by Yvonne Woon
Dante considered my argument, then nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s try it.”
Anya bit her lip. “Fine,” she said. “Though if you’re wrong, we’re asking the cards.” She stuffed the tarot deck back into her pocket.
I was so absorbed in our conversation that I didn’t even notice that Theo had gone missing until someone bumped into my shoulder. I spun around, thinking it was Theo. “Knock it off,” I said, but it was only a passing traveler.
“Pardon,” the man said, adjusting his bag.
I scanned the station. “Where’s Theo?”
“Did I hear my name?” Theo said from behind me.
“Where were you?” I demanded. “I thought something had—”
“Happened to me?” he said, finishing my sentence. My worry seemed to amuse him. “While you three were here talking about what we should do, I was out getting us a car.” He dangled a set of keys.
“How—?” Anya began to ask, but Theo cut her off.
“I have my ways.”
“Did you steal it?” I said.
Theo placed his hand on his chest, as if we had wounded him. “Me? Steal?” he said, feigning innocence. He shook his head. “No trust,” he said, and threw me the keys, which were attached to a polished metal ring. “A gift from Monsieur. Now, who knows where we’re going?”
We must have looked confused because he explained. “I was hungry. So while you guys were talking, I dropped by the concession stand to grab a bite. That’s when a boy tugged on the sleeve of my shirt. ‘A message for you,’ he said, and handed me an envelope. Inside was a set of keys and a note.”
He pulled the folded piece of paper from his pocket to show us. All that was written on it was a license plate number, along with the following message:
The Undead are coming. They will take two things from you. Let them.
Sincerely,
Monsieur
We all froze, suddenly aware of our surroundings. I reached behind me to pat the bottom of my bag. The chest was still inside. Dante did the same, his shoulders collapsing with relief when he felt the smooth corners of the box.
“How do they know where we are?” Anya wondered aloud.
“Pruneaux,” Dante said. “They broke into his store and took him. He knew we were heading to the Netherlands. He could have told them. Or maybe they brought him along. He has valuable information in his head.”
“‘Let them’?” I said, reading the note again. “We don’t have anything worth stealing except for the chest and the box, and all of us know that we can’t part with either of them.”
My eyes darted to the people walking past us. I couldn’t feel the Undead around us yet.
“Maybe it’s something else,” Theo said. “Something we aren’t thinking of now.”
“What would that be?” I asked, and held up my white canvas backpack, which was heavy with my shovel and the chest. “All of my things fit in this bag, and Dante’s things in another. I’m not overlooking anything. Unless one of you has something you’re not telling us about?”
I searched Anya and Theo for an answer, but they only stared back at me with blank looks.
“I have nothing but this,” Anya said, motioning to her suitcase. “Just clothes, jewelry, makeup, my shovel, and my burial gear. Oh, and of course my tarot cards. And a few candles. And some teas and vitamins, and a few tonics and elixirs from my father’s store.”
Theo raised his eyebrow. “Tonics and elixirs?”
“Why do you laugh?” Anya questioned. “Isn’t that what we’re all here for—to find the ultimate elixir?”
“Touché,” Theo said, and lowered his pack, which was attached to his Spade and its sheath. “Other than this,” he said, nodding to his weapon, “I don’t have anything of worth.”
My eyes couldn’t help lingering on Anya. I still couldn’t figure out why she wanted to find the Netherworld or why Monsieur would have asked her to come in the first place. What would she want an elixir of life for?
“All I’m saying is that so far, Monsieur has turned out to be helpful,” Theo said. “So we’d better prepare ourselves.”
By the edge of the concourse, two patrol officers peered in our direction. “Keep your voice down,” I said. “We don’t know who’s watching us.”
“Monsieur, it seems,” Dante said. “How else would he know where we’re going before we even get there?” He motioned to the note in Theo’s hand. “A boy gave that to you?”
“Skinny, dirty blond hair. A street kid. Couldn’t have been older than ten. I thought I saw him following us when we got off the train. I asked him who gave him the note, but all he said was a man in a long overcoat with a cane.”
