CHAPTER 5

THE PROPHECY

SOUL SHARING DOES NOT EXIST. A soul may only inhabit one body at a time.

After days of searching through the narrow stacks of the St. Clément library for anything that might save Dante, it was the only answer I could find. Shutting that book, I pulled a thicker one off the shelf, entitled The Art of Dying, which the cover described as “The most comprehensive study of death and its aftermath in current publication”. Checking the index, I flipped to the section on Souls and skimmed the page until I found the entry I was looking for.

Soul splitting does not exist. To split one’s soul is to kill one’s self.

Frustrated, I shut the book and shoved it back on the shelf. We were never going to find a solution. Sliding to the floor, I rubbed my face with my hands. The reality was this: I was searching for an antidote to death. I laughed at the irony that everyone thought I was immortal, when here I was, sitting on the floor of the library, trying to find the answer to immortality in a book. As if it were that easy.

I spread my fingers on the floor, imagining the wood was Dante’s back. Four. That was how long he had left to live. Across the room, I heard a chair scrape the wood as someone sat down. I looked up to see Clémentine unpacking her books from her bag. She was alone and hadn’t seen me. Quietly, I put the books back on the shelf and crept towards the exit.

It wasn’t until the end of the week that I woke with the sickening suspicion that I had forgotten something. Sitting up in bed, I looked at the clock. It was eight in the morning. I wasn’t late for class and I hadn’t missed any assignments. I didn’t have any plans or any friends, I thought miserably, except for Anya, who wasn’t really a friend at all; and I wasn’t supposed to see Dante for another week. The only other person I knew here was Dr. Newhaus… That’s when I remembered.

Kicking back the covers, I jumped out of bed and threw on whatever clothes were lying around my room. And without looking in the mirror, I ran across campus.

The headmaster’s office was in the main building, above the school archway. I walked down the hallway, my feet sinking into the plush carpet as I studied the old sketches of Montreal that hung on the walls. Dozens of boats and barges speckled the river and canals.

Between two sketches stood a lacquered wooden door with a nameplate that said: HEADMASTER JOHN LAGUERRE. I knocked, and when no one answered, I sat on a wooden bench in the hall.

Just then Headmaster LaGuerre opened the door. “Renée?” he said, looking at me.

I stood up and he smiled, baring impressively white teeth. “And here I was thinking you’d forgotten about me.”

“Headmaster LaGuerre, I’m so sorry,” I said. “I know it’s early, but I only just remembered that you had asked me to come to your office, and I thought I should come immediately. I’m sorry I didn’t make it sooner.”

“That’s quite all right,” he said, and held out his hand. “Call me John. Please, come in.”

He motioned to a green leather chair. “Have a seat.” Up close, he was soft spoken, his accent gentle and less pronounced. “I heard you fell ill?”

“I’m fine now,” I said, trying to smooth out the wrinkles in my skirt.

“Good,” he said, unbuttoning his suit jacket as he sat down. “Good. So how are you liking St. Clément?”

I sat on my hands. “It’s okay.”

“My daughter, Clémentine, told me you’d met.”

“Oh,” I said, surprised she had mentioned me. “I guess we did.”

Clasping his hands in front of his mouth, he studied me, and then laughed. “Why so timid?”

“You don’t have any cats, do you?” I asked, glancing around his office, which, admittedly, looked nothing like Headmistress Von Laark’s. It was a sunny alcove, finished with blond wood and floorboards worn smooth with time. The window sills held overgrown leafy plants, which, if I stretched my imagination, almost seemed to give off the faint smell of mint.

He gave me an amused look. “No. Why do you ask?”

“Because…” I said, glancing across his desk until I spotted a school folder, which had the crest of a cat. “Because it’s the St. Clément mascot.”

He shook his head. “To be honest, I’m actually very allergic. But that’s between you and me. If the administration finds out, they might give me the boot.” He winked and leaned forward, sifting through his documents until he found a piece of paper.

