Dead Beautiful

Headmistress Von Laark flinched.

“Disgusting business, whatever happened down there,” the man said, spitting a wad of chewing tobacco on the ground. “But I guess there’s only one thing that matters.”

The headmistress had started to walk away, but stopped on his words. “Which is?”

“She’s alive.”

The headmistress frowned. “Let us hope.”

CHAPTER 12

The First Living Room

ELEANOR SURVIVED. SHE SPENT A WEEK IN THE nurses’ wing before being transferred to a hospital in Portland, Maine, and then home over winter break to recover. Between the panic that ensued after her discovery and final exams, I barely saw her before she left. Nathaniel and I visited her every afternoon, but most of the time she was delirious. The nurses said that she was technically fine; they couldn’t determine if anything traumatic had happened to her other than malnutrition and a slight case of pneumonia from being in cold water for such a long time. But there were a few complications. Her skin was freezing yet she refused to use any blankets or sheets; she was hungry but turned away all of the food given to her; she was tired but she never slept. Eleanor didn’t know what had happened either. She told Mrs. Lynch that the only thing she remembered was going to the library to study. After that, everything was blurry.

The news only made people more uncomfortable. Had she been attacked? Was it an accident? I obviously thought the former, though the fact that she wasn’t afflicted with any sort of heart failure did disturb my theory. And even though I was happy she was safe, I was also more confused. Mrs. Lynch reopened the investigation, looking for new leads, new evidence. But just when they were ready to begin, winter came in full force, burying the campus—and all of its secrets—beneath three feet of snow.

But let me rewind. After Dante carried Eleanor out of the girls’ dormitory, he came and found me in the bushes. “This is a nice spot,” he said over my shoulder into the evergreen shrubs. I all but screamed at the shock of him suddenly behind me.

“How did you find her?” I asked him.

“You said you thought she was in the basement. So I’ve been going to the dorm every day to check.”

I gave him a curious look. “I didn’t tell you that I thought she was in the basement,” I said. “I told Eleanor’s father that.”

Dante stared at me. “You didn’t?”

I shook my head. “No.”

Dante looked troubled, but I didn’t care.

“Cassandra is dead,” I said bluntly, because how else can you say something like that? “I saw her file. Which I found in Gideon’s room, by the way.”

“How did you get into Gideon’s …” But his words trailed off. “Wait, her file? You have it?”

“Yes, but—”

Suddenly he stood up. “Show me.”

I led him to the third floor of the library. On the way I told him about the rest of the files and their contents, and the real reason why I’d wanted to find them. But when we got to the oversized book section, the files were gone. I double-checked the decimal numbers, even took half the books off the shelves and shook them by their spines, but the files were unmistakably missing.

“They were here,” I said. “I put them back the other day.”

“Did you show them to anyone else?”

“Only Nathaniel, but he wouldn’t have taken them.”

“Could anyone else have known that you took them?”

I shook my head, until I remembered running into Gideon as I was leaving the boys’ dormitory. By now he must have realized that someone had been in his room and that the files were gone, but could he have known it was me, and followed me to the library? I swallowed. “Yes.”

Finals came and went. I studied for them in a blur, meeting up with Nathaniel during study hall, where we talked briefly about Minnie’s story. Nathaniel brushed it off. “Everyone knows she’s crazy,” he said, looking up from his geometric proof. And somewhere between exams and my study dates with Dante, I tried to do research, starting with the cryptic phrases on the school files, because it was the only evidence I had. This time Dante helped me, though by help, I mean sat next to me in the library scouring Latin books without telling me how they were relevant to figuring out why Gideon had had the files and what the files actually meant. But all of my work yielded nothing. When I asked Dante if Non Mortuus meant anything to him, he replied, “Not Dead.”

“I translated that too,” I said over my book. “But does it have any significance to you?”

Dante shook his head. “No.”

“What about Undead?”

He laughed. “Like revenants and zombies?”

I sighed. “That’s all I could come up with too.”

There were virtually no books or documents on Gottfried Academy, just like the article had said, and no matter how many times I searched “Undead” in the library catalog or online, I couldn’t find a single legitimate piece of information other than the expected Web sites about the general category of vampires and ghouls and zombies. I tried “Non Mortuus, Gottfried,” and then “Sepultura, Attica Falls,” and then various iterations of “Cassandra Millet,” “Non Mortuus,” “Two Deaths,” “Benjamin Gallow,” and “Deceased,” before I gave up.

By the Friday before Christmas, everyone had already started to leave campus. Cars lined the half-crescent driveway in front of Archebald Hall; chauffeurs were packing luggage in trunks while everyone said good-bye for the winter holidays.

Dustin came, just like he said he would, in my grandfather’s Aston Martin. I was standing with Dante beneath the lamppost in front of the building, my luggage resting at my feet as large flakes of snow floated down on us. When I saw Dustin pull up the path, I threw my arms around Dante, breathing in the woodsy smell of his skin for the last time before break.

“I don’t want to go,” I said. “I want to stay here with you.”

“It’s only a few weeks,” he said, checking his watch. “See, we’re already five minutes closer to seeing each other again.”

“Come with me,” I said. “It’ll be so much fun. We’ll explore the mansion, play croquet in the snow, sneak into my grandfather’s cigar parlor....”