Life Eternal

She watched me, pleased. I told her about how I saw Miss LaBarge while I was with Noah, how she and my parents had died with gauze in their mouths. When I was finished, Anya’s forehead was furrowed, her wet red hair dangling over her shoulders, leaving water marks on her shirt.

“Maybe they found the secret of the Nine Sisters and became immortal,” I said. “Maybe that’s why I’m seeing Miss LaBarge everywhere—because she’s still alive. And maybe—maybe—”

“Your parents are still alive, then, too?” Anya offered, finishing my sentence.

I fiddled with the hem of my shirt, nodding.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It doesn’t seem right. Your parents were searching for the ‘lost girl’ when they wrote Miss LaBarge the letter, right? So that means they couldn’t have found the secret. They were probably just searching for it, like us. And after they died, Miss LaBarge took what they found a step further. She was looking for something having to do with lakes or water—”

“Which is kind of what we’re looking for,” I said, thinking about the saltwater riddle.

“Exactly. Which means she hadn’t found it either. And then she was killed.”

I spun the beans on the necklace, unable to accept what she was saying. Why couldn’t Miss LaBarge be alive? Why couldn’t immortality be real? Why couldn’t my parents still be alive? “But that doesn’t explain why I keep seeing Miss LaBarge.”

“You keep having weird visions,” she reminded me. “Couldn’t she be one of those, too?”

“But Noah saw her. Not just me.”

“He never met her when she was alive, did he? He could have been mistaken. It could have just been someone who looked like her.”

I sat back, frustrated. “Fine,” I said. “You’re right. They’re dead. They’re all dead. Does that make you happy?”

“It’s better this way,” she offered. “If your parents had been alive all this time, and hadn’t contacted you, that would be even more disturbing.”

I gazed at the lamp until it burned a yellow orb into my vision. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, she was right. If my parents were alive they would’ve found a way to contact me. And Miss LaBarge—maybe I had been seeing things. “You can’t know for sure, though,” I said. “The only way to be certain is to follow the riddles. Maybe they’ll all lead us to them.”

It could have been a trick of the light, but Anya seemed to grow uncomfortable. “Yeah…” she murmured, and took a sip from her tea. “Drink up,” she said, staring at my mug. “You’ve barely touched yours.”

I ignored her. “Noah thinks there’s one piece left of the riddle, the first piece, which will tie the clues together. We have to find it.”

“You told Noah about them? As in Clementine’s Noah?”

I shrugged. “He chased Miss LaBarge with me. What else was I supposed to do? Besides, he helped.”

“Barely,” Anya said, sipping at her tea. “You know, I’ve been thinking about the riddles, and we’re asking the wrong questions.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Sisters vowed to let their secret die with them. So why would they hide the riddles?”

“You already asked that,” I said. “And I still don’t know.”

“Well maybe we should figure it out. Think about it. The hospital room. The headstone. The riddles we’ve found so far haven’t been hidden in major historical landmarks or encrypted in pieces of art. They’re in places that would be important to an individual—a headstone, a hospital bed.”

I leaned back, crossing my legs on the couch as I considered what she was suggesting. “The ninth sister,” I said. “You think the ninth sister hid these in places that were meaningful to her.”

Anya nodded.

“But why?”

“I don’t know,” Anya said, tapping her nails on the arm of the couch. “But we can guess a few things about her. Judging from the portrait of the Nine Sisters, she had to have been around our age in the 1730s, when the other Monitors were killed. She had ties to Montreal, which we know because of the headstone. And she was associated with the Royal Victoria Hospital.”

As the first snow began to fall over St. Clément, dusting the shingles of the buildings in a thin layer of white, the wind blew through to my bones, rattling around inside me as if I were hollow. Anya and I searched for the ninth sister, going through as many records as we could in the St. Clément library, pulling dusty tomes out of the shelves one by one, and scanning every page. But before 1950, the information was slim and disorganized.