“The other day, when everyone was taking the placement exam, I stepped in to take a look. You were the only one in the gymnasium other than Madam Goût and Mr. Pollet. I observed you. You were standing in the middle of the gymnasium, writing.”

He pushed the sheet of paper across the desk. It was the map I had marked up, identifying eight out of the nine animals.

“This is incredible,” he said.

I felt my face turn red. Was it?

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m making you uncomfortable. Let me explain. I called you in here to congratulate you because of your class rank. Though, to be honest, after watching you, and studying your results, the title of top rank doesn’t even do you justice. The ability to locate death without moving, without taking a single step.” He placed his finger at the centre of my map. “That is an ability that many of us strive for, but few ever achieve, even after years of training. How did you do it?”

How had I done it? I thought it might have had something to do with my being a little Undead, with my being a better version of myself, but that still didn’t explain how I did it. At Gottfried, I had been at the top of my Horticulture class, and it was there my Monitor skills were first identified. But I never used to feel the air parting into a path, nor could I map the exact location of a dead thing without actually seeing it. I would just wander stupidly in one direction, where I would stumble across a dead animal and embarrass myself by screaming. Now it was different. It was as if the dead animals were items I had lost, and all I had to do was mentally retrace my steps to remember where I had put them. Only, I’d never known where they were in the first place. “I – I—”

The headmaster laughed. “Don’t look so scared. I’m not expecting an answer. I just wanted to meet the girl who could map death.”

I gave him an embarrassed smile. “I hope I haven’t disappointed you.”

A wrinkle formed between the headmaster’s eyebrows. “Of course not,” he said, and stood up. “Well, thank you for taking the time to meet with me.”

I picked up my bag and made for the door, but then stopped. “May I ask you a question?”

“By all means.”

“What was the last animal on the test?”

Headmaster LaGuerre crossed his hands. “A canary.”

I must have looked confused, because he asked, “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t understand. How did I rank first if I couldn’t even identify all of the animals?”

“Because that would have been impossible,” he said. “A canary has the lightest soul of all animals. Its soul is fragile, hollow, like its bones. It dies so quickly and so suddenly that it seems to barely have any life at all. It’s as if it isn’t even present in this world. No Monitor has ever been known to identify one correctly. The fact that you could detect its location was extremely impressive.”

I broke his gaze, not sure how to respond to his compliment. I didn’t feel very impressive, just confused.

A breeze blew in through the window, rustling the papers on the headmaster’s desk. “You were the only one who made it past the fifth animal,” he said, studying me as if he were trying to figure me out. “Most students only identified three before the time was up. Does that answer your question?”

A canary? I repeated in my head, remembering how I had blurted out that word on the aeroplane without knowing why. Was it a coincidence that the canary was the last animal on the test? No, I thought. Impossible.

“Is there something else?” The headmaster probed.

I shook my head. “Yes. I mean, no,” I said, and forced a smile. “Thank you.”

When I got back to my room, Anya was waiting outside my door, looking annoyed. She was dressed in a tight little ensemble that was more nightclub than dress code. Her red hair was pulled into two loose braids, her dull roots showing along her parting.

“Why aren’t you ready?” she asked, taking in my haphazard outfit.

I fumbled with my keys. “Ready for what?”

“Seeing your future,” she said, adjusting her purse, which was covered in tassels.

“Today? But I have to go to class.”

“Yes, today,” she said in disbelief. “And we don’t have class. It’s Saturday.”

I glanced at my watch. So it was.

“So? Are we going?”

I was pretty sure we had never made plans, but no matter. It’s not like I had anything better to do. “Okay.”

The woman Anya knew lived in Mile End, the neighbourhood where Anya grew up. We travelled there by foot, winding through the city streets until we passed Mont Royal, the mountain looming at the centre of Montreal, swallowing the west side of the city in its shadow.

