“I don’t feel well,” I said meekly, and rolled over.
“Miss Winters,” Dustin said, knocking again. “Are you quite all right?”
“No. Please go away.”
He lingered a few seconds longer before I heard the muffled sounds of his footsteps disappearing down the stairs. Not long after, there was another knock. This time, no one waited for me to reply. My grandfather ducked into the room.
“Dustin told me you weren’t feeling well,” he said, cautiously stepping close to my bed. He set a glass of orange juice on my bedside table. “I’ve brought you some juice.”
“Please go away,” I said, my voice trembling.
There was a long silence. I heard my grandfather bend over and pick up Seventh Meditation, which I had stupidly left on my bedside table.
He sat on the edge of my bed and placed his hand on the outline of my ankle beneath the blankets. He smelled of cigars and leather. “Death is nothing to be afraid of.”
“It’s not death I’m afraid of.”
“What is it, then?”
“Life,” I said, my voice small. The thought of living without my parents was practically unbearable, and Dante was the only person who gave me something to live for. Now that I knew he was dead, it seemed like there was nothing left.
“I haven’t been honest with you, Renée. I know this,” he said gently. “But if you’ll get dressed and come downstairs, I’ll explain everything over breakfast.”
I blinked back tears. He waited a few seconds longer, but I made no effort to respond. Finally he stood up. I heard the door click shut behind him.
Slowly, I willed myself out of bed and got dressed. I rinsed my face and pulled my hair back into a ponytail. When I glanced at my reflection in the mirror, it was frightening: my eyes swollen, the circles beneath them making my face look hollow.
“Is it true?” I asked, sitting down at the breakfast table.
My grandfather looked up from his coffee and newspaper. Outside it was sunny and snowing, the entire world white and happy, as if the day were mocking me. Beneath the Christmas tree were stacks of presents.
“Is it true that my parents were killed by the Undead?”
My grandfather shuffled around his newspaper and glanced at Dustin, who left for the kitchen. “Yes.”
A portrait of Charlemagne standing valiantly over a slaughtered boar hung on the opposite wall. I stared at it in silence as I imagined my parents’ last moments. The gauze and coins, which I still couldn’t make sense of. And then a faceless child, wild and bestial, sucking the life from their bodies. I closed my eyes as the face transformed into Dante’s. Had he killed people? Had he taken innocent lives?
“Who was it?” I demanded, suddenly angry.
My grandfather clasped his hands together and shook his head. “I have spent every day since their deaths trying to figure that out. But sadly, I do not have an answer for you. The Undead are hard to track, especially when they perform random acts of violence, which I suspect was the case with your parents.”
A random act of violence? It couldn’t be. There had to be a better reason than that. “But what about Benjamin Gallow? He’d died under almost exactly the same conditions.”
“Exactly. They were all killed by Non Mortuus. It isn’t as rare as you think. Why do you think Gottfried exists?”
“So...so everything in the book is true?”
“Most of it. The rest is based on myth and assumption.”
“The Undead,” I said, trying to get used to the idea. “What exactly are they?”
“Children who died and were not buried.”
“So they’re like zombies?”
“The common depiction of the zombie does not do them full justice. They have functioning minds, they have thoughts. The only difference is that they don’t have souls, which leaves them unable to feel sensation. They can see and hear, but they cannot perceive beauty or sadness or wonder associated with the things they see or the sounds they hear.”
“Are you sure?” Dante definitely felt sensation when he was around me. Hadn’t he told me that in his room the night after Grub Day?
“Quite positive. It’s one of the primary characteristics of the Undead.”
“Even when they’re around a living person?”
“Yes, even when they’re around a living person.”
I hesitated. “So anyone can become Undead?”
“Only people who die before the age of twenty-one. You, for example, could become Undead if you died and were not buried or cremated or mummified.”
“And then someone else would have my soul?”
“Yes. A child born on the same day that you died.”
“And then I would be soulless for twenty-one more years, before I died again?”
“If you weren’t buried, yes. Though the myth is that if you somehow found the person with your soul, you could take it back by Basium Mortis, or sucking the soul back into the body. Then you would be human again, and live a natural life span.”
I imagined Dante taking his soul back from a child, but quickly shook the thought from my head. “Why is it a myth?”
“Because finding one’s soul is an almost impossible task. Think of the odds—how many people are born and die each day, all over the world. There hasn’t been a single recorded episode of an Undead finding and taking its soul back. It is the great myth of history. That one can cheat death.”
I couldn’t ignore my grandfather’s use of the word its. “So why do people think it’s possible?”
“Because it is possible for the Undead to take souls that aren’t theirs. It delays the decaying process, giving them a few more years of ‘life’ before they begin to decline.”
“And the human who loses his soul dies?”
My grandfather nodded. “Or, if he isn’t discovered and is under the age of twenty-one, he could also become Undead.”
“But then couldn’t he just take his soul back from the Undead who took it?”
“No, because a taken soul will not occupy the Undead who performs Basium Mortis unless it is the original soul of the Undead. Otherwise, it will soon leave the Undead and be reborn anew.”
Dustin brought out a plate of poached eggs and Canadian bacon.
“So Gottfried Academy is...is a school for zombies?”