Dead Beautiful (31 page)

“Bye,” I whispered through the window as we backed down the path, my breath leaving a foggy imprint on the glass where Dante’s face had been.

After a long snowy drive through evergreen forests and quaint New England towns, we arrived at the Wintershire House. Its sprawling lawn was now covered in snow, the trees naked and glazed in a glassy sheen of ice. As we meandered up the driveway, the black lampposts turned on, one by one, until we reached the crescent entry of the mansion.

Dustin opened the car door for me, and I stepped into the graying December dusk. The windows of the mansion glowed warmly, and I walked inside, past the frozen fountain and the topiaries, which lined the front of the yard like faceless statues.

“Your grandfather will be arriving for dinner shortly. In the meantime, I’ll take the liberty of bringing your luggage upstairs to Miss Lydia’s old room.”

Dinner was served promptly at seven o’clock. I barely had to time unpack my bags when the grandfather clock downstairs chimed. Minutes later, Dustin knocked on my door, wearing a dinner suit and bow tie. He led me down through the foyer, where two men were standing on ladders, stringing lights around a twenty-foot-tall Christmas tree.

My grandfather was already seated at one end of an excessively long table in the main dining room, which was decorated almost as lavishly as Gottfried’s Megaron. He smiled and stood up as I entered. “Renée,” he said warmly, giving me a stiff hug before unbuttoning his dinner jacket.

His face was pink and weathered from the cold, his nose and ears even larger and droopier than they were last summer. A heavy chandelier hung over the middle of the room, and candles decorated the center of the table. Dustin bowed as he pulled out my chair for me, and after a flurry of swift swoops, I was suddenly sitting down, my chair pushed into the table, a napkin draped over my lap, a bowl of salmon-colored soup in front of me.

“Thanks,” I said, trying to decide which spoon to use.

Dustin made a modest bow and retreated to the kitchen to bring out our meals. My grandfather smiled from the seat beside me at the head of the table. He had a mustache now, bushy and white like a mop, and I watched it expectantly as he took a mouthful of soup. Our places were set with an elaborate array of china that included far too many forks and spoons. I chose the smallest one and dipped it in my bowl. All at once, the flavors and textures unfolded in my mouth: salty turning to bitter, and then tart and sweet.

“It’s cold,” I blurted out. “And bitter. But also kind of fruity.”

“It’s supposed to be cold, my dear. And that’s the goat cheese you’re tasting.
Potage effrayant de figue, tomate
,
et fromage de chèvre.
And quite delicious,” my grandfather said, raising a glass of scotch to Dustin. “Thank you.”

I managed a smile as Dustin replaced my soup with the second course, a delicate arrangement of asparagus, stuffed figs, and duck confit. We ate in silence.

“I was informed about your roommate,” my grandfather said, working at his duck with a fork and knife. “I’m glad she has recovered. I’m told she’s doing well?”

“She was trapped in a flooded basement for over a week,” I said.

He stopped chewing. “Yes, I was aware. I’ve already spoken to my contacts at the school.” His knife scraped the plate. “So how are you finding your classes? Stimulating?”

I put down my fork. A giant moose head stared at me from over the mantel. “I know what you were,” I said, watching him eat.

My grandfather coughed, choking on a fig. After pounding his chest with his fist twice, he composed himself. “What’s that, you said?”

“I know what you were.”

My grandfather exchanged a glance with Dustin, who was standing in the corner of the room with a napkin draped over his forearm. My grandfather put his fork down and let out a sigh of relief. “You must have questions. I knew you would come to it on your own once you started at Gottfried. Though I did not think it would be this quickly. Your mother didn’t figure it out until she was elected to the Board of Monitors in her third year. That’s how she met your father.”

I sat back in my chair. My parents were Monitors? “What do you mean she didn’t figure it out until her third year? Wasn’t it obvious when she saw you around campus?”

“Surely you must have realized it when you began Horticulture?”

I shook my head, confused. “Horticulture? What does that have to do with you being headmaster?”

My grandfather considered my words. “My being headmaster? This is the matter that you wished to discuss?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Picking up his glass of scotch, he sat back in his chair, the ice cubes clinking as he took a sip. “I am sorry,” he said slowly. “It must have slipped my mind.”

“Really?” I said skeptically. “Because it seems kind of convenient that you would remember to tell me that my parents went to Gottfried, but forget to mention that you were the headmaster for over thirty years and that my parents were Monitors.”

The candlelight flickered. “I’m glad to see you’re getting a good education,” my grandfather said, finishing his drink in one gulp. “Dustin, could you fetch me another scotch?”

“What caused the heart attacks?”

My grandfather narrowed his eyes. “Heart attacks?”

“I know you know what I’m talking about. The Gottfried Curse.”

“Legend and lore created by idle townspeople and failing journalists.”

“But last year two students were murdered.”

“Just one. Benjamin Gallow,” he said. I gazed at my grandfather in astonishment. “Yes, I was made aware of his death and Cassandra’s...disappearance.”

I blinked, baffled that he wasn’t more disturbed by this information. “Why did you send me there if you knew it wasn’t safe? Even if the Gottfried Curse is a legend, you knew about it.”

“Your parents died; you were far less safe in California.”

“Why not send me to a different school?”

“Our family has been attending Gottfried for centuries,” my grandfather said loudly. “There
are
no other schools.”

Infuriated, I stood up. Dustin rushed over to my seat to pull my chair back for me. “My roommate is in the hospital and my parents are dead. Cassandra Millet is dead too. I read it in her file, her official Gottfried file, which means the school is covering it up. Minnie Roberts claims that the headmistress and the Board of Monitors are behind it.”

My grandfather set his fork down on his plate. “That is preposterous,” he said quietly. “You trust the words of a girl you barely know, without any other proof, and against the words of the headmistress and the Board of Monitors, at an institution in which your parents placed their utmost trust. And here I thought you were intelligent.”

I went silent.

“You’re here, and you’re safe. Or as safe as one can be in this world. Now, I want you to listen to me very clearly. Education is safety. Knowing what’s out there is safety. Knowing how to fight and protect yourself is safety. So sit down. We still have one more course.”

With no better option, I obliged. Dustin pushed in my chair for me. “Thanks,” I mumbled over my shoulder as he retreated to the kitchen to bring out dessert.

“I was the headmaster at Gottfried Academy for thirty-two years, during which time your mother and father attended the school. That is where they met, as you already know. The Gottfried Curse is a legend, nothing more. While I was the headmaster, there were no accidents, no deaths. I became familiar with many of the faculty members that teach at Gottfried today. Professor Lumbar was a colleague; as were Professors Starking, Mumm, and Chortle. Annette LaBarge was a classmate of your mother’s, and a good friend of both your parents. And while Headmistress Von Laark was a new hire when I was reaching the end of my last term, I have reason to believe that you are in the best of hands at Gottfried.”

“But they’re just … they’re just teachers. What could they do? They obviously couldn’t protect Eleanor.”

“Some things in this world, as you know, are unpreventable. It is my belief that if it were not for the current professors, the students at Gottfried would be far less safe. As is the case with most other schools.”

That evening, while I was looking through my mother’s papers, trying to find out more about who she and my father were when they were at Gottfried, Dustin knocked on my door. He was holding a tray with a note on top. “A phone call for Miss Renée,” he said properly, with the twinge of a smile. I picked up the note and unfolded it.
Mr. Dante Berlin.

“He’s on the phone? Right now?”

Dustin made a little bow in reply. Unable to contain my excitement, I ran downstairs to the sitting room.

“Hello?” I said, barely believing that he was on the other line.

Dante’s voice reverberated gently through the phone. “I had to hear your voice.”

I coiled the cord around my fingers. “So I guess that means you miss me already.”

I expected him to laugh, but to my surprise, he was serious. “I do. Very much. I don’t like being away from you.”

Smiling into the receiver, I sat on the chaise longue, cradling the phone. “Well, hi,” I said softly.

I imagined his dark, pensive eyes staring into mine. “Hi,” he said in a hushed tone. “So tell me what I missed.”

I told him about my grandfather, about our conversation over dinner and how my parents were Monitors, about the long table and the moose head and the cold soup, which I still wasn’t certain I liked yet.

Dante laughed. “No cold soup, no goat cheese. I’ll make a mental note. And no Gottfried Curse.”

“And for you it’s no food at all. No sleep. And no tunnels.”

“I’m low maintenance.”

“Is that what you are? Because I’ve been trying to figure it out all semester.”

“And what have you concluded?”

“A mutant. A rare disease. A creature from the inferno.
Dante.
”

“And what if you found out you were right?” he asked. “What if it meant that I could hurt you?”

“I would say that I’m not scared. Everyone has the ability to hurt. It’s the choice that matters.”

We talked every night. My grandfather was in and out of the house for business meetings, funding numerous ventures, charitable foundations, etcetera, etcetera. So I spent most of my days alone, exploring the house and the estate grounds. After going through his entire library looking for information on Gottfried, my grandfather, or the curse, I found nothing, and resorted to trudging through the snowy Massachusetts woods in tall boots, imagining my mother doing the same thing when she was my age, her cheeks flushed and rosy, her lips chapped, her nose dripping from the cold.

And even though every morning I prepared myself for the inevitable night when Dante didn’t call, he always did. We talked for hours; our voices traveling to each other in waves and currents; the distance somehow pulling us closer together.

After talking to Dante, I looked through my mother’s belongings over and over again, picking things up and putting them back delicately, afraid to hold anything for too long. I found dozens of books about cats, a sewing machine and a box of bobbins, a photograph of my mother and father from when they first met. They looked only a little bit older than me and were sitting on the grass beneath a giant tree, staring at each other and smiling. It was my first Christmas without my parents, and I missed them so much it was unbearable.

“Nothing’s the same,” I told Dante. “I miss cutting down the tree with my dad and trying to fit it into the station wagon. Drinking hot chocolate and listening to cheesy Christmas songs while we decorated the tree together. How my dad always left cookies and milk by the fireplace, even when I was a teenager. The tree here is too perfect. It’s not even crooked or anything. It’s unnatural.”

“Unnatural?” Dante said softly.

“I don’t even think its needles fall off. What kind of tree is that?”

“Evergreens aren’t supposed to die.”

“Everything dies.” Immediately I thought of my parents. “Sometimes too soon.”

There was a long silence. Finally Dante said, “It will get better, Renée. Don’t wish your life away just because your parents lost theirs.”

I sighed. “It would be better if you were here.”

“I’ll get to see you every day for the rest of the school year,” he said. “It’s only fair that I let your grandfather have a week or two.”

“Don’t I get a say in this?”

“That’s what I worry about. That one morning you’ll come to your senses and realize that a girl like you would never want to be with someone like me.”

I shook my head, confused. “I would never think that.

You helped me pass Latin. You stood up for me in front of Gideon and Vivian and the headmistress. And you found Eleanor. You’re like no one I’ve ever met. What kind of girl do you think I am that I wouldn’t want to be with you?”

“Unreal.”

On Christmas Eve there was a blizzard. Snow piled up to the windows, burying the lampposts, the statues, the fountain. I sat through a stiff holiday dinner with my grandfather, Dustin standing in the corner while I picked at my ham. Midway through, I turned to him.

“Why don’t you join us?”

Dustin, surprised at being addressed, didn’t know how to respond. “I...um...thank you, Miss Winters, but I’ve already eaten.”

“Well, that can’t be true. I saw you just before dinner, polishing the silver and setting the table.”

Dustin looked embarrassed.

“Thank you, Miss Winters, but I’m quite all right here.”

I rolled my eyes. “You don’t look all right. You look uncomfortable. Who can stand for that long?”

Dustin’s eyes traveled to my grandfather, who coughed and stopped chewing.

“Why yes,” my grandfather said with a jolt. “How silly of me. Dustin, please do sit. We have more than enough for three.”

I gazed at the heaping platter of ham and cured meats and yams in front of us, and stood up to pull out the chair next to me for Dustin. “You can use one of my forks. I have too many anyway.”

So Dustin sat down at the table, probably for the first time.

After dinner I helped him clear the table. Then we did the dishes together and left a glass of milk and two cookies beneath the tree. My grandfather retired to the Smoking Parlor. “Merry Christmas, Renée,” he said, squeezing my shoulder. He put on his glasses. “If you need anything, I’ll be downstairs.”