It was a hazy morning, the sky a thick orange as Anya led the way. We chatted as we walked. She was born in Russia but had been living in Montreal since she was ten. Her father ran a drugstore, and she used to help out on the weekends, stocking the shelves. That was where she first learned how to put on make-up and dye her hair, by “borrowing” items from her father’s shelves.

Even though she had been at St. Clément for two years now, she had few friends there. “I have my own people. Russian people,” she explained. But the way she talked about them was the same way I talked about everyone I’d once known in California: as if they didn’t exist any more. They were in a different world, a world that didn’t include Monitors and the Undead, and I couldn’t tell them who I was or what I was doing.

Anya and I turned down a curved street lined with buildings that looked like tenement houses. The people who passed us on the pavement all seemed to be speaking Russian. “It’s across from my hairdresser,” Anya said. “See, there.” She pointed to a weathered brick building streaked with water stains. Over the entrance was a sign in huge Russian print. Anya held the door for me, and I stepped inside. It was a spice shop. The dusty trail of cloves and nutmeg and paprika tickled my nose. Anya said something in Russian to the man behind the counter, who seemed to know her. He smiled as he responded, giving us each a honey stick before letting us through a back door that led to the rest of the building.

We walked up four flights of stairs until we reached an apartment with an etching of an eye on the door. “This is it,” Anya said, and rang the buzzer. No one answered. Anya rang it again, and tried to peer through the peephole.

“Maybe she’s out,” I said, cringing as Anya knocked and then held down the buzzer.

“No, they’re here. They’re always here.”

Moments later, we heard heavy footsteps in the hall, followed by the clicking sound of dead bolts unlatching. When it swung open, a hairy, middle-aged man wearing an undershirt stood there, appraising us. Anya said something to him in Russian. He looked at me, back at her, and then promptly shut the door.

“Zinyochka!” I heard him bellow within.

“What did he say?” I asked.

“We have to wait here for her to come meet us. If she decides to see us, she’ll let us in. If not, we have to go.”

While we waited, I peered out the tiny window in the staircase. A tall boy my age was wandering down the pavement below us, his broad shoulders moving beneath his collared shirt as he stepped into the street. “Dante?” I breathed, and stepped down a stair.

“What are you looking at?” Anya said.

I barely heard her as I watched the boy hail a taxi. Just before he ducked inside, he looked up. I pressed myself to the wall. It definitely wasn’t Dante.

Before Anya could ask me anything, the apartment door opened, and a woman appeared in the entryway. She was thick-boned, with thinning hair and a heavy bosom. “Yes?” she said, her voice deep. Her hands were stained a blotchy red. She wiped them on her apron.

Anya spoke to her in Russian. After she was finished, the woman looked me up and down. “Why have you come to see me?” she said with a thick accent.

“I’ve been having dreams that I think might be premonitions,” I said softly.

The woman squinted at me. “Give me your hands.”

After hesitating, I placed them in hers. She squeezed them as if giving me a massage, her fingers moist and strong. Letting my hands drop, the woman said something to Anya in Russian, and disappeared inside.

“She said okay,” Anya translated, and together we followed the woman into the apartment.

The hall was dark and carpeted, with smudged windows that looked out on a fire escape and a brick wall. It stank of meat. We walked to the back of the apartment, through a maze of little rooms – one with a boy watching television, another with a sewing machine and two mannequins stuck with pins – until we made it to the dining room.

Zinya supported her weight on the back of a chair. “Will cost forty dollars. Okay?”

Anya dropped her bag on the floor, and with wild gesticulations she spouted a torrent of Russian words, which came out so quickly, I was surprised even Zinya could understand them. After haggling, Zinya finally turned to me and said, “Twenty.”

I nodded.

A fly buzzed around the windows. Without warning, Zinya picked up a swatter and killed it. “Only one at a time,” she continued, as it slid down the glass, leaving a brown streak.

“You go,” Anya said, examining a set of porcelain figurines with distaste. When I hesitated, she repeated, “Go on.”

