Love Reborn (A Dead Beautiful Novel) (2 page)

“Don’t!” I shouted, as the crack rang out through the trees.

Its head fell limp in Dante’s arms. All went still. The lifelessness of the dog crept toward me, the air rearranging itself until the forest felt hollow.

A lock of hair dangled in front of Dante’s face as he looked up, his eyes clouded and cold, void of the deep brown gaze that belonged to the boy I knew. His cheek was smeared with blood. As he took me in, his eyes came back into focus; the haze over his irises receded. The muscles in his face softened, his shoulders relaxing, until he was back to the Dante I had come here with. The Dante who was gentle and kind, who had never killed anything in front of me before.

He hesitated before walking toward me. He must have seen the fear in my eyes. “Are you okay?”

I nodded, willing my lips to stop quivering. I reached out to his cheek, but let my arm drop. “You have blood,” I said. “Here.”

He wiped it away. “It’s not mine.”

Though of course, I already knew. Dante healed too quickly to have left such a brazen trace of red.

The snow fell around us in thick clumps, like shreds of cloud falling from the sky. It clung to his hair, his shoulders, preserving him in white as he trudged toward me. Gently, he brushed the snowflakes from my eyelashes, sending an icy prickle up my skin. At his touch, I could suddenly smell the sharp pine of the trees around us, the wind whistling through the branches in a melancholy key.

The first time I had felt the prickle of his touch it had frightened me; now, though, it was a comfort. The Undead have only twenty-one years to roam the earth, their bodies decaying, growing hungrier and more desperate until they die again for good.

Feeling the cold tug of Dante’s presence reminded me that he was still here, that we still had time; though how much, I wasn’t sure. He had four years left as an Undead, but how many as the Dante that I knew? How long did we have until he succumbed to darkness? Until his skin withered and the hunger within him surfaced, the hunger that would urge him to take my soul? He had already begun his decline; I could see it in the coldness that came over him when he was angry. He could barely hear the dogs until they were upon us. He couldn’t feel the slick of blood on his cheek, or any other sensation except for my touch. He couldn’t smell the woods around us unless I was close to him, nor taste anything but the salt on my skin, nor hear music—to Dante, everything was noise, except for the sound of my voice.

With every day that I lived, Dante was dying.

I tried to imagine what it would it be like when all of this was over, and we could walk down a snowy street hand in hand, like any other couple—never having to worry about who might see us, or how much time we had left together. A muffled shout brought me back to the woods.

“This way—he feels stronger than any other Undead I’ve ever known!”

My body went rigid. I recognized the deep intonations of my grandfather.

“They’re coming,” I said, and turned to Dante, confused. “They can feel you more than any other Undead.”

But why? Dante’s presence couldn’t be that much stronger than it was weeks earlier. I knew that the presence of an Undead grew more potent as he aged, but my grandfather had been hunting Dante for months, and had never had this response. Something must have changed in the past ten days, but what? My hand tightened around the strap of my bag. “The canary,” I said, feeling its subtle tug on my back. Could its presence be somehow heightening Dante’s vacancy? I had never heard of such a phenomena. It didn’t make sense—the canary was supposed to be the most difficult corpse to find—but nothing else did either. “Maybe...maybe it’s drawing the Monitors closer?”

Dante didn’t question me. “We have to leave it behind.”

“What if we need it?”

“Need it for what?” Dante said. “It was probably only pinned inside the chest so that you could find it.”

I hesitated. “I’m not sure.”

Dante had no answer. “If you’re right that it’s adding to my vacancy, and we keep it, there’s more of a chance that they’ll find us. If that happens, they’ll bury me. And there will be no use for the chest at all.”

In the distance, I could hear the muffled cries of the Monitors.

“Okay,” I said, and fumbled through my bag until I found its brittle body. Before I could change my mind, I tossed it far into the woods.

A swirl of snow followed us as he led me deeper into the white woods. It was a place where everything looked alike; one tree seemed identical to the next, until I felt like I was running in circles. Everything had an eerie hollowness to it here, as if the forest around us was sleeping, waiting, watching. All the while, the sound of the Monitors crept up on us, their footsteps crunching in the snow, their voices carrying on the wind like the murmurs of ghosts.

“Hurry!” my grandfather said, his baritone voice silencing the others. “His presence is stronger than ever.”

I slowed. “It didn’t help,” I said, realizing then that my instinct had been right—the canary had never been the problem. “They can still sense you more than ever before.”

Dante stopped in his tracks. “It’s because we’re together,” he said, the realization making his face drop. “We feel stronger to them. That’s how they were able to find us so quickly....” He met my gaze, his eyes already apologizing for what he was about to say. “We have to split up.”

