“Don’t say that,” Dante said, his voice low.
“I don’t know how else to make you understand.”
His muscles flexed as he leaned against the desk, a lock of hair falling in front of his face as he lowered his head. “I’m sorry,” he said, as if that explained everything. But all I heard was Good-bye.
“I don’t care if you’re sorry,” I said, trying to stop my words from wavering. “I’ve made my decision, and you can’t change it. I’m a Monitor. I can take care of myself. I’m following this map, with or without you, though I think we’d both be better off together.”
“You might want to listen to her,” Theo said, surprising us both. He drummed his fingers along the bedpost. “First, she has the chest, and thus the map, and thus the power. Second, you’re Undead. How are you going to find all of these points, which we’re supposed to find through our senses, if you have none? Third, Renée is a Monitor. Without her, you won’t be able to tell where the Liberum are until they’re upon you. And, of course, she’ll be safer if we’re around, too, seeing how we’re Monitors and all, and can help protect her.” He began to pace around the room. “Fourth,” he said, raising an eyebrow, “as a former student of St. Clément, she understands the mindset of the Monitors far better than you do. And, of course, if I were to come along, I would understand even more, since I’m the only one among us who has earned a Spade.”
Anya rolled her eyes, but I barely moved. My gaze was trained on Dante, who listened, arms crossed, his face unreadable.
“And fifth,” Theo continued, “even if you do go on your own, you don’t know where in the Netherlands to start. Yes, you could go to a library and research all of the places Descartes had ever been to, but that could take weeks, maybe months. And then, of course, you’ll need to do the same for the next four points, which could take years, if you ever even figure it all out.”
“And how does Renée coming with me change that?” Dante said.
“Because if she doesn’t come,” Theo said, winking at me, “then I don’t, either, and it seems like you need me right now, more than anyone else.”
I tilted my head, curious. What kind of trick did he have up his sleeve this time?
Dante squinted at him. “Enlighten me.”
Theo collapsed onto the bed, pulled a notebook from his coat pocket and began flipping through it nonchalantly, as if he was barely paying attention to us.
I stepped closer. “Is that—?”
Theo looked up, feigning surprise. “What?” he said. “Oh, this old thing?” He swung the cover shut, the beginning of a grin spreading across his face. “It’s just Pruneaux’s notebook.”
“The one he had in his shop?” Anya asked.
“Oui,” he said, pressing his fingers to his chin in his best Pruneaux impression.
“The one with all of his notes on Descartes?” I asked. “The one with all of the places he’d visited written inside?”
“Oui.”
“How did you get it?” I said.
“I nabbed it while the old man was lecturing you. Something about evil forces and creatures lurking in darkness. Anyway, while he was off on his tangent, I figured he wasn’t going to help us, so I had to help myself. I just slipped it off his desk. It was easy.”
I wanted to touch it, to make sure it was real, but Theo held it away from my grasp. “Ah ah ah,” he teased. “It’s mine now.” He turned to Dante. “And it doesn’t go anywhere without all of us.”
“Why do you even want to go?” I asked Theo.
He tilted his head as he studied me. “Do you think you’re the only one who wants a fresh start?”
“A fresh start from what?” I asked, but Theo had already turned away, avoiding my question.
Even though I suspected that Theo was only helping me for his own benefit, I couldn’t help but feel grateful, a sentiment I never thought I’d have toward him.
“There are four tickets,” Anya added. “Monsieur is putting us together for a reason. Maybe he knows something we don’t.”
But Dante’s attention was focused only on me. His body seemed to reach toward me, its cold tendrils wrapping around my arms, coaxing me toward him.
“This is the life that I want,” I said to him. “Let me live it with you to the end.”
His lips parted; they were a pale pink, as though they’d frosted over. He took me in as though he were looking at something that would soon be gone. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to hear you say, and yet now I can’t bear to hear it.”
Choose me, I pleaded with him. Choose me like I chose you.