When that didn’t work, I took to wandering the streets of Montreal, hoping that something I saw would set off another vision; though, really, I was looking for Dante. I found traces of him everywhere—a used Latin book left on my usual table at the coffee shop, a note scrawled inside that read: I’m searching; a message traced into the frost on a window: I miss you; graffiti etched into a mailbox near the corner store: Remember us. Every time I saw one, my heart trembled in my chest, and I had to force myself to look away so that I didn’t draw attention to myself. Anya came with me at first, but as the holidays approached, her father asked her to help him at his store, which left me on my own. Sometimes Noah would join me, catching up with me after class, and together we’d walk down the snowy cobblestones, gazing up at the gargoyles that guarded the roofs. Every time I felt a cold breeze blow through an alleyway, I froze, staring at the empty street, waiting for Dante to appear. But he never did.

I didn’t realize what I was doing. I thought I was just filling the time while Dante was gone, but as the weeks passed, every day pulled us further apart. I didn’t know what was happening until I found myself looking forward to bumping into Noah, and then making plans to bump into him. When we were together, it felt like the pressure had been lifted from my chest. To be able to walk with someone and not talk about anything.

It was on one of the rare days when I wandered alone that I found myself on the waterfront, staring at the abandoned grain silos.

When the tourists had cleared, I approached the railing. Gazing across the water of the St. Lawrence River to the opposite shore, I cleared my throat. “Where are you?” I said, and without waiting to hear my echo, I continued. “Why do you always disappear? Why haven’t you come to find me?”

My voice cracked and I paused, pushing my hair behind my ear as I tried to compose myself. When my questions bounced back to me, they were jumbled and confused, the words laying themselves on top of each other, each question repeating itself and merging with the next into incoherent mush. Just like the way I felt.

“Where are you?” I heard finally, my voice fading as it bounced off the walls of the silo. “Where are you?”

Tired, I leaned against the metal railing, empty of questions, of answers, of energy to even ask any more, when I heard a voice. Not from the echo, but from behind me.

“I’m right here.”

My body grew rigid as his cold breath tickled my ear. I spun around. “Dante?”

I saw the cuff of his shirt first, followed by the collar, the lock of hair dangling by his chin, the pen tucked behind his ear. “You’re here,” I said, gazing at the stubble on his cheek, at his thin lips as he said, “I’m sorry it took so long.”

“You left me those notes,” I said, my eyes darting around us to make sure no one was watching.

Dante nodded. “I’ve been trying to reach you for weeks,” he said. “But I haven’t been able to find you alone.”

I bit my lip, feeling suddenly guilty. “That night in the cemetery. You never finished your sentence.”

Dante was silent for a minute. “I wish I could tell you what I’m doing,” he said. “But I can’t. I can’t put you in danger.”

I stood back. “Okay,” I said slowly. “But what do you mean? Are you saying you had been to the cemetery before?”

Before he could answer, a voice called out to me from the distance. “Renée?”

I jolted at the sound of my name. Dante spun around, his eyes darting around the waterfront.

Noah, I thought. Not sure what to do, I turned to Dante. “He wasn’t supposed to meet me today,” I said quickly.

“Who?” Dante said, narrowing his eyes.

“A Monitor. You have to go,” I said, and glanced over my shoulder. From across the street, Noah waved at me, but I didn’t wave back. “I’m going to go and distract him,” I said, taking Dante’s hand. Above us the seagulls cried as they wove around each other.

“Wait,” Dante said, holding my wrist. “Tell me you believe me. That you believe I would never hurt you or anyone else.”

“I do,” I said, my eyes darting to Noah. If he found Dante, he would tell the professors, and it would all be over.

“Say it out loud,” Dante said, his brown eyes pleading with me. “Please.”

“I believe you,” I said, confused. “You would never hurt me or anyone else.”

A look of relief passed over his face, and he loosened his grip on my arm. “I love you,” he said. “Now go.”

Slipping away from the cold swirl of Dante, I ran to Noah. “What are you doing here?” I said, blocking his path.

“I got out of class early and came to find you,” he said, a little perplexed. “Are you okay? You’re acting kind of nervous.”

“I’m fine,” I said, staring at the reflection of the silos in Noah’s glasses, as Dante walked down the wharf, keeping his head lowered.

Noah must have seen him too, because he said, “Who was that?”

“Who?”

“That guy you were talking to.”

“Oh, he was just a stranger asking me for directions.”