by Yvonne Woon
“Renée?” Noah said, adjusting his glasses as his tall body filled the doorway. “I—I’m sort of busy right now—”
“I know you probably don’t want to see me right now,” I cut in. “I don’t blame you. But we found her,” I whispered. “We found the ninth sister. And we need your help.”
Noah went rigid as he took in what I had just said. And glancing over my shoulder at Anya, he pushed his door open. “Come in.”
And just like that, we became friends again.
Noah’s father had an office in the history building at the university. “There’s an entire library of archives in the basement; I go down there with my dad when I help him do research. They have stuff going all the way back to the founding of Montreal.”
So the three of us piled into a taxi and set off. I turned around and stared out the rear window as we wound through the city, my eyes glued to the sidewalks, searching for any sign of the Undead. Even though the streets were empty and motionless, something about the pressure of the air made me nervous.
The university campus was white and slushy as we ran through it, the quadrangles peppered with statues sculpted out of a dark bronze.
“Do you feel that?” I said, slowing to a jog as a prickling sensation climbed up my legs, as though a cool wisp had wrapped itself around me.
“It was probably just the specimens in the biology lab,” Noah said, glancing at the building to our right. “Come on.”
But it wasn’t just the biology lab. It was a familiar feeling; the kind of chill that made the air seem thinner, staler, as if it were rearranging itself into a path.
“Come on,” Noah said. “We’re almost there.”
But just as I started walking, I saw a flash of white. And then again.
“There,” I said, pointing to the thicket of trees. “They were right there.”
If Anya and Noah heard me, they didn’t let on.
I slowed, letting them walk ahead, and quietly, I approached the statue. “Dante?” I whispered, hoping it was him I had felt, though the cold, odorless air told me it wasn’t. I blinked into the night.
Someone laughed behind me; a child. I whipped around, but no one was there.
“Renée?” Noah shouted from up the path.
Before I could respond, two boys, short and pale, emerged from the trees, their faces round and chubby. They ran toward me from either side, their bodies so light they didn’t even sink into the snow. “No,” I whispered, but the words never left my mouth. And then they were touching me, grabbing at my legs, my skirt, my coat.
Jerking around, I flung them off, the shadows parted, and a thin figure stepped through the air, his face a streak of white against the sky. My breath got caught in my lungs as I fell backward, staring at his limbs, long and stiff like a scarecrow’s.
I tried to stand up, but the two boys were grasping at my arms, pressing me deeper into the snow. But as I struggled, my fingers digging into the ice, all I could think of was Dante; of how I wished I could see him one last time.
And then I heard a girl’s voice whisper in Latin. It was so soft, I could barely hear it, but slowly, the Undead around me seemed to become calm, their grips weakening until they slinked back, retreating into the shadows.
“Go,” she said to me, in a voice I recognized.
“Anya?” I whispered, as she pulled me up.
“Go!”
Before I knew it, I was running, Noah by my side.
“What about Anya?” I said, looking wildly behind me, but Noah pulled me on.
“She’s fine,” he said. “She’s taking care of it.” Grabbing my wrist, he led me off the campus to the street, where he hailed a taxi. It screeched to the curb.
“We can’t just leave her,” I said, but Noah took my hand and pulled me in, slamming the door behind us.
“Drive,” Noah said over the front seat.
“What are you doing?” I demanded. “Anya is back there, alone.”
“She’s fine.”
“How do you know?” I said, incredulous. “Haven’t you seen her in class? She can’t take them on her own.”
“She can,” Noah said firmly. “She’s a Whisperer. A rare kind of Monitor. One that can speak to the Undead; persuade them, manipulate them.”
“What?” I said, confused.
“Didn’t you hear her just now? She was speaking to them. She has it under control. They’re looking for you, anyway, not her. We can lead them away from her. So focus. Where should we go?”
I glanced out the rear window at the pale children in the distance. “Île des Soeurs,” I blurted out, before I realized what I was saying. The taxi slowed, and with a jolt, we made a sharp right turn.
As we wound through the Montreal streets, I wiped the water and dirt from my face and caught my breath. Every so often I glanced through the rearview mirror, expecting to see flashes of white trailing behind us, but the streets were empty. I don’t know why I had an impulse to go to the Île des Soeurs. Maybe it was because the convent on the island was the one place the Undead feared, though I hadn’t thought of that till after. No, it was a feeling I had, a feeling I hoped I could trust.
We drove until we reached a long bridge leading over the St. Lawrence River. On the other side was a tiny island pinpricked with trees.
“Can you drop us at the convent?” I said to the driver. He nodded beneath his cap.
Île des Soeurs was a small island with neat rows of houses, the glow of televisions flickering through the windows. Driving through the streets, I felt somehow calmed, as if everything here were visible. The driver parked in front of a gated building that looked like a junkyard. The sidewalk was covered with loose trash and scraps.
“This is it?” I said as a gray cat darted out from behind a garbage bin and scampered across the road.
“Yep,” the man said.
We paid him, and the rumble of his car’s muffler faded away into the distance. Behind us, the setting sun was bleeding red all over the St. Lawrence River. Pulling up my scarf, I ran toward the plain rectangular building looming behind the iron gates. It was cream with brown trim and thin bars over the windows.