Dante lowered his head and ran his hands through his hair. “It isn’t a second life that I want,” he said, succumbing to my pleas. “It’s you. You’re the only reason any of this matters.”
“So that means that I’m coming with you?” I said.
Dante bit his lip, as if he didn’t want to let the words out. “I guess it does.”
I wanted to run to him, to wrap my arms around him and bury my face in his hair, but Theo’s voice reminded me that we weren’t alone.
“Seeing as how I’ve held up my side of the deal,” he said, “I think it’s your turn. Show me what was inside the chest.”
Dante slipped his bag off his shoulder and took out the small black box.
Theo’s expression changed when he held it, his anticipation fading to bewilderment. I could see its weight straining to pull away from him as he turned it around in his hand, feeling its heaviness, its unwillingness to be held.
“A box?” he said, tracing the striations in the rock, some smooth to the touch, others uneven like seams. He passed his hand over the top, where the tangle of grains in the rock had formed those same words I saw when I clutched the box: Pour l’Amour Vrai. Theo paused as his hand touched them. “For true love,” he said, translating the inscription. He looked between Dante and me. “How romantic.”
“It doesn’t feel that way,” I said.
“Love can come in a lot of different forms,” Anya said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean romantic love. You can love a friend purely. A family member...a parent.” She paused. “A mother—”
“I know,” Theo said bluntly, as though he had been thinking the same thing. He searched the box for an opening. Theo dug his nails into the grooves in the stone, to no avail. “So what’s inside?” he said. “A love letter?”
“We haven’t figured out how to open it,” I admitted.
Theo gripped the top and bottom and twisted, attempting to unscrew it. When that didn’t work, he tried to pry it open from one of the seams with his nails.
“We tried that,” I said. “It doesn’t work.”
Theo leaned against the bedpost, stumped. He held it up to his ear. “It feels so heavy,” he said. “And yet—”
“It sounds hollow, like a vast empty space,” Dante said, completing his thought. “Odd, isn’t it?”
Theo lowered it from his ear. “Yes.”
Anya twirled a lock of hair around her lips, her gaze fearful but curious as she watched him handle the box. “Let me look at it,” she said.
Theo tightened his grip around the box.
“Give it to me,” Anya said, an edge of concern in her voice.
Theo quickly released it, letting it drop into her hand.
She held it lightly, rotating it with her fingers, as though she wanted to minimize the amount of her skin that touched it. When her hands passed over the lid, she paused, as though she, too, could see letters forming in the stone. Their words seemed to startle her, but she hid her surprise. She quickly set the box down on the side table by Dante and backed away from it.
“What if there isn’t anything inside?” she said, eyeing it with suspicion.
Theo snorted. “Why would anyone hide a box without putting anything inside it?”
Anya didn’t share his humor. “Who knows,” she said. “It’s possible that it isn’t even a box.”
A silence fell over the room.
“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see,” Dante said, and slipped it back into his bag.
Theo stood up and zipped his coat. “I guess so,” he said. “Well, I’m out for the day.”
“Where are you going?” I asked.
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Oh, here and there. I have some business to attend to. Our train doesn’t leave until tomorrow. Which means we have the entire night to kill. I’ll see you squares back here later tonight.”
“What kind of business could he possibly have tonight?” I asked as he left the room.
“I actually have something to do, too,” Anya said.
“What?” I said with a laugh. “But we only just got here. How could you...?” my voice trailed off when I realized she was serious. “Where are you going?”
She bit at her chipping nail polish. “I just have some errands to run,” she said vaguely. “I’ll see you guys later tonight.” Before Dante or I could ask her anything more, she left.
“What was that about?” Dante asked.
I pushed back the curtains of the window. “I don’t know.”
Her hair blew in front of her face as she stepped out of the lobby into the street below us. She peered at the buildings around her to make sure no one was watching, then turned right and stole down the sidewalk until she was nothing but a flounce of red hair melting into the dusk. For a moment, I wanted to be her. I had almost forgotten what it felt like to do whatever I wanted, to pick up and go anywhere I pleased without worrying that anyone was following me. Paris was sprawled out in front of us, waiting to be discovered, yet Dante and I were imprisoned in this dirty hotel.
