Dead Beautiful (27 page)

CHAPTER 10
The Stolen Files

T
HE SEARCH FOR ELEANOR CONTINUED FOR A
week, but they found nothing. Her bag, her books, and all of her things were in our dorm room. The beams of their flashlights occasionally flickered through my window, and I watched them dance across the walls as if they were looking for Eleanor in her bed. It was coincidental that the flood in the basement had occurred around the same time as her disappearance, though no one thought the two events were related, since I had told everyone that Eleanor had been safely in our room that night. Besides, the water level was still too high for anyone to access the basement. So instead they taped up posters around campus and Attica Falls, plastering the entire area with Eleanor’s face. Underneath it read one word: missing.

Her parents flew in separately, her mother a tall, elegant blonde in riding boots and a slim black jacket; her father a suited corporate lawyer who talked to everyone as if he were interrogating them. They bickered like children, blaming each other for Eleanor’s disappearance; though they were surprisingly kind to me. “Eleanor spoke highly of you,” Mr. Bell said. “She said you were one of her closest friends. Am I correct to believe that you helped her with her grades in Horticulture?”

I gazed at him, confused. “I, um...no, I only gave her a few pointers. She didn’t need much help.”

“Modest, too,” he said, looking me up and down. “If you were leading the search, where would you look?”

“The basement,” I blurted out.

He didn’t speak for a long time, until he put his hat back on and buttoned his coat. “They said she couldn’t be in the basement.”

I shrugged. “It’s just a hunch.”

“Eleanor was right about you.”

I gave him a questioning look.

“You speak your mind.”

But I seemed to be one of the few people he didn’t despise. He marched around campus, his son, Brandon, beside him, his ex-wife, Cindy, and his two assistants trailing behind, ordering the rangers, the townspeople, the professors, even the headmistress around, all of whom he accused of being incompetent and lazy. Yet even with more people, the search yielded nothing. Slowly the parties disbanded.

Campus affairs seemed to go back to normal, or as normal as they could have been with a sixteen-year-old girl missing. Everyone was scared, and even though there was no proof, it was hard not to project Benjamin’s fate onto Eleanor. Mrs. Lynch seemed almost excited. She patrolled the halls and conducted random room searches with the kind of enthusiasm born from years of putting up with children who deserved to be disciplined, but rarely were. A scandal like this would merit a punishment she could only have dreamed of.

I sat through my classes, hardly paying attention as I tried to smother my imagination. Somewhere out there, Eleanor was in trouble. I felt useless, and Professor Lumbar’s lecture about ancient forms of declensions was hardly enthralling enough to take my mind off of it.

“What can Latin tell us about ourselves?” she asked, her giant body housed beneath a tent dress. She wrote a word on the board in large, slanted cursive:
Vivus eram.

“There is a form of ancient Latin called
Latinum Mortuorum,
which can only be spoken in the past tense. It doesn’t have any other tenses. You couldn’t say, ‘I am alive’; only ‘I
was
alive.’ It was spoken by children, often orphans. For them, the present, the future—these realms of time didn’t exist. Instead they spent their lives looking backward. In essence, living in the past.”

I stared at the board, copying down the phrase. It was difficult to leave the past behind. First the death of my parents, and now Eleanor’s disappearance. Maybe it was my way of trying to relieve the guilt I felt about my parents, that finding Eleanor would somehow make them come back.

How could I not be haunted by the past when death was looming so close to me? I
was
alive.

That night I called Annie, and told her about Eleanor.

“Why don’t you go to the police?” she asked.

“They were here. Plus, what would I say? That someone is killing people by giving them heart attacks, and that Eleanor was probably the next victim?”

“It does sound pretty ridiculous.”

“I know. And I have no proof.”

“Have you told anyone?”

“Just Nathaniel and Dante.”

“You’re still talking to that guy?” she said.

“Dante? Of course I am,” I said defensively. “Why wouldn’t I be talking to him?”

“The last time we talked you thought he was some sort of mutant.”

“Oh, right …” Thinking back to our previous phone conversation, I was almost embarrassed at how angry I had gotten at Annie. “I’m sorry, An,” I said. “All these things were happening that I didn’t understand, and nothing seemed fair.”

