Dead Beautiful (35 page)

“Except they’re not people.”

Dustin gazed out over the lake.

“This Mr. Berlin. Has he offended you in some way?”

“He lied to me about who he was. He made me think I was losing my mind and seeing things, when he knew I wasn’t.”

Dustin frowned and hoisted himself up. “I see. Well, I suppose it’s settled, then. Shall we pack up and head back?”

I let my eyes wander over the geese still grazing by my feet, realizing that I didn’t want it to be settled. “Yeah, I guess so.” And in the dwindling afternoon light we made our way back to the mansion.

“Dustin, did you know about...?” I asked him before we went inside.

“About what?”

“I know you were listening at breakfast. You were there, in the corner. You must know.”

“I have been aware of the existence of the Undead since ...since I was your age,” he said, opening the door for me. “And yet I still trust your grandfather with your safety.”

Wiping my boots on the mat, I stepped inside, peeling off my outerwear piece by piece. Normally, my grandfather worked with talk radio on, but now the house was strangely silent. “Hello?” I called out as Dustin unloaded our gear and brought the goose to the kitchen to be defeathered.

As I took my hat off, my hair wild with static, I noticed a note on the foyer side table. It was on my grandfather’s stationery.

R,

Left on business. Dustin will see you back to school.

—BW

January was blustery and bleak. Dustin drove me back to school, where, against his protests, I dragged my suitcase up to my room. The snow moved like sand dunes in the wind, and icicles hung tenuously from the roof, thick and irregular. Everything was white, even the sky, the clouds blurring the horizon into an endless barren landscape.

Even though the investigation about Eleanor was technically still going on, with no leads, no suspects, and no evidence, it had degenerated into guesswork and speculation. A few students didn’t come back to school because their parents thought it was too dangerous. In response, Gottfried tightened its security by increasing the number of guards both on campus and around the wall, and by enforcing stricter rules for day students entering and exiting the campus.

Although I had no decent theories, my discovery of the Undead made everything more logical. Gideon and the rest of the Latin club had to be Undead. It fit with their behavior—and their files. And if Benjamin had died of
Basium Mortis,
that could mean that Cassandra had taken her boyfriend’s soul. But who killed Cassandra? And was the same person behind Eleanor’s disappearance?

After spending winter break recovering at her mother’s house, Eleanor returned to Gottfried. She burst into the room and was about to give me a hug when she stopped as if she had changed her mind, and pulled away before we touched. “Is everything all right?” I asked, giving her a weird look. It wasn’t like Eleanor to be standoffish.

“Yeah,” she said. “I just have a cold. I don’t want you to catch it.”

“We’re living in the same room,” I said with a laugh. “I’ll probably catch it anyway.”

For a moment we stood in silence, Eleanor looking uncharacteristically humorless. I didn’t know what to say, and small talk had never been my forte. So I just asked her what was on my mind.

“Eleanor, what happened?”

She took off her beret.

“You have to tell me,” I said. “I know that look. You’re hiding something.”

She sighed and sat on her bed. “Okay, so don’t get mad at me, but this past semester, I was secretly dating...” She closed her eyes and bit her lip, bracing herself for my reaction, “Brett.”

“What?” I said, too loudly. It was so far from what I was expecting that I couldn’t help but stare, waiting for her to confirm that I had heard correctly. “Brett Steyers? You and Brett Steyers?”

Eleanor nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know. I liked the idea of a secret fling. It was so exciting and romantic to think we could get caught. And then when they found me, I didn’t want to tell anyone what really happened because they might suspect him, and it wasn’t his fault.”

“What do you mean ‘what really happened’?”

“On Grub Day I went to the library to study. Later, I snuck out to meet Brett, then tried to sneak back into the dorm through the basement. But just after I stepped inside, someone locked the door behind me. I tried to climb into the chimney to get back to our room, but the flue was closed. I heard four loud bangs, like a hammer on metal, and water came rushing in from somewhere in the ceiling. I tried going to the furnace room to find another way out, but the basement was already filling with water. I screamed and screamed, but the water was too loud for anyone to hear me.”

