I choked on my water. “What boy?”
“You know which boy I’m referring to.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Dante Berlin,” my grandfather said with force. “Have you or have you not been seeing him?”
My throat tightened at Dante’s name. It had been so long since I’d heard anyone other than myself say those words; it almost felt as though Dante had become a figment of my imagination. “No,” I said, wishing I was lying. “I haven’t.”
My grandfather’s face hardened. “Good. If he comes near you, I’ll bury him.”
I shrank back in my seat. No! I wanted to scream, but I knew that I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything at all.
My grandfather motioned to Dustin to take his plate away, and pushed out his chair. Just before he left the room, he stopped. “We’re giving Annette a Monitor’s funeral on Friday. I expect you to come. Death is your profession now. It’s time you accepted that.”
Every day was windy on the coast of Maine. I could tell by the craggy cliffs and small knotted trees that were swirled and twisted out of shape. When we arrived at Friendship Harbor on Friday, after a five-hour drive, a crowd of people was already gathered by the shore. They all wore black. Docked behind them was a large wooden boat painted with the name Le Prochain Voyage.
Brandon Bell, Eleanor’s older brother, was standing by the side of the boat, handing out garden trowels to the guests as he directed them on board. Beside him was his mother, an elegant blonde. I recognized her immediately, not only because I had met her at Gottfried last winter, when Eleanor had disappeared, but because I had just seen her. She was an older replica of the third girl in the photograph in Miss LaBarge’s cottage. Cindy Bell. Seeing her now —her sleek black suit and impeccable makeup—I could barely imagine the two women being friends. But if Cindy was here, it meant Eleanor had to be back from Europe.
Brandon’s eyes lingered on me for a moment before he bent down to pick up a trowel.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, handing it to me and averting his eyes. “The ceremony will take place just outside of Wreck Island.”
I had expected a warmer welcome, considering I was one of his sister’s best friends.
“Where’s Eleanor?” I asked, looking over his shoulder to see if I could spot her blond ringlets. I wanted to tell her about my dream, Miss LaBarge’s cottage, and the letter my mom had written to her.
Brandon looked puzzled. “She’s not here,” he said, as if it were obvious.
“What? Why?”
“Only Monitors can attend a Monitor burial.”
“Oh. Right,” I mumbled. Eleanor wasn’t a Monitor anymore; she was the enemy. “How is she—” I started to ask, but Brandon didn’t let me finish.
“If you could move along, that would be helpful,” he said, and handed the couple behind me two shovels.
“Yeah, okay,” I said slowly, stung by how quickly he had brushed me off.
The deck was crowded with Gottfried professors and a handful of older people that I didn’t recognize. Genevieve Tart and a few other girls from Gottfried were standing by the wine table in sleek dresses, chatting. When they saw me, they stopped and huddled together, whispering. Waiters dressed in black suits wove through the crowd carrying platters of hors d’oeuvres amid the low hum of talk. “Monitoring without a partner.” “Careless mistakes.” “The Undead.” “She didn’t even have a shovel on her.”
No shovel? In my dream I had taken the shovel from her and dropped it into the lake. Could it have been real? I continued listening, but it was more of the same. It was odd hearing the word “Undead” spoken in public, but everyone here was a Monitor, so there wasn’t any reason for secrecy. The only person not engrossed in conversation was Eleanor’s mother, who was sitting alone by the mast, nursing a drink and looking out to the horizon. A waiter offered her a canapé, but she waved him away.
Beyond them, the waves crashed onto the rocky shore, where a woman was standing. She had plain brown hair and was wearing a dress that twisted around her in the wind like the trunks of the trees. Ducking beneath the lines that held the sails, I made for the side of the boat to get a better look, but people crowded past me, blocking my view. When I looked at the shore again, the woman was gone.
“Miss LaBarge?” I whispered, staring at the spot where I thought I had seen her. The salty air blew through my hair, and I blinked. It couldn’t be, I thought, letting my eyes wander to the open casket on the other side of the boat. I was so disturbed by her death, and by the letter my mother had written to her, that I was seeing things.
“Renée,” a boy said from behind me, and I turned. Brett Steyers, a friend from Gottfried and Eleanor’s former boyfriend, stood there in a navy suit, his sandy hair blowing in the sea breeze. “Where have you been hiding all summer?”
I gathered my own hair as it tangled in the wind. “At my grandfather’s,” I said, forcing a smile.
“I bet,” he said.
I furrowed my brow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” he said, tracing the lines in the wooden deck with his shoe. “So when did you find out about all of this?” His gaze drifted across the other Monitors, and I realized that he and I had never before spoken of the Undead.
“Last winter,” I said softly. “You?”