“And now everything makes sense?” She sounded skeptical.

I laughed. “Definitely not. I think I just changed. I like Dante. I like him a lot.” I wanted to tell her everything about him; I wanted to describe the way he looked at me, the way his voice sounded when he spoke in class, each word like a tiny piece of a sprawling love letter written only for me. But I knew she wouldn’t understand.

After we hung up, I sat in my room and listened to the muffled sound of girls laughing through the walls. How could they laugh when one of their friends was missing? With nothing else to do, I decided to clean my room. The recesses beneath my bed were treacherous at best. Large stacks of papers and books crowded the floor, surrounded by dust bunnies. I began to sift through them, when I saw the book I’d bought from Lazarus Books. It was lying on its side beneath a pile of notebooks and folders. I wedged it out and wiped off its cover.
Attica Falls.
Its woven ivory binding was slowly unraveling along the edges. “The Gottfried Curse,” I thought. I had spent so much time worrying about how the curse related to my parents and Benjamin and Eleanor, that I had totally forgotten about the only part of the article that related to
me.
Literally. I stood up and paced the room until I found myself picking up the phone and dialing my grandfather’s number. Dustin answered.

“Winters residence,” he said stoutly.

“Hi, Dustin,” I said softly, feeling suddenly very much like a little girl. “Is my—”

Upon hearing my voice, Dustin interrupted me. “Miss Winters?” he exclaimed warmly. “I’ve been wondering when we were going to hear from you. Calling about your winter travel arrangements?”

“Um, no, I actually wanted to talk to my grandfather. Is he there?”

“I’m afraid he’s away,” Dustin said. I imagined his forehead wrinkling as he said it. “Until next week, I’m afraid. Is it an emergency? Maybe I can be of service.”

I hesitated. “No, it’s fine—it can wait. Thanks, though.”

“But we’ll see you for the holidays, yes?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Excellent. I’ll be picking you up next Friday. And you can talk to Mr. Winters when you get home. He wouldn’t want me saying it, but he’s very much looking forward to seeing you again. As am I, of course. It will be such a joy to have a young person around the estate again. I fear we have all become statues.”

I laughed. “Okay,” I said slowly, not sure how to respond. “See you next Friday, then.”

I was about to blow out the candle and go to sleep, when I heard something hit my window. I got out of bed and looked outside, only to find Dante standing in the path below. I opened the window and leaned out.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Come down,” he said.

I looked behind me again. “I can’t! I’ll get caught.”

“Mrs. Lynch is gone. I saw her leave for the headmistress’s office ten minutes ago.”

I threw on a pleated skirt and sweater, and checked my appearance in the mirror, clipping my hair to the side with a barrette.

Dante was waiting for me by the path in just a shirt and tie, no jacket. He was leaning on a lamppost, his hair swept back from his face, save for a few loose strands that blew in the wind. Without saying a word, he wrapped his hand around mine and led me through the green. The night was gray and foggy, the moon barely visible beneath the clouds.

“Where are we going?” I asked, trying to keep up with his long stride.

Slowing down, he looked at me and smiled. “Trust me.”

We stopped in front of the chapel, its massive stone buttresses leaning beneath the weight of the steeples. I let my hand slip from his as he walked ahead of me. Along the archway over the door, dozens of white flowers were blooming from gnarled vines. I gazed at them in awe. I had never seen them during the day.

“Moonflowers,” I said, remembering them from the night-blooming plants class in Horticulture.

Dante smiled and held open the riveted doors, which, surprisingly, were unlocked. With delicate footsteps, I stepped inside.

The chapel was lit by dozens of candles all arranged in a line between the two aisles of pews. I picked one up and cradled it in my palm, glancing back at Dante with a surprised smile. He nudged me forward, and I followed the candlelit path into the belly of the chapel.

It was dark and shadowy, with the faint smell of musk and rosewater. The candlelight reflected off the stained-glass windows, covering the floor in a dark mosaic of blue and purple light. The ceilings were vaulted and covered in peeling frescoes of clouds and angels and beautiful women with long, flowing hair.

The candles led to the back of the chapel, behind the altar, and up into a narrow spiral staircase. The wind rattled the windows, and I looked back at Dante, who was just steps behind me. His fingers grazed the ends of my hair as I climbed, watching our shadows dance across the stone.

