I remembered Anya’s tarot reading.
You will leave your
path and walk on another. You will have to choose to return or
go back. The lives of those around you will be sealed with your
decision.
Could that refer to this very moment? Would Theo choose to come back?
“As for your friend Anya Pinsky, she is a nice girl, but flighty and gullible. She conflates Monitoring with magic, choice with fate. More likely than not, she came along because she wanted to help you. She didn’t understand the kind of undertaking you were dragging her into. Frankly, I believe it is highly selfish of you to have let her come in the first place.”
I wanted to tell him how wrong he was, but wondered if there was truth to his words. “She isn’t here for no reason,” I said. “Someone in her family is sick. Her mother.”
My grandfather scoffed. “No one in her family is sick. I saw them a few weeks ago. Both of her parents are just fine, though I doubt they’re doing as well now that their only child is missing.”
Her mother wasn’t ill? I tried to hide my surprise by looking at my hands. So why was she here?
“Did she tell you that?” my grandfather asked, raising an eyebrow. “An eccentric girl, she is.”
But Anya hadn’t told us that; she’d denied it. Perhaps she had another reason for coming along, though now I would never find out.
“Now back to the map,” my grandfather said. “Tell me about it.”
I glared at him. Let him think what he wanted to. I was the one who had the real power here. I knew about the chest and the map etched inside. My grandfather hadn’t helped me find it, nor had he helped me get here.
“Fine. You don’t have to speak. But you’re with me now. And you are a Monitor. Eventually, you’ll have to accept that.”
We rode the rest of the way in silence, our heads swaying with the motion of the car as it climbed up a winding road. It was icy and flanked by forests thick with evergreens. High at its top stood a stalwart gray castle, its stones almost the same shade as the cars and coats of the Monitors, as if they cast a shadow in their likeness everywhere they went. It was perched high on top of the hill, where even from the car I could see all around us for miles. So this was how the Monitors traveled. They moved through the world in plain sight, making sure they always took the high road, so that when people like Dante and I crept through darkness, it was their shadows we were hiding beneath.
A young woman greeted us at the front desk. She was beautiful, with a soft figure and high rosy cheeks that were flushed from the mountain air.
“Mr. Winters?” she said. “Welcome. Dinner is waiting for you in the main dining room.”
She led us toward a stately room off the back of the lobby. Before we entered, my grandfather pulled me aside and introduced me to two junior Monitors. The first was a man approaching middle age, his face set in a permanent frown. The other was a woman, thin and mousy, though her eyes betrayed a harshness that her gentle features hid.
“Mr. Harbes,” my grandfather said, “and Ms. Vine will be keeping watch over you from now until we return to the States. You are to do as they say, or risk being sent home.”
After my grandfather left us alone, the Monitors peered down at me, neither of them happy about their new task. They escorted me toward the dining hall, muttering to each other over my head. Before we entered, I spotted my grandfather, almost completely hidden behind a pillar near the entrance, where he spoke softly into a cell phone, his back turned. As we passed him, I bent down and quickly pulled the laces loose on my boot.
“What are you doing?” Ms. Vine asked.
“I’m tying my boot,” I said, and lowering my head, I tried to hear what my grandfather was saying.
“Are you at the school?” my grandfather asked. “Did you find the boy?” I could tell from the impatient tone of his voice that he was talking to Dustin, his estate manager. But who was he talking about? The school, the boy. Was he asking Dustin if he had gone to Gottfried, and found Noah?
My grandfather clenched his jaw as he listened. He didn’t like the answer. “That is not optimal,” he said, his hand on his hip. “Well, keep looking. The mansion will be fine without you.”
I could imagine Dustin’s voice on the other line.
Thank
you, sir. Of course, sir.
“We’re lodging in the Belnort Castle,” my grandfather said. “Tomorrow we head up the mountain.” He paused. “I’ve found Renée. Yes, she’s safe. She was with two others. Anya Pinsky and Theodore Healy.” He paused. “Yes, the same Theodore Healy. I know it’s sensitive; that’s why I’ve sent them both on a plane back to Boston. I need you to meet them at the airport and make sure they get home.”