I spun around. Was Monsieur here, at this very moment, watching us? The others turned with me, all searching the train station. But for what? It was winter. Everyone in the train station wore long, heavy coats.
“An overcoat?” Dante said. “Like the ones the Monitors of the High Court wore?”
Theo shrugged. “It’s possible. Considering how much he knows about the Undead and about where we’re going, he’s probably a Monitor. And a good one.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a cane he was carrying, but a Spade,” I said, remembering the glint of metal I had seen beneath the Monitors’ coats on the night Clementine had found us. “How do we know that he’s not working for the High Court?” I asked. “He could be leading us into their grasp. We already know he’s been following us.”
“All of our cards are on the table, but his hand is still a mystery,” Anya said. “Though that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s holding a winning hand.”
I bit my lip. “I still don’t like it.”
Judging from the silence that followed, neither did anyone else. Then again, Monsieur had told us that the Monitors were coming to find us in Pilgrim, just like he had warned us about them raiding our first hotel in Paris. He had yet to give us any reason to distrust him.
“Without him, we’d be stuck in this train station,” Dante said.
“Or worse,” Theo added. “Still in Pilgrim, Massachusetts.”
Dante nodded in agreement. “If there’s anything I’ve learned from Monsieur thus far, it’s that we have less time than we think. Let’s go.”
A sleek vintage car waited for us in the parking lot. It had just two doors, a low dashboard, and nostalgic round headlights—the kind that belonged in a smoky noir movie, switching on in the night to follow someone on a winding road through the mountains. Except here, we were the ones being followed. Lancia, the badge on the rear hood read. On the dashboard sat a road map of the Netherlands.
Theo whistled when he saw the car, then ran his hand over its glossy angles. After admiring it for a moment, he stepped back and looked at the field in the distance. Slowly, he smiled. “I think it’s safe to say that regardless of what kind of coat Monsieur is wearing, he’s on our side, at least for now.”
I didn’t understand what he meant until I looked at the car against the snowy field in the background. Its white paint blended into the wintery landscape almost perfectly. If Monsieur was trying to give us away to the Monitors, he definitely chose the wrong color car, for any Monitor or Undead who tried to spot us in the distance would have a hard time.
Anya narrowed her eyes. “And it’s also safe to say that he’s a criminal.”
That silenced all of us. “What?” I said. “How do you know?”
“Don’t you recognize it?” Anya said, as if it were obvious. When no one seemed to know what she was talking about, she glanced over her shoulder, and said, “Get in. I’ll tell you on the way.”
Theo approached the driver’s seat, but Dante intercepted him, grabbing the keys from him before Theo could unlock the doors.
“What are you doing?” Theo asked, incredulous. He tried to take them back, but Dante held them out of reach.
“I’m sorry,” Dante said. “But you’re not driving.”
“Says who?” Theo shot back. “The kid gav
e the envelope to me. Which means the keys are mine.”
“Let me see the envelope,” said Dante.
Theo went quiet. “It’s in my bag.”
“No it’s not,” Dante said. “It’s in your pocket.”
Theo hesitated, then pulled the crumpled envelope out of his coat. On the front was written a single name. Dante Berlin.
“That’s what I thought,” Dante said, and opened the front door, relegating Theo to the backseat. He drove us out of the city and onto a winding country road that led us through the rolling hills, following the map toward Egmond-Binnen. The Dutch countryside was dotted with farmhouses, windmills, and wooden bridges pressed with snow, their crooked planks making our car rattle.
“A little over thirty years ago, there was an attack on the High Court,” Anya said from the backseat. “There was a big trial going on with a group of Undead children who had supposedly worked for the Liberum. All of the top Monitors were there. But just minutes after they had gathered in the grand assembly room, a loud rumble shook the floor. The walls trembled, the windows shattered, and the building began to collapse in on itself.”
She paused. The sound of the ice crunching beneath the tires filled the car.
