“Renée?” he prodded. “Are you okay?”

Catching my scarf as it fluttered around my face, I said, “Anya and I are going to a café to study. Do you want to come?”

His face softened in relief. “Sure.”

We went to a café just a few blocks from school. Anya wiped her boots on the mat outside. While Noah held the door for me, a gust of wind, harsh and biting, blew between the buildings and took my scarf with it.

I grabbed at the air, watching my scarf swirl away and catch on the boxy shelter of a bus stop. I chased after it and pulled it down from where it hung on a wall of thick translucent glass. My reflection mimicked me as I wrapped the scarf around my neck. But when I adjusted my hat, the reflection didn’t move.

I held my hand up to the glass and stepped closer until my nose grazed its icy surface. There was a person on the other side, his face like mine but ashen. His hair was pulled back in a knot.

“Dante?”

I took a step back in surprise and darted around the glass wall, dragging my fingers across the siding. But when I got to the other side, the only person there was an older man, tall and wrinkled, his gray hair gathered into a ponytail. He winked when he saw me staring.

“Oh—I’m—I’m sorry.”

“Renée?” Noah called from down the street, his voice distorted by the wind.

Holding my hat down with one hand, I ran back to the coffee shop.

Streams of Christmas lights decorated the front window. I stepped inside, welcomed by a line of long glass counter-tops filled with cakes and pastries coated in frosting.

We were supposed to be studying for our history exam, but quickly abandoned the task to discuss Ophelia Coeur and the last part of the riddle. In the process, we devoured an entire plate of Hungarian cookies, dusting our books with crumbs and confectioner’s sugar.

“But the dates don’t match with Ophelia Coeur. So if she isn’t the ninth sister, then who is?” I said.

Noah stirred his coffee. “I don’t know. There are so many things that match with her. The scars on her face would have let her go unrecognized when everyone was looking for her. The research on water, specifically islands and salt water…” He shook his head.

“I know,” I said, tapping my fingers on the table.

Anya slid her finger through the excess sugar on the plate and licked it. “Well, it wasn’t that certain. The girl in the portrait is practically unrecognizable anyway, so the burned face doesn’t really matter. And how many nurses were at the Royal Victoria Hospital? So many.”

Noah leaned back in his chair. “True,” he said, taking a sip of coffee.

Anya continued. “I’ll admit that the Lake Erie connection is weird, but that’s just one fact that fits. The rest don’t necessarily mean anything.”

“So now what?” I asked.

Anya tried to cover her nose as she sneezed, but was too late, and blew confectioner’s sugar across the table.

“We’ll keep looking,” Noah said, offering her his napkin. “We’ll find the last part of the riddle.”

“But how?”

Noah shrugged. “Maybe you’ll have another vision?”

I rested my head on my palm. “I don’t know. It’s been months since my last vision. They might have stopped.”

“Or maybe it will come when you least expect it,” Anya said. “Isn’t that how it works?”

Later that week, when Dr. Newhaus walked into Psychology, he said nothing. He merely glanced at the clock above the door, turned off the lights, and made his way to the back of the room. There, he flipped a switch. A projector cast a square of white light onto the screen in front of us. After a few moments, the following words came onto the screen, the film yellow and grainy:

THE DEATH OF CHILDREN

Interviews by F. H. Newhaus

October 1998

In the middle of the frame, a hand held up a small white board with SUBJECT 003 written on it. When it dropped, we were looking at a classroom. All of the desks were empty, save for one in the front, where a boy was sitting, playing with a collection of rubber bands strung on his wrist.

Someone offscreen coughed. “How old are you?” Dr. Newhaus’s voice resonated from behind the camera.

The boy remained still, as if he hadn’t heard the question. Dr. Newhaus repeated himself, his voice slightly sharper.

“I don’t remember,” the boy said, fidgeting with his shirt. A map of the world was tacked to the wall behind him.

“Are you seven?” Dr. Newhaus asked. The boy made no reply. “Are you seven years old?”

The boy shook his head. “Much older.”

“Why did you try to run away last week?” Dr. Newhaus asked.

“I don’t like it here.”

“At this school?”

The boy shook his head.

“You don’t like it where?”

“I don’t feel right,” the boy said.

