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Dustin, apparently still hovering outside the library, responded through the door "Renée? Are you all right? Will you letto be all right, Renée," Dustin said, his voice gentle "It was an accident A Monitoring accident She was probably killed by the Undead she was hunting These things happen so in beneath the door, but didn’t hed "Well, I’ht I had drifted somewhere else Was it an accident? Inanyone It see her

I didn’t open the door Instead, I sat against the wall beneath the , listening to the rain trickle down the side of the house until I fell asleep

When I woke up, the rain had stopped and the house was quiet I rubbedover Dustin, as sitting on the floor outside, dozing off next to a tray with a teapot, two cups, and a plate of butter cookies

"Renée," he said, shaking hi hiht need so to warm you up," he said, and carried it into the library

He folded his legs into the small space beside me and sat down between the piles of books There he adjusted his jacket and gave me a sad s selection," he said, gesturing to a pile of books by Aristotle He used them as a table while he poured e came to the house with your ether," he said, gazing out theat the wet, green lawn "She was a lovely girl"

"It feels like everyone around et older"

"But I’m not old"

"You’re a Monitor I used to be one too, you know, and look at , he adjusted his knees "Time passes differently with us Life, death--sometimes it all seems like a dream"

His words made me shudder "A dream?"

Dustin nodded

I wanted to tell him what I had seen in my sleep, and to ask him what it meant I wanted him to tell me that it wasn’t my fault, that it was a coincidence But I couldn’t What if he told randfather? That would only add to my problee spots "You were a Monitor?"

"I was" He leaned over and took two cookies fro me one "Go on"

I turned away, unable to look at it "What if I don’t kno to?"

Dustin furrowed his brow "Don’t knohat?"

"Just go on"

"It will happen whether you kno to or not," he said "After all, what else can we do?"

Chapter 2

I WOKE UP IN THE LIBRARY, MY FACE PLANTED IN the middle of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, to the sound of a horn honking After my conversation with Dustin, tiht hours had been one unbearably long moment I had wandered in and out of the library in a daze, hoping the news of Miss LaBarge’s death had been a nightmare, but it wasn’t The seventeen-item breakfast that Dustin had prepared for me had sat on the kitchen counter until one of the cooks scraped it into the garbage Even though the staff was going about their nore was dead made the mansion feel drafty and deserted, as if everyone else had died along with her

Miss LaBarge had an accident while hunting an Undead That’s what Dustin kept telling ht about it, the less sense it made Why had she been there alone, when I knew that Monitors alorked in pairs? Orat all? The little I’d gleaned froht , researching, judging, teaching, coffin building…There was an order to tracking and hunting the Undead; we didn’t just go out and bury thee, who had dedicated their lives to teaching the Undead and Monitors how to coexist So ould she have traveled across several states to hunt one?

"Why?" I’d begged Dustin, when he couldn’t giveout the ansould so over, I pushed the curtains aside and peered out theIt was a crisp, blue day, so bright it randfather’s car was parked at the end of the crescent driveway, the doors open as Dustin struggled to carry in two stacks of papers, a briefcase, and a traveling bag