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She watched e while I ith Noah, how she and auze in their mouths When I was finished, Anya’s forehead was furrowed, her wet red hair dangling over her shoulders, leaving water marks on her shirt

"Maybe they found the secret of the Nine Sisters and becae everywhere--because she’s still alive And maybe--maybe--"

"Your parents are still alive, then, too?" Anya offered, finishing

"I don’t know," she said "It doesn’t seeirl’ when they wrote Miss LaBarge the letter, right? So that means they couldn’t have found the secret They were probably just searching for it, like us And after they died, Miss LaBarge took what they found a step further She was looking for so to do with lakes or water--"

"Which is kind of e’re looking for," I said, thinking about the saltwater riddle

"Exactly Which means she hadn’t found it either And then she was killed"

I spun the beans on the necklace, unable to accept what she was saying Why couldn’t Miss LaBarge be alive? Why couldn’t immortality be real? Why couldn’t my parents still be alive? "But that doesn’t explain why I keep seeing Miss LaBarge"

"You keep having weird visions," she reminded me "Couldn’t she be one of those, too?"

"But Noah saw her Not just me"

"He never met her when she was alive, did he? He could have been mistaken It could have just been someone who looked like her"

I sat back, frustrated "Fine," I said "You’re right They’re dead They’re all dead Does that make you happy?"

"It’s better this way," she offered "If your parents had been alive all this time, and hadn’t contacted you, that would be even azed at the lamp until it burned a yellow orb into ht If my parents were alive they would’ve found a way to contact s "You can’t know for sure, though," I said "The only way to be certain is to follow the riddles Maybe they’ll all lead us to theht, but Anya seerow uncomfortable "Yeah…" she murmured, and took a sip fro "You’ve barely touched yours"

I ignored her "Noah thinks there’s one piece left of the riddle, the first piece, which will tie the clues together We have to find it"

"You told Noah about theed "He chased Miss LaBarge with me What else was I supposed to do? Besides, he helped"

"Barely," Anya said, sipping at her tea "You know, I’ve been thinking about the riddles, and we’re asking the wrong questions"

"What do you mean?"

"The Sisters vowed to let their secret die with them So ould they hide the riddles?"

"You already asked that," I said "And I still don’t know"

"Well ure it out Think about it The hospital room The headstone The riddles we’ve found so far haven’t been hidden in major historical landmarks or encrypted in pieces of art They’re in places that would be important to an individual--a headstone, a hospital bed"

I leaned back, crossing"The ninth sister," I said "You think the ninth sister hid these in places that were ful to her"

Anya nodded

"But why?"

"I don’t know," Anya said, tapping her nails on the aring from the portrait of the Nine Sisters, she had to have been around our age in the 1730s, when the other Monitors were killed She had ties to Montreal, which we know because of the headstone And she was associated with the Royal Victoria Hospital"

As the first snow began to fall over St Clés in a thin layer of white, the wind blew through toaround inside me as if I were hollow Anya and I searched for the ninth sister, going through as many records as we could in the St Clé dusty toe But before 1950, the inforanized

When that didn’t work, I took to wandering the streets of Montreal, hoping that soh, really, I was looking for Dante I found traces of him everywhere--a used Latin book left on my usual table at the coffee shop, a note scrawled inside that read: I’e traced into the frost on a : I raffiti etched into a mailbox near the corner store: Remember us Every time I saw one, my heart trembled in my chest, and I had to force myself to look away so that I didn’t draw attention to myself Anya came with me at first, but as the holidays approached, her father asked her to help him at his store, which leftup with ether alk down the snowy cobblestones, gazing up at the gargoyles that guarded the roofs Every tih an alleyway, I froze, staring at the e for Dante to appear But he never did