I followed Zinya into the kitchen, which had a dingy linoleum floor and a ceiling fan. “Wash your hands,” she said, sitting at a round table.

By the sink was a tub of beetroot soaking in water, and a coagulated bar of soap. I turned on the tap. Above it hung a black-and-white photograph of a rigid old couple.

“I tell you three things,” Zinya said from behind me. “One about past. One about present. One about future. But nothing more. Past, present and future, they are always connected.” She waved a hand. “Always. You understand?”

I didn’t actually understand, but nodded anyway. What else was I supposed to do?

“Now choose a beetroot,” she said, motioning to the tub.

Fruit flies circled around it. I waved them away, and after some hesitation, plunged my hand into the tepid water and selected a small, irregular bulb. It was warm, as if it had just been boiled. I brought it to the table, where there was a box of parchment paper and a bowl. Zinya pushed the bowl towards me. “Now peel.”

I stared at the dirty beetroot in my hand, confused. I didn’t even have a knife. “I’m supposed to peel this?”

She nodded as if it were completely natural.

“Right.” I turned the beetroot in my palm, trying to find a good place to start.

It was a messy ordeal, the juice dripping down my arms as I inexpertly took off huge hunks of beetroot skin and tossed them into a bowl until I was left with the slippery, round interior.

“Good,” Zinya said. “Good.”

When I was finished, she laid out a piece of paper on the table beneath me. “Squeeze beetroot over sheet.”

I did as she said. Dark pink syrup ran down the sides of my palms and dripped onto the paper.

Pushing my hands away, Zinya picked up the paper and folded it in half, pressing it down with her thick fingers as if she were kneading dough.

Setting it aside, she had me squeeze the beetroot over two other pieces of paper. I watched as she worked each sheet, folding them over and over, compressing them with her palm until there were three tight squares on the table in front of me.

“Past.” She unfolded the first paper. It was coloured with a swirled pattern that almost looked like waves. She spread out the creases and turned it around, then grunted and turned it around again, tracing a smeared mark near the bottom of the page.

Shifting uncomfortably in her seat, she looked up. Her expression was different as she scrutinized me, as if she had seen something in my face that she hadn’t expected. “Past is very dark.”

I sat back in my chair, unimpressed. It was so vague that it could have applied to anyone.

She traced a shape in the middle of the stain. “There is woman in boat. You chase her.” Zinya looked to me for confirmation.

I became alert. “Yes.”

“You take her weapon, drop it in water. Could not protect herself. She die.”

I felt so stunned that I couldn’t move. Even in her broken English, Zinya’s words had thrust me back into that hellish night, which was still so crisp in my memory that it could have been real. I felt the water, cool and still against my lips; I saw the fog part as Miss LaBarge swung the shovel down over my head; I felt the splintered wood of its handle as I pulled it from her grasp and dropped it, watching it sink into the black water of the lake. Could Zinya be right? Did Miss LaBarge die because her weapon was taken away? Could I have saved her? Leaning over, I looked at the marks on the paper, trying to see what she saw, but it was nothing but pink swirls to me.

Zinya rested her fleshy elbows on the table. When she looked up at me, her eyes were wet and somehow understanding. “We can stop if you like.”

Sitting on my hands, I shook my head. She unfolded the second paper. “Present.”

It revealed a series of concentric ovals, wobbly and smeared from the folds. She squinted at the page. “Your dreams. They are not future. They are now. Present.”

A fly buzzed around the bowl on the table. Zinya shooed it away as I processed what she’d said. In my dreams, I wasn’t seeing the future, I was seeing the present. But why? That meant that I never could have saved Miss LaBarge. That regardless of what I saw in my visions, I was helpless; I couldn’t change them. What was the point?

Zinya unfolded the third square of paper and flattened it on the table. “Future.”

The pattern was divided in half by a winding line. One side was completely white; the other was a mess of red dots that were smeared and splattered like blood. When Zinya saw it, her face grew pinched. She didn’t say anything for a long time.

