Part 29 (1/2)

”My shovel. It's gone. Where is it?”

And barging toward her closet, I flung open the doors. Clementine yelled at me to stop, but I didn't care. I pushed her clothes aside and fumbled through her shoes and bags, but nothing was there.

”It's here somewhere. I know it is,” I said. Ignoring her protests, I checked behind the door, beneath her bed, beside her bureau. All I found was her shovel, which was made of a dark metal and smooth, oiled wood.

”I didn't take your shovel,” she said firmly. ”And I didn't go through your room before, either.”

”Then who took it?” I demanded. ”You've already gone through my things. You waited in my room for me when I wasn't there. It was you. I know it was you.”

Clementine hesitated. ”It wasn't me.”

Before I could stop myself, I grabbed her slender wrist and dragged her into my room. ”Then why is the case empty?”

She squirmed out of my grasp and parted her lips to respond, when her face gathered in a wince. ”What is that smell?”

I shook my head. ”What? What are you talking about?”

She covered her nose with her hand. ”How can you not smell that?”

”You're trying to distract me,” I said.

”I'm not!” Clementine insisted, and stepped back into the bathroom. ”It smells like something rotting.”

I must have looked confused, because she pointed to the radiator below my window. ”It's coming from over there.”

I glanced at her once more to make sure she was telling the truth, and bent down. I sniffed at the air, trying to smell what she did, but my senses were so dull that I could only detect a vague stale odor, like something left in the fridge for too long.

Slowly, I reached beneath the vents and patted the floorboards until my hand met something soft and wrinkled. With a gasp, I pulled back my arm.

”What is it?” Clementine said from the door.

”I don't know,” I said, my lips trembling as I crouched low to see what it was. Something knotted and white.

Clementine picked up an umbrella that I had thrown from the closet. ”Use this,” she said.

Taking the umbrella from her, I stuck its curved handle beneath the radiator and pulled the thing out. It was a thick, gnarled root, like a carrot, except it was white and rotten. I touched it with the tip of the shovel. It was soft and shriveled from age, the bottom side brown and blistered from sitting on the floor in one position.

”I think it's some sort of vegetable,” I said.

”Why is it here?” Clementine demanded.

”I don't know,” I said. ”I don't even know what it is. Someone must have put it here.”

”Why would anyone do that?”

If it hadn't been Clementine, then who could it have been? There was no one else who would have wanted to come in my room. Except...the Liberum, I thought.

I ran down the hall to Anya's door, carrying the root by its tip. If anyone would know what it was, it was her. But just as I raised my hand to knock, the door opened.

”Renee!” Anya said with a gasp. ”I was just about to go to your room,” she said. ”Why did you run away like that?”

The white root went flaccid when I held it up, pinching it by its wiry tip. ”I found this in my room, beneath the window. Do you know what it is?”

She froze when she saw it. ”It's a parsnip,” she said slowly, gazing at its wrinkled skin.

”Why would someone put it in my room?”

She hesitated, as if she knew something but didn't want to say it.

”Tell me!” I said, exasperated.

”A white root that rises from beneath the earth. It's a symbol for the Undead.”

”What?” I said, my mind racing. Did that mean that the Undead had entered my room and left it there? Had they taken my shovel, too, to disarm me? ”It doesn't make any sense. Why would they take my shovel and leave this here to announce themselves, when they could have just attacked me? Why wait?”

Anya sniffed the root and winced.

”Do you think they were waiting for me to find the ident.i.ty of the ninth sister so that if they take my soul they'll have more information?”

”That would be stupid,” Anya said. ”We might never find her.”

”That's not completely true.”

Anya squinted at me, reading my expression. ”Wait. Did you find her?”

We retreated to my room, where I showed her the article about the Gottfried Curse. ”This proves that there was a Monitor named Ophelia Hart alive in the 1700s. And according to Noah's dad, there was another Monitor named Ophelia Coeur who was alive in the 1900s. Coeur means heart' in French. It has to be a pseudonym. It's too strange to be a coincidence-they have to be the same person.”

”But that means she would have been alive for over two hundred years. That's impossible.”

”Exactly,” I said. ”Unless you're the ninth sister, and have the secret to immortality. It was her all along,” I said. ”I'm sure of it.”

”I thought we already crossed her off,” Anya said slowly, the pages of the book fanning open as she loosened her grip. ”The ninth sister died. That's why she hid the secret. You went to her headstone.”

”Maybe she never died.”

Anya frowned. ”Then why would she have a headstone?”

”I don't know, but everything else matches up. She was alive in the early 1700s, during the time of the Nine Sisters. She was incredibly smart, had ties to the Royal Victoria, and to salt water, from her later research in water and lakes. It fits, it all fits.”

I watched Anya work it all out in her head. When she looked up at me, her eyes were wide with wonder. ”It could be. So now what?”

”We figure out where she would have hidden the first part of the riddle.”

”How?”

”She probably hid it in a place that was important to her, right? So all we need to do is find out more about Ophelia's life.”

”But how?” Anya said, exasperated. ”She could still be alive. Where do we even start?”

My mind skipped back to the last time I'd heard about Ophelia Hart. ”Noah.”