As I neared the last stone I began to panic. It had to be here. Just as I was about to turn around, my foot hit something hard, and I tripped and fell into the grass. I groaned, feeling the rocky soil against my palms. I was about to hoist myself up when I noticed the headstone that had impeded my way.
It was low to the ground, flat, and so overgrown that I would have otherwise missed it. Stooping down, I pushed the weeds aside and shone my light on its surface. There was no name or date. Only the word soeur and the following inscription:
here it is laid to rest
where to only the best
of our kind it shall be bequeathed.
Engraved beneath the words was the crest of a small bird.
I read the inscription again, lingering on the first line. I heard my heart beat, irregular and quick, like the sound of something tumbling down the stairs. I had to find a shovel. On my walk here I had passed a worker’s pickup truck on the side of a path. There could have been a shovel there. Standing up, I retraced my steps.
The truck was only a little ways back. Beside it sat a collection of garbage bins and a few tools: a pitchfork, a rake, and a shovel.
I hesitated before touching the handle of the shovel. I despised it. I didn’t want to touch it. But tonight I had no other option. Its shaft felt rough and splintered as I ran my hand along it, growing accustomed to the quality of the wood. Lifting it over my shoulder, I carried the shovel back to the nameless headstone.
here it is laid to rest
I focused on the words as I planted the shovel firmly into the ground and began to dig. The moon moved lower in the sky. Wiping my forehead, I stepped back to look at my work. The hole was now a few feet deep; to go any deeper I’d have to lower myself inside and dig.
I began to pace around the hole. I could try. I could stick one foot in and see what happened. It wasn’t even close to the six-foot mark, where things started to get dangerous….Slowly, I lowered my foot into the hole. As it went below the surface, a tingling feeling passed through my body. It quickly sharpened to a sting. My toes curled in my shoes, the muscles seizing before they went numb. Quickly, I pulled my leg back and collapsed on the grass. I couldn’t. It was impossible. My body wouldn’t let me. My eyes darted around the cemetery, looking for some other way. There wasn’t one. Why had I not foreseen this? Why had I been so unprepared? My grip on the shovel loosened, and it dropped to the ground beside me with a soft thud.
When I woke up, I found myself surrounded by the mahogany walls of Dr. Newhaus’s office. I was lying on a sofa, an itchy wool blanket draped over me. Rubbing my eyes, I kicked it off me and sat up. My hair was still damp from the river.
Dr. Newhaus was standing at the far end of the room, his back turned to me as he gazed out the window. When he heard me shuffling around, he faced me. He was wearing a maroon suit vest over a shirt and tie.
“Miss Winters,” he said, holding his fingers together, his lids heavy as one eye gazed at me, the other at the plant on the windowsill. “You’ve returned from the netherworld. How are you feeling?”
“A little groggy.”
Before I knew what was happening, I had a thermometer in my mouth, a blood pressure cuff on my arm, and the cold nose of a stethoscope pressed to my back.
“Still irregular,” the doctor said as he counted my heartbeats with his watch. “Though otherwise, everything seems normal.” He stood, his knees cracking, and fetched me a towel from a supply closet. “You baffle me.”
I thanked him and wiped my face. Dr. Newhaus took off his glasses. “Can you tell me exactly what happened?”
I told him about Strategy and Prediction, about the boat, about how when the headmaster mentioned the cemetery in Mont Royal, I blacked out and fell into the water.
“Do you remember anything after that?”
“I had another vision,” I said. “I was digging up someone’s grave, but I stopped halfway.”
Dr. Newhaus squinted. “Whose grave was it?”
SOEUR, I thought, but instead said, “It was nameless.”
He grunted. “It seems your hallucinations are being prompted by visual or aural stimuli. A photograph, a phrase…”
I said nothing. He was right, partly, but I knew it was more than that. It was a feeling, a strong feeling of fear, of dread, of hate, of disappointment.
“Could you detect any other connection between this vision and the one you experienced previously?”
I hesitated. There was the second part of the riddle, which I should have been more excited about, but I was preoccupied by something else. Why couldn’t I have jumped into the hole? Why had my foot reacted in that way? Why had I not wanted to touch the shovel?
“Renée?” Dr. Newhaus said, trying to catch my gaze. “Any connection between your visions?”
“Um—no,” I said, my mouth suddenly feeling parched. The only reason why I wouldn’t have been able to jump into the hole was if I were Undead. But I wasn’t Undead. I could go underground; I had been in the Montreal tunnels.
The doctor wrote something on his pad, and I wondered what it was. If my visions were of an Undead, who was I seeing? There were hundreds of them out there, but only one person made sense.
But no—it couldn’t be. When I’d told Dante about my visions, he hadn’t recognized them, had he? He’d even asked me where they had come from, and worried that they might be dangerous.
“Have you been taking the medications I prescribed for you?”
I stared at the carpet, flattening its tassels with my toe. “No.”
“Why not?” he said with disapproval.
“I—forgot.”
“I see. Well, I would still encourage you to take them.” Dr. Newhaus crossed his arms. “Have you considered my offer?”
I frowned, waiting for him to elaborate.
