“Did you feel that?” I asked Anya.
“Feel what?” she said, looking up from her book.
I held up a finger to silence her, and closed my eyes, trying to find it again, but there was nothing.
“Never mind,” I said, and gazed out the window, staring at the faces of the people on the sidewalk, hoping to see Dante. When we got back to St. Clément, it was raining. As I walked across the courtyard with Anya, I felt a hand on the sleeve of my coat. Hearing Clementine’s voice near me, I whipped around. “Don’t touch me.” I was face-to-face with Noah.
He stepped back, retracting his hand. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you.”
“Oh,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “I thought you were…” I stopped short before saying her name.
“Ah,” he said, understanding who I was talking about. “I see. Well, I just wanted to—”
“You don’t have to apologize for her. I can take care of myself.”
Noah pushed a lock of hair out of his face. “—apologize for my behavior,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said all those things. I don’t know anything about the guy or how he treats you. I was just caught off guard.”
Biting my lip, I nodded. “I’m sorry, too. I didn’t—”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I know.”
The mist speckled his glasses, the water catching on the rust stubble climbing up his cheeks. “I also wanted to ask what you were doing on Friday.”
“Friday?” Even though I had no plans, I pretended to think about it so as not to appear pathetic. “I don’t know. I’ll have to check.”
He hesitated, as if he were nervous. “Would you…” he said slowly, “have any interest in coming to my house for dinner?”
“Your house? Like with your parents?” I said, both flattered and confused.
“Yeah,” he said, with an amused smile. “Haven’t you ever been to dinner with someone’s parents?”
To my embarrassment, I hadn’t. At least not to a boy’s house. Dante didn’t have any parents, and before that…well, I could hardly remember life before that. The thought of having dinner with Noah’s parents was so traditional, so normal, that it was almost strange.
“I go home every Friday, and even though my parents are delightful people, I don’t know if I can take an entire evening alone with them this week. Having you there might actually make it fun.” I must have looked a little uneasy, because he added, “Take pity on me?”
“But what about Clementine?”
Noah’s dimples disappeared as his smile faded. “What about her?”
“She’s your girlfriend. Shouldn’t you be bringing her?”
He scratched his head. “Right, well…we’ve been fighting.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “The point is, I’m asking you.”
I bit my lip. “Oh, that’s nice, but—”
“Great,” he said with a huge grin. “I’ll take that as a yes. I’ll meet you at the gates at six.”
That Friday, I spent an hour trying on clothes in front of the mirror in the bathroom, the thick fabrics tickling the mark between my shoulders, before I finally settled on an outfit that said “Just friends.”
“What are you doing in there?” Clementine yelled through the door. I was tempted to tell her that I was getting ready to go to dinner with Noah, but then decided that was too cruel.
Noah’s parents lived in a beautiful brick town house in Outremont. We took the metro there. It was crowded, and Noah’s hand kept slipping down the metal railing, touching mine.
His father answered the door, wearing an apron over his work suit. Comfortably plump, with full cheeks and a swirl of brown hair clinging to the top of his head like a toupee, he looked nothing like Noah. He was holding a glass of red wine. “Ah, hello!” he said with a smile, his face flushed as he gave Noah a hug, the wine sloshing out of his glass. He wore a heavy ring on his pinkie finger.
“Dad, this is Renée.”
“Luc,” he said, squeezing my hand and then beckoning us inside.
The Fontaine house was a cozy mess—all oriental carpets and stacks of political magazines and books. A large aquarium stood on one side of the living room, filled with tiny spotted fish that looked like they were made of newspaper.
The sound of clattering dishes came from the kitchen, followed by a tall woman who entered the foyer holding a cutting board of charcuterie.
“Ah, and this is my Veronica,” Luc said, turning to Noah’s mother and placing his hand on the small of her back.
She looked just like Noah: tall, angular, effortlessly elegant. Her legs seemed even longer because of her high heels. “It’s a pleasure.”
As we followed her to the dining room, she said over her shoulder, “I hope you like meat.” Before I could respond, she corrected herself. “Oh, but of course you do. You’re a Monitor, no?”