I shook my head, already knowing my answer. I had only just found him; I couldn’t lose him again.

“If we stay together, they’ll be able to follow us wherever we go. Our only chance is to go in separate directions, and hope that they can’t sense me as strongly. Once we gain some ground, we’ll find each other.”

The thought of leaving him made my insides collapse. “No,” I said. “I can’t leave you.” But he slipped his hand from mine.

“Then you might as well bury me now.”

My grandfather’s voice cut through the woods. “He’s killed the dogs!”

Dante’s eyes implored me.
Please,
they seemed to say.

What choice did I have? I lowered my bag, my fingers nervous and clumsy as I unlatched the hinges on the chest and took out the small black box within. I felt its weight pulling away from me as my fingers closed around it. I thrust it into his hands.

“Take this, then,” I said. “So I know I’ll see you again.”

Dante hesitated.

My eyes stung in the wind. “I won’t leave until you take it.”

He nodded and tucked it inside his coat. “Now, go.” He pointed up to the two mountains that rose above us. “In the valley between them is a town. You should be able to make it there in a few hours. There’s a bus station and an inn, which should be safe. They mind their own business.”

“And then what? How will I find you?”

“Meet me tomorrow night in Pilgrim, Massachusetts. When you get there, you’ll know where to go.”

“What?” I asked, unable to hide the desperation in my voice. “But how—”

Through the trees, I heard the sound of footsteps crunching in the snow.

“Trust me,” Dante said. “Now, where are you meeting me?”

“Pilgrim, Massachusetts,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “Tomorrow night.”

He nodded.
I love you
, he mouthed, and disappeared into the white.

V
ACANCY,
BLINKED THE MOTEL SIGN.
I stopped to catch my breath. The afternoon sun waned in the sky. Had anyone followed me? My grandfather’s voice had faded away hours ago, along with the Monitors, the footsteps. Our split had only slowed them down briefly; after a few miles, they had veered off my trail to follow Dante. I felt his presence slip away as he traveled farther south, quicker than he ever could have with me. Had he lost them? He was too far away for me to tell. There was nothing I could do to help. Unless...

I ran across the street to the motel. The inside was colored in shades of brown—the carpet, the wood siding, the curtains, the furniture. I rang the bell on the counter, and a woman shuffled in from the back room. The sound of a television floated in behind her. She eyed my clothes, which were caked with snow. “From out of town?”

I nodded. “I was wondering if you had a map of Maine that I could look at?”

She paused. “You mean New Hampshire?”

So that’s where I was. “I’m just passing through,” I explained.

“Sounds like you need this,” she said, and slid a road map of New England across the counter. I unfolded it and scanned the web of lines until I found a small dot near the southern coast of Massachusetts. Pilgrim.

“And where are we now?”

The woman squinted at me, then pointed to the mountains in western New Hampshire. I felt her watching me, and quickly folded it up. “Thanks,” I said, sliding it back to her. “Is there a bus station nearby?”

“On the other side of town. Swing a left at the light and keep walking till you hit the end of Main Street. You can’t miss it.”

When I reached the small booth on the edge of town, I quickly found the schedule posted on the window and scanned down to Pilgrim, which was leaving in an hour. But that wasn’t my first destination. I had one more place to go before meeting Dante.

“A ticket to Amherst,” I said through the glass. “One way.”

A white canopy of trees led us into Western Massachusetts. While dusk set over the rooftops, I took a taxi to a lonely road that wove out to the foothills.

“Are you sure this is the right way?” the driver asked.

I gazed out at the long barren landscape passing by the window, nothing but naked trees and snow for as far as the eye could see. Yes, I was sure. When the road narrowed, I asked him to let me off.

“You’re certain?” the driver asked again.

“Yes.”

The walk was short. After just a few paces, I could make out a slant of black shingles through the trees. A few steps more and a spire cut into the sunset, followed by a chimney, cold and smokeless; a line of diamond-paned windows flanked by shutters; and a heavy wooden door. My grandfather’s house loomed over the pines. The topiaries were covered in burlap bags for the winter, the lampposts off. A long driveway packed with snow rolled out before the mansion. I crept closer.

All of the windows were dark, except for one. A shadow moved behind it. I stood in the snow and peered through the gap in the curtains. Dustin, my grandfather’s estate manager, paced back and forth in the kitchen rubbing the bald skin of his head, his brow furrowed. After a moment, he picked up the phone and bent over a pad on the counter, dialing a number. He waited, then spoke into the phone, his words deliberate, though they were lost on me. Before the person on the other end of the line could have possibly had time to respond, he hung up.

