“I want to believe that too,” he said.

“Do you think Cassandra is dead?”

Dante hesitated. “Yes.”

His frank answer somehow disturbed me, and a series of questions escaped my mouth before I could process them. “What? How? Why? Who do you think—?”

“Slow down,” he said. “One at a time.”

I paused to compose myself. “Do you think Benjamin was murdered?”

“Killed, yes.”

“Do you think it’s related to my parents and the deaths in the article?”

He thought about it. “Yes.”

I hadn’t expected so many affirmatives, and was at a loss for what to say. “So you believe me? Why didn’t you tell me earlier? After the séance?”

“I didn’t know you were looking for your parents when I ran into you that night,” he said, almost to himself. “You were in your pajamas, which caught me off guard. And you looked so surprised to see me; I couldn’t tell if you were happy or upset. I remember holding your hand and running through the rain; the way the water collected in droplets on your eyelashes. I couldn’t believe you were real. I still can’t.”

“You remember that?” I whispered.

“I remember everything.”

I looked up at him, and he moved closer. I shivered. Raising my hand to Dante’s face, I coiled my fingers around the back of his neck and pulled him toward me.

We met halfway, my neck arching up to meet his. But just as our lips were about to touch, he pulled away and kissed me on the cheek.

His face was inches from mine. “Why won’t you kiss me?” I asked, my voice betraying more despair than I intended.

When he finally spoke, his words came out slowly. “Because I’m afraid of what might happen.”

“What could happen?”

“That’s what I’m worried about—I don’t know.”

Not knowing what I was doing, I let my hand fall down his cheek. Dante pressed his finger to my lips, as if to stop me, but instead let his hand pass over them and roam down to my collarbone, guiding me toward him. His touch tickled my skin, like dozens of snowflakes falling and melting. His eyes were trained on mine.

“Renée, wait, there’s something you need to—”

Everything happened at once. I closed my eyes, feeling his breath dance around my lips. Then voices emerged from the distance, floating toward us, followed by the sound of footsteps thumping against the frozen earth. And then light.

I pulled away from Dante and froze. A flashlight shone on us.

“Stand.”

I shielded my eyes and squinted into the glare. It was Miss LaBarge, her cheeks rosy from the cold. She shone the light in my face, and then in Dante’s.

“What was about to happen just now?” she asked him, her voice sharper than I had ever heard it.

“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing.”

She shone the light in his face for a few more seconds before turning it off.

“You shouldn’t be out here tonight. Or any night, for that matter. No students are allowed outside during the search, only professors. You know that.”

I stepped forward to explain, but Dante gripped my hand, holding me back.

“I’m sorry, Professor, it was my fault. I asked her to meet me here.”

Miss LaBarge gazed at him. “Fault is a slippery thing.”

Dante nodded, and I sat very still. I could hear the footsteps of the rest of her party walking in our direction. Miss LaBarge glanced around. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t see you. Get back inside. And don’t let me catch you again.”

Dante reached for my hand, but I stopped him, remembering the note Nathaniel had written to me earlier. There was only one way to get into the headmistress’s office to find those files. I couldn’t sneak in, I had to be sent there. And what better time than now, when the headmistress was clearly distracted?

“Wait, no,” I said. “I don’t want you to pretend you didn’t see us.”

Both Miss LaBarge and Dante gave me confused looks.

“Send us to the headmistress’s office.”

“Renée,” Miss LaBarge said, “you don’t want this.”

“Yes I do.”

Miss LaBarge looked behind her shoulder. “You realize you could be expelled.”

At that point I didn’t care. What I cared about was Eleanor. My parents. The Gottfried Curse.

“Go,” Miss LaBarge ordered, pushing us away from her.

Dante tried to pull me with him. “Renée, what are you doing?”

“Getting us information,” I said, and coughed.

From the bushes, I heard people fumbling around. “What was that?” Professor Lumbar said loudly as she pushed through the brush and ran toward us. Miss LaBarge shined her flashlight on us just as the professors emerged through the trees, their faces shrouded in darkness, their eyes gleaming at us through the glare. Mrs. Lynch stepped forward. “Good work, Annette,” she said while staring at me with a pleased grin. “Got you.”

“We have to distract her,” I said to Dante as Mrs. Lynch dragged us to the headmistress’s office. “I need to get to the filing cabinet.”

Dante studied me, then nodded. “I’ll try.”

The headmistress met us outside her office, emerging out of the shadows in the hall.

“Renée, Dante,” she said. “Come.”

Once inside, she walked past the wall of bookshelves, running her fingers along the bindings as she sat in the leather chair behind her desk. She didn’t speak for a long time. Dante and I stood in front of her, trying to think of a plan. Finally she spoke, her tone firm and rather agitated.

“Be seated,” she said, picking up a Siamese and dropping it into her lap. She rapped her fingers on the desk. “You look cold. Would you like a cup of tea?”

“Yes, please,” Dante and I said at the same time, almost too quickly.

Headmistress Von Laark glanced between the two of us, and smiled as she unlocked the china hutch on the far wall. “If my memory serves me correctly, this is the second time you’ve both been here this semester,” she said, her back to us as she poured our tea. “Sugar?”

“No thanks,” Dante and I said simultaneously.

Just before the headmistress closed the doors of the hutch, I noticed two filing drawers at the bottom. I watched them disappear behind lock and key. In order to get into the files I had to get her out of the office, a task that seemed more and more impossible the longer I thought about it. It would only take an emergency for her to leave us here unsupervised, and considering that we were already in the middle of an emergency, our chances were slim.