Life Eternal Part 31

"I found it."

Pushing a volume of old admissions tests back onto the shelf, I jumped off of a step stool and ran over to him. Noah was trying to extricate a thick book from its neighbors. Giving the book a firm tug, he stumbled back, and it fell to the floor with a thud.

We set the book on a windowsill and flipped through it. The paper was thick and brittle, the words written in a small, slanted hand. Each page contained nothing but a long list of names and their corresponding room numbers. And it went on for hundreds of pages. No wonder no one came up to this section of the library.

And then we found it. The year 1732, the same year that dated the letter in my pocket. Using my finger, I scanned the list until I found it: Hart, Ophelia. Room 22.

"Room 22. Do you know where that is?" Noah asked.

It was on my floor. Closing my eyes, I mentally counted off the doors, starting at the stairway and working down, down, down...and then I stopped. It couldn't be.

I counted again, this time from the other direction, but I was right the first time. "Yes," I said, opening my eyes. Noah was bent over the book next to me, his face inches from mine.

"Who has that room?"

"No one," I said, amazed that I hadn't realized it earlier. Anya's room was number 21. And Arielle's room was 23. The room in between them was Ophelia's. I must have pa.s.sed it dozens of times this year without giving it a second glance. Except I never knew it had been a room. "It's a broom closet."

Just to make sure, I flipped ahead to the next year and found her name. And then to the next year. Ophelia had lived in the same room for the entirety of her stay at St. Clement.

But strangely, in the years that followed, room 22 wasn't listed at all.

"She was the last one to live there," I said, turning to Noah.

As if reading my thoughts, he said softly, "We found it, then."

Picking up our things, we hurried down the stairs and through the double doors into the cold February night.

The warm lighting and rose wallpaper of the girls' dormitory greeted us as we burst through the doors. We quickly composed ourselves when we noticed a group of girls staring. Once upstairs, I peeked around the corner to make sure the hallway was free of Clementine and her friends. And after waiting for a girl to disappear into her room, Noah and I slipped through the corridors until we were standing in front of Anya's room, number 21.

Just beside it was the broom closet.

I had been right. Beneath the thick layers of paint that coated the door, I could barely make out the raised metal of the number 22. Noah ran his fingers across it. "Amazing," he said. "I never would have noticed this."

The paint was so thick that it filled the seams between the door and the k.n.o.b, sealing it shut. Still, he tried the k.n.o.b. It wouldn't turn. After watching him try it a few more times, and giving it a series of firm, frustrated pushes that made more noise than I would have liked, I grabbed his arm.

"It isn't moving," I said. "The only way would be to break down the door, which would probably arouse some suspicion."

Noah wiped his brow, looking dejected for the first time today. "So now what?"

I bit my lip, trying to think of some solution, but I was all out of ideas. The room had obviously been sealed on purpose, which meant that someone didn't want anyone getting in here.

From somewhere behind us, I heard the m.u.f.fled sound of things clattering to the floor. Noah and I exchanged puzzled looks and turned around. It had come from Anya's room. Beyond the walls I could hear her cursing at something in Russian.

Abandoning the broom closet, I knocked on her door. Something shuffled inside, then stopped. The door cracked open, and one large eye peered out at me, its lashes thick with mascara.

"Oh, Renee!" Anya said.

"You're okay," I said, relieved.

"I got them to tell me their names and where they lived," Anya said proudly. "I think one of them might have even liked me-" but she cut herself off when she saw Noah behind me.

"Can we come in?" he said. "We need to use your bathroom."

Dozens of candles were lit about her room, making the atmosphere hazy. Noah tripped over a box of incense and knocked a set of metal charms as he steadied himself on the bedpost. They clinked together like chimes.

"What do you need the bathroom for?" Anya asked, picking up a pile of dirty clothes.

"Ophelia Hart hid the first part of the riddle in her dorm room-" I began to say, when I noticed that Anya's closet door was ajar. A worn wooden handle was sticking out from between her clothes.

"What is that?" I said, gazing at the handle, and then at Anya.

Her face seemed to grow pale. "Just a broom," she said quickly, and ran to shut the closet door, but I made it there first. Gasping the handle, I pulled it out of her closet, knocking the hangers from the rod.

"This is my shovel," I said, and turned it around to inspect its rusty head. Baffled, I turned to Anya. "Did you take this from my room? Did you go through my things?"

Anya backed against the wall as I held the shovel up, not even realizing I was shaking it at her. "Did you-did you put that parsnip beneath my radiator?"

