"Who were they?" Clementine asked.
Turning to the blackboard, she erased all of the p.r.o.nouns scrawled across it. She then picked up a piece of chalk and wrote down the following names in a swirling cursive: Gertrude Fine Marie Champierre Victoria Limon Josephine Klein Prudence Beaufort Hester Olivier Chrisette Longtemp Alma Alphonse "They were a secret society of female Monitors," she said. "A sisterhood." Smoothing out her skirt, Madame Gout went to the door and closed it. "It started in 1728 in Paris, as just a group of friends. Brilliant Monitors, young, incredibly smart, and all husbandless, which was very uncommon at the time. They called themselves Les Neuf Soeurs, after the nine muses in Greek mythology."
"What did they do?" Anya asked.
"It is believed that they were behind most of the early Monitoring advances-Monitoring schools, hospitals, the convent on the ile des Soeurs. But most famously, they were the protectors of a secret."
Everyone grew still, listening.
"A secret? What kind of secret?" Clementine asked.
Madame Gout clasped her hands together. "That"s where the facts end. The rest we can only guess at. The prevailing rumor is that they had discovered the secret to eternal life."
My pencil slipped from my fingers and dropped to the floor. I felt Clementine"s eyes on me, watching my reaction. I tried to hide my surprise.
Madame Gout continued. "It has long been speculated that since children can defy death for twenty-one years, there might be a possibility that adults could defy death indefinitely. The myth of immortality has powerful allure."
Immortality. The word floated around my mind like a feather. This is it, I thought. This is the solution that Dante and I have been looking for.
"As the story goes, once Les Neuf Soeurs found the secret to eternal life, they decided they could never use it. They were frightened by the power they held. Eternal life is perverse, unnatural. A world without death is even more frightening than a world with death. The beauty, the magic, the ephemere...it would all be lost. So before they died, the Soeurs supposedly made a pact to let their secret die with them."
The room went so still I could hear the footsteps of the professor in the cla.s.sroom across the hall as he paced.
"So that"s it?" Clementine said. "The secret is gone?"
The professor tapped her finger on the table. "Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe the secret was never about immortality to begin with; maybe it was about a family heirloom or a dirty rumor. It all depends on what you want to believe."
"I don"t understand," I said, raising my voice over the sputtering heater. "If Les Neuf Soeurs was a secret society, then how do you know so much about them? Or is it all made up?"
Madame Gout raised an eyebrow, as if she had antic.i.p.ated my question. "Oh, but it"s not. At first, no one knew anything about them." She stood behind her chair and leaned on its back. "Until they died."
"What do you mean?" Anya asked.
Madame Gout"s expression grew solemn. "They were killed. Each found murdered at home in France in 1732. That was how their ident.i.ties were discovered."
Madame Gout motioned to the list of names on the blackboard as a murmur rose over the cla.s.s.
There was a long pause as we read the names on the board.
"There are only eight names here," I said, breaking the silence. "Who was the ninth sister?"
"Ah, yes. The ninth sister. I told you that each of the Soeurs was killed at her home. Well, only eight bodies were found."
"What happened to the ninth?" Clementine asked.
"No one knows. Some believe she died. Others believe that she used the secret and is still alive, guarding it from evil."
Madame Gout paused. The hands on the clock above her crept toward noon.
"Who was she?" I asked.
"No one has been able to confirm her name or anything about her ident.i.ty. Other than this." Madame Gout"s heels clicked against the floor as she walked to her desk and removed a heavy book from the lower drawer. Flipping through it, she opened to a painting and pa.s.sed the book around the table.
"This is the only painting we have of the Sisters. Many believe this was painted just days before their deaths. It is very famous; you will find it in all of the books about Les Neuf Soeurs."
When it came to me, I traced my finger across each of the Soeurs, their black eyes boring through the page as they stood in a parlor, each wearing a plain housedress. They were of varying ages, some in their twenties, others not much older than me. On the far left was a girl with wild brown hair and narrow eyes. She looked the youngest. Half of her face was obscured in shadows. Perched on her arm was a yellow bird.