“A fire raged up from the furnace, scorching the walls and filling what was left of the courthouse with smoke. A handful of Monitors on the High Court died that day, trapped in the rubble. Others were badly injured. My father has a permanent cough from the debris, and he was one of the lucky ones. He wasn’t even in the courthouse when it happened, but on the street.”
“My grandfather was there, too,” Theo said. “That’s how he lost his vision. He doesn’t like to talk about it.”
“Neither does my father,” said Anya. “He only brings it up at family gatherings, after he’s had too many drinks. He gets especially animated at the part where he bursts through the doors into the smoky lobby and carries the receptionist outside to safety.” Anya rolled her eyes. “Every year his story gets more elaborate.”
“Your grandfather was there, too,” Theo said, looking at me.
“Mine?” I said.
“He wasn’t a sitting Court member at the time. I think he was on leave or something, but he was definitely there when it happened. Afterward, he rose to become to Head of the High Court.”
“He’s never mentioned anything about it,” I said.
Theo’s eyes lingered on me. “Why would he?” he said. “It was an awful day. He’s probably trying to forget it.”
I turned to Anya. “Outside of the train station, you implied that all of this has something to do with the car. How?”
“In the investigation afterward, they found the source of the explosion. A car parked in the lot beneath the building, or what was left of it—a bit of leather seat, a dented segment of the door, a hood ornament. It had been filled with explosives. And it wasn’t just any car, but a custom Lancia, pure white.” She ran her fingers along the edge of the window. “The exact same model and color as this one.
“They never found out who did it, or why. Only that it was probably a Monitor. They were the only ones who knew when trials took place. Plus, the car was parked in the basement lot, which means it couldn’t have been an Undead.”
“A Monitor with a vendetta,” Theo said.
Anya ran her hand down the leather interior. “It isn’t the sort of car you see every day. It seems too much of a coincidence not to mean something.... I suppose Monsieur could have been there at the time. He could just want to send us the message that he doesn’t care for the Monitors.”
“Or,” Theo said, “Monsieur could have been the one who did it in the first place.”
Anya lowered her eyes and nodded, as if she wished she didn’t agree. “That’s more likely.”
“But why would he reveal such a telling detail about himself to us?” I asked. “Especially after taking such care to keep his identity hidden.”
“Carelessness?” Anya offered, but I shook my head. Nothing Monsieur had done thus far had shown any sign of sloppiness. If anything, he paid too much attention to detail, giving us direction before we even realized we were lost. It felt like he had a plan for us. But to what end?
“I think it’s safe to assume that anything Monsieur does is on purpose,” I said. “So, say he meant to give us this clue. He must have had a good reason to do so. What about that story did he want us to know?”
Dante had remained quiet throughout the entire conversation, his brow furrowed as though he were trying to fill in the gaps in Anya’s story. “After the explosion, what happened to the Undead children who were on trial?”
“They escaped. The bomb had been planted by the cell where the Undead were being held. It could have been a coincidence—”
“Or that could have been the reason why he attacked the court in the first place,” Theo murmured.
“To set the Undead free,” Dante said, completing his sentence.
“But why?” I wondered. No one had an answer. We all suddenly became aware of the car around us; of what it meant. To fill the silence, I turned on the radio and flipped through the talk and pop and foreign commercials until the soft beginning of a symphony floated through the speakers. I sank back into my seat, letting the landscape roll past me in time with the music. It was a beautiful day. I had almost failed to appreciate the naked trees glazed with frost, the sun glinting off of the icy patches in the pavement. I pressed my fingers to the window, feeling the cold afternoon lick the side of the car. A twinge of emptiness passed through me.
My hand recoiled. “Do you feel that?”
“Feel what?” said Dante.
Death. It reached out to me from the snowy trees up ahead, its vacancy rearranging the air around the car until everything around us felt void of life. But it wasn’t the Undead; no, they had a particular vacancy to them, one that coaxed me closer, that made me want to follow them and bury them. This sensation was different; I had never experienced anything like it before. It was all-encompassing, as if a shadow of death were hanging over the earth. I didn’t want go toward it; I wanted to turn around and drive as far away from it as possible.