We emerged at the top of the steeple, where a ring of candles wrapped around a giant bell in the middle. I stepped outside, the cold air refreshing on my cheeks. In front of me was the entire campus, now small, and behind it the forest and the rocky peaks of the White Mountains disappearing into the clouds.

“It’s beautiful,” I uttered, though it hardly described what I felt.

“You like it?”

I turned to face him. “I love it.”

Dante studied me, his face almost sad as he gently ran his fingers down my arm. “Renée, I—”

I looked up at him expectantly, curling my hands into the sleeves of my coat.

Dante’s eyes searched mine. “I can’t lose you.”

My voice trembled as I stepped closer to him. “Why would you lose me?” I said with a faint smile.

He raised my hand to his lips and kissed it. We sank to the ground, surrounded by candles, and listened to the wind.

“If you could have anything you wanted, what would it be?” Dante asked as I rested my head against his chest.

“To have my parents back.”

“If I could give that to you, I would,” Dante said, kissing the inside of my arm, making it feel like dozens of white flowers were blooming across it.

I turned to him. “Then a kiss. A real kiss.”

Dante ran a melancholy hand down my cheek. “I can’t.”

“Why?” I asked, my face inches from his as I drew him closer. He leaned in, unable to help himself. I felt his hand on the back of my neck, pulling me toward him until our lips were nearly touching. The air fluttered in my lungs, and I closed my eyes, letting my body go soft in his arms. I couldn’t think or feel anything except his arms knotting themselves in my hair, grasping at my neck as if it were clay. And then suddenly he pulled away. “I can’t—” he said. “I can’t trust myself around you. I can’t help myself.”

“I trust you,” I said softly.

“Renée, what if I hurt you? I would never forgive myself.”

“You won’t hurt me, I know you won’t,” I said, raising my hand to his face. He pressed it against his cheek.

“You don’t understand. You don’t know what I’m capable of. I’m afraid to touch you, in case I break you; I’m afraid to talk to you, afraid you’ll realize that I’m a monster. But every day you’re still here.” He gazed at me. “I can barely control myself when I’m around you. I have to have you. I have to keep you.”

“You do have me.”

He spoke slowly. “Renée, I need to tell you—”

But before he could finish his sentence, I saw a person walking down the pathway toward the chapel below us, carrying a lantern.

“Mrs. Lynch,” I said frantically. We ran downstairs and snuck out the back entrance into the cemetery. With barely enough time to say good-bye, I ran to the dormitory.

By the next morning, the magic of the night in the chapel seemed like nothing more than a dream, and the reality of Eleanor having been gone for over a week made me so nauseated that I barely had an appetite. I was stuffing books into my bag after Philosophy when Miss LaBarge approached me. “How do you feel about tea?” she asked.

I hesitated. Mrs. Lynch had already questioned me three times about Eleanor, and I wasn’t up for it anymore. “I... I—”

“That’s what I thought,” she said with a smile, and held the door for me as we walked to her office. It was on the third floor of Horace, in the east wing. I wiped my feet on a mat outside of her door that read, welcome friends, and entered. The room was covered in books. They were stacked on shelves, lying in piles on the floor, propped up against the windowsill, tucked behind the door. I sat in a Victorian armchair as Miss LaBarge busied herself over a platter with dishes, cups, saucers, and a teapot.

“I don’t know where she is,” I blurted out before she could say anything.

“Madeleine?” she said, her back to me.

I stared at her, confused. “No. Eleanor. She’s in our class.. ..”

Miss LaBarge turned around and smiled, holding out a plate of tea biscuits. “Of course she is. Madeleine, as in the cookie.”

“Oh...right. Thanks,” I said, turning red.

She held up a creamer. “Milk?”

I nodded, and she poured it in my cup and sat in the armchair across from me.

“Sorry,” I said. “It seems like every time someone talks to me these days, all they ask about is Eleanor.”

She frowned. “I’m not interested in your involvement with Eleanor’s disappearance, which I assume you had nothing to do with,” she said, sipping her tea, “but in your involvement with a certain someone else, who also has a proclivity for making himself scarce.”