“How did you get out?”

She shrugged. “One day I just woke up and the flue was open, so I climbed out.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“I didn’t want them to know about the chimney. It’s our only way out. And I didn’t want anyone to suspect Brett.”

“But what if it
was
Brett?”

Eleanor shook her head. “It wasn’t. Because I was coming back from meeting him when it happened. He would have had to be in two places at once to have broken the pipes while I was in there. Besides, why would he want to kill me?”

“So are you guys still...you know?”

Eleanor sighed. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him yet,” she said, and unzipped her bag.

Sitting on the bed while she unpacked and told me about her winter vacation, I wanted to believe that nothing had changed, that we were back to the first day of school, before the flood, before Dante, before everything got complicated. But it wasn’t true. She avoided talking about the flood any further, and remembering what it felt like after my parents died, I didn’t ask. Whatever happened in the basement had changed her. It was something about the way she carried herself, the way she now slouched and dragged her feet, the way her smile seemed thinner and crooked. They were subtle differences, barely noticeable to anyone except me. It was as if she had been replaced by a twin, identical, yet essentially different. So instead of talking about what happened, we went to lunch.

“So how was your break?” she asked as we sat in the dining hall. Groups of students gathered in clusters at the tables around us.

More than anything, I wanted to tell her about what I had learned at my grandfather’s house. “I was at home and I found this book,” I said, trying to figure out how to best explain everything. Where to begin? Should I start with the
Seventh Meditation,
or just skip ahead to what the Undead were and how everything in the book described Dante? “So you know how Dante has all of these unexplainable things about him—like his cold skin and the fact that he never...he never...” My voice trailed off as Eleanor’s plate caught my eyes.

“Renée?” she said to me. “Hello? You were saying something?”

“Ate anything,” I said blankly. Eleanor’s plate was virtually empty. Putting my cup down, I studied her again. Could it be?

“You’re not eating anything,” I said quietly as I tried to remember how many days Eleanor had been in the basement. Ten?

Eleanor looked at her plate. “I sort of lost my appetite since the flood.”

“And you didn’t wear a coat when we walked over here.”

Eleanor didn’t notice until I pointed it out to her. “I guess you’re right,” she said, looking at the thin sweater covering her arms with surprise. “I didn’t even realize. Anyway, what were you saying about Dante and something about a book?”

Should I tell her about it? I wasn’t sure that Eleanor even knew what she was yet, and I definitely wasn’t the right person to tell her. But I also didn’t want to get accidentally killed. “Oh, um, nothing. Nothing.”

That night she didn’t sleep. She tossed around in bed, tangling herself in the sheets, while I had nightmares of zombies running toward me from every direction, their faces blank and emotionless. Every so often I would wake up in the middle of the night, my pajamas drenched in sweat. I’d kick off the covers and sit up, unable to stop thinking about all the things my grandfather had told me about Gottfried. And then I would stare at Eleanor and wonder if she was feeling the impulse to take my soul.

Suddenly she stood up and started pacing around the room.

“Are you feeling okay?” I asked, my voice trembling.

Startled, she turned to me. “I don’t know. I have to think about it,” she murmured as if she were talking in her sleep, the hem of her nightgown fluttering around her legs in the moonlight.

The next morning I woke up early to go to Horticulture. It was our first day back in classes. Eleanor was in bed, curled up, facing the wall. I prodded her gently. “Eleanor, get up. We have Horticulture at six.”

Eleanor lay with her back to me. “I’m not going,” she said miserably. “I’m not in that class anymore.”

“What?”

“They switched my schedule. Just go without me.”

I waited a moment to see if she would roll over, but she didn’t move; and with nothing else to do, I left for class without her.

That morning we gathered by the chapel, until Professor Mumm showed up and led us out the gates of the campus.

“Renée,” Brett called out to me as we walked.

I stopped, looking at him in a new light. “Oh hi, Brett.”

He jogged up to me, looking like a robust ski instructor in a winter coat and a blue-and-yellow Gottfried scarf, his brown curls emerging from the bottom of a knit hat. “How’s it going?”