"It was for your own good!" Anya said quickly, staring at the tip of my shovel as it hovered inches from her face. "If you put one beneath your window, they're supposed to keep the Undead away. I accidentally knocked your water jug over on my way out," she admitted. "And it's bad luck to use a shovel that belonged to someone whose soul was taken. I couldn't let you use your mother's shovel, but I knew you wouldn't believe me if I told you, so while I was there, I took it."

I felt my mouth move as I tried to form words that would express how equally disturbed and relieved I was to discover that Anya had been the one who broke into my room.

"You're angry," Anya said, fidgeting with the end of her braid. "I know. I shouldn't have lied to you-"

Before she could finish, I jumped toward her and gave her a hug, her bony shoulders relaxing beneath my grip. "Thank you," I said, giving her an understanding smile as I stepped back. "But please don't ever do that to me again."

"I won't," Anya said. She began to twist one of her earrings. "There's one more thing."

My smile faded.

"I never told you my fortune."

Slowly, I lowered the shovel and waited for her to continue.

"For my past, Zinya told me that I had thought myself worthless because I never had any Monitoring talent. For my present, she said that I was developing a new rare skill that a friend would bring out in me."

"You're a Whisperer," I murmured.

Anya nodded, but didn't meet my eyes. Her face grew somber.

"And your future?" I asked. "What did she say about that?"

Anya fidgeted with her fingernails, unwilling to meet my gaze. "That I was going to lose that friend."

I lowered the head of the shovel to the ground. "But -what?"

Her words hung in the air between us as I stood there, unable to move. "Did she mean me?"

Anya's eyes drooped. "I don't have any other friends."

"But it can't mean that," I said. "Zinya told me that I would meet life and death at the end of my search." And then it dawned on me: maybe I would die, and Dante would live. "Maybe she meant that I would just go away," I said. "Lose doesn't necessarily mean death."

Anya nodded. "You're right. That's probably it."

But I barely heard her. "Why didn't you tell me before?"

"Because it's bad luck. I was hoping it wouldn't be true. That I wouldn't become a Whisperer. That you wouldn't find the clues to the riddles, or discover the ninth sister. But all of that happened."

I blinked.

"Renee!" Noah called from the bathroom. "I think I found it."

I glanced over my shoulder at Noah's legs in the bathroom.

Anya met my gaze. "If Zinya knew you were going to die, she would have told you. But instead she said life and death. Nothing's certain."

I bit my lip, not sure if she was saying that to make me feel better, or because she really meant it. But no matter. There was only one thing left to do. Dropping the shovel, I ran to the bathroom.

Noah was standing in front of the full-length mirror, positioned in the same place the door leading to Clementine's room was in my bathroom. "I think this is it," he said, speaking to my reflection. "Feel this."

He guided my hand to a tiny hole near the corner of the mirror. Pulling open Anya's bathroom drawers, he rummaged through them until he found a pair of tweezers. "Look for another pair," he said as he knelt in front of the mirror and inserted the tweezers into the hole. Rotating them slightly, he looked up at me and grinned. "It works. It's a screw."

As Noah made his way around the perimeter of the mirror, I went through the rest of her drawers.

"The bottom left," Anya said from the doorway. Following her direction, I rifled through her toiletries until I found another pair, peered into one of the holes, and began uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the tiny bolt within.

Noah had already finished the penultimate screw, and was placing it into a soap dish by the sink, when I felt the final screw wobble in the hole. I pulled out my tweezers, and a little piece of metal fell through my fingers and onto the floor.

The mirror trembled.

Noah grabbed my arm and pulled me toward him. Anya screamed.

And with a loud swoop, the mirror fell to the ground, shattering across the tiles.

When everything had settled, Anya was crouched in the doorway, covering her head. Noah was kneeling beside me, asking me if I was hurt. And where the mirror used to be, there now was an old wooden door.

"I'm fine," I said, and stepped over the shards, the gla.s.s crunching beneath my shoes.

The door was a dark brown, with peeling varnish and slanted slats like the kind you see in psychiatric inst.i.tutions. Little wormholes dotted the center.

I shook the k.n.o.b, which was loose. The door rattled in its frame but didn't open.

"Move out of the way," Noah said, backing up. And with a determined look, he ran at the door, hitting it with his shoulder and bursting through to the other side.

There was a loud crash, the sound of wood cracking, and then a groan.

"Noah?" I shouted into the darkness.

No one answered for a long time. I looked at Anya, who was squinting into the room. I was about to repeat myself, when Noah's voice echoed from inside. "You have to come in here."

