Pressing myself against the wall, I listened to him whispering to her, to her whispering back. To the sound of a bra strap snapping against skin. To Clementine giggling. To the silence when they kissed.
Closing my eyes, I imagined that it was me in there with Dante, but Noah’s voice kept drowning him out. And for reasons I couldn’t explain, I started crying.
I wasn’t jealous of Clementine; it wasn’t that. Or maybe it was. As I stepped into the shower, gripping the tile, I wished, just for a moment, that I could be her, that Dante could be Noah, and that when I went back to my room, he would be there waiting for me. But I knew I could never have that.
The shower curtain billowed as I reached over my shoulder and, with delicate fingers, touched the indentation on my back. The pain was shrill and shaky, like the high note of a soprano, but I held my finger steady until it calmed to a long, low ache. It was all I had left of him. And in five years, when he died, I wouldn’t even have this, unless I did something now to change my fate. As my hand slipped to my side, I hung my head back, letting the hot water cascade over my body until I couldn’t tell if I was crying anymore, and the bathroom was filled with so much steam that it was hard to breathe.
My room was cold when I shut the bathroom door behind me. Clutching my towel, I went to my desk and pulled my history book off the shelf. I flipped through it until I found the section on Les Neuf Soeurs. The painting Madame Goût had showed us in class stared back at me from the page. I studied the shadowy girl with the canary, wondering who she was and what had happened to her. But the text didn’t help. It only mentioned the few facts Madame Goût had already told us, and spent the rest of the chapter talking about their influence on Monitoring culture and society.
Had they really found the secret to immortality? I had to know. And if it existed, I had to find it. But where was I supposed to start? Skipping ahead, I spotted a photograph of a stone carving on the bottom of the page. It was a simple thing—a small bird entwined with what looked like vines —yet still, it was enough to make my chest seize.
My breath grew shallow as I leaned back in my chair, unable to believe what I was seeing: the same bird that had flashed into my mind on the airplane with Dustin. The Canary Crest of the Nine Sisters, the caption read.
My voice cracked. “Impossible.”
Switching on my desk lamp, I looked closer, but I was right: it was the same bird I had seen when I’d blurted out the word canary.
Did this mean that the visions I’d been having, the information I’d suddenly known, all had to do with the Nine Sisters?
A crisp swirl of air blew in, turning the pages of my book. But hadn’t I just closed the window? I stood up. The window was indeed still shut, yet the air was streaming in, coiling around my wrists, my arms, my chest, until I let out his name like a breath. “Dante.”
Acting on an impulse, I ran to the wall and turned off the light. And standing in the middle of the room, I closed my eyes and took a tiny step to the right, and then an even smaller step to the left, until I could feel the stream of air reaching up my legs.
I threw my towel aside and got dressed as quickly as I could, combing my wet hair with my fingers as I ran down the stairs and out the door. At the school gates, a group of boys were joking around with a security guard.
“Renée,” a voice said. It was Brett.
“I—I have to go,” I said, and squeezed through them. I disappeared into the winding streets of Montreal.
I didn’t know where I was going; my only guide was the chilly passage that connected me to Dante. It was hard to follow. I kept getting distracted by death that I sensed nearby: crowded markets, hospitals, and churches with modest graveyards. I made a left, followed by two rights, but then lost my way. I turned around and retraced my steps, holding my breath until I could feel him.
Eventually I found myself at the far end of the old port, at a fisherman’s wharf. The air was raw and cold, like the inside of a freezer, and filled with sounds of the ocean at night: the chug of the water splashing against the dock, the boats swaying in the marina, their lines clinking against their masts like chimes.
By the pier was a wholesale shack filled with beautiful six-foot-long fish hanging from the ceiling, their scales reflecting the fluorescent light in oily shades of red, orange, and purple. I felt their pull on me as if they were the Undead. A weathered man in rubber boots and gloves wheeled a barrel of smaller fish up the dock. Lowering my head, I walked past him, watching the moon’s reflection ripple on the water, when a cold hand grabbed my wrist.
I knew I had found Dante from the way his presence enveloped me, seeped into me, filling my lungs with the scent of the woods clinging to his clothes, the pine so sharp that for the first time in months I could remember what it felt like to walk through a forest at dusk.
“Is it safe here?” I uttered, but Dante put a finger over my lips.
“Nowhere in this city is safe,” he said, and pulled me into the shadows between two oversized boats, his hand on my ribs, his breath soft against the back of my ear, as we waited, hushed, for the last workers to leave.