“It’s okay,” I said. “You know, I’ve been better.”

“Break wasn’t so great?”

I laughed and shook my head. “That’s the understatement of the year. But I did watch a lot of movies.”

“Crappy horror movies, I bet.”

I looked up at him, surprised.

He shrugged, pleased with himself. “You seem like the type.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you do always seem to find dead things whenever we’re in class.”

I bit my lip, thinking back to the first day of class, when I found the dead fawn, or later in the semester when I found the carcass of a bird when we were supposed to be collecting baby saplings; or when I found a frozen squirrel when we were supposed to be learning about seasonal mosses. “I guess you’re right.”

Brett stuffed his hands in his pockets. “It’s not a bad thing. Professor Mumm loves you; you’re like her prodigy. Maybe it’s some sort of special talent.”

Letting out a laugh, I said, “Yeah, right. More like a curse. A Gottfried Curse.”

I looked at him to see if he recognized the term, but he didn’t seem to be familiar with it.

“Anyway, I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” Brett said. “About Eleanor.”

I smiled, unexpectedly comforted by normal conversation. “Thanks.”

“How is she?” His forehead was furrowed with worry.

How to respond. “She’s … different. Quieter. I think she’s traumatized,” I said, which was partially the truth.

“How was her break? Was she at home with her mother? Or was she in the hospital?”

“I think she was with her mom. It sounded like her break wasn’t so great. Recovering and all. Why don’t you just ask her yourself?”

“Oh, no. I don’t think so. Is her brother around a lot?”

Brandon
had
been hanging around Eleanor a lot these days, looking even more stern and angry than normal. And who could blame him? His sister had probably died, and from the scrutinizing look he gave anyone who talked to her, it was clear that he was certain someone was responsible, and was determined to find out who it was and punish them. “He is.”

Brett shrugged. “I figured as much. Did she say anything about how it happened?”

I shook my head. “She doesn’t know.”

We stopped just at the edge of the woods. Professor Mumm cleared her throat. “Today we’ll be learning how to read snow. Like soil, the texture and topography of snow and ice can tell us what lies beneath. A dune, a crevasse; whether the snow is powdery or packed, blue or creamy or a brilliant white—each of these characteristics can tell us what’s hidden beneath”—she held up an index finger—“if we learn how to read them. Now, what I want you to do is partner up.”

Brett elbowed me. “You and me?”

I smiled.

When I got out of class, Dante was leaning on the stone at the entrance to Horace Hall, waiting for me, as beautiful as ever. He looked up at me as I approached, his face young and dark and gallant, his hair pulled back like an Italian model. If I hadn’t known everything that he was, I would have fallen in love with him all over again. He was wearing a crisp blue shirt and tie. Only a thin coat, no scarf. Snowflakes collected on his hair. Everything about him reminded me of how different we were.

“Renée,” he called out, but I kept walking. “Renée, wait. Why won’t you talk to me?” He reached out and grabbed my arm.

Unprepared for the coldness of his skin, I pulled my arm away and stared at him as if he were a stranger. For the briefest moment our eyes met, and a flicker of understanding passed between us before I looked away.

What does it feel like to discover that your boyfriend is Undead? Shocking. Unfair. But mostly disturbing. How was it possible that I had spent so much time with Dante without knowing what he truly was? I couldn’t decide which was more disturbing—that he was dying, or that a killer was dormant inside him. Was there a part of him that wanted my soul? I thought back to every time we almost kissed. I shivered at how close he had come to taking my life. Could he do it? I didn’t want to ask him or talk about it. What could I possibly say? I was alive, he was dead, and no amount of words would change that.

“Renée, please,” he said as I turned to go. “Just listen to me. Talk to me. I’ve been trying to call—” But I was already gone.

“How was Horticulture?” Eleanor asked while we were sitting in Philosophy, waiting for class to start.

“We had it in the forest,” I said.

Eleanor’s eyes went wide. “What was it like? What did you do?”

“Snow topography. With partners.”

Nathaniel frowned. “What does that have to do with horticulture?” He looked at Eleanor. “So you weren’t there?”