Dante ran his hand along my back, his hands climbing up the crests of my shoulder blades as the footsteps grew distant. When his fingers grazed the space between my shoulders, a sharp pain shot through my body. Unable to stop myself, I gasped.
“What was that?” Dante said, stopping abruptly. His hand fell to his side.
Just as quickly as the pain had started, it ended. Dante’s face was furrowed into a frown. Had he felt it too? “I don’t know,” I said, trying to compose myself.
Giving me a skeptical look, he slowly placed his palm between my shoulders again. I couldn’t help but wince as the same prickling pain shot through my neck. Gently, he took off my cardigan and pulled down the back of my shirt.
“You have a mark here,” he said, tracing the lines of my vertebrae. “How long have you had this?”
“I didn’t know I had one,” I said, his gaze making me uncomfortable. Squirming away from him, I sat up. “It’s probably nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. I have the same ones. Look,” he said, and led my hand to the small of his back.
I ran my fingers across his spine until I felt them. Tiny indentations, barely visible, leading all the way up his back. They were as shallow as crease marks left from sleeping too long in the sheets; so subtle that I wasn’t surprised I had never noticed them before. Unable to help myself, I pulled my hand away. “What are they?”
Dante touched a freckle on my arm. “I like to think of them as age spots.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ve been getting one every year, on the exact same day. The anniversary of my death.”
“The marks count how long you’ve been dead?”
Dante averted his eyes, as if apologizing for what he was.
Grasping the bottom of his shirt, I pulled it off of him, watching his shoulder muscles roll under his skin as he let his arms drop. I reached around him and eased my fingers up his back, counting each mark like a knot in a lifeline. They stopped in the middle of his shoulder blades, one vertebra short of where my mark was.
“There are only sixteen—” I said, and then stopped. I had just turned seventeen, which meant that Dante was missing one spot.
As if reading my mind, he said, “I didn’t get one this year.”
“What happens when you run out of space?” I asked, placing my hand on his neck, just above the last mark. My fingers fit perfectly.
Dante gazed out at the gravestones peeking out through the grass.
Stunned, I pulled away and stared at the space left on Dante’s back, counting how many marks could fit. Suddenly I felt weak. Five years. That’s how much time he had left.
How do you measure someone’s life? By the scope of their accomplishments, or the number of people they’ve touched, or by the width of a hand? None of it seemed fair. None of it seemed like enough.
“But it doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Why didn’t they just disappear? You became human when you took my soul. And then you gave it back to me, becoming Undead. Doesn’t that mean that you should start fresh again, and have another twenty-one years?”
Dante shook his head. “All I know is that I was never fully alive even after you gave me your soul. And you—”
“I’m not, either,” I said, my voice cracking. “But I don’t understand. Why?”
“We were underground when you gave me your soul; we were both already buried, which made the transfer incomplete.”
“Which means what?” I asked, but he didn’t reply. “Tell me what you’re thinking,” I pleaded. “Just because we have the same soul doesn’t mean I know what’s going on in your head. I’m not inside you. You have to tell me.”
Dante let out a sad laugh. “That’s just it, though. I think you are.”
“What?”
He closed his fingers around my hand, holding my fist in his. It fit perfectly. “I think a part of your soul is in me now.”
I shrank back and raised my hand to my face, my fingers grazing my cheek as if I were touching a stranger. I had spent the entire summer trying not to think about my symptoms, as the doctors called them. The small changes I had been noticing in myself. The fact that I barely had an appetite and couldn’t sleep like I used to. That I couldn’t smell cooked food until it was right in front of me. That I felt severed in some way, as if a piece of me were missing. Could he be right? Is that why my senses were dulled; why nothing had meaning or beauty until I was around Dante?
“But we still saved each other,” I said in awe. “I have one of your marks now, which means that you have one extra year to live. Can’t we just keep exchanging souls?”
Dante suddenly looked angry. “And you have one less. Are you suggesting that we kill each other every year?”
I swallowed. When he put it that way, it did sound a little extreme.
