Love Reborn (A Dead Beautiful Novel) Read Online Free PDF Page A

then.”
    I bit my lip, wishing I could tell her what she wanted to hear. Instead, I told her what had happened, starting with my train ride with Noah from Montreal to Maine. We had been following clues left by the Nine Sisters, a Monitoring sisterhood that had claimed to have found the secret to eternal life. The sisters had vowed to destroy their secret, but before they could, they were murdered by the Liberum—all but one. The ninth sister, Ophelia Hart, survived. She defied her sisters by hiding their secret with three clues, which she planted throughout Montreal, the historic city of Monitors. I had found the final clue at St. Clément, an academy for Monitors, where I had met Anya and Noah. But Ophelia’s clue had led me back to Maine, to Gottfried Academy: the school where I had first learned of the Undead; where I’d discovered that I was a Monitor, predisposed to bury the dead; and where I had first met Dante. It was there that Noah dove to the bottom of the lake to retrieve the chest Ophelia Hart had buried. The Liberum had caught up to us, and their Undead boys dragged Noah back into the frozen lake. Dante had whisked me away just before one of the Brothers lowered his withered face to mine to take my soul.
    When I was finished, Anya’s gaze was distant. She said nothing for a long while. When she finally looked at me, her face was firm, wiped free of any grief. She wasn’t one for crying. She believed in karma and superstitions; that everything happened for a reason.
    “It was unlucky from the start,” she said. “I should have known. I felt that from the beginning.”
    She didn’t seem to be talking to me, but to some force in the air around us. “What happened next?” she said.
    I told her about the Monitors from Gottfried Academy, about how they had come running from the school, my grandfather leading the pack as they chased Dante and me into the mountains. I told her about how we’d split up. “Dante told me to meet him in Pilgrim, Massachusetts. He said that I would know where to go.” I glanced up at the wooden sign creaking in the wind. “So I found my way here....”
    “But Dante isn’t here,” Anya said, finishing what I couldn’t say.
    “Yet,” I said, trying to ignore the fact that the sky was already folding into a dark orange sunset. Had the Monitors caught up to him? No, if they’d buried Dante, I would have felt it somehow. It had to work that way; our connection was too deep. I couldn’t lose my soul mate without realizing it, could I?
    “So what happened to the chest?” Anya pressed, the spaces in between her words asking me if it had been worth the price of Noah’s life. “Do you still have it?”
    I bit my lip. “Only half of it.”
    “Half?” Anya asked. “I don’t understand.”
    “Dante has the contents.”
    “What do you mean? What was inside of it?”
    “We’re not totally sure—” I began to say, but before I could continue, the screen door of the tavern opened and the old man stepped onto the porch. He looked a sturdy seventy; his white hair was thinning at the top, and a pipe was tucked into the breast pocket of his sweater. He held a walking stick, which he used to feel his way a few paces forward. He was blind.
    A hush fell over us. Had he heard us talking about the chest?
    He grasped the porch column beside him. “You girls still out here?” he asked in a grizzly, kind voice. He squinted in our general direction. “It’s getting late. Isn’t it about time you both came inside?”
    Anya and I exchanged a perplexed glance. Had he known we were here the entire time? Neither of us spoke.
    “Now, don’t go and pretend you’re not there,” he said with a harmless smile. “I may be blind, but I’m not dead yet. You’ve been standing out here in the cold for almost an hour. Besides, I’ve been expecting you.”
    I froze. What did he mean?
    “My grandson told me,” the man said simply, and opened the screen door. “Are you coming in or not?