Outside I heard a bottle smash against the ground. A drunk man shouted a slurry of words to no one, then kicked a garbage can. It was strange to think that this part of the city was the safest place for us, but it was. The cemetery behind the church, the catacombs beneath us—all of the long-dead people were now drowning out Dante’s presence. The moment we left the area, the Monitors would be able to sense us. We couldn’t wander the city or see the Eiffel Tower at night. We couldn’t eat at a fancy restaurant or sit at a café, sharing a buttery pastry. Dante couldn’t even eat. Being confined here, forced to embrace the death that surrounded us, made me feel like we were already doomed.
Dante slid his hand down the back of my neck. “Come on,” he said softly, as if he could read my thoughts. “Let’s go out.”
“How?” I said.
His eyes glimmered. “The catacombs.”
The sun was setting. A light snow fell over the city, but I couldn’t enjoy it. Every time I looked up at the buildings, I swore I could see the glimmer of eyes watching us through the dusk. We snuck beneath the awnings, avoiding the streetlights as we crept from alley to alley. I led the way. I didn’t know where the catacombs were, I only knew what I could feel: the dead lurking all around us, beneath us. Were they watching us now? As we approached an intersection, I thought I saw a gargoyle move, but when I looked again, it was still.
I shook my head, laughing at myself, and was about to cross the street when Dante clamped his hand over my mouth and whisked me into a dark alley. I gasped, but his arms tightened around me, muffling the sound. A maze of fire escapes zigzagged above us.
“Shh,” he whispered in my ear and peered out at the sliver of street. I fell quiet. A lone streetlamp cast a cone of yellow over the sidewalk. A shadow stretched into it, followed by another, then another.
Three men walked through the light, all dressed in somber gray overcoats and caps, which shrouded their faces from the snow. I didn’t dare move. Were they Monitors of the High Court, or just a group of men going to the opera? The tallest one turned. Beneath his cap, I could make out the heavy wrinkles in his cheeks that could only have belonged to a man close to death. He walked with a cane. Or was it a Spade? I couldn’t tell. Something caught the street light beneath his hand. The metal end of a shovel, hidden from view, perhaps. Or was it nothing more than a cuff link?
Dante inched deeper into the alley, pulling me with him. No, I wanted to whisper to him. Movement would give us away. I gripped his arm to stop him, but not quickly enough. The smallest of the three men glanced over his shoulder, and while the others continued down the street, he paused, his eyes lingering on the alley.
A stray pigeon cooed behind us. I begged it to be silent. I tried to catch a glimpse of the small man’s eyes, but as he stepped outside of the dim light from the streetlamp they were reduced to nothing but dark sockets. Even his skin dissolved into the night. I squinted into the shadows, trying to make out the silhouette of his face beneath his cap, but it vanished, in its place nothing but darkness. The pavement crunched beneath his feet.
I felt Dante’s chest against my back, his irregular heartbeat so loud that I was certain the Monitor could hear it, too. This couldn’t be how it ended. I closed my eyes and willed blood to pulse stronger through my veins, to make up for his lack of life, but the sound of the Monitor’s footsteps only got closer.
Then I heard a gasp. It was so soft that the wind swallowed it almost immediately. I opened my eyes, surprised. That voice—it didn’t sound like it belonged to a man.
The Monitor had stopped walking and stood only a few feet away. He slipped off his cap, revealing a head of short black hair, combed to one side and pinned with a barrette; a sliver of skin, dark and buttery; and a pair of sharp eyes, their whites shining through the darkness. He wasn’t a man at all, but a girl. Clementine LaGuerre.
She looked at me, then at Dante, her eyes widening with intrigue as she realized what she had discovered. Suddenly, I felt like I was standing in the hallway of my dormitory from last fall, caught doing something illicit with a boy in the middle of the night. Except we weren’t at school anymore. She didn’t have her friends standing behind her, only the two Monitors of the High Court loitering on the street in the distance. And instead of spitting an insult at me—a public embarrassment that would fade over time—with one word, she could bury us.