“Can you even fathom what that could do to us? What kind of existence that would be? Even after dying once, you’ve changed more than you know. I can see it your face, the way you stand, the way you speak.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said, sitting upright. “Do you think I look old?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said, his voice softer. “You’re surreal.” He ran his hand down the pale side of my wrist, feeling my pulse. “I took your life. And now a piece of your soul is gone. It’s in me now. You’re a little more Undead, and I’m a little more alive.”
The sun set behind the cathedral, mottling the light around us as though the sky were a stained-glass window. Pulling my knees to my chest, I looked up at him, watching the shadows move across his face as he leaned on the gravestone. “Why is that so bad if it keeps you alive?” I asked quietly.
“Because if we keep exchanging souls, it will only get worse. You’ll become more Undead. You’ll become wasted and miserable like the rest of us, and then we’ll both die.”
“But you’ll live longer. We’ll have more time together,” I pleaded, unable to understand why he didn’t agree with me.
“At what cost? Neither of us will be fully human. No one has ever done this before. Anything could happen. We could both die the next time we kiss.”
“But what else can we do?” Angry tears blurred my vision, and I turned away from him. “You can’t die. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“We’ll be okay,” Dante said, running his hand down my leg. My skin trembled beneath his touch. “We’ll keep looking. We’ll find a solution.”
When I didn’t say anything, he took my hand and held it to his chest. “Listen to me,” he said. “I won’t lose you. I’ll find a way.”
I nodded, wanting to believe him. Curling up beside him on the grass, I listened to the birds flit through the trees toward the cathedral beyond, its rose windows flickering with candlelight. Voices carried through the cemetery, singing a hymn, and it was the first time in months that I’d heard music and harmony instead of just noise. Dante moved toward me, entwining his limbs with mine as if piecing our broken soul back together. I closed my eyes. As night fell, I pressed my ear against his chest and listened to the irregular rhythm of his heart beating in tandem with mine, the muscles within me stirring with warmth, as if finally awake after a deep slumber.
When the church bells chimed eleven, Dante sat up. “I have to go.”
I brushed my hair away from my face. “Why?”
“The Monitors do a sweep of the city every night at midnight. I have to be far away from here when they do.” Taking my hand in his, he led me to the gates of the cemetery.
“When will I see you again?” I said as he slipped through to the other side.
He narrowed his eyes as he glanced at the cathedral door behind me, making sure no one could hear us. “It isn’t safe for me to stay here, but I’ll come back as soon as I can. Two weeks? Maybe sooner. Will you be able to sense me?”
I grasped the iron bars and nodded. “What will you do in the meantime?”
“Try to find a way for us to be together,” he said, wrapping his hands around mine.
“Me too,” I whispered. Letting my hand slip from his, Dante disappeared into the night.
The walk back to St. Clément seemed much longer than the walk from the school had been. The streets were wide and empty at night, with an occasional smoker loitering outside a bar. I retraced my steps until I made it to the intersection by the campus. It was a quarter till midnight. I was about to cross the street to the alley that led to St. Clément when a pair of people stole down the sidewalk, weaving around the streetlamps so they wouldn’t be seen. I crouched in the shadows beneath an elm tree and watched as they turned left. They were wearing long dark coats that shielded their faces. A few moments later, another pair emerged, followed by another. The Monitor sweep.
I waited while each pair broke off in a different direction. When they had all disappeared, I stepped out to the curb just as a gray Peugeot pulled up to the traffic light. The driver was a woman with a plain face and dull brown hair, her neck wrapped in a thick knitted scarf.
“Miss LaBarge?” I uttered, watching her face glow red, then green as the light changed. She fiddled with a knob on her dashboard and then looked straight ahead, neglecting to see me.
“Wait!” I yelled, but it was too late. Running into the middle of the street, I watched as her car disappeared around a corner. I caught a glimpse of her license plate, which was from Quebec, but I didn’t see it well enough to commit it to memory. I must have been imagining things, I thought. Miss LaBarge was dead; I saw her coffin drop into the Atlantic Ocean. What was happening to me? I rubbed my eyes, and pulling my gaze away from the spot where the car had been, I ran the rest of the way back to my dormitory.
After I reached my floor, I made the same wrong turn on the way to my room. Spying the broom closet again, I cursed under my breath and was about to turn back when I heard shrieks coming from Anya Pinsky’s room. I crept toward it.