Soundlessly, I stood up and watched, as Noah did the same. We didn"t need to speak; we were thinking the same thing. We crept along the side of the room. When Noah thought I wasn"t watching, he wet the edges of his lips. Had he kissed me? Had it been real? Averting my eyes, I looked at my face in the mirror. It was dusty and hollow, as if it were an older me, an ancient me from a past life. If it had been a kiss, it must have happened in a different world, when we were both different people.
Once in the hallway, I could hear voices coming from downstairs. Closing my eyes, I tried to count how many there were. One by the window. One by the door. Another two at the kitchen table. Four more outside, by the barn. A handful more in the field. The only way to go was left, down the hallway.
Cautiously, I took a step, and then another, and another, until we reached a room on the other side of the house. Turning the k.n.o.b, I pushed the door open and went inside, Noah at my heels.
We found ourselves in a narrow, dank room, with low ceilings and a narrow staircase going down the side. The maid"s room. Except, instead of being furnished like a proper room, it was filled with toys. Worn toys, chipped and broken, as if they were lifetimes old. Plastic trucks and Matchbox cars and marbles and jacks were scattered across the floor. I stepped around them carefully, gazing at the room. What was this place?
I was about to lead us down the narrow staircase and out the door, when we heard more voices. They seeped through the heating vent like frost. I crouched down and listened. There were dozens of them, talking and laughing and fighting, their voices high-pitched and playful, almost whiny. They were children; boys, no older than twelve, for their voices hadn"t dropped yet. I tried to make out what they were saying, but it was all chatter.
I was about to turn away when a deep voice cut through them, speaking in Latin. It sounded like a boy-or rather a man-around Dante"s age, maybe older. The room went silent. My lip trembled as I waited, but when he spoke, all I could make out were words here and there: "The Nine Sisters."
"Name in the mailbox."
"Hold her and wait for us to come."
"Serve the Liberum."
Soundlessly, I stood up, willing my heart to beat softer. My eyes darted about the ceiling. The Liberum. Was the deep voice one of the Brothers? Were they employing Undead children to help them find the secret of the Nine Sisters?
I glanced out the window to where the taxi should have been waiting for us, but it was gone.
"What is he saying?" Noah mouthed.
"We need to get out," I whispered, so softly that I wasn"t even sure Noah heard me.
But how? We were miles away from civilization. Without realizing it, I backed away from the wall, trying to distance myself from the voice, but I had forgotten that the floor was cluttered with toys, and lost my footing on a train set that wound around the room.
It happened too quickly for me to catch myself. I stumbled, my arms flailing as I reached out for a desk. I was too slow, and fell to the floor with a loud thump, the toys beneath me scattering across the room.
I didn"t move until everything had settled. The house went still. Noah"s eyes were wide as they traveled from me to the open door and the shadowed hallway beyond.
From somewhere in the distance, I heard the light pitter-patter of footsteps. They seemed to be coming from nowhere and everywhere, like rain falling on the roof. The sound was low at first, and then grew louder, like dozens of tiny feet running up the stairs.
I felt them before I saw them: a rush of cold, as if I had just fallen into an icy lake. Goose b.u.mps rose over my skin as they got closer, closer; the cold air enveloping me, wrapping itself around my throat until it was so tight I could barely breathe.
A pale figure emerged from the darkness at the end of the hall, running toward us. Another followed behind him -a flailing white thing-followed by another, and another. They were moving so quickly and so strangely, their limbs thrashing as they ran.
Noah"s voice boomed across the room. "Come on."
Taking his hand, I pulled myself up.
We clambered down the narrow back stairway, my feet so close to Noah"s heels that I thought I was going to knock him over. At the bottom was another long hallway, lined with family photographs and doors. On the other end I could see the windows of the kitchen, and beyond that, a back door.
We began to run for the door when I saw a white blur moving toward us from that direction.
Noah skidded to a stop, the oriental carpet bunching beneath our feet as I slid into him. He turned to me, his breath quick. Above us, I could hear the boys running through the maid"s room, the ceiling sagging slightly beneath their footsteps. They were getting louder, closer.
"What now?" I said, searching the hallway, looking for a way out.
Noah ran to me just as an Undead child emerged from the stairwell, his eyes a cloudy gray. They didn"t move as he turned about the room like a dizzy child listening for our sound. He couldn"t have been older than six. I watched him, taking in his worn pants, his bare feet, his wild hair; then I realized that he was blind.
Two others stumbled down the stairs behind him. Their eyes were clearer, more focused, tilting their heads as if trying to figure out what I was.
I felt Noah behind me. "Why are they staring at us like that?" he whispered.
"They"re just interested," I uttered, cringing every time their blurry eyes met mine. "They"re only children, remember? They don"t know who we are. Just don"t let them see-"
"Shovel!" one of them said in Latin, pointing to the small trowel sticking out of the inside pocket of Noah"s coat.
