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"What do you mean?" I asked "I just told you aboutelse!" he said "I spoke with Dr Porter He told me you weren’t very helpful when he etables around on my plate, suddenly defensive "I don’t knohat you’re talking about"

"The doctor said that you wouldn’t even answer his questions"

"That’s because he kept asking about my parents and my friends; about e talk about on the phone He even asked aboutto control e "He’s a doctor I don’t see how that’s any of his business" After chewing, I put randfather didn’t move, Dustin carandfather eyed etable pie and took a bite Still bland I reached for the salt again, when h," he said, taking the shaker from me "The food is already well seasoned And you will answer all of the questions the doctors ask you I hired them for a reason"

I stared down at randfather said, wiping his lips with his napkin "You were dead," he said "For nine days, you were dead They found you on the green and took you to the nurses’ wing, under my request, to wait for you to reanimate I saw you with my own eyes" He paused to take a sip of water "But on the day that you were supposed to reanimate, you disappeared And e found you, you were on the green again, not Undead, but alive Completely alive" He studied me "How did you survive?"

Outside, a ht blinking behind the randfather’s story I could have told hiave Dante ave it back to randfather would never understand "I’ve told you everything I can already I don’t understand it any better than you do What else do you want randfather shook his head "There’s speculation a the professors that you have some sort of immunity to the Undead That you’re a new kind of Monitor"

"What do you

"They think you’re immortal" He paused "But it doesn’t aze, I picked at the food on et about it?"

"Forget about it?" he said, ale’s death, about your parents’ deaths, but not about your own? This is your life, Renée Don’t you want to kno you survived?"

"Of course I do," I muttered

"You’re not yourself You don’t even look like yourself And you’re keeping solanced down the hall to where I could see the cooks shuffling in and out of the kitchen, pots clanking as soh I could remember the way the halls of thefood around mealtimes, now I could barely smell it unless I loweredabout," I said "Everything is fine" But the words fell flat

I was definitely alive, not Undead, at least according to the doctors Their tests had returned nor into ue The cold shock of a stethoscope as it touched my back What the doctors couldn’t seey, disoriented, my eyes dry and heavy with sleep, as if I had just co afternoon nap and didn’t knoTo be honest, since last spring, I wasn’t sure that I had ever co that boy, have you?"

I choked onto"

"No, I don’t"

"Dante Berlin," randfather said with force "Have you or have you not been seeing hi since I’d heard anyone other than h Dante had beco I was lying "I haven’t"

My grandfather’s face hardened "Good If he comes near you, I’ll bury him"

I shrank back in my seat No! I wanted to screa at all

My grandfather motioned to Dustin to take his plate away, and pushed out his chair Just before he left the roo Annette a Monitor’s funeral on Friday I expect you to come Death is your profession now It’s time you accepted that"

Every day indy on the coast of Maine I could tell by the craggy cliffs and small knotted trees that were swirled and twisted out of shape When we arrived at Friendship Harbor on Friday, after a five-hour drive, a crowd of people was already gathered by the shore They all wore black Docked behind thee wooden boat painted with the nae

Brandon Bell, Eleanor’s older brother, was standing by the side of the boat, handing out garden trowels to the guests as he directed theant blonde I recognized her immediately, not only because I had met her at Gottfried last winter, when Eleanor had disappeared, but because I had just seen her She was an older replica of the third girl in the photograph in Miss LaBarge’s cottage Cindy Bell Seeing her now --her sleek black suit and i friends But if Cindy was here, it meant Eleanor had to be back from Europe