"The girl on the left," Madame Gout said. "That is the ninth sister. The lost sister. Many Monitors searched for her, but all they knew was what half of her face looked like, from the portrait. But after years of nothing, everyone a.s.sumed her dead."
"Who did it?" Anya asked. "Who murdered them?"
"I will leave that to Monsieur Orneaux to explain. I believe it"s his area of expertise. Latin is, after all, the language of the Undead." Leaning over her book, she turned the page. "Now, back to francaise."
"The Undead?" I said. "They were killed by the Undead?"
"Ah, ah, ah," Madame Gout said, raising her index finger. "I never said that."
"How come no one ever tried to look for the secret?" Clementine asked.
"Oh, but of course they have. It"s one of the most controversial stories in Monitoring history. Many Monitors have lost years of their lives searching for La Vie eternel, or Life Eternal, as many of us call their secret. It is the Monitors" version of the lost city of Atlantis. The Holy Grail. The fountain of youth." Madame Gout shook her head. "And you"ve seen how many of those have turned out to be true."
The cla.s.s erupted in whispers.
"Quiet, please," she said, rapping her knuckles on the table. "That"s enough futilites for today."
As she continued her lecture on p.r.o.nouns and gender, I thought back to the plane ride with Dustin, when I had blurted out the word canary. Could that have had something to do with the Nine Sisters?
That evening in the dining hall, I was pouring myself a gla.s.s of milk when a voice tickled my ear. Caught off guard, I nearly dropped the carton on the floor.
"You seemed awfully interested in the Nine Sisters today," Clementine said over my shoulder. "What I"m wondering is why someone who supposedly already defied death is so intrigued by talk of the secret to immortality."
"What do you want me to say? That I"m just a normal person and all the rumors are a lie?" I said, keeping my chin up as I walked to the condiments section.
Clementine followed me. "No. See, I don"t think you"re normal, either."
"You don"t know anything about me," I said, and shrugged her off as I walked toward the table in the corner where Anya was sitting.
"I know you have a secret," Clementine said as I left her behind. "And I"m going to find where you buried it and dig it up."
When I got back to my room after dinner, it was so quiet I could hear footsteps coming down the hall, and then the sound of Clementine"s door unlocking. I was setting down my bag when a sudden cold breeze blew in from the windows. I ran to the other side of the room, hoping it was Dante, but of course it wasn"t. Clementine"s words crept into my head. If she ever found out about Dante...I didn"t even want to think about what would happen.
Closing the window, I went to the bathroom and turned on the shower. While I was leaning on the sink, waiting for the water to get hot, I heard someone knock on Clementine"s door. I a.s.sumed it was some of her girlfriends, so it surprised me when I heard a boy"s voice.
"Noah," Clementine said. Her voice sounded different. Soft. Sincere.
Noah? I thought. The same Noah who hit me with a bicycle, who had flirted with me? The Noah who had spilled a bouquet of daffodils all over the street. He had bought them for Clementine?
Pressing myself against the wall, I listened to him whispering to her, to her whispering back. To the sound of a bra strap snapping against skin. To Clementine giggling. To the silence when they kissed.
Closing my eyes, I imagined that it was me in there with Dante, but Noah"s voice kept drowning him out. And for reasons I couldn"t explain, I started crying.
I wasn"t jealous of Clementine; it wasn"t that. Or maybe it was. As I stepped into the shower, gripping the tile, I wished, just for a moment, that I could be her, that Dante could be Noah, and that when I went back to my room, he would be there waiting for me. But I knew I could never have that.
The shower curtain billowed as I reached over my shoulder and, with delicate fingers, touched the indentation on my back. The pain was shrill and shaky, like the high note of a soprano, but I held my finger steady until it calmed to a long, low ache. It was all I had left of him. And in five years, when he died, I wouldn"t even have this, unless I did something now to change my fate. As my hand slipped to my side, I hung my head back, letting the hot water cascade over my body until I couldn"t tell if I was crying anymore, and the bathroom was filled with so much steam that it was hard to breathe.