Behind me, Anya peered out the window. “I feel it,” she said.
“So do I,” added Theo.
In the distance stood a sign for Egmond-Binnen. Beyond it stood the rooftops of the town. But instead of driving toward it, Dante slowed just before we reached a hidden drive overgrown with trees and brush, now heavy with snow.
“What are you doing?” I said.
Dante looked at the map, then at Pruneaux’s notebook. “This is it. The last residence of Descartes in the Netherlands.”
I gazed down the narrow driveway. It led into a tangled thicket of naked trees that blocked out the light, swallowing the path in its shade.
Dante turned the wheel and drove us down the bumpy road. The branches of the trees tapped the sides of the car. The air temperature dropped as we drove deeper into the tangle, its cold wisps prickling the skin on my arms. We had just rounded a curve when the road came to an abrupt end.
Dante slammed on the brakes and gripped the wheel as the car skidded out over the ice, just missing a crooked tree at the edge of the path. Behind it, a chimney rose through branches.
A tattered sign printed in Dutch was nailed to the tree: VERBODEN TOEGANG.
“No trespassing,” Dante translated, yet strangely, his voice sounded softer than normal.
“Now what?” Theo said. His too, was distant, as though he weren’t sitting behind me but yards and yards away.
Dante turned the engine off. “We walk.”
Silence filled the air. Though I could see the trees bending in the wind, they made no sound. Even our footsteps were muffled, as if the sound were being sucked away into the hollow in the trees.
We found ourselves in front of an unassuming stone house, its earthy brown color blending into the surrounding woods. It had a sloping slate roof that had long ago sunk into disrepair, and planked shutters fr
om which the paint had all but rotted off, as though it were trying to crumble back into the ground from which it came. There was something unnatural about this place. I didn’t want to see what was inside.
Snowflakes dotted Anya’s red hair. Everything is so quiet, her lips said, though the emptiness swallowed her voice.
Frosted weeds climbed around the gate that encircled the front of the house. In one swift motion Theo jumped over it. He walked through the overgrown garden and up the front steps, which sagged beneath his feet. They must have creaked, but I couldn’t hear them. He called out to us, but his voice was so muffled that I could barely hear him either. All I could make out was the shape of his lips. There are footprints in the snow, he was saying. Someone is here—
Why couldn’t I hear him? Why couldn’t I hear Anya? Before I realized what I was doing, I found myself inching toward the car. “Maybe we should go back,” I said, but as the words left my lips, they disappeared, the emptiness pulling them into the house. I repeated myself, this time louder, but I could barely make out the sound of my own voice before it was sucked away. The others didn’t hear me either; they were already making their way toward the house.
Sound, I thought, remembering Descartes’s riddle. It was the sense that marked the first point. Sounds, they fade to the ground, the earth’s music unsung...
I ran toward the house as Theo opened the front door. Heat enveloped us as we walked inside, the radiators seeping in the corner, the lights still on as though whoever lived inside had just run out on an afternoon errand.
Hello? I saw Theo shout, though the sound was sucked away.
It was a dowdy house, decorated with furniture upholstered in faded florals. There was a quilt on the sofa, coasters on the coffee table. Who could possibly live here, in this strange, soundless vacuum? It had once been Descartes’s house, though that was centuries ago, and he had no living relatives. I searched the walls for some clue, but except for the peeling paper, they were bare. No photographs, no artwork, no marks of identity.
The others fanned out through the house. Theo ventured off to the left; Anya wandered through the maze of little rooms to the right. Dante gazed back at me before heading down the hallway toward the rear of the house. I went to follow him when out of the corner of my eye I saw movement. The pale specter of a woman flitted past the window—or was it a girl? She almost looked like an apparition. But when I pushed back the curtain, she was gone. Maybe I was seeing things.