Parked in its driveway, hidden in the shadows, was a gray Peugeot.
“It can’t be,” I said. “It’s the same one I saw Miss LaBarge in a few months ago.”
“Come on,” Noah said, and led me to the tall gates. The iron bars twisted and coiled toward the center to form the words: couvent des soeurs. In the middle of the gates, the bars were lashed together with a chain, and locked.
“Do you think she’s in there?” I said.
As if in answer to my question, a light turned on in one of the windows on the third floor. I jumped, bumping into Noah, who caught my arm.
“There’s only one way to find out,” he said.
Before I knew what was happening, Noah grabbed the top rung, and in an elegant swoop, lifted himself up and over the gate, landing on the other side.
Wiping his hands on his pants, he let out a breath and stood up. “Now you.”
He braced himself to help me climb up, but instead, I grabbed the bars and stuck one leg through, and then another, contorting my body until I had squeezed through to the other side.
There were stray cats everywhere. Creeping between the crevices of the foundation, crouching beneath the bushes, peering out from underneath the front stoop as we approached the front door.
“Are you just going to knock on the door?” I asked.
“Do you have a better idea?”
I didn’t, but something about it made me feel uneasy. A cat darted across the lawn in front of my feet. I covered my mouth before the gasp came out.
Noah took my hand and squeezed it, and together we climbed up the steps. I braced myself against the railing as Noah pressed the bell.
Somewhere inside, a chime sounded, but no one came to the door. A calico cat rubbed its head against my ankle; I nudged it away. Just as Noah held his finger up to the buzzer again, we he
ard footsteps thud inside. The sound of locks being unlatched. And then the knob turning.
The door opened a crack, and a woman appeared, peeking through the chain bolt. She was holding a shovel, its tip pointed at us through the gap. The foyer behind her was dark.
When I saw her face, I froze. “Miss LaBarge?”
She paused before answering. “Who are you?”
The calico cat slipped inside through Miss LaBarge’s legs. “It’s me,” I said, unable to comprehend why she didn’t recognize me. “Renée. From philosophy class last year?”
“How did you get in?”
“I squeezed through the bars,” I said, putting my hand on the door frame. Miss LaBarge jolted at my advance.
“What do you want from me?” she asked, wedging the tip of the shovel deeper into the gap.
I searched her face, baffled. Maybe she had lost her memory. Maybe that’s why she was acting this way. “I don’t want anything. I—I didn’t know you were going to be here. But now that you are, I just—I’d like to talk to you. Everyone thinks you died.” I lowered my voice. “It was on the news. I went to your funeral. I watched my grandfather bury you in the ocean. But now you’re here.”
She looked at me, and then at Noah. “You’re both students at Gottfried?”
“Lycée St. Clément,” Noah said.
“What are your names?” she asked.
“Renée Winters,” I said.
“Noah Fontaine.”
Miss LaBarge squinted at me, as if trying to see something she hadn’t seen before. “Winters? The daughter of Lydia and Robert?”
I loosened my grip on my bag. “Yes,” I said, confused. “You knew them.”
Without warning, she receded into the darkness.
“Wait!” I yelled, but it was too late. She had already shut the door.
I rang the bell again and then collapsed with a sigh on the edge of a cement pot by the railing. A black cat that had been sleeping inside hissed and jumped out. “I don’t understand,” I murmured, looking up at Noah.
He put a finger to his lips. On the other side of the door, I heard something clicking, and then just as abruptly as it had closed, the door reopened.
“Get inside,” she said, her eyes darting about the quiet street behind us as we shuffled past her.
The convent was dark and drafty. After bolting the locks, Miss LaBarge gave us a quick glance. She led us through a series of rooms, each one sparsely decorated with little more than a table and a few chairs. There were cats everywhere—curled around the banister, stretching on the windowsills, yawning from beneath the radiators. A Persian jumped down from a mantel and followed us until we reached the kitchen. Miss LaBarge turned on the overhead lightbulb, which bathed her in a dingy yellow glow.
There she was: her plain brown hair, small nose, and ruddy cheeks that made her look like a farm girl. Leaning on the back of a chair, she opened her mouth to say something, but then changed her mind and walked to the stove.
Arrested at the sight of her in the light, I shuddered, my entire body growing cold. Something wasn’t right.
This woman looked exactly like Miss LaBarge, but at the same time she didn’t. Her features were the same, yes, but the angles weren’t correct. Her cheekbones looked a little higher; her jawline looked a little heavier; the wrinkles around her eyes looked a little less defined, as if she were a grainy photocopy of the real Annette.
She removed the lid from a dented kettle, crossed to the sink, and filled the kettle under the faucet. “Tea?”
I must have been staring, because Noah nudged me with his elbow.
“Yes, thanks,” I said.
Miss LaBarge moved too briskly about the room. I watched, horrified, as she sliced a lemon and squeezed its juice into her tea. Miss LaBarge always preferred cream.
“You’re—you’re not Miss LaBarge at all.”
The impostor put down the lemon and gave me a sad sort of look, like she pitied me. Wiping her hands on a dish towel, she pulled out two chairs at a plain wooden table. “Please, sit down.”
Noah sat down at the end of the table, but I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I felt paralyzed and confused and angry, so angry. Who was this woman pretending to be Miss LaBarge?
Setting two mugs of tea on the table for us, she took a seat across from Noah. “My name is Collette LaBarge,” she said. “I’m Annette’s younger sister.”
I nearly spilled my tea. “What?”
“Annette is dead. She died in August. I’m her younger sister.”
All at once, everything suddenly made sense. I hadn’t been seeing Miss LaBarge this year; I had been seeing her sister. It seemed too easy and too dreary to be true.
She frowned. “You look disappointed.”
“I thought—”
“You thought she was still alive. You wish I were someone else.” Collette’s eyes had a coldness to them, and her hands were balled into fists, as if she were ready to fight. She leaned back in her chair. “I’m sorry.”
“So there’s no way she’s still alive?” I uttered, only realizing then that somewhere within me I had reserved the smallest hope that Miss LaBarge had survived.
Collette lowered her eyes. “No.”
“But then why are you here?” I asked. “Why are you in hiding? No one knows about you. You didn’t even come to her funeral.”
“I did attend.”
“I saw you, then,” I said, realizing that it was Collette on the coast that day as we sailed away. “But you weren’t on the boat. You were on the shore.”
“Annette and I weren’t close.”
I shook my head, trying to understand. “But every time I saw you on the street you acted like you didn’t want to be seen.”
She put down her mug. “When have you seen me?”
“The first time was at Miss LaBarge’s burial. The second time was when your car stopped at an intersection. I wanted to talk to you, but you vanished. The third time, I was with Noah at a bakery in the old port, when you walked by. We followed you downtown, where you took an elevator into the underground. When we made it to the tunnels, we couldn’t find you anywhere.”
Collette didn’t say anything for a long time, her eyes darting between us. Finally, she spoke. “Why have you come here?”
Noah’s eyes met mine, but neither of us answered.
“Was someone chasing you?” she said, her eyes wild.
“We were looking for the secret of the Nine Sisters,” I said finally.
Collette coughed.
“You know it?” I said, studying the way her eyes widened, the way she shifted her weight.
“You’re asking a dangerous question,” she said softly. “Looking for the secret of the Nine Sisters can only bring death—just like your parents’, my sister’s, Cindy Bell’s. Or you’ll become like me, living in confinement, waiting for the Liberum.”
“It’s too late,” I said. “They already found us.”
As my words sank in, a flicker of understanding passed over her face. Her body grew tense as her eyes moving from us to the window. “Did they follow you here?”
“What do you know?” I said.
“Did you bring them here?” she said, growing panicked.
“It’s possible,” I admitted. “Please, tell us what you know. There isn’t much time.”
She pushed her tea across the table and gave me a level look. “I’ll show you.”
We followed her down a corridor and one set of stairs, until we were in an old cellar.
“We all became friends at Gottfried—your mother, Annette, Cindy, me. That’s where we first heard about Les Neuf Soeurs. Like everyone else, at first we were just intrigued, but as we did more research, we started to believe that the secret still existed, hidden by the mysterious ninth sister. And what started as a hobby turned into an obsession.
“We traveled all over Europe—France, Italy, England —looking for any kind of information that might identify her. We searched through all of the French
Monitor archives, looking for a talented girl of seventeen who had lived around the time of the Nine Sisters. Of course we didn’t find anything. The problem was that we had focused our entire search on France, since that’s where the Nine Sisters had come from. It never even crossed our minds to look in Montreal, where they sent their youngest member for schooling.”
Collette walked to a hutch in the corner of the cellar. She opened one of the drawers and took out what looked like a box of loose leaf tea. Lifting the lid, she removed an envelope, yellowed with time.
“Annette gave this to me before she was killed. She said your parents had given it to her, and that it was incredibly important I keep it safe.”
With that, she handed it to me. The paper was so worn it was almost transparent. It was addressed to Alma Alphonse in France. I remembered the name from Madame Goût’s lecture: Alma was one of the eight sisters who was murdered. Gently, I opened the envelope and removed the paper, flattening it on the counter. It was faded and creased and smudged with oil, as if it had been folded and unfolded dozens of times. The right-hand corner was embossed with the crest of a canary.
April 2, 1732
Cher Alma,
I fear we have made a grave mistake with Ophelia. Her doctor at the Saint-Laurent says she is responding well to treatment; however, after visiting her in Montreal, I am quite worried. She seems rash and unable to control her urges. In confidence, she confessed to me that she often desires to kiss people, and her mood fluctuates between rapture and severe melancholy, in which she complains of the world clouding to tedium. She is resistant to the treatment we give to her kind, and speaks of suffering from a moral crisis and lovesickness, though it is unclear with whom she is in love. The only person she seems fond of is her doctor, Bertrand Gottfried.
She has taken an unusual fancy to water. Her nurses say she studies it day and night, staring at the basin in her room or sitting by the fountain, a practice which is in stark contrast to the vigor and discipline she held as first rank Monitor. No doubt this is a reaction to the fire; however,