“Just one. Benjamin Gallow,” he said. I gazed at my grandfather in astonishment. “Yes, I was made aware of his death and Cassandra’s...disappearance.”
I blinked, baffled that he wasn’t more disturbed by this information. “Why did you send me there if you knew it wasn’t safe? Even if the Gottfried Curse is a legend, you knew about it.”
“Your parents died; you were far less safe in California.”
“Why not send me to a different school?”
“Our family has been attending Gottfried for centuries,” my grandfather said loudly. “There are no other schools.”
Infuriated, I stood up. Dustin rushed over to my seat to pull my chair back for me. “My roommate is in the hospital and my parents are dead. Cassandra Millet is dead too. I read it in her file, her official Gottfried file, which means the school is covering it up. Minnie Roberts claims that the headmistress and the Board of Monitors are behind it.”
My grandfather set his fork down on his plate. “That is preposterous,” he said quietly. “You trust the words of a girl you barely know, without any other proof, and against the words of the headmistress and the Board of Monitors, at an institution in which your parents placed their utmost trust. And here I thought you were intelligent.”
I went silent.
“You’re here, and you’re safe. Or as safe as one can be in this world. Now, I want you to listen to me very clearly. Education is safety. Knowing what’s out there is safety. Knowing how to fight and protect yourself is safety. So sit down. We still have one more course.”
With no better option, I obliged. Dustin pushed in my chair for me. “Thanks,” I mumbled over my shoulder as he retreated to the kitchen to bring out dessert.
“I was the headmaster at Gottfried Academy for thirty-two years, during which time your mother and father attended the school. That is where they met, as you already know. The Gottfried Curse is a legend, nothing more. While I was the headmaster, there were no accidents, no deaths. I became familiar with many of the faculty members that teach at Gottfried today. Professor Lumbar was a colleague; as were Professors Starking, Mumm, and Chortle. Annette LaBarge was a classmate of your mother’s, and a good friend of both your parents. And while Headmistress Von Laark was a new hire when I was reaching the end of my last term, I have reason to believe that you are in the best of hands at Gottfried.”
“But they’re just … they’re just teachers. What could they do? They obviously couldn’t protect Eleanor.”
“Some things in this world, as you know, are unpreventable. It is my belief that if it were not for the current professors, the students at Gottfried would be far less safe. As is the case with most other schools.”
That evening, while I was looking through my mother’s papers, trying to find out more about who she and my father were when they were at Gottfried, Dustin knocked on my door. He was holding a tray with a note on top. “A phone call for Miss Renée,” he said properly, with the twinge of a smile. I picked up the note and unfolded it. Mr. Dante Berlin.
“He’s on the phone? Right now?”
Dustin made a little bow in reply. Unable to contain my excitement, I ran downstairs to the sitting room.
“Hello?” I said, barely believing that he was on the other line.
Dante’s voice reverberated gently through the phone. “I had to hear your voice.”
I coiled the cord around my fingers. “So I guess that means you miss me already.”
I expected him to laugh, but to my surprise, he was serious. “I do. Very much. I don’t like being away from you.”
Smiling into the receiver, I sat on the chaise longue, cradling the phone. “Well, hi,” I said softly.
I imagined his dark, pensive eyes staring into mine. “Hi,” he said in a hushed tone. “So tell me what I missed.”
I told him about my grandfather, about our conversation over dinner and how my parents were Monitors, about the long table and the moose head and the cold soup, which I still wasn’t certain I liked yet.
Dante laughed. “No cold soup, no goat cheese. I’ll make a mental note. And no Gottfried Curse.”
“And for you it’s no food at all. No sleep. And no tunnels.”
“I’m low maintenance.”
“Is that what you are? Because I’ve been trying to figure it out all semester.”
“And what have you concluded?”
“A mutant. A rare disease. A creature from the inferno. Dante.”
“And what if you found out you were right?” he asked. “What if it meant that I could hurt you?”
“I would say that I’m not scared. Everyone has the ability to hurt. It’s the choice that matters.”
We talked every night. My grandfather was in and out of the house for business meetings, funding numerous ventures, charitable foundations, etcetera, etcetera. So I spent most of my days alone, exploring the house and the estate grounds. After going through his entire library looking for information on Gottfried, my grandfather, or the curse, I found nothing, and resorted to trudging through the snowy Massachusetts woods in tall boots, imagining my mother doing the same thing when she was my age, her cheeks flushed and rosy, her lips chapped, her nose dripping from the cold.
And even though every morning I prepared myself for the inevitable night when Dante didn’t call, he always did. We talked for hours; our voices traveling to each other in waves and currents; the distance somehow pulling us closer together.
After talking to Dante, I looked through my mother’s belongings over and over again, picking things up and putting them back delicately, afraid to hold anything for too long. I found dozens of books about cats, a sewing machine and a box of bobbins, a photograph of my mother and father from when they first met. They looked only a little bit older than me and were sitting on the grass beneath a giant tree, staring at each other and smiling. It was my first Christmas without my parents, and I missed them so much it was unbearable.
“Nothing’s the same,” I told Dante. “I miss cutting down the tree with my dad and trying to fit it into the station wagon. Drinking hot chocolate and listening to cheesy Christmas songs while we decorated the tree together. How my dad always left cookies and milk by the fireplace, even when I was a teenager. The tree here is too perfect. It’s not even crooked or anything. It’s unnatural.”