Slowly, I walked backward toward the line of doors, hoping one of them led to a way out, when I felt a tiny hand on my leg, tugging at my skirt. Startled, I fell down, the carpet rough against my legs as the boy crawled on top of me, his small body smudged with dirt as he grabbed at my face. Arching my neck away from him, I covered his mouth with my hand, flung him off of me, and stood up.
Noah was a few feet away, kicking off three small boys, all barefooted and shirtless. Pressing my lips together, I pushed through them, pulling them off of Noah and dragging him out. They grabbed at our ankles as I turned the k.n.o.bs of the last door. It was pitch-black inside, and dank. A bas.e.m.e.nt, I thought, staring down at the cement staircase. Just then, an Undead boy wrapped his hands around my leg. I pulled Noah through the door, taking the Undead boy with me.
The boy clung to my stockings, his tiny fingers pressing into my thighs as I stumbled underground. I tried to kick him off, but he grew breathless, desperate, grasping at my skirt, my arms, my hair. Before I could catch myself, I slipped, crying out in pain as I toppled down the stairs, the cement bruising my back.
I felt the boy"s face close to mine, his breath cold against my cheek. And then we hit the ground. The unfinished floor scuffed my knees, and the boy"s grip grew loose. Peeling him off of me, I scrambled away and watched his cloudy eyes grow bloodshot. They rolled back in his head. I gasped as he twisted his neck one way and then the other, as if in pain; faster, faster, until he was writhing on the floor.
Noah grabbed my arm.
"Wait!" I said, staring at the boy"s slim body, his b.u.t.ton nose, his chubby cheeks smudged with dirt. "He"s dying. We have to help him."
"Leave him!" Noah said.
"He"s just a child!" I said.
"He isn"t anymore. He"s a monster." Before I could say anything else, Noah took me by the waist and pulled me toward the back of the room. It was a long stone bas.e.m.e.nt filled with bales of hay and rusty farm equipment.
"Maybe there"s a ground entrance," Noah said, scanning the ceilings until he found a set of metal doors. Standing on a bale of hay, he pushed them open to reveal the night sky, blue and wild with stars.
He lifted himself up and then leaned over to me help me, but I was right behind him. A vast field stretched before us, the snow packed into ice. We ran through it, the air sharp on my lungs as we headed for the lake and the woods beyond.
I skidded to a stop as we reached the sh.o.r.e, where the ice met the snow.
"Is it safe to walk on?" I shouted, my hair whipping about my cheeks as I turned. Behind us, the Undead boys were slipping out of the farmhouse, their skin pale in the moonlight, like moths.
"Of course it is," Noah said, slowing as he stepped onto the lake. "This was an ice farm. They had to have gotten it from somewhere."
I wavered as I listened to see if the ice beneath Noah was cracking. But all I could hear was the snow crunching beneath the feet of the Undead behind us.
The blackbirds nestled on the surface scattered as we ran across the lake, our shoes slipping on the ice as the January winds numbed my lungs. When we made it to the woods on the other side, I saw the boys through the branches, their pallid faces a dim blue in the darkness. It looked like they were going to follow us, until a deep voice boomed behind them. "Enough," it said, as a dark figure appeared, tall and narrow like a scarecrow. I felt the Undead children gather and become still along the perimeter of the lake, their dulled eyes following us as we vanished into the night.
ICE, THE GAS STATION ADVERTISED IN NEON.
It had taken us an hour to get there, trudging through the woods until our legs were numb and caked with snow.
"There was no riddle in there," Noah said, catching his breath. "What was that place?"
"I don"t know," I said, bending over my knees. "A place where the Undead live. A place run by the Liberum." I looked up at him. "They"re looking for the riddle, too. They"re trying to find the secret."
"They said that?"
I shook my head, my eyes watering. "No. I can just feel it." Suddenly I regretted not looking for the last part of the riddle sooner. What would happen if the Liberum found it first?
"Why would you have a vision of that?" he asked, incredulous. "Why would your dream tell us to go there?"
"It"s not my fault," I cried out defensively, and then covered my face, embarra.s.sed.
"I never said it was," he said, and held the door of the gas station for me.
"I know." I stepped into the fluorescent lighting.
Noah nodded to the cashier, a greasy man sipping coffee. "Do you think they followed us?" He glanced out the window at the trees.
I closed my eyes, remembering the tall dark boy hovering behind the children as we ran away. "I can"t feel them anywhere."
While Noah approached the cashier to ask about a taxi, I wandered to the side of the store, trying to calm my nerves. But as I pulled a bottle of water out of the refrigerator, all I could think of was Dante doing the same thing in my vision.
Had the dark figure by the woods been a Brother of the Liberum? Had Dante been working with them to find the secret of the Nine Sisters? Is that why he had gone to the farmhouse and taken Cindy Bell"s name from the mailbox?
"Renee?" Noah said. "Are you okay? You look sick."
I swallowed, realizing I was hunched over a counter, my stomach queasy. I knocked over a cup of plastic lids as I picked myself up. "Sorry, I"m fine," I said, and bent down to collect them.
"Here, let me do that," Noah said, helping me. "The cashier told me there"s a late ferry, but we might have already missed it. He said he"ll call a taxi to come pick us up, if we want to try and make it. What do you think?"