“Can I ask you to look at the camera when you answer?”

The boy looked up for the first time, staring at something just left of the camera. A murmur floated through our class. The boy’s face was hollow and aged, his eyes heavy, as if he were an older person stuck in a young body.

“What did you do yesterday?”

The boy didn’t answer.

Dr. Newhaus repeated himself. “What did you do?”

“I took someone’s soul.” His voice was barely a whisper.

“Whose soul did you take?”

“My brother’s.”

“Why would you do such a thing?”

The boy hesitated, biting his finger.

Dr. Newhaus repeated his question.

“Because he wouldn’t tell me where he hid my toy truck.”

“But why would you kill him over that?”

“Because I wanted to know.” The boy said it as if it should have been obvious.

“Why not just ask him?” Dr. Newhaus asked.

“I did, and he didn’t tell me. So I found out myself instead.”

After a moment of focusing on him, the film cut out. A hand held up a sign that read: SUBJECT 005.

Back in the same classroom sat a small boy. He was younger than the previous subject, no more than six years old. He was cross-legged on the floor, his hair a mop, his face covered in freckles. His eyes were growing hazy around the edges, just like Dante’s.

“How old are you?” Dr. Newhaus asked.

The boy thought about it, sucking on his finger. “Twenty,” he said finally, his voice boisterous.

“I see. That’s quite old for such a small person.”

The boy didn’t answer.

“How many years have you been in school?”

The boy thought. “Ten.”

“Can you tell me why it’s bad to kiss people on the mouth?”

The boy looked at him as if he were confused.

“Is it bad to take someone else’s soul?”

The boy didn’t seem to register the question. “I’m hungry,” he said instead.

“I don’t think I have any food here except for a few butter biscuits. Would you like one of those?”

The boy hesitated. Without warning, he sprang up toward the camera, his limbs thrashing as he leapt toward Dr. Newhaus. Someone screamed. The camera trembled and then fell to the ground, focusing on the legs of a chair. Loud voices. A chair scuffing against the floor, and then an abrupt crash.

Two pairs of legs swathed in stockings crossed the frame. And then someone—presumably Dr. Newhaus—picked up the camera and steadied it, focusing on two nurses who were restraining the boy in the chair, while he kicked at them. They held him until he calmed, and remained by his side when silence resumed.

After a long pause, Dr. Newhaus said, “Why did you do that?”

The boy remained still.

“Why did you do that?”

His eyes darted quickly to the left.

“Look at me,” Dr. Newhaus said, his voice sharp.

Before Dr. Newhaus could ask him another question, the boy kicked out of his seat, pushing the chair over as he lashed out at the nurse to the left. Setting the camera down, Dr. Newhaus jumped into the screen and pinned the boy to the floor.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Dr. Newhaus said, only his legs visible as he threw his suit coat on the floor and bent over the boy. “Let’s get him back to his room.”

The clip ended, and a hand held up another sign: subject 067. A girl sat in front of us. She was prim and obedient-looking, like an elder sister. She sat on the edge of her seat with her knees together.

She gazed out the window, focusing on something far in the distance. “I still can’t believe that I did it.”

“What did you do?” asked Dr. Newhaus.

“I did what they asked me to do.”

“Which is what?”

“I killed someone.”

There was a long pause.

“Whom did you kill?”

“I killed a boy, a small boy.”

“How did you do it?”

“I followed him, and then I captured him, and then I buried him.” She blinked.

“Does what you did bother you?”

“Monitoring is my job,” she said.

“But does it bother you?”

“I’ve been training to be a Monitor for my entire life. This is what I’m supposed to do.”

“What are you looking at?” Dr. Newhaus asked, his voice gentle.

She looked at her knees, where her hands were clasped in a tight knot. “I’m not looking at anything.”

“Could I ask you to look at the camera?”

“I’d rather not.”

The film cut out again. We watched several more, the change of light in between each new subject making me wince. In the shadows I could see the whites of Noah’s eyes as they traveled over me. I met his gaze. For the briefest moment, he held it, and then looked away, the projector humming behind us until the film turned white. Dr. Newhaus’s voice boomed out from the darkness as if he were still offscreen. “I showed you this because you have to understand what you’re being asked to do. You have to understand who you are.