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"I’m not!" Clementine insisted, and stepped back into the bathroo"

I must have looked confused, because she pointed to the radiator belo "It’s colanced at her oncethe truth, and bent down I sniffed at the air, trying to smell what she did, but ue stale odor, like so

Slowly, I reached beneath the vents and patted the floorboards until asp, I pulled back my arm

"What is it?" Clementine said fro as I crouched low to see what it was So knotted and white

Clementine picked up an umbrella that I had thrown fro the umbrella from her, I stuck its curved handle beneath the radiator and pulled the thing out It was a thick, gnarled root, like a carrot, except it hite and rotten I touched it with the tip of the shovel It was soft and shriveled fro on the floor in one position

"I think it’s soetable," I said

"Why is it here?" Clementine demanded

"I don’t know," I said "I don’t even knohat it is Someone must have put it here"

"Why would anyone do that?"

If it hadn’t been Clementine, then who could it have been? There was no one else ould have wanted to coht

I ran down the hall to Anya’s door, carrying the root by its tip If anyone would knohat it was, it was her But just as I raised my hand to knock, the door opened

"Renée!" Anya said with a gasp "I was just about to go to your room," she said "Why did you run away like that?"

The white root went flaccid when I held it up, pinching it by its wiry tip "I found this in my room, beneath theDo you knohat it is?"

She froze when she saw it "It’s a parsnip," she said slowly, gazing at its wrinkled skin

"Why would someone put it inbut didn’t want to say it

"Tell me!" I said, exasperated

"A white root that rises from beneath the earth It’s a sy Did that mean that the Undead had entered my room and left it there? Had they taken my shovel, too, to disarm me? "It doesn’t make any sense Why would they take my shovel and leave this here to announce themselves, when they could have just attacked me? Why wait?"

Anya sniffed the root and winced

"Do you think they aiting for me to find the identity of the ninth sister so that if they take my soul they’ll have more inforht never find her"

"That’s not co my expression "Wait Did you find her?"

We retreated to my room, where I showed her the article about the Gottfried Curse "This proves that there was a Monitor na to Noah’s dad, there was another Monitor named Ophelia Coeur as alive in the 1900s Coeur means ‘heart’ in French It has to be a pseudonye to be a coincidence--they have to be the same person"

"But that means she would have been alive for over two hundred years That’s impossible"