline. They will move from past to present to future. Okay?”
“Got it.”
Starting with the top of the deck, she placed the first card onto the table with a satisfying slap. To everyone’s surprise but Theo’s, it was the same card he had pressed to his forehead just moments before. It was even upside down. The Magician.
“This card represents who you are,” she said. She traced the edge of it. “The Magician is very talented, but doesn’t make use of his skills. He has a difficult time making choices, and for that reason he often backs away from challenges instead of making a hard decision. He isn’t trustworthy.”
Theo let out an uncomfortable laugh. “Are you calling me a coward?”
Anya pursed her lips. “I’m not calling you anything,” she said. “I’m reading the deck.”
She flipped the next card, revealing an image of a white fist holding a leafy torch. Ace of Wands, it read. “You were a young talent,” she said. “A prodigy. You had a brilliant start to your career. Everyone thought you were going to shine.”
She turned over the next card. Two of Swords, upside down. It depicted a woman sitting on a beach, her eyes closed. She held a sword over either shoulder, each facing opposite directions. They looked strangely similar to Spades. “But you were deceived. You didn’t realize it at the time, but someone was playing a trick on you. They tried to use you for something else.”
Theo seemed to hold his breath when he saw the next card. It was a dark image. At its center lay a man stuck with dozens of swords. Ten of Swords. “A death occurred. Perhaps it was an accident.”
The color drained from Theo’s face.
Anya frowned. “Or murder? The cards do not say.”
Theo relaxed a little, as if the ambiguity relieved him. Anya flipped over the next card. It depicted an old man in a tattered cloak. He faced the distance, which looked gray and bleak. The Hermit. “You were cast out.”
Theo averted his eyes. Anya continued, laying down a card with an image of a beautiful woman, her long hair flowing down her shoulders. The High Priestess. “You will meet a girl and fall in love.”
Theo’s cheeks blushed ever so slightly, but he quickly laughed it off. “Right, well, she’s not my type,” he said, nodding to the woman on
the card. “I hope the cards take that into account.”
Anya didn’t respond. She laid out the last card. The Knight of Swords. A valiant man riding a horse, wielding his sword fearlessly in front of him. Anya passed her hand over the cards, her eyes darting down the line as she took them all in. “You have a choice ahead of you. You will leave your path and walk on another. You will have to choose to return or go back. The lives of those around you will be sealed with your decision.”
Theo gazed at the cards without saying anything. Finally, he let out a laugh. “You’re some sort of witch.”
Anya studied him with curiosity. “Thank you.”
Theo looked to Dante. “His turn.”
But before Dante could respond, through the curtains I saw something move. I pushed them back just in time to see the shadows on the street shift. Everything inside me tensed. Dante must have noticed because the scratching of his pencil stopped. “What do you see?” he whispered. I didn’t dare turn around lest I miss it. Dante turned off the lamp behind us, leaving us under the cover of darkness.
I leaned closer, watching a shadow shift in the alley. The night seemed to unfold in its wake. One by one, a wave of figures emerged from the darkness, each wearing a long gray overcoat and a gray suit. The only flashes of color among them were their crimson scarves, tucked into the lapels of their coats. They walked quickly, each carrying what looked like a long staff. I could only catch glimpses of their faces. A hooked chin; an old sunken cheek; a bit of gray beard; a pair of lips, thin and elegant; a wisp of long white hair.