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"Noah?" I shouted into the darkness

No one answered for a long ti into the room I was about to repeat myself, when Noah’s voice echoed from inside "You have to co rectangle of light froround

Behind us, Anya held up a flashlight and pointed it around the roo the interior in a sloeep as if ere exploring the remains of a sunken ship

The ere shut and coated with a thick layer of dust and gri candelabras and piles of books and linens The furniture all looked antique, the arlass doors, the desk inlaid with lovely layers of wood And the bed--a beautiful bed engraved with vines that looked much too small for any person born in this century

All of it was blackened with s the walls

"There was a fire here," I said to Noah, touching the dark billowing patterns on the walls, the dust tickling my nose "This was the fire she died in That’s why the rooine what the courtyard looked like when Ophelia lived here

She e when she’d died If I were her, and cae, where would I have put it?

Anya had opened the French doors of the closet, and Noah was scouring the walls, but I knew they rong I wouldn’t leave a e anywhere that could be easily painted or papered over or burned away

With sudden conviction, I spun around There, on the far wall, was a sturdy brick fireplace, the red darkened to a smoky brown hue from the fire This must have been the fire Dustin had told me about that led the school to ban the use of the fireplaces It was the only part of the rooed in any way, unless the entire building was de off my coat, rolled up my sleeves, and reached my arm into the chimney It was soft with spiderwebs and ash I brushed all of that away The flue was shut and locked in place, so I patted around below it, tracing the lines of the brick until I felt soain, this ti my palm across it There were lines etched into it I was so shocked that I pulled lanced around the roo the far wall When I put my hand back, I half expected the ination, but instead, it see letters beneath ertips

"I think I found it," I said,But no one seemed to hear me "I found it," I repeated, this ti to a sht?" I asked

He handed it to me, and I ducked into the chih as I shined the light on the inner wall And there, cut neatly into the e

If you wish to find what the nine have kept, frohest rank to the lowest depth, you rief;

I read it out loud three times, until I was sure I had it co the dust from my hair "We found it"

"What do you think itthe full riddle on a piece of paper and spreading it in front of us on the carpet in Anya’s roohest rank to the lowest depth, you rief;

to arrive there

follow the nose of the bear

to the salty waters beneath;

here it is laid to rest

where to only the best

of our kind it shall be bequeathed

"The first verse doesn’t tell us anything," I said, reading it all again, even though I knew it by rief?" Noah said, tracing the second and third lines "Clearly, the hiding spot has so to do with a school"

I bit my lip "But not this school She couldn’t have hidden the secret at St Clément Ophelia would never have hidden the secret in the same place as the first part of the riddle That would defeat the purpose"

Anya sat down between us and pushed the riddle aside "You’re going about it the wrong way I think the last few lines mean that Ophelia hid these riddles for only a very specific kind of person to find the secret Probably someone like her Top rank"

Noah and Anya both slowly turned and looked at ives us half the infored in salt water, beneath a bear And that it h I think in order to find the secret, we have to think like her"

Closing ine what it would have felt like to have a secret so big you couldn’t tell anyone It wasn’t hard; all I had to do was think of Dante So if I were going to write down the story of our relationship and hide it, where would I put it?

Where we first met

I opened my eyes "If I were her, I would have hidden the secret where I had first used it That seems lucky So let’s just consider e know" I looked at Anya "Ophelia Hart died here, in this fire, in her dorm room at St Clément She was sent to the Royal Victoria, where she reanimated into an Undead"