The table was already set. Noah pulled out a chair for me, and in a sloppy bow, laid my napkin across my lap. I laughed as he sat next to me. His parents shared a knowing look as his mother passed around the cutting board, atop which sat an elaborate spread of pâté, sausage, and paper-thin slices of roast beef. She then disappeared into the kitchen.
On one side of the room was an ornate fireplace. Above the mantel hung two tiny trowels, both mounted on wooden plaques. The first said
Noah
; the second said
Katherine.
“That was my first shovel,” Noah said over my shoulder. “I was four when my parents gave it to me.”
“Is this how you grew up?” I asked. “You always knew what you were?”
“Every family is different,” his father said, filling my glass with wine. “Here, we are very open. We are what we are. What’s the use in keeping secrets from each other?”
I watched as Noah spread a bit of pâté on a piece of bread and took a bite. He laughed at something his father said, and then looked at me. I hadn’t caught the joke, but I laughed anyway. This was what my life would have been if my parents hadn’t died. If I could fall in love with Noah. But something was off about all of it. Why was I here, and not Clementine? Was I really that special to Noah, or was he interested in an idea of a girl that he thought was me?
The door swung open and Noah’s mother returned carrying a silver platter and another dish. Noah’s father put his hand on her hip as she removed the lids, revealing potatoes roasted with rosemary and thyme and a rack of lamb, its rib bones sticking out of its center like a piece of modern art. I should have been overwhelmed by the aromas, but I couldn’t smell anything. The more I stared at the food, the more it looked almost waxy and unreal, as if there were a filter between me and everything else.
“So Noah told us you ranked number one at St. Clément?” his mother said, serving each of us. “Very impressive.”
Noah’s father clucked and picked up his wine. “Yes,” he said. “And what kind of Monitor are you?”
“Um—I don’t know.”
“I assume you are planning to join the High Monitor Court when you finish school?” Noah’s mother asked, crossing her legs.
Before I could answer, Noah cut in. “She can do whatever she wants,” he said. “She’s good at everything.”
I felt myself blush. “Then why wouldn’t she?” Noah’s father said. “It’s the most coveted job in our society.”
“Maybe she doesn’t want to be a High Monitor,” Noah offered. “Maybe she wants to do something else.”
I tried to get a word in, when his mother’s laugh stopped me. “But everyone wants to be a High Monitor. Noah, if you just apply yourself, one day you could—”
“I don’t want to talk about this now,” he said, trying to control his voice.
“Noah told me you’re both professors?” I said, changing the subject.
Noah’s mother smiled. “
Oui.
I am a scholar in
français
and the Romance languages, and Luc is one of the most celebrated historians in Canada.” She rubbed her husband’s arm. “Actually, your father just started doing research for a new book. It’s very different.”
Noah spooned a heaping pile of potatoes onto his plate. “What’s it about?”
His father leaned back in his chair and swirled the wine around in his glass. “A forgotten female scientist who had a peculiar obsession.”
Noah’s mother gave him a coy smile before going to the kitchen to bring out more wine.
“Go on,” Noah said.
“Bon,
” his father said, clasping his stubby hands together. “Her name was Ophelia Coeur. And she was obsessed with water.”
Ophelia Coeur. The name sounded familiar somehow. “Who was she?” I asked, trying to remember where I knew her from.
“She is the Marie Curie of Monitors. The Mother Teresa of Monitors. The Christopher Columbus of Monitors!” his father said, spilling his wine as he gesticulated.
“But what did she do?” Noah pressed.
“Many, many things. She was the first person to study the effects of water on the dead.”
I frowned. I definitely didn’t know her name from that.
“She started her career as the school nurse at St. Clément, then moved to the Royal Victoria Hospital in 1894 just after it was taken over by the Plebeians, where she rose to become the head nurse of the children’s ward.”
“The Royal Victoria?” I repeated, my eyes darting to Noah’s. “The children’s ward?”
“
Oui.
She revolutionized the entire hospital.”
I coughed, my mind racing. Noah gave me a knowing glance. “Then what?” he asked.