“To meet with me on a more regular basis.”
“Oh, um…no, thank you. I think I’m fine now.”
Dr. Newhaus seemed skeptical, but let it go. “Very well; it’s your decision. But keep an open mind.” Standing, he continued. “Well, I don’t want to keep your young man waiting any longer. He’s been very patient.”
I froze. “Young man?”
The doctor nodded and walked me to the door. “He’s been waiting for you outside.”
Dante. But how could he be here at St. Clément? It wasn’t safe. Suddenly becoming aware that my hair was wet and my clothes probably smelled like the St. Lawrence River, I slung my bag over my shoulder, thanked Dr. Newhaus, and slipped out the door.
But when I got to the hallway, Dante wasn’t there.
“Noah?” He was sitting on a bench, reading.
I must have surprised him, because he jolted, dropping his book.
“Renée,” he said, studying me through his glasses. “You move like a cat. Soundless.”
Smiling, I bent down and picked up his book. Colorful drawings of heroes and villains filled the pages. All of the dialogue was in French.
“Comics?” I asked with a smile, and handed it to him.
“You say it with such disdain,” he said.
I laughed. “What’s it about?”
“Superheroes fighting the Napoleonic wars. But really it’s about so much more. Life, death, violence, love, immortality. The meaning of our existence on earth.” His tone was serious, but his eyes seemed to be teasing me. “I think you’d like it.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Don’t you have a superpower, too?”
I shrugged. “Well, I can’t read French, whatever that’s worth.”
“And her true tragic flaw is finally revealed,” he teased, and stood up.
“Have you been here the whole time?”
He shrugged. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
I picked at a piece of mud clinging to my shirt, not wanting to be reminded of the mortifying incident. “Thanks.”
It was evening as we left the building and walked across the courtyard to the dormitories. J
ust as I was about to thank Noah and go up to my room, he turned to me.
“Hey,” he said, “are you hungry? I know of a really great French deli.”
“What about Clementine?”
Noah’s smile dropped a little. “Oh, I think she’s busy tonight. But she won’t care.”
Unable to help myself, I let out a laugh. Of course she would care.
But Noah didn’t see the humor. “What’s funny?”
“Nothing,” I murmured.
“So what do you think?” He tilted his head to meet my gaze. “If you don’t like French food, we can get something else.”
I bit my lip, my face going soft with guilt. “I can’t.”
Noah stepped back. “Oh, okay.”
“I’m sorry. I just—”
“No, it’s okay. You don’t have to explain.”
Feeling grateful, I nodded, and was about to turn away when he said, “It’s a boy, isn’t it?”
“Excuse me?”
“I can tell by your expression.”
I brushed my bangs away from my face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I knew you’d say that,” he said with a wink. “Just thought I’d try.”
He held the door for me, and after giving him a wave, I slipped inside. I passed Clementine in the hallway, where I overheard her asking one of her friends if they had any dinner plans. I must have paused for a little too long, because Clementine glared at me and asked me what I was looking at. Without answering, I squeezed by them, wondering why Noah had lied about her being busy tonight.
In my room, I showered the river water out of my hair, rifled through my closet for a dry outfit, and set off. I crept past the school gates and through the city until I reached the long curving path that led me to the base of Mont Royal. I pulled my coat closer to me as I climbed the mountain, passing the spot where I saw the girl and boy kissing by the water fountain. I could still remember the way they’d held each other, kissing as if it were an afterthought.
I was about to walk on when I heard something rustle in the leaves behind me. I froze. A rock tumbled down the hill. For a moment I thought it was the couple, back to haunt me with their happiness. A moth fluttered about a lamp, but otherwise all was still.
I continued until I found myself in front of the twisted gates of the Mont Royal Cemetery. I stopped in front of them, running my hand along the cold bars. Beyond them, tombstones stuck out of the ground in great winding rows that stretched as far as I could see. Dim lamps lit the path.
The gate creaked as I pushed it open just wide enough to squeeze through. Inside, the graveyard was just as I had envisioned it.
Frost laced the grass, making everything appear frozen in place, but when I stepped onto it, a headstone seemed to shift.
I gasped, backing against a tree as the ice seemed to crystallize up my feet and around my legs. Dante was here.
He was standing by a black marble tombstone carved into the shape of a pillar. All that was visible were the angles of his face, ivory against the shadows like the planes of a statue.
“Renée?” Maybe it was the wind distorting his voice, but something about the way he said my name made me think he was just as surprised to see me as I was to see him.
Just before our arms met, I hesitated. It seemed strange that I would find him here, right after my vision.
“Is everything okay?” he said, his eyes searching mine.
“You scared me,” I said.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come. This cemetery is so far away from St. Clément that I was worried you wouldn’t sense me. But you did.”
I nodded as he wrapped his arms around me until there was no space between us. My visions couldn’t have been his, I thought, burying my face in his chest. Everything felt right, now that we were together. Everything felt like it was in its place. Except that I hadn’t felt him. I’d been too focused on finding the cemetery to notice his presence.