He paced. After a few moments, the phone rang. He picked it up immediately.
Hello?
his lips said. He listened, his shoulders growing tight, and began to talk. He turned his back to me and leaned over the counter. I watched him until he hung up for the second time. He hovered over the phone, deep in thought, as if the conversation had had no closure. Then, without warning, he turned to the window.

I ducked out of the way and crouched in the snow beneath the sill, pressing myself against the side of the house.
Swish
, went the curtains. A bar of warm light stretched out over the lawn, Dustin’s shadow cutting through the center. The fog of my breath billowed in front of me. I covered my mouth and eyed the rectangle of light. The snow was a smooth white, unmarred by my footprints, except for a heel mark at the very edge. Had Dustin noticed it?

No. He backed away, his shadow moving out of the light. After he closed the curtains, I stood up and peered through the gap as Dustin disappeared into an adjacent room. My eyes followed him to the next room over, where he pulled a weekend travel bag out of the closet and ran upstairs. When he came back down he wore a wool cap and an overcoat, and carried a long shovel. Was it his? His bag looked heavy. He set it down in the foyer and pulled a handkerchief from his suit pocket. He patted his upper lip, then folded the cloth into his coat and opened the door. I hid behind a hedge and watched through the branches as he walked down the icy steps toward the spare cars, threw his bags in the back of my grandfather’s Roadster, and sped away, his taillights disappearing into the night.

When I was sure he wasn’t coming back, I fumbled through my bag for my keys, and snuck inside.

The house was quiet and dark. The heat creaked through the radiators, and the faint smell of dinner clung to the air. The other members of the mansion staff were probably in their quarters by now, though I still had to be careful. I tiptoed down the hall and into the kitchen, where Dustin had stood minutes before. Leaving the lights off, I picked up the phone and pressed redial. It rang and rang. Finally, a woman picked up.

“We still haven’t recovered him yet,” she said. I recognized her voice as my grandfather’s secretary at Gottfried Academy. “They’re searching the lake now, but so far there’s no sign of him.”

I pressed my lips shut just before the gasp left my mouth. She had to have been talking about Noah. He was the only person who would have been in the lake.

“Dustin?” the woman said. “Dustin, are you there?”

Quickly, I hung up. She must have been in contact with Dustin while my grandfather was away, updating him on the status of Noah’s body. Which apparently was gone, just like in my dream. I gazed out the window, wondering. Had Dustin packed his things in order to go to Gottfried himself in my grandfather’s stead? If so, he wouldn’t be back tonight. He had been dressed like he was going on a trip, but I couldn’t be sure. He could return at any moment.

I crept down the hall to my grandfather’s study. He was an organized man, his desk decorated sparsely with a telephone and a jar of odd objects: a magnifying glass for reading, a spare set of spectacles, a few pens, a compass. I turned the compass until the needle inside trembled and pointed north. I followed its direction out the window to the snowy pines outside, imagining Dante trudging through the woods. They couldn’t have caught him yet. He was still out there.

I walked straight to the hutch behind my grandfather’s desk and unlatched its doors, behind which hung his entire collection of shovels, gleaming in the light. I picked them up one by one, testing their weight and sharpness, before choosing a small silver shovel. Its handle was just long enough for me to wield it like a sword, but just short enough that it would fit, concealed, within my coat. I then opened the bottom drawers of the hutch, where my grandfather kept his Monitoring supplies, and stuffed as many rolls of gauze as I could fit into the front pocket of my bag.

While the staff slept, I crept into the kitchen and snuck food from the pantry. A triangle of light stretched over the tiles as I peeked into the refrigerator at the pots of leftovers. I spooned myself a plate of mushroom stew and sweet potatoes and carried it upstairs to my room. There I packed a small bag with clothes, a light blanket, and all of the money in my dresser drawer. A little over three hundred dollars. It was all I had left from what I’d saved at my job in California. Only two years had passed since then, though it felt like a lifetime had gone by. Leaning against the bed, I gazed at my bedroom, which had once belonged to my mother. She, too, was a part of a different life. She and my father were fading in my memory to something hazy and distant, their faces stuck in time. I glanced around the room at all of her things. They were my things now, though as I studied them, I realized I didn’t care that I might never see them again. I felt no attachment to the mansion, to this place, to
any
place. My parents had been my home, and now that they were gone, all I had left was Dante. I glanced down at my bag, the chest heavy at the bottom. Where would it lead us? And would I meet my parents there?

I turned off the light and pulled a blanket into the closet, where I made a bed beneath my mother’s clothes. I couldn’t chance being caught. And with the hems of my mother’s dresses tickling my arms, I closed my eyes and prepared myself for what I had to do in the morning, before I left the mansion for the last time.

