“Was friends with,” Schuyler emphasized.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Brandon, cutting him off. “My point is that we don’t know what he’s capable of. Just like Cassie. Just like the rest of them. If Renée were smart, she’d stay away from him.”

Genevieve laughed. “That’s the problem. When it comes to Dante, no one can think straight. Don’t worry, though. If the headmistress is right about her skills, I’m sure Renée can take care of herself.”

The waitress came with our food. She slid our plates across the table and left us with a handful of minijams and a bottle of ketchup, but I wasn’t hungry anymore. Why was the headmistress asking about me and Dante, and what did Genevieve mean by my “skills”? She must have meant in Horticulture, because it was the only class that everyone seemed to compliment me on.

Brandon stood up. The rest of them followed. As he walked by our booth to the door, he gave me a sideward glance. I quickly stuffed a piece of omelet into my mouth.

“What just happened?” Nathaniel asked, tucking his napkin into the top of his shirt like a bib, and I remembered that he hadn’t heard any of it. When I was sure no one was listening, I recounted everything.

“What did they mean about Cassandra and the rest of them?” I asked. “And why should I stay away from Dante? What is he capable of?”

Nathaniel looked troubled, though admittedly he almost always looked troubled. “I don’t know,” he said. “And neither do they. That’s the point.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re a genius. Have I ever told you that?”

“No, really,” he said. “If they don’t know what Dante is capable of, it means he hasn’t done anything yet. And neither have the rest of them. It’s Cassandra that’s the problem, because clearly she did something.”

“But what?”

He shrugged. We finished eating, and the waitress came back with our bill. I watched her impatiently as she counted out the change. “Thanks,” I said when she was done, and grabbed Nathaniel by the arm. “Come on. We’ve got to find them.”

But when we got outside, the Board of Monitors had disappeared. “Why is the headmistress interested in me?” I said. “And Dante?”

Nathaniel said nothing. “Maybe,” I said while we walked, “the headmistress also thinks something weird happened to Benjamin and Cassandra. She probably thinks Dante knows something since he used to be friends with them and was the one who found Ben. And she’s interested in me because she thinks we’re dating.” I had to be more careful, I told myself.

“Are you dating him? Like, it’s official?” Nathaniel asked, staring at me, his blue eyes magnified through his thick glasses.

“I...well, we haven’t really talked about it. But I think so. I mean, we spend a lot of time together.”

“Why isn’t he here today? Doesn’t he live here?” Nathaniel asked earnestly.

I didn’t know why we weren’t meeting until five. “Oh, he has studying to do,” I said quickly.

We walked down the street, toward a small row of stores, when I bumped directly into Brandon Bell.

“Renée,” he said.

I looked up at him, his sandy hair a short, military version of Eleanor’s. “Oh, hi.”

“Have you seen my sister?” he asked. Eleanor had introduced us a few times, but the encounters had been brief and unpleasant. Brandon had a way of making every conversation sound like an interrogation.

“I...uh...no, she went to the library instead.”

He gave me a suspicious look. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah...sorry, I’m just...well, I have to... We have to go,” I said. “See you later!” Grabbing Nathaniel by the shirt, I pulled him into the alley. A rickety wooden sign with chipped blue paint bore the name lazarus books. I pushed open the door, and we both stumbled inside.

“Well, that went well,” Nathaniel said. “Not conspicuous at all.”

The bell over the door chimed as it slammed shut, and an old man emerged from a room behind the counter. He had a round face with a ruddy nose and a salt-and-pepper beard. He propped his elbows up on the counter. “Schoolbooks are in the back.”

“That’s Conrad Porley,” Nathaniel told me as we walked to the back of the store. “People say that he won’t sell a book to you if you rub him the wrong way. And I don’t know about your theory that the headmistress and Board of Monitors are hiding something about Cassandra or Benjamin,” Nathaniel added. “Why would the school cover up a death? They didn’t cover up Ben’s death.”

“But what about what Minnie Roberts said?”

Nathaniel stopped walking. “She said that the headmistress and the Board of Monitors killed Cassandra. Come on, even you have to admit it’s a crazy idea.”

“Do you have a better one?”

“Benjamin died of a heart attack, Cassandra transferred, and Minnie Roberts is crazy.”

“What fifteen-year-old dies of a heart attack in the woods? And what about what Eleanor saw in the séance?”

Nathaniel shook his head. “I thought we already went over this.”

I sighed. I guess he had a point. “But that still doesn’t explain why the headmistress is so interested in me and Dante.”

“Well, you did get into some trouble, didn’t you?”

“Just once,” I said, thinking of getting caught with Dante after the séance. And then I remembered the dress-code incident on the first day of class. “Okay, twice. Maybe you’re right,” I conceded, and turned to the check out the store.

Unlike normal bookstores, each section was categorized not only by genre, but by subject matter. One shelf read Puberty. The one across from it read Pet Saves Owner and Dies, and beside that were sections titled: Superhero Origin Stories, Babies, Death in the Family, and Girlfriend in the Refrigerator.

I scanned the walls and walked toward Nathaniel. He was a few rows away, looking at a book in the section on Vampires and Zombies. But before I got to him, a section title caught my eye. Boarding School. I crouched down to read the titles. There were a lot of novels and a few nonfiction books on prestigious prep schools, but there wasn’t anything on Gottfried Academy.

I approached Nathaniel, who was flipping through a teenage romance about vampires. I wasn’t really interested in zombies or vampires, but with nothing else to do, I knelt beside him and looked at the titles, pulling one out every so often. Most of them were horror stories with fangs and gravestones and bandaged, faceless monsters on the cover. I was growing bored, my eyes going in and out of focus, when I spotted a book that stood out from the rest. It had a plain ivory binding, with letters so faded they were barely legible.