Finally, I cut in. “What is it?” I said, my voice frantic. “What does it say?”

“In your dreams, you are searching for something,” she said, following the line travelling down the middle of the page. “If you follow, will end in death.” She covered the clean half of the paper. “And life,” she said, removing her hand.

My eyes darted across the two halves of the paper. “Death and life? It can’t be both. Which one is it? Which one will it end in?”

She pointed to the bottom of the page, where the trail forked off to either side. “This is what is written.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” I said, my chair scraping the floor as I collapsed back, frustrated. “Should I follow the visions or not?”

“Depends if you want to find what they lead to.”

“What do you mean? What do they lead to?”

Wiping her hands on her apron, she hoisted herself up. “The answer to your soul.”

I must have looked spooked when we left, because after Anya came out from her reading with Zinya, she stared at me for a long time before leading me outside in silence. “What did she say to you?” she said finally. We were walking back to school, down a brick street lined with tiny storefronts.

“She knew things that no one could have known,” I said, speaking to myself more than to Anya. “She knew about Miss LaBarge.”

“I told you she was the real thing.”

“She knew about my vision,” I murmured to myself. “About the shovel.”

Anya gave me a puzzled look. “What shovel?”

I barely even registered her question. “She said my visions were in the present. Which means I’m not seeing the future.”

“I knew it. Didn’t I tell you that?”

“She said that if I follow them, I’ll find life and death.”

Anya froze. “You might die?” she said, so loud that a couple walking in front of us turned around.

“Shh!” I said, though I wasn’t sure who I was worried would hear me. Down the street was a quiet cafe. “Come on,” I said, and pulled her behind me.

Inside it was warm and comfortably vacant, save for a few crouched men reading newspapers to the sound of grinding coffee. At the counter, I ordered a large tea and sat at a table in the back corner while Anya picked out a plate of biscotti.

“So you might die?” Anya repeated, after sitting down across from me.

“Zinya said I would meet both life and death. But that the visions will lead to the answer to my soul.”

“What does that mean?”

Dante, I thought, my heart skipping as it came to life. She must have meant that the visions will lead to an answer for me and Dante to be together. But did she mean that one of us would meet life and the other, death? “I don’t know. Do you think she meant the life and death part literally? That I would die and live?”

“She’s a peasant. Everything is literal with her.”

I traced the rim of my saucer, thinking about the visions. Something within me screamed, Follow them! It was the only thing that made sense: to see where they led me. Otherwise, I would never know. But what if Dante was right? What if they were dangerous?

“Who’s Dante?” Anya asked, disrupting my thoughts.

“What?”

She broke a piece of biscotti in half, the crumbs sticking to the side of her mouth as she nibbled on an end. “You just said, ‘What if Dante was right?’”

I frowned. I hadn’t realized I was speaking out loud.

Anya licked the tips of her fingers. “Is he your boyfriend?”

“I – um – no, just friends,” I said, worried that if word got back to my grandfather or any of the Monitors that Dante and I were still together, they would bury him.

“I like that name,” she said.

“What do you know about the Royal Victoria Hospital?” I asked, trying to direct the conversation back to Zinya.

“Dante,” Anya said, letting his name roll off her tongue. “Where do I know that name from?”

I coughed, choking on my tea, when I realized that she probably knew his name from hearing rumours about what happened last spring at Gottfried.

Anya stopped chewing. “Oh my god. That’s who you’re dating?”

I wiped my mouth with a napkin. “I – um – no.”

“It’s true,” she said in awe. “You still see him. But how? It’s so dangerous here.” When I didn’t say anything, Anya moved her chair closer. “Are the rumours true? Did he really plot to kill the headmistress?”

