Part 18 (1/2)

Beside her, a buzzer went off. She hit the top of it and stood up. ”Time to wash the dye out,” she said, and threw the necklace into my lap. ”Be right back.”

While she washed her hair out in the sink, I studied the necklace. The frayed twine was strung with dozens of different dried beans, some as small as a pea, some as large as a quarter. Most of them had a white spot in the middle, which made them look like eyes. In the middle of the necklace hung what seemed to be a white rabbit's foot. I touched it. The fur was delicate and soft.

”So what do you think of it?” Anya said from the doorway.

”It's-nice,” I said. ”What's it made of?”

”Mung beans, black-eyed peas, fava beans, kidney beans...They're supposed to bring you health.”

”And the rabbit's foot?”

”Oh, it's not a rabbit. It's a cat.”

Letting the necklace drop into my lap, I said, ”What? Why? Where did you-”

”It's from an herbal store I go to sometimes. It's for protection. It's supposed to give you nine lives.”

”Oh,” I said, examining the necklace again, trying not to feel queasy. ”Thanks.”

”And here,” she said, picking up a mug from her night-stand and carrying it to me. ”This is for you.”

The mug was warm when I took it from her, the liquid inside murky and a brownish-green. ”What is it?”

”It's tea,” she said.

I swirled the cup around, but the contents were so viscous that they barely moved. ”Really? What kind?” I said with a grimace.

”Oh, it's just an herbal thing. Good for the cold season.”

I glanced in her mug. The water inside was a pleasant peach color. A normal tea bag dangled from a string.

”Why aren't you drinking any?” I asked.

”Oh, I already had some.”

”Right,” I said, taking a sip. It tasted like water from the bottom of a flower vase, and was oddly gritty.

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 s.h.i.+rt.

”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, finis.h.i.+ng my sentence.

I fiddled with the hem of my s.h.i.+rt, 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 salt.w.a.ter 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 a.s.sociated with the Royal Victoria Hospital.”

As the first snow began to fall over St. Clement, dusting the s.h.i.+ngles 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. Clement 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 cla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed, every day pulled us further apart. I didn't know what was happening until I found myself looking forward to b.u.mping into Noah, and then making plans to b.u.mp 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 sh.o.r.e, 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?”