A pause.
“Well, hurry up,” said Ms. Vine. “Stop dallying.”
I ignored her, waiting for my grandfather to go on. “No sign of the Undead boy,” he said. “My hunch is that he defected to the Liberum, though we’ll find out soon enough.”
Would we? I tied my laces into a knot and stood, letting Ms. Vine escort me to our room to freshen up, all the while wondering what my grandfather had meant.
Dinner was served in a vast stone room, the walls the same shade of gray as the suits of the High Court. Iron chandeliers dangled from the ceiling, and a cool breeze floated in from the adjoining balcony, offering a panoramic view of the mountains. The food came, a hearty plate of breads and sauerkraut and sausages dripping in oil, but when I took a bite, I couldn’t taste a thing. The meat felt rubbery against my tongue, the bread so bland that I had to spit it into my napkin. Even the water tasted strange—dry and metallic, barely able to quench my thirst. I drank it anyway, and forced a few more bites of sausage before pushing the food around on my plate and hoping that no one would notice.
I felt a pair of eyes on me.
Clementine sat across the room beside her father, her fork raised while she watched me, as if trying to get my attention. When our eyes met, she wiped her mouth with her napkin, whispered something to her father, then stood and walked toward me. She kept her focus straight ahead, as if she didn’t know I was sitting nearby. When she passed, she brushed against my arm and gave me a quick glance. Her eyes darted to the balcony outside, which was lined with tall stone pillars.
Five minutes
, she mouthed and walked by before anyone noticed she had spoken to me, disappearing outside.
I waited, and when the time had elapsed, I turned to the two Monitors guarding me. “I’d like to smell the mountain air.”
Irritated by my interruption, they put down their forks and got up to come with me, but I stopped them. “I’d like to go alone, if that’s okay. I just want a moment to myself. I’ll be right there, in plain sight.”
They exchanged a glance. From where they sat they could only see part of the balcony and the sprawl of stars and mountains beyond, though even if I tried to escape, there was nowhere to go. Mr. Harbes nodded to Ms. Vine. “Don’t make us regret this,” he said.
Across to the room, my grandfather sat at the head of the main table, absorbed in a conversation with a Monitor to his left. While they spoke, I wove through the tables quickly, my head bowed.
The balcony looked empty. I stood beside a tall stone pillar and waited. From the corner of my eye I saw my guards watching me from the dining room. I turned and glued my eyes to the countryside and pretended to take in the scent of the night breeze. The sky was staggeringly vast, just shades upon shades of blue, cut off only by the dark silhouette of the mountains beneath it. And yet without the accompanying sound, without the crisp taste of the air on my tongue, it felt like nothing more than a backdrop painted on canvas.
I thought about what I’d overheard my grandfather say to Dustin on the phone.
We’ll find out soon enough.
I held out my hand, waiting for a cold thread of air to wrap itself around my fingers, to tell me that Dante was out there, that he and the Liberum were close by. But before I could focus on the distance, a voice spoke from the other side of the pillar.
“Did anyone follow you?” Clementine asked.
“No.”
“I never told anyone that I saw you and Dante that night,” she said. “I wanted to. But I didn’t.”
I waited, unsure what to say.
“I’m telling you because I want you to believe me.”
“Believe what?” I whispered.
“That something strange is going on,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“The Monitors have been following you since the day you and Dante escaped from the Liberum at Gottfried Academy. I joined them soon after with my father. We came thinking we were going to hunt the Liberum
;
they killed Noah, and they tried to kill you,” she said, lowering her voice.
“And at first, that’s exactly what happened. The elders dispatched the rest of us to search for the Liberum
,
while they followed you and Dante, to make sure you were safe. The elders were more secretive about it than normal, which my father thought odd. They kept disappearing for days on end, and meeting up with us looking older and exhausted, but my father didn’t say anything. He’s always prided himself in his loyalty. He trusted them.
“Then late one night, after everyone else had gone to sleep, I was awake in my tent when I heard footsteps. Dozens of them, all quiet. I waited for them to pass, then slipped outside. I saw the elders walking into the forest. So I followed them, thinking they were going to have a late night meeting. But instead, they led me somewhere I’d never expected to go. The camp of the Liberum.”