Extricating his arms from mine, Dante took a step back and studied me, his eyes dark and clouded like the sky. Maybe it was my own nervousness, or the fact that we were in a cemetery, or the fact that he never blinked, but something about the way he was staring made me uneasy. I tried to move toward him, but he stopped me.
“Let me look,” he said, the words low. “Please.”
My voice cracked. “At what?”
He didn’t answer for a long while. “Sometimes I worry that I’ll forget.”
Beside us, a crow swooped onto a tombstone. My coat was unbuttoned, letting a chill creep beneath my clothes, but I didn’t care. “Forget what?”
Dante’s eyes traveled across me, but his mind seemed far away.
“Forget what?” I repeated, as some part of me began to panic. “Me? Us?”
He took a step closer. “No, not that. All of this. The feeling of being with you.”
“Why would you forget?” I asked, growing anxious.
He let his hand drop down my arm, sending a shiver up my skin. “I don’t know.”
What was he saying? I touched a tombstone near us. The marble was cold and black. “Why did you choose this cemetery?”
Dante gazed around us. “It’s the biggest in Montreal. I thought it would be safest.”
“Have you been here before?”
Dante’s eye twitched. “No.”
I believed him. I had to give him the benefit of the doubt; though something about the way he turned away made me wonder. “Isn’t there a section of this cemetery where Monitors are buried?”
“Monitors?” he said, betraying a hint of unease. “I don’t know.”
“I was just thinking that maybe the Nine Sisters might have been buried there. I know you’re skeptical about them, but it wouldn’t hurt to check.”
Dante hesitated. “Doesn’t that seem too easy?”
“I just want to look,” I said. “Will you walk with me?”
In the distance, a car drove past the cemetery gates, its headlights shining across the headstones. Dante took my hand and slipped it into the pocket of his coat.
We walked to the fork in the path, and stopped at the map—the same one I’d seen in my vision. Barely taking any time to search, Dante put his finger on the small green area near the back of the grounds. “It’s here.”
I went stiff. “How do you know that’s the right section?”
“Because it says so right here.”
He pointed to a tiny line of text in the map’s index that said Founders. I assumed it meant the founders of Montreal.
As we walked beneath the streetlamps to the back of the cemetery, I watched the shadows change his face, darkening and distorting it until he looked like a stranger.
“What?” Dante said, giving me a confused look.
“Nothing,” I said quickly, and looked straight ahead until I found myself standing in front of the same tiny circle of land I’d seen earlier today. It was framed with barren trees and separated from the path by a chain.
Slowing to a stop, Dante gazed around the frozen weeds at our feet. “They must be somewhere here,” he said. Behind us was the same narrow aisle I had visited in my vision. I waited, expecting Dante to lead me down that row. But instead he pulled me in the opposite direction. “Maybe this way?” he said, bending down to look at the headstones as we walked.
I let out a sigh of relief. He hadn’t been here before. It was all in my head. Leaning in to him, I pressed my head against his shoulder, silently apologizing for not trusting him. We walked like that for a while, meandering through each of the rows, Dante wiping the frost from the face of the headstones so I could read the names and dates. I gave each of them a brief glance, and then shook my head. We had almost made it through all of the aisles, when I turned to him. “I don’t think it’s here. We can go if you want.”
“Are you sure?”
I nodded.
With that, we made our way back, our arms stretched over the headstones as we wove in and out of them, veering apart and the
n coming together in a dark waltz. I laughed as I skipped down an overgrown row a few steps ahead of Dante. I was almost at the chain when he called out to me. “Watch your step.”
At his words, I froze, the smile fading from my face. Slowly, I looked down. Buried in weeds just below my feet was the nameless headstone, the same one I had tripped over in my vision. The word soeur peeked out just above the grass.
Suddenly I felt queasy. I put a hand to my head, my knees growing limp. “Renée?” Dante said, just as I fell. I landed on the frozen earth beside the crooked stone.
Its inscription was barely visible through the frost.
“Are you okay?” Dante said from above me, bending down to offer me a hand. But I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. Had he lied to me?
Rolling over, I stood up and brushed myself off.
“What’s wrong?” he said, studying me. “You look sick.”
I took a step away from him. “Did you see that headstone?”
“Of course. That’s why I told you to watch your step.”
I paused, trying to sort everything out. “But it’s so dark. How did you see it from all the way over there?”
Dante gave me a confused look. “I was right behind you.”
Was he? I couldn’t remember.
“What’s going on?” he said, his voice betraying a hint of alarm.
“I had another vision. I came to this cemetery, looking for a grave, but while I tried to find it, I tripped over a headstone. The same headstone you just warned me about.” I squinted at him in the dark.
“What are you implying?”
“That my visions are yours. That I’m somehow seeing what you’re doing.” I swallowed. “That you’ve been lying to me about it.”
Dante gave me a baffled look. “Lying to you about what? What do you think I’m doing that’s so terrible?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “Digging up a grave. Looking for the secret of the Nine Sisters.” But the more I spoke, the more absurd everything sounded. If he had been looking for the secret of the Nine Sisters, he would have told me.
“Is it really so hard to believe that I saw the headstone just before you fell?”