The dock rocked beneath our feet as Dante led me to the end of the platform, where a small white boat called The Sea Maiden was docked. Its sails were rolled up.
“Whose is it?” I asked as Dante put one foot on the deck.
“Ours tonight,” he said. Before I knew what was happening, he lifted me up as if I were weightless and carried me into the boat, my feet knocking a handle of the steering wheel, making it spin and spin. I clung to his neck, burying my face in his hair, in his shoulder, not wanting him to let me go.
“I miss you,” I said, as if I were imagining all of this. “I miss you,” I repeated, already anticipating when the night would be over and he would be gone.
He carried me to the middle of the deck, where a set of stairs led down into the cabin. I held on to the collar of Dante’s shirt, touching the curves of his neck as he stepped over a pile of life jackets and into the hull of the boat.
He tightened his grip and flipped on the light switch. Strings of tiny lights lit up the perimeters of the windows. A plush red bench lined the room, which was walled with panels of dark wood. Laying me down on the cushions, Dante stood back and looked at me.
I felt myself blush. “What?” I whispered, embarrassed.
He knelt by my side. Picking up my right leg, he gently unlaced my shoe and slid it off. My toes curled as he moved to my left leg, slipping my other shoe off and placing it on the floor.
The boat creaked as he looked up at me, his eyes somehow desperate. His fingers tickled my skin as he ran his hands up my thighs, reaching beneath the pleats of my skirt. Something within me ached. I closed my eyes and felt him grasp the waist of my tights and peel them off, one leg at a time. I let out a shallow breath as he kissed my bare knees, the cool air of the marina making my skin prickle.
“Is this okay?” he asked, his voice soft.
Swallowing, I nodded, his question making me want him even more. “Don’t stop,” I said, my voice cracking as I unbuttoned my cardigan and slipped it off my shoulders.
He kissed my neck. And slowly, he unbuttoned my shirt, his breath dancing across my skin until I was clothed in nothing but a bit of cotton and lace.
Sitting back, he took me in, his eyes roaming across my body, bare and pale in the evening light. Beautiful, he mouthed, as if his lips had acted without him. He lowered himself on top of me and moved his hands across me, tangling his fingers in my hair, feeling the smooth lines of my hips, my rib cage, my collarbone, until everything inside me went limp.
Forgetting myself, I lifted my head and pulled his face toward mine.
He turned away just before our lips met. “Careful,” he whispered into my hair.
And even on that tiny couch, in a cramped cabin in the stomach of a boat, everything seemed to fit together, as if he were the inverse of me. The cavity of his chest, the curve of his waist, the weight of his legs on top of mine—they filled the hollowness within me, and I breathed him in until I could smell the wet air, the dusty cushions beneath us, the salt on his skin as his stubble grazed my neck.
We stayed up into the evening, whispering, touching, as if no time had passed between us, as if the last two weeks had been nothing but a pause in the middle of a long, rolling sentence.
“I think I found an answer,” I breathed over my shoulder, my voice barely audible as I told him about Zinya’s prophecy, the Nine Sisters, and the canary. “If the legend is true, then their secret could still be out there. If we find it, then we can use it to give you life again.”
I waited for Dante to press himself against me and tell me we were saved, but he remained still. “But all of that is just speculation,” he said finally. “How do you know the ninth sister didn’t let it die with her, or that immortality exists at all?”
His voice hit me like a splash of cold water, and I felt myself grow stiff. “Because it has to. A vision of a canary flashed into my mind on the airplane. That has to mean something. Zinya said the visions would lead to the answer to my soul. What if all of my visions are clues leading to the secret of the Nine Sisters?”
“You promised me when we were behind the cathedral that you wouldn’t follow your visions.”
“I never promised,” I said. “And besides, I’m a Monitor. I can take care of myself.”
“Could Miss LaBarge take care of herself? Could your parents?”
Bewildered, I hugged my arms to my chest. “Why are you saying these things? Don’t you even want to try?”
He reached out to me, but I pulled away.
“Of course I do,” he said.
I searched his face, trying to understand why he was acting this way. “Then why aren’t you happy?”
“I am happy,” he said, as if I had hurt him. “I just don’t want to get my hopes up about something that might not even exist.”
“But that’s all I have,” I said. “When you’re gone, it feels like a piece of me is missing. If I lose you, what’s left?”