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"Why? Why can’t it be real?"
She gazed at the paper as if she feared it "How could you have seen that in a vision?"
"Maybe I was meant to find it"
As she studied me, a smile spread across her face "That is theI’ve ever heard"
"So what do you propose, then?" I asked, taking offense "We just ignore it?"
She sucked on a lock of red hair "Fine," she said "Let ed, and a down arrow lit up Once the doors closed, I took out the rubbing
"So we have to follow the nose of the bear to the salty waters beneath," I said, reading the final two lines
"I don’t knohat that means," Anya said
I crossedto a real bear Maybe it , or a rock formation that looked like a bear…And the salty waters probably referred to the ocean…
"But Madame Goût said that the Nine Sisters vowed to let their secret die with them so no one would ever find it," Anya said "So ould they leave a riddle leading to it?"
I didn’t know, and before I could say anything round floor
"Renée?"
My eyes traveled up fro of his pants, cuffed as if he had just co a bicycle, to his collared shirt, unbuttoned at the top, to his auburna cup of coffee and a book
He looked atQuickly, I ripped it off and cru he hadn’t read it
"What was that?"
"Nothing," I said, giving Anya a look She did the sarand at his dimples, at the dark red stubble on his cheeks "I’m so sorry"
"No, it’s okay She’s been here for a while I like to come every so often to say hi, even if she can’t hear me I was actually on my way here when I ran into you on the street"
"You were?" I said, inexplicably relieved to realize that the floeren’t for Cle?"
"Oh, u out a laugh "What are you doing here, then?"
As I searched for the right answer, Anya piped in "Sarabbing her ar," Anya said, finishing my sentence
He backed into the elevator "A club? What club?"
"It’s girls only A private thing," Anya said, randether Anya and I ran back to St Cléstones, and into the dormitory
Chapter 7
IT RAINED FOR THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, SEPTEMBER washing into October with little change I should have been happy aboutbut dull With Dante gone, tis just as cloudy and dark as the evenings, as if the sun had never decided to rise There was no wind, like the world was holding its breath along with inning of October huddled in the library, trying to decode the riddle I looked up the crest of the canary dozens of tiraphs in the books to the one on raphite, the similarities were unot the first tingling sensation that I ht: the secret of the Nine Sisters wasn’t dead; it was preserved in a riddle
But what did itabout oceans, bears, noses, or any coue that they rendered nothing The , the : the verse was only one part of a larger riddle And in order to make sense of it, I had to find the other pieces
"But how?" Anya asked, the bangles on her wrists clinking together as alked to Strategy and Prediction, which was being held off campus
"Maybe it will come to me in another vision," I said "That’s how it happened before"