Love Reborn (A Dead Beautiful Novel) Read Online Free

talking about Noah. He was the only person who would have been in the lake.
    “Dustin?” the woman said. “Dustin, are you there?”
    Quickly, I hung up. She must have been in contact with Dustin while my grandfather was away, updating him on the status of Noah’s body. Which apparently was gone, just like in my dream. I gazed out the window, wondering. Had Dustin packed his things in order to go to Gottfried himself in my grandfather’s stead? If so, he wouldn’t be back tonight. He had been dressed like he was going on a trip, but I couldn’t be sure. He could return at any moment.
    I crept down the hall to my grandfather’s study. He was an organized man, his desk decorated sparsely with a telephone and a jar of odd objects: a magnifying glass for reading, a spare set of spectacles, a few pens, a compass. I turned the compass until the needle inside trembled and pointed north. I followed its direction out the window to the snowy pines outside, imagining Dante trudging through the woods. They couