I must have looked confused, because he continued. “I will be resuming my position as headmaster. Gottfried is going to be a disciplinary school for the Undead, where we can monitor them in privacy, and, as necessary, put them to rest without risk of exposure. The Academy is returning to its roots—the way it began, under Dr. Bertrand Gottfried and his nurses.”
My chair creaked as I sat back. So that’s what the letter meant by “special needs.” But where would I go? Where would everyone go? I couldn’t return to a normal school now. Not after everything I knew, after everything I had seen and done. I thought about Eleanor, about the Board of Monitors and the chimneys and Grub Day. They were the only things that had helped me rebuild my life after I’d lost my parents. They had become my life. How could I move on from Gottfried now?
“You will continue on to Lycée St. Clément, Gottfried’s sister school, and an academy solely for Monitors.”
From the foyer, the clock chimed nine times. “A Monitors’ academy?” I repeated. How would I see Dante? How would I tell him what was happening or where I was going? It would be hard enough to see him at Gottfried, but at least there, he knew where I was. And there was the distraction of other Undead students. We could have met off campus. We could have found a way. But at a Monitors’ academy, there wouldn’t be any Undead to muffle Dante’s presence, and the entire student body along with the professors would be able to sense him. Would be training to sense him.
“Many of your classmates will move to St. Clément with you. People from your horticulture class…It won’t be a difficult transition,” my grandfather continued. “Of course, those who are Undead will remain at Gottfried. And the rest, well, who knows. I suppose they’ll go to a normal school—”
I cut him off. “Where is it?”
“Montreal, Canada. It’s just across the border, really. Not far at all.”
“Canada?” I should have been upset, but instead, all I could hear were Brett’s words: People are saying he left for Canada. Was there a chance that they were right, and Dante was already waiting for me in Montreal?
“You’re upset,” my grandfather said, leaning back in his chair, his wrinkled knuckles turning white as he gripped the armrests. “The limiting of Gottfried to only Undead students was not my decision. But the events of last year are impossible to ignore when the welfare of both students and professors is at stake.”
Trying to compose myself, I looked up at him. “Fine,” I said, my voice weary as I grasped on to the only hope I had: that fate was on my side and Dante was somewhere in Canada. “When do I leave?”
Chapter 3
SIX LETTERS, ENDS WITH RY.” Dustin tried to write it out for me, but his pen was dry. He shook it and then tried again. We were on an airplane, traveling to Quebec.
I blinked. While he dug through his bag, looking for a replacement, an image of a bird flashed into my head, as if it were engraved on the underside of my eyelids. Without knowing why, I was overwhelmed with the desire to find this bird. To have it for my own.
“Ah,” Dustin said, emerging with a pencil in hand. He hovered over his crossword puzzle. “Now, where was I? Oh yes, number seventeen across—”
The answer seemed so obvious that I didn’t even let Dustin finish his sentence. “Canary.”
He counted the letters, and threw down his pen. “Now how did you know that? I hadn’t even read you the clue yet.”
“I don’t know. I—I guess it was just on my mind.” I averted my eyes to the little window, where I gazed at the clouds below.
“You must have inherited that gift from your mother. She was a master of crossword puzzles. Always used to sneak them under the table during breakfast.”
“What was the clue?”
“Blank in a coal mine.”
“Was I right?”
Dustin let out a laugh. “Yes, of course.”
“A canary in a coal mine?” I said, turning the words over in my mouth. The saying sounded familiar, though I couldn’t remember where I had heard it. “What does it mean?”
“You don’t know?” His face wrinkled with surprise. “Miners used to bring canaries down into the coal pits to test for poisonous gas. Canaries are very sensitive to that kind of thing, and if there was any gas, the birds would die immediately, alerting the miners to evacuate.” Dustin tilted his seat forward and back. “Isn’t it marvelous?” he said. “At this very moment we’re thousands of feet above the earth, shooting through the air!”
Despite how gloomy I felt, I couldn’t help but smile as I watched him fiddle with the buttons on his armrest. Dustin loved airplanes. The compartmentalized meals, the in-flight magazines, the flight attendants in their prim outfits, pointing front, back, side, side.
“Beverage?” an attendant asked, pushing a cart down the aisle.
“I’ll have a club soda, please,” Dustin said, and then changed his mind. “No—make that a cranberry juice.” As she filled a cup with ice, Dustin interjected, “Actually, could you change that to a tomato cocktail?”
He turned to me, looking pleased. “Lovely,” he said, as if the flight attendant couldn’t hear him. He shook a bag of peanuts with delight. “Everything is in miniature!”
Picking up Dustin’s magazine, I flipped through it, glancing at the ads until I stumbled across a map of North America. I spread it out on the folding table “Have you ever been to Lake Erie?” I asked, staring at its blue shape.
The smile faded from Dustin’s face. “Yes.”