I stumbled over the splintered fragments of the door and into a dark and musty room. A long rectangle of light from the bathroom shone across the ground.

Behind us, Anya held up a flashlight and pointed it around the room, illuminating the interior in a slow sweep as if we were exploring the remains of a sunken ship.

The windows were shut and coated with a thick layer of dust and grime. Sheets were draped across the room, protecting candelabras and piles of books and linens. The furniture all looked antique, the armchair standing on curled claws, the bookshelf plated with gla.s.s doors, the desk inlaid with lovely layers of wood. And the bed-a beautiful bed engraved with vines that looked much too small for any person born in this century.

All of it was blackened with smoke stains, including the walls.

"There was a fire here," I said to Noah, touching the dark billowing patterns on the walls, the dust tickling my nose. "This was the fire she died in. That's why the room was closed off."

I gazed out the window, trying to imagine what the courtyard looked like when Ophelia lived here.

She must have been just around my age when she'd died. If I were her, and came back to this room to plant a message, where would I have put it?

Anya had opened the French doors of the closet, and Noah was scouring the walls, but I knew they were wrong. I wouldn't leave a message anywhere that could be easily painted or papered over or burned away.

With sudden conviction, I spun around. There, on the far wall, was a st.u.r.dy brick fireplace, the red darkened to a smoky brown hue from the fire. This must have been the fire Dustin had told me about that led the school to ban the use of the fireplaces. It was the only part of the room that wouldn't be torn down or changed in any way, unless the entire building was demolished.

Kneeling on the floor, I flung off my coat, rolled up my sleeves, and reached my arm into the chimney. It was soft with spiderwebs and ash. I brushed all of that away. The flue was shut and locked in place, so I patted around below it, tracing the lines of the brick until I felt something cool and smooth, like metal. I went over it again, this time slower, pa.s.sing my palm across it. There were lines etched into it. I was so shocked that I pulled my hand out and glanced around the room. Anya and Noah were busy searching the far wall. When I put my hand back, I half expected the metal to have disappeared, a figment of my imagination, but instead, it seemed even more real, the lines carved into it forming letters beneath my fingertips.

"I think I found it," I said, my voice cracking. But no one seemed to hear me. "I found it," I repeated, this time louder. Noah froze, his face softening to a smile.

"Can I borrow your flashlight?" I asked.

He handed it to me, and I ducked into the chimney. Dust sprinkled from above, making me cough as I shined the light on the inner wall. And there, cut neatly into the metal, was a message.

If you wish to find what the nine have kept, from the highest rank to the lowest depth, you must be schooled in my grief; I read it out loud three times, until I was sure I had it committed to memory, and then climbed out, shaking the dust from my hair. "We found it."

"What do you think it means?" I said, writing the full riddle on a piece of paper and spreading it in front of us on the carpet in Anya's room.

If you wish to find what the nine have kept, from the highest rank to the lowest depth, you must be schooled in my grief; to arrive there follow the nose of the bear to the salty waters beneath; here it is laid to rest where to only the best of our kind it shall be bequeathed.

"The first verse doesn't tell us anything," I said, reading it all again, even though I knew it by memory.

"Highest rank? Schooled in grief?" Noah said, tracing the second and third lines. "Clearly, the hiding spot has something to do with a school."

I bit my lip. "But not this school. She couldn't have hidden the secret at St. Clement. Ophelia would never have hidden the secret in the same place as the first part of the riddle. That would defeat the purpose."

Anya sat down between us and pushed the riddle aside. "You're going about it the wrong way. I think the last few lines mean that Ophelia hid these riddles for only a very specific kind of person to find the secret. Probably someone like her. Top rank."

Noah and Anya both slowly turned and looked at me.

"The riddle gives us half the information," she said. "It tells us that the secret is submerged in salt water, beneath a bear. And that it might be a.s.sociated with a school. But it isn't enough. I think in order to find the secret, we have to think like her."

Closing my eyes, I tried to imagine what it would have felt like to have a secret so big you couldn't tell anyone. It wasn't hard; all I had to do was think of Dante. So if I were going to write down the story of our relationship and hide it, where would I put it?

Where we first met.

I opened my eyes. "If I were her, I would have hidden the secret where I had first used it. That seems lucky. So let's just consider what we know." I looked at Anya. "Ophelia Hart died here, in this fire, in her dorm room at St. Clement. She was sent to the Royal Victoria, where she reanimated into an Undead."