I woke before the sun rose and called a taxi from the phone in my grandfather’s office, telling the driver to meet me by the end of the lane. While I waited for him to arrive, I picked up the phone again and dialed my grandfather’s mobile number. It rang three times before he picked up.

“Dustin, yes?” he said, static crackling through his voice. So he didn’t know that Dustin had left. Strange.

“Dustin?” my grandfather repeated. “Are you there?” Even through the weak connection, I could hear the exhaustion in his voice. He hadn’t caught up with Dante yet; I could tell.

I swallowed. “I’m here,” I said. “But not for long. Come and find me.”

I heard my grandfather shout just before I hung up. All my grandfather wanted to do was protect me from the Liberum, and from Dante, whom he had been hunting ever since Dante and I exchanged souls. Maybe my phone call would make him change his course.

The phone rang, but I didn’t pick up. As the house stirred with the sound, I slung my bag over my shoulder and slipped outside. I ran toward the road, the zing of the morning cold making my limbs move faster. My taxi was waiting to take me to the bus station in Amherst. The driver nodded as he pulled away from the road, and I watched the last trace of my grandfather’s mansion disappear through the pines.

Pilgrim, Massachusetts, was a quiet fishing town, the shores rocky and the water dark. The slant of the afternoon sun made my shadow stretch as I walked down Main Street, trying to figure out what to do. Souvenir shops and fish shacks lined the sidewalk, though almost all were closed for the winter, and the streets were empty save for a few stray seagulls perched on the awnings. I was supposed to meet Dante somewhere in town, but I felt no trace of him. That had to have been what Dante had meant when he’d told me I would know where to go—that I would be able to sense him—but all I could feel now was the salty sea breeze rolling in over the ocean.

The shops on the street grew sparse as I made my way toward the end of town, the chest heavy against my back. I tried to keep my mind from wandering, but all I could think about was: what if? What if my grandfather had caught up to Dante? What if the Monitors had decided to bury him? What if I never saw him again? The seagulls cried overhead, circling like vultures, while the waves crashed against the rocks. I slowed, about to lose hope, when something caught my eye.

The street rose up a hill. At the top stood a rickety brown house with a wooden sign hanging off its awning. It swung, creaking in the wind. the old soul
,
it read in a mariner’s typeface. Before I knew it, I was walking, then jogging toward it, the air sharp in my lungs.

At the top of the hill, I stopped to catch my breath. The Old Soul stood only a few paces away: a weathered colonial with screen doors, a wraparound porch, and shutters flanking its windows.
TAVERN AND RESTAURANT
,
the sign read.

I peered through the windows, looking for Dante even though I knew he couldn’t be there—not without me feeling him. On the other side of the window stood a rustic dining room with long wooden tables set with mugs and dinnerware. No sign of guests or waiters. I scanned the chairs, looking for some clue as to why Dante would have told me to come here, when I saw something move.

I jumped back. An elderly man stood behind the bar, listening to a portable radio. He didn’t seem to see me. I squinted, watching him sneeze, then pat around the counter for a stack of napkins as if he were blind.

I leaned forward to get a better look, when I noticed someone peering in through the window on the opposite side of the building. I cupped my hands over the glass. It looked like a girl, though she was too far away to make out the details of her face. All I could see was the top of her hair, which was dyed a deep, unnatural red. I paused. The color looked shockingly familiar.

“Anya?” I whispered.

Just before my breath fogged the glass, her eyes darted to mine as though she’d heard me. But no, it couldn’t be. I wiped the condensation off the window; she ducked out of the way. Anya had been one of my closest friends at St. Clément last year. But the school and her home were both in Montreal—why would she be here, in this country, in this state, in the same exact town, peering into the same exact window on the opposite side of the restaurant where I was supposed to meet Dante? No one knew we were meeting here; in fact, even I hadn’t known until a few minutes before. I must be seeing things, I thought, and backed away.

“Renée?” It was a high-pitched voice with a Russian accent.

Before I knew it, Anya Pinsky had wrapped her skinny arms around me with an excited squeal. I breathed in her tangy perfume. It reminded me of winter in Montreal, of the cozy smell of smoke and incense that had enveloped me every time she’d opened the door to her dorm room; of the scratchy blanket she’d thrown over me all those times I’d fallen asleep on her sofa, the candles on her windowsill flickering while the snow fell over the city. Suddenly everything felt like it was going to be okay.

We parted quickly, an awkwardness coming over us as Anya brushed herself off. She normally wasn’t one for hugs. I couldn’t help but smile when I took in her tight black ensemble, which was more urban than rural, and made her look at odds with the rocky natural landscape of Massachusetts. She wore heavy black eyeliner and nail polish to match.