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Votre Soeur,

Prudence Beaufort

I looked at Noah "Ophelia Hart was a student at St Clé as I scanned the letter onceto tediues Reaction to the fire Those could only"She became Undead?" I said in disbelief "Is that why she used the secret and then preserved it?"

Collette gave ht nod "I think so Your parents were the ones who first discovered that Ophelia Hart was the ninth sister Your mother found this letter buried beneath a birdbath in Alma’s old house They retraced Ophelia’s life and found the second part of the riddle in the hospital, in the same room where she first reanimated as an Undead"

"She must have planted it when she worked as the head nurse there one hundred years later," Noah said, his eyes trained on mine

"And then she created the headstone," I said "She e life She etched the last part of the riddle on it"

Noah nodded, his expression althe exact sae and Cindy continued the search, assu to do with her research on water," I murmured "That’s why they were found near lakes"

Collette nodded "I’ their search but still haven’t found the last part of the riddle"

Ophelia Hart had gone to St Clément, just like me, and at some point while she was there, she had died What could be ," I said "The part of the riddle we’reis the first part, not the last And before Ophelia was a scientist, before she was a nurse, she was a student at St Cléht have even died there" I turned to Noah "Didn’t your father say that she’d worked briefly as a nurse there?"

Too surprised to speak, Noah gave ht nod

"What if she went back to work at St Clé there?" I said

"The beginning of a riddle," Noah said, coether, we turned to Collette "We need to go back to school"

Chapter 15

WE FOLDED OURSELVES INTO THE BACKSEAT of Collette’s car and waited beneath a blanket as she drove us back to school "I think it’s safe," Collette said, turning the ignition off She had parked in an alley a few blocks away fro for the vacant presence of the Undead "They’re close," I said "But not here"

Noah and I slipped out of the car and down the alleyway, giving Collette one last nod before we disappeared into St Clé the courtyard blinked with lights, turning on in one , going off in another We knew the first part of the e had to be in one of thee, with oddly shaped rooms and an endless maze of narrow hallways and dark crevices It could be anywhere

"Where would she have hidden it?" Noah said as we stopped in the shadow of a building

In iven o to school at St Clément She’d been sent here with a secret, just like I had been

So if I were Ophelia Hart, where would I have hidden the first piece of the riddle? It had to be a place that was private, where no one would find me while I hid the clue; but it couldn’t be too private, or else I risked the chance that no one would ever find it again Most ih, I would only buryto me when I attended St Clé Noah, as a step behind ether "It’s in her old dorh the card catalog until we found the location of St Clément’s old school files It was upstairs on the fourth balcony in a dim, dusty corner that looked like it hadn’t been visited in decades

I started fro toward each other, we scanned the books, looking for a volunments Each book was at least an inch thick, full of bound school documents, and h the top rohen Noah called out toa volume of old admissions tests back onto the shelf, I ju to extricate a thick book fro, he stumbled back, and it fell to the floor with a thud

We set the book on a sill and flipped through it The paper was thick and brittle, the words written in a s list of na rooes No wonder no one came up to this section of the library

And then we found it The year 1732, the saer, I scanned the list until I found it: Hart, Ophelia Room 22