I had been trying to refrain from having any physical reaction to Clementine’s story, lest the Monitors noticed, but her words caught me by surprise. “What?”
“We walked for what felt like miles. Then suddenly I could feel them,” she said. “I could see the Brothers of the Liberum through the trees, their long black robes gathered on the ground. The Undead boys lounged around them. At first I thought the Monitors were going to mount an attack; after all, no Monitor has ever been able to track the Liberum, and most have never even seen a Brother, let alone found their camp. But they didn’t attack. They waited on the outskirts of the camp, just out of sight. They kept checking their watches. Finally, two Undead boys snuck through the trees and walked toward them. I thought the Monitors were going to bury them, but instead, they started whispering to the boys, as if they had planned on meeting there. I tried to hear what they were saying, but couldn’t make out anything.”
I frowned. It didn’t make any sense. “You’re sure they were Undead?”
“Yes. While they talked, the elders seemed to get more and more angry. Eventually, two of them clamped their hands over the mouths of the Undead boys and carried them off into the woods. I watched them bury the boys, then stalk back to the tents. They didn’t seem to care about the Liberum being there at all. The next morning, the elders told us they were going to track you and Dante, and that the rest of us should continue searching for the Liberum.”
“But they already knew where the Liberum were camping,” I said.
“Exactly.”
The thought was baffling. This entire time my grandfather had known where the Liberum were, and hadn’t done anything to stop or apprehend them. “So the elders have been tracking the Liberum this entire time, and not telling anyone?”
“Not just tracking them,” Clementine said. “Talking to them. And not just once, multiple times. I’ve followed the elders a few times since. They always wait by the outskirts of the camp until a few Undead boys come out and speak to them. Then they leave. I’ve been racking my mind for days as to what the elders could possibly want from the Undead, but I can’t think of anything. All I know is that they’ve been lying to the rest of the Lower Court. And the only time I lie is when I’m doing something wrong.”
Multiple times? My heart began to race. “So the elders still know where the Liberum are?”
Clementine nodded. “I think so.”
I remembered what my grandfather had said to Dustin on the phone.
My hunch is that he defected to the Liberum,
though we’ll find out soon enough.
All I had to do to find Dante was follow the elders out to the camp. “How often do they go out?” I asked.
“Every few nights. Why? Do you want to follow them?”
“Yes—” I began to say, when I heard footsteps behind me. I glanced over my shoulder. The two Monitors guarding me had gotten up and were whispering to each other while they walked in my direction. “I have to go,” I said.
“My father and I sit close to the elders at breakfast,” Clementine breathed. “I’ll try to find out when they’re meeting next. In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled. I don’t know what the elders are up to, but it can’t be anything good.”
That night I dreamed of the lake again, its frozen surface dull like a clouded eye, the dark water seeping up through the cracks. A thudding filled the air, as irregular as a heart reanimating. The ice trembled then, shattered, a pale hand reaching out from the gash.
Noah rose from the lake, his skin glistening. His eyes snapped open. With a blink, he was running through the pines, his muscles shifting beneath the thin cotton of his shirt, his auburn hair dotted with snow.
Renée
, his heart seemed to beat.
Renée, Renée, Renée.
Another blink and the landscape behind him changed, flipping back like a canvas. He stole through the snow, the jagged peaks of the Bavarian Alps jutting up behind him like teeth. He paused, gazing up at a castle built into the edge of a cliff, its gray stone blending into the rocky landscape. A castle that I recognized. In a flash, he had scaled the cliff, his body hunched low as he crept beneath the windows lining the back of the edifice, peering inside each one until he reached a room toward the corner. He pressed his hand against the glass, his icy breath sending a bloom of frost over the pane. In the chambers within, a girl was fast asleep, her hair strewn across the pillow.
I forgive you
, he whispered.
A chill of cold shook me awake. I sat up in bed, feeling the thin wisps of air seep beneath the seam of the window and twist around my wrists. An Undead was here, though it wasn’t Dante.