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The rest of the students loitered on the sidewalk by the school gates, which were uard’s booth was a dark green van, with the St Clément crest printed discreetly on the back

Headht brown suit When he saw us, he smiled and fished the keys out of his pocket

I sat in the back row, in between Anya and a boy named Harrison, who had a chubby face covered in freckles The seats were dusty and rough In front of ether as we rolled over the cobblestone streets of the old port I watched as she played with a lock of his hair and whispered so to admit that some part of me was jealous

"As you probably realized from your placement tests, some dead animals are easier to sense than others," said Headh the rearview mirror "The French term that Monitors use to describe this is force lish, superior force Soer force than other animals, which makes them easier to detect

"For example, other than hureatest force, is the cat, which is why it is our school mascot The cat is much like a Monitor, because it can detect death just as we can"

I thought back to Headmistress Von Laark’s Siamese cats, who always pawed at Dante and Gideon

"The san of a Clairvoyant Monitor is being able to recognize these differences in weight Death is everywhere In order to do our jobs, we need to be able to distinguish between dead animals, dead people, and the Undead After that, we find the Undead who are dangerous, and put the of Dante "Why do we get to decide who lives and who dies?"

As I spoke, I felt a pair of eyes on me, which I assumed were Cleed to Noah

The headhtfully "Because a world without order would collapse in on itself We’re the only ones capable of sensing the Undead It’s not fair, I suppose, but it’s not our task to solve thethe St Lawrence River to the grungy industrial area of Montreal Headlanced over his shoulder as he maneuvered down the waterfront "But water," he said "Water co the head less factories lined the shore, spewing a continual strea into the sky Rusty pipes and corroded beams of metal stuck out of the river like the remnants of a flooded forest It se, and for the first tilad my sense of smell was partially muted

"It is incredibly difficult to sense a dead creature when it is i at the end of the dock Behind him, a slew of rowboats bobbed in the water "And the deeper it is, theit is for us to sense its presence Which is exactly e’re here To practice our intuition"

I shivered as I studied the flotsaarette butts

"This is where people duain Weapons, clothes, the dead…Death often resides in inconvenient locations, and as a Monitor in the world, places like this will be your office Many of the cases you will encounter are of children who have drowned --and per the Cartesian Oath, you will have to find them and bury them before they float and reaniazed out at the murky water "I have planted one dead animal out there," he said "Your job is to locate it, identify it, and if possible, record its depth"

We paired up Noah orking with Cle as she climbed into a rowboat

After I settled in, she handed me the oars "You row," she said "I’ll direct you"

"Why do you get to direct?" I said

"Because I have weak arood at sports"

"But I’ the dead than you are"

She looked offended at my statement, but shook it off "All the more reason for me to practice"

"Fine"

"Fine"

As ed out, the headmaster climbed into his own boat and continued to shout out tips on sensing the presence of the dead beneath the water I tried to pay attention, but Anya kept changing our course "To the left ht Oh, sorry, never ain"

Frustrated, I turned around "Can you just pick a direction and stick with it?" At the periphery of my vision, I could see Noah put one of his oars down

Anya pointed to the left "More that way"

"That’s wrong," I said "I can feel it"

"So can I," Anya said "Just because you’re first rank doesn’t ht this time," I said, but was distracted by a splash

Clementine and Noah were a few feet behind us, their boat wobbling as Noah teased her with a net he’d fished out of the river