She parted her lips as if she were going to call out to the others. Unable to help myself, I sprang forward. I didn’t know what I planned to do, only that I had to stop her, but Dante held me back. He was right. The Monitors behind her were too close; they would hear a scuffle, or if they didn’t, they would quickly notice she was gone.
Clementine’s face sharpened. Don’t test me, she seemed to say. I saw the ambition flash through her face. If she told them we were here, she would get the credit. She’d be honored by the High Court, and would probably get her Spade soon after, not to mention that she’d be getting rid of the only Monitor her age who had ranked higher than she had. Me.
I knew all of those things because despite our history, we weren’t that different. She had a natural talent for Monitoring, one of the best in our school’s history, until I came around. We had both liked the same boy, Noah, and I could tell from the heaviness in her shoulders that she mourned his death just as much as I did. We both wanted, more than anything, for other people to stay out of our business. And, most important, we were both—by instinct and by trade—killers. We were drawn to the Undead by a single urge: to bury them. If Dante and all of the other Undead were dangerous, then we were no better.
I tried to communicate all of that to her while we stood locked in the alley, the snow collecting on our shoulders. Please, my eyes begged. We are more similar than different.
That’s when I felt a lick of cold against my legs. At first I thought it was the wind, a gust of snow wrapping itself around me. But when the breeze died down, the wisp of air was still there, coiling itself around my ankles, willing me to follow it. Undead, dozens of them, stealing through the night.
Clementine must have felt them, too, because she glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the vacancy. One of the Monitors shouted to her. Clementine’s eyes lingered on me, still deciding if she should tell the others.
Please, I begged her.
She curled her fingers as if something w
as prickling them. I knew that sensation. Dante’s presence was coiling itself around her, pulling her closer. She clenched her fists, forcing the sensation away. “I’ll be right there, Dad,” she said, her voice cool, controlled.
I followed the direction of their voices to the dimly lit street, realizing that her father, John LaGuerre, the jovial headmaster of St. Clément, was standing just beyond the buildings.
“I found you,” she whispered, a teasing smile spreading across her face. “In this round, you lose. Lucky for you, I want to see where this game goes.” She slipped her cap back on. “Go,” she mouthed and slinked back through the alley, disappearing around the corner.
It wasn’t until Dante wrapped his hand around mine that I realized I was shaking. I curled my fingers around his. We were still here. Though next time, Clementine might not be so forgiving.
Dante gazed down at me, the reflection of the streetlamp in the distance making his eyes glow a pale white. He pulled me back to the side of the building, where he leaned toward me, pressing me against the brick. I felt the cold metal against my neck, the damp railing pressing into my skin. His shadow enveloped me. His fingers felt like icicles as they crept beneath my coat, counting the vertebrae of my back. I trembled, feeling everything within me begin to unravel. His hollowness wrapped itself around me in frigid tendrils. He buried his hands in my hair and pulled me closer, his cool breath tickling my throat until I couldn’t tell the difference between him and a gust of winter wind.
Then his lips grazed mine. Too close. They drew the breath from me, making it twist up my throat in a thin wisp of air. I pressed my lips shut before it could escape, and pushed him away, his body stiffening as he realized how close he had let his mouth come to mine. Had it been an accident, or was he losing control? I searched his eyes for an answer. They were dulling with age, a hint of gray creeping over his dark irises like clouds obscuring the night sky.
He pressed his hands to his lips, realizing what he had almost done. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, the words curling around me like an icy strand of air. “I would never...” But he let his voice trail off, as if he wasn’t sure anymore if it was true. I felt my heart skip. Or was it his? I could no longer tell where his life ended and mine began, and suddenly the space between life and death seemed impossibly small. A cold hand. An irregular heartbeat. A pair of cloudy eyes.