I nodded. I wanted to tell Noah everything about me and Dante, but knew that I couldn"t. How could I explain that I"d fallen in love with the person who might have killed Miss LaBarge and Cindy Bell; the person who could have killed my own parents? I didn"t understand. Was he lying when he said he loved me? Did everything that happened between us mean nothing to him?
I listened to the gas station coffee trickle through the drip while we waited for a taxi, Noah pacing by the pastry shelf, gazing out the window. The fluorescent lights buzzed over the gas pumps, illuminating the snow as it fell atop the canopy above them. The horizon beyond was black. I knew we had escaped, that the boys from the farmhouse had stopped at the words of the tall scarecrow figure, but for some reason I couldn"t shake the feeling that we were being watched.
Thirty minutes later, a blue car picked us up, its windshield wipers squeaking against the snow as we wobbled through the icy streets. A faint light shone from the ferry station, but after we paid the driver and went inside, we realized that it was empty. The ticket counter was closed and locked with a metal cage. I followed Noah into the darkened waiting room. It was lined with rows of cheap plastic chairs and metal rubbish bins.
He checked a note on the wall. "The last ferry was canceled due to inclement weather," he said. "The next one isn"t till morning."
"Now what?"
"We wait here, I guess."
"What if they come?" I said, staring out the gla.s.s doors.
Taking an inventory of the room, Noah picked up a mop from a corner and barricaded the door handles. Joining him, I helped move two trash bins in front of the back door, and then locked all the windows. "At least now we"ll hear them," Noah said, and sat at the end of a row of seats.
Using my scarf as a pillow, I lay down on the chairs across from him. And as the rush of the night wore off, the air between us grew tense.
"It"s different now," Noah said, staring at the pipes on the ceiling. His eyes were melancholy. "We"re different."
"No we"re not," I said, but my voice fell flat. Should I have pulled him toward me in the farmhouse? Should I have kissed him back? Part of me wanted to, but the rest of me had screamed no!, as if I were betraying something buried deep within me.
"Who is he?" Noah said. "What"s so great about him?"
I felt his eyes on me, pleading to tell him something. But what could I say? I didn"t know where love came from or why it attached itself to some people and not others. Despite everything that had happened with Dante, I couldn"t bring myself to leave him behind.
"Do you believe in soul mates?" I whispered.
"You mean a human who has the soul of an Undead?"
"No. The idea of a soul mate. That there"s only one person that"s really right for you in this world."
I could hear Noah breathing as he thought. "No."
"Why?"
"Because it gives us no choice. It means that some cosmic force has already chosen the person I"m supposed to love. But that"s not how it works. I don"t want to be with someone who completes my soul; I want someone who will open it. I want to be able to choose."
I closed my eyes. "What if the choice isn"t that easy?"
"Choices are always easy," Noah said, a hint of spite in his voice. "It"s our heads that get us confused."
"What do you mean?"
Leaning forward, he reached into his pocket and took out a penny. "If it lands on heads, he"s your soul mate." His voice hardened on the last words. "If it lands on tails, soul mates don"t exist." He gave me a level look. "Okay?"
Confused, I shook my head. "It doesn"t work like that-"
"Give me a chance," he said, and then looked away, embarra.s.sed. Before I could say anything more, he threw the coin in the air. It landed on the ground with three clinks. Bending over, Noah picked it up. My shoulders went taut as I waited, surprised at how involved I was in something as meaningless as a coin toss.
Noah opened his hand. As he said, "Heads," I felt tears p.r.i.c.k my eyes.
"Now be honest," he said. "Do you wish it had fallen a different way? It could have, you know."
I hesitated, too ashamed to admit that I didn"t think it could.
"See?" Noah said, his lids growing heavy as he watched me. "You already made your decision. You just haven"t accepted it yet."
I couldn"t sleep that night. I had nightmares of fingers scratching at the windows, of the tall shadowy figure lowering his face to mine, his skin riddled with veins as his cold breath lapped against my lips.
The next morning, the ferry manager woke us up by banging on the door. The white winter sky was bright as I rolled off the plastic chairs and let him in, gazing at the empty streets beyond, unable to shake the feeling that the Undead were watching us.
"I"m sorry," I said to Noah as we waited for the boat to leave.
"You don"t have to apologize," he said, and gave me a meager smile, pretending it was easy for him, even though I knew it wasn"t.
When we arrived on campus, we walked through the St. Clement school gates as real Monitors. We had killed an Undead in the farmhouse; I had watched him writhe on the bas.e.m.e.nt floor. But as I made my way with Noah down the snowy path, I couldn"t help but feel like I was taking steps backward. The more I learned about myself and the people I loved, the more I found myself looking back, trying to reread the past and see where it had gone wrong.
"Where are you going?" Noah said as I walked toward the girls" dormitory at the fork in the path.
"Back to my room."
"We have to go to the headmaster"s office. We have to tell him that we found a house full of the Undead and maybe a Brother of the Liberum."