My room was cold when I shut the bathroom door behind me. Clutching my towel, I went to my desk and pulled my history book off the shelf. I flipped through it until I found the section on Les Neuf Soeurs. The painting Madame Gout had showed us in cla.s.s stared back at me from the page. I studied the shadowy girl with the canary, wondering who she was and what had happened to her. But the text didn"t help. It only mentioned the few facts Madame Gout had already told us, and spent the rest of the chapter talking about their influence on Monitoring culture and society.
Had they really found the secret to immortality? I had to know. And if it existed, I had to find it. But where was I supposed to start? Skipping ahead, I spotted a photograph of a stone carving on the bottom of the page. It was a simple thing-a small bird entwined with what looked like vines -yet still, it was enough to make my chest seize.
My breath grew shallow as I leaned back in my chair, unable to believe what I was seeing: the same bird that had flashed into my mind on the airplane with Dustin. The Canary Crest of the Nine Sisters, the caption read.
My voice cracked. "Impossible."
Switching on my desk lamp, I looked closer, but I was right: it was the same bird I had seen when I"d blurted out the word canary.
Did this mean that the visions I"d been having, the information I"d suddenly known, all had to do with the Nine Sisters?
A crisp swirl of air blew in, turning the pages of my book. But hadn"t I just closed the window? I stood up. The window was indeed still shut, yet the air was streaming in, coiling around my wrists, my arms, my chest, until I let out his name like a breath. "Dante."
Acting on an impulse, I ran to the wall and turned off the light. And standing in the middle of the room, I closed my eyes and took a tiny step to the right, and then an even smaller step to the left, until I could feel the stream of air reaching up my legs.
I threw my towel aside and got dressed as quickly as I could, combing my wet hair with my fingers as I ran down the stairs and out the door. At the school gates, a group of boys were joking around with a security guard.
"Renee," a voice said. It was Brett.
"I-I have to go," I said, and squeezed through them. I disappeared into the winding streets of Montreal.
I didn"t know where I was going; my only guide was the chilly pa.s.sage that connected me to Dante. It was hard to follow. I kept getting distracted by death that I sensed nearby: crowded markets, hospitals, and churches with modest graveyards. I made a left, followed by two rights, but then lost my way. I turned around and retraced my steps, holding my breath until I could feel him.
Eventually I found myself at the far end of the old port, at a fisherman"s wharf. The air was raw and cold, like the inside of a freezer, and filled with sounds of the ocean at night: the chug of the water splashing against the dock, the boats swaying in the marina, their lines clinking against their masts like chimes.
By the pier was a wholesale shack filled with beautiful six-foot-long fish hanging from the ceiling, their scales reflecting the fluorescent light in oily shades of red, orange, and purple. I felt their pull on me as if they were the Undead. A weathered man in rubber boots and gloves wheeled a barrel of smaller fish up the dock. Lowering my head, I walked past him, watching the moon"s reflection ripple on the water, when a cold hand grabbed my wrist.
I knew I had found Dante from the way his presence enveloped me, seeped into me, filling my lungs with the scent of the woods clinging to his clothes, the pine so sharp that for the first time in months I could remember what it felt like to walk through a forest at dusk.
"Is it safe here?" I uttered, but Dante put a finger over my lips.
"Nowhere in this city is safe," he said, and pulled me into the shadows between two oversized boats, his hand on my ribs, his breath soft against the back of my ear, as we waited, hushed, for the last workers to leave.
The dock rocked beneath our feet as Dante led me to the end of the platform, where a small white boat called The Sea Maiden was docked. Its sails were rolled up.
"Whose is it?" I asked as Dante put one foot on the deck.
"Ours tonight," he said. Before I knew what was happening, he lifted me up as if I were weightless and carried me into the boat, my feet knocking a handle of the steering wheel, making it spin and spin. I clung to his neck, burying my face in his hair, in his shoulder, not wanting him to let me go.