Worried my expression would betray my thoughts, I looked down at my biscotti, which I had broken up into crumbs. I hadn’t told anyone what had really happened that night last spring, except Eleanor. I’d always liked having secrets, the kind I told my best friends under the covers with a flashlight. It was like I was spilling a part of myself into them, and for ever after we were connected. I now understood that real secrets were lonely. They planted themselves inside of you and expanded, until you felt like that was all you were – a lonely little secret, isolated in your experiences. “He didn’t kill the headmistress, but other than that, I can’t talk about it,” I said. “I wish I could.”

Anya studied me as if reading the true answer on my face, and then sank back in her chair. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“Thanks,” I said softly, watching the steam rise from my mug.

Anya paused for a moment and then clasped her hands on the table. “So what about your visions, then? Should we figure out a way to follow them?”

“I have to think about it,” I said. Dante’s voice echoed in my head, asking me to promise not to endanger myself. “What if it’s exactly the opposite, and the dreams are actually a warning? What if I’m seeing them to tell me what I should be avoiding?”

Anya rolled her eyes as she put on her coat. “You dreamed of a bed in the Royal Victoria Hospital. What could be a safer place than that?”

She had a point. As we stepped out into the street, I turned to her. “Wait. I never even asked what Zinya told you.”

Anya hesitated, and then began fidgeting with a tassel on her bag. “It’s bad luck to tell someone else your fortune.”

“But you didn’t say anything about that when I told you mine—” I started to say, but Anya cut me off.

“I’m not telling you, Renée. It’s bad luck.” She pushed a red wisp of hair away from her face. “Maybe later I’ll change my mind.”

We didn’t make it to the hospital for another week. As classes picked up, Anya and I were too busy with schoolwork to plan anything, and we decided to postpone our trip to the weekend. In the meantime, I waited, keeping my window open each evening, but the days and nights passed without a sign of Dante.

Before class on Monday I traced my finger around the perimeter of the mark on my back, twisting in front of the mirror to study the way its edges grew pink after a hot shower. I liked to know it was still there, to be reminded that a part of Dante was within me. After getting dressed, I walked two blocks away from campus to the dépanneur, a convenience store, where I picked up a copy of the daily newspaper and scoured the pages, searching for deaths, disappearances, mysterious sightings – anything that might have to do with the Undead. And even though I knew that if Dante had been discovered and buried by the Monitors, it wouldn’t be in any newspaper, it made me feel better just to look.

A boy held the door for me when I got to Latin. “Thanks,” I murmured, barely looking at him as I took a seat at the far end of the table. Just as I shoved the paper beneath the table, leaving it open at the obituaries so I could read when the professor wasn’t looking, I heard a voice behind me.

“Any news from the outside?”

Brett pulled out the chair next to me and slung his blazer over the back. From his expression, I knew he was talking about Dante.

“No,” I said, giving him a sad smile.

“I haven’t talked to you in a while,” he said, lowering his voice. “How is everything going?”

I shrugged. “I’ve been better.”

“Yeah. I hear the girls gossiping at dinner. I wouldn’t listen to them, though. People here, they don’t know what it’s like. Most of them have never even met an Undead. Just keep your head down and do what you have to do. Everything else will take care of itself.”

“Thanks,” I said, appreciating his words more than he knew.

Monsieur Orneaux, our Latin professor, was already seated at the head of the table, his back upright, his eyes dark and heavy. He was a gaunt man with hollowed cheeks and a rigid expression that rarely changed, regardless of what mood he was in. He seemed to dislike everyone, but held a particularly vehement disdain for women.

“Latin is a calculated language. A language of strategy, of ancient wars, of pagan gods and sacrifice, and later, of the clergy. It is a language that has always belonged to the afterlife.” He had a way of drawing out each syllable, as if the words had turned sour in his mouth. “And as the language, so its people. The Undead are a miserable lot.”

I didn’t think I had to pay attention because, unlike last year, I was now practically fluent in Latin. I found myself knowing vocabulary I had never learned before; conjugating verbs without even having to think. So instead, I glanced down at the newspaper on top of my bag and skimmed an article on the deaths of two tourists in British Columbia.