Noah’s father dunked a piece of bread into his sauce and stuffed it in his mouth. “After a few years, Ophelia Coeur quit nursing and dedicated her life to science,” he said, his words muffled as he chewed. “She went to every body of water in North America to study drowning victims and the way the flesh and soul reacted to being submerged in different kinds of water. She was the first person to figure out that water has a ‘muffling’ effect on dead beings.”
Noah’s mother leaned over and wiped a speck of food from Luc’s chin. He smiled at her and squeezed her hand.
“She spent most of her time studying the Great Lakes, with special attention to Lake Erie. She claimed that the water in that lake muffled the dead even more than usual.”
“Lake Erie?” I said.
“
Oui
. . .” Luc said, clearly confused by my interest. “She was the first one to set foot on many of the islands in the lake. Some of them were even named by her.”
Little Sister Island. That was where Miss LaBarge had been found, dead.
“But I believe her greatest contribution was when she identified all of the lakes that had briny properties, or properties that mimicked those of salt water. That was, oh, in the early 1900s—”
“Where was she buried?” I demanded, and then shrank back when I realized how urgent my tone sounded.
Noah’s parents didn’t seem to notice. “Probably at sea, like everyone else,” Noah’s mother said, nibbling on a string bean.
“Oh,” I said. A part of me expected the nameless headstone to be hers.
“Actually, I wasn’t able to find any records of her death,” Luc corrected. “But back then, our record system wasn’t what it is today. Even now, though some of her research papers have been preserved in the archives, we know very little about her background. She was very private about her past. She rarely made public appearances, and only published her scientific findings sporadically. All we know about her past was that at some point in her childhood she was badly injured in a fire.”
By then, both Noah and I had stopped eating.
“It’s odd,
non?
” Noah’s mother said, gesticulating with the carving knife.
“How do you know about the fire?” I asked.
“Because much of her face was covered in burns.”
“Do you have images?” I asked, a little too eagerly.
Noah’s father seemed a little taken aback by my abrupt request, but then smiled. “There’s a spark in you,” he said, and winked. “I like that. After dinner, I’ll bring one out.”
I felt Noah’s foot touch mine beneath the table, and I blushed.
It was a long, hearty dinner. One course and two bottles of wine later, Noah’s father was a little pink in the face, but otherwise just as lucid as when he had answered the door. We finished the meal with a platter of soft, smelly cheeses, which Noah’s mother ate as if they were dessert, scooping up the Camembert with one finger and licking it off like frosting. His father smiled, admiring her.
“So, are you interested in history, then?” Noah’s father said to me through a mouthful of blue cheese.
“It used to be my favorite subject,” I said slowly.
I must have looked confused, because Noah’s father said, “Ah, well I just thought since you were so interested in my new book.”
“What are you interested in?” Noah’s mother asked.
“I—I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe teaching the Undead? Helping them in some way?”
Noah’s mother let out a laugh as if I had made a joke. When she realized I was serious, she said, “Help them? But why?”
I froze. “What do you mean?”
“Well, they have no souls; they cannot be helped.”
I felt Noah trying to catch my eye, but I refused to turn to him.
“That’s not true,” I said. “At Gottfried—”
At the mention of my old school, Noah’s mother groaned. “Oh, that place. We’ve been trying to get them to shut it down for years. Teaching the Undead to be human. Impossible!
Enfants terribles.
That’s all they are.”
I clutched the cheese knife, my knuckles white as I opened my mouth to respond. Noah cut in before I could. “A lot of her friends are at Gottfried,” he said. “She’s very close with them.”
Incredulous, I wiped my mouth with my napkin. So he thought my opinions on the Undead were just biases that I had toward my friends?
“Sometimes I wonder,” I said impulsively. “Are Monitors really saving humans from the Undead, or just killing people?”
Noah’s mother coughed and put down her spoon as the table went quiet.
“There’s an art to what we do,” she said finally, her voice less friendly.
“But how is it different?” I said, trying not to sound too argumentative.
“We’re civilized. We have courts and schools, we have a system. The Undead, they’re—”
“They’re what?” I said, anticipating what she was going to say. “They’re monsters? They’re murderers?”
“Okay!” Noah’s father said. “Are you ready to see the portrait?” He glanced between me and his wife, patting a napkin to his head nervously.