"I miss you," I said, as if I were imagining all of this. "I miss you," I repeated, already antic.i.p.ating when the night would be over and he would be gone.
He carried me to the middle of the deck, where a set of stairs led down into the cabin. I held on to the collar of Dante"s shirt, touching the curves of his neck as he stepped over a pile of life jackets and into the hull of the boat.
He tightened his grip and flipped on the light switch. Strings of tiny lights lit up the perimeters of the windows. A plush red bench lined the room, which was walled with panels of dark wood. Laying me down on the cushions, Dante stood back and looked at me.
I felt myself blush. "What?" I whispered, embarra.s.sed.
He knelt by my side. Picking up my right leg, he gently unlaced my shoe and slid it off. My toes curled as he moved to my left leg, slipping my other shoe off and placing it on the floor.
The boat creaked as he looked up at me, his eyes somehow desperate. His fingers tickled my skin as he ran his hands up my thighs, reaching beneath the pleats of my skirt. Something within me ached. I closed my eyes and felt him grasp the waist of my tights and peel them off, one leg at a time. I let out a shallow breath as he kissed my bare knees, the cool air of the marina making my skin p.r.i.c.kle.
"Is this okay?" he asked, his voice soft.
Swallowing, I nodded, his question making me want him even more. "Don"t stop," I said, my voice cracking as I unb.u.t.toned my cardigan and slipped it off my shoulders.
He kissed my neck. And slowly, he unb.u.t.toned my shirt, his breath dancing across my skin until I was clothed in nothing but a bit of cotton and lace.
Sitting back, he took me in, his eyes roaming across my body, bare and pale in the evening light. Beautiful, he mouthed, as if his lips had acted without him. He lowered himself on top of me and moved his hands across me, tangling his fingers in my hair, feeling the smooth lines of my hips, my rib cage, my collarbone, until everything inside me went limp.
Forgetting myself, I lifted my head and pulled his face toward mine.
He turned away just before our lips met. "Careful," he whispered into my hair.
And even on that tiny couch, in a cramped cabin in the stomach of a boat, everything seemed to fit together, as if he were the inverse of me. The cavity of his chest, the curve of his waist, the weight of his legs on top of mine-they filled the hollowness within me, and I breathed him in until I could smell the wet air, the dusty cushions beneath us, the salt on his skin as his stubble grazed my neck.
We stayed up into the evening, whispering, touching, as if no time had pa.s.sed between us, as if the last two weeks had been nothing but a pause in the middle of a long, rolling sentence.
"I think I found an answer," I breathed over my shoulder, my voice barely audible as I told him about Zinya"s prophecy, the Nine Sisters, and the canary. "If the legend is true, then their secret could still be out there. If we find it, then we can use it to give you life again."
I waited for Dante to press himself against me and tell me we were saved, but he remained still. "But all of that is just speculation," he said finally. "How do you know the ninth sister didn"t let it die with her, or that immortality exists at all?"
His voice hit me like a splash of cold water, and I felt myself grow stiff. "Because it has to. A vision of a canary flashed into my mind on the airplane. That has to mean something. Zinya said the visions would lead to the answer to my soul. What if all of my visions are clues leading to the secret of the Nine Sisters?"
"You promised me when we were behind the cathedral that you wouldn"t follow your visions."
"I never promised," I said. "And besides, I"m a Monitor. I can take care of myself."
"Could Miss LaBarge take care of herself? Could your parents?"
Bewildered, I hugged my arms to my chest. "Why are you saying these things? Don"t you even want to try?"
He reached out to me, but I pulled away.
"Of course I do," he said.
I searched his face, trying to understand why he was acting this way. "Then why aren"t you happy?"
"I am happy," he said, as if I had hurt him. "I just don"t want to get my hopes up about something that might not even exist."
"But that"s all I have," I said. "When you"re gone, it feels like a piece of me is missing. If I lose you, what"s left?"
Dante put a hand to my cheek and guided my face to his. "You won"t lose me," he said. "I would never let that happen. I promise you."