The professor interrupted my thoughts. “What do the Undead fear most?”

As the class fell silent, a shudder crept through my body. All at once I felt cold and sweaty, my heart palpitating against my ribs, its beat quick and irregular. Fear – it was in me, overwhelming me, as if I knew what the professor was talking about…

“Hey, are you okay?” Brett whispered to me. “You look kind of pale.”

Before I realized what I was doing, I blurted out the answer. “The Île des Soeurs.”

All heads turned in my direction. Confused, I slid lower in my chair. What had I just said? Something in French? I barely even knew French, and whatever phrase I had said was one I had never known before.

Monsieur Orneaux studied me. “What did you say?”

I pulled at the neck of my shirt, which suddenly felt damp and far too tight. “I – I can’t remember,” I said. The words I had just spoken were gone, as if someone else had said them.

Across the room, Clémentine answered, an eyebrow raised as if challenging me. “She said, ‘the Île des Soeurs’.”

The professor studied me. “That is correct.”

“What is it?” Brett asked, looking at me and then at the professor. I let my hair fall across my face, not wanting to reveal that I had no idea what I meant.

“It’s the island just outside of—” Arielle began to answer, but Monsieur Orneaux held up a hand to silence her.

“Island of the Sisters, to Monitors,” Monsieur Orneaux translated, “Or Nuns’ Island, to regular Canadians. It is an island just outside of Montreal, known in Monitor history as the place where they used to send the Undead to be punished.

“It was a barbaric place. Run solely by female Monitors, who operated out of an old convent. They did terrible things. Torture, seclusion, exorcism. They bled the Undead with leeches, they probed them with medical equipment in an attempt to cure them of their evil…” Monsieur Orneaux’s face remained utterly calm as he recounted all the ways the early Monitors attempted to “cure” the Undead.

“It has a reputation among the Undead, though few Monitors are aware of it.” His eyes met mine, as if trying to understand how I had known the answer. “It’s one of the reasons why the Undead rarely come to Montreal. Along with, of course, the fact that Montreal is historically a Monitor’s city.”

“I’ve heard of it,” a boy with a French accent said. “The convent is still there; it’s now abandoned. In primary school there used to be a rumour that it was haunted, though I never knew why. The story was that any child who passed through the gates would disappear for ever. We used to dare each other to go inside—”

Monsieur Orneaux cut him off. “That’s enough. This is not a history course.”

He was about to return to his lecture on Latin and what it told us about the Undead when Clémentine raised her hand. Monsieur Orneaux ignored her until she finally just spoke up.

“Why was it run only by female Monitors?” she asked, holding the end of her pencil up to her lips.

Monsieur Orneaux clenched his jaw. “Female Monitors are not my area of expertise. If you’re interested in the Nine Sisters, go to the library in your free time.”

Clémentine’s back went rigid. “What do you mean, the Nine Sisters?”

Monsieur Orneaux blinked, looking like he wished he could take back his last words. “That’s enough,” he said again, raising his voice for the first time. “Latin. Back to Latin.”

And picking up his class notes, he continued his lecture on roots and verbs and declensions, the Undead, and how the way they spoke could teach us about how they behaved.

I spent the rest of the afternoon gazing out the windows of my various classes, hoping I would sense Dante.

“When you restrain an Undead, the most important step is to protect your mouth,” Headmaster LaGuerre said in Strategy and Prediction, during a lecture about the art of burial. On the board he had drawn a series of diagrams of a Monitor attacking an Undead from behind, pinning him to the ground as he secured his arms and legs, and finally wrapping his head with gauze to prevent a kiss. On each of them, I mentally superimposed Dante’s head, and shuddered. How could everyone else in the room be taking notes on this? Didn’t they realize we were learning how to kill people?

“Renée?” Headmaster LaGuerre said. “Do you know what the primary cause of Monitor death is?”

Sitting up straight, I felt my cheeks flush. “I – um – no.”

“Trying to speak to the Undead in the process of burial,” Clémentine said, shooting me a smug grin.

I don’t belong here, I thought. I don’t belong here.

When the last bell rang, I made my way downstairs and through the school gates. I had hours of homework to do, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t sure where I was going, exactly, only that St. Clément was the last place I would find Dante, which meant that if I wanted to see him, my best chance would be out in the city.

I only made it a few blocks before I caught a glimpse of a grey Peugeot, just like the one I’d seen Miss LaBarge in the other night. Or someone who I thought was Miss LaBarge.

“Wait!” I said, watching as the car turned down the street ahead of me. I pushed through the people on the pavement.

It all happened before I could move out of the way. I stepped onto the crossing, not realizing the light was still red. From the kerb, an old woman yelled at me to stop. The brakes of a car squealed, muffling her voice, and I turned just in time to see something metal hurl itself towards me. This is it, I thought; just as Zinya predicted. I am going to die before I can even say goodbye to Dante.

A sharp pain shot up my right side as a bicycle and a bouquet of flowers flew into the air. Covering my face, I fell over and landed on something soft.

After a long moment, I sat up. To my surprise, the ground beneath me groaned.

I was lying on top of a boy. A tall, lean boy. I looked closer. A cute boy. Yellow daffodils were crushed into the ground around us. He groaned again, and I jumped off him.

“Are you all right?” he said, wincing as he looked at his palms, which were scraped from the pavement. His bicycle was a few metres away, its front wheel still spinning.

I nodded. Save for what was probably going to be a big bruise on my right thigh, I was fine.

The boy’s eyes travelled up to mine. He was clean-shaven, with olive skin and hair that reminded me of the best months of autumn. He wore a rectangular pair of glasses that made him look like a college student. “You saved my life,” he said, with a slight French accent.

“I’m so sorry.”

“About saving my life?” He smiled. He had three artfully placed freckles. One under his eye, one on his chin, one on his neck.

“Oh – oh, no,” I said. “Wait, what do you mean?”

“I didn’t see the red light. If you hadn’t blocked me, I would have run it and been hit by that car.”

“Oh,” I said, blushing. “It was an accident.”

He laughed and helped me up.

“You’re warm,” I said, accustomed to Dante’s coldness.

He took me in. “You’re the girl who can’t die.”

“You go to St. Clément?” I asked, surprised.

“I sit three seats down from you in Strategy and Prediction. And in History and Latin. I held the door for you today?”

“Oh.” I felt my face grow red as his features grew familiar. I was used to seeing only the side of his head.

He smirked. “It’s okay. You’re the famous one.”

I looked away and brushed off my skirt. “Those are just rumours.”

“Or maybe some of your immortality just rubbed off on me.”

I smiled. “Then I guess you owe me one.”

“Owe you one what?”

“I won’t know until I want it.” The words came out of my mouth automatically. What was I saying? Was I flirting with this boy?

“Deal.”

“I’m Renée, by the way,” I said.

“Noah Fontaine.”

He held out his hand, and I hesitated, staring at it and thinking of Dante. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, looking at his scratches and then wiping his hand on his jeans.

I looked at my feet and fidgeted with the buttons on my sleeve.

Bending down, he picked up his bag and the remains of the bouquet of flowers he had been carrying, which had spilled out around us, coating the road in crushed petals.

“I’m sorry about your flowers,” I said.

“Oh, it’s okay. She probably won’t even notice,” he said, holding up a wilted stem.

And even though I had no idea this boy existed until a few seconds ago, for some reason, as I watched him collect the loose flowers, my heart sank imagining the girl he had bought them for.

He stood up. “Do you believe in fate?” he asked.

“No,” I said quickly, and then reconsidered. “Well, maybe.”

“My thoughts exactly,” he said. And with the grace of a cat, he picked up his bicycle and pedalled off, grinning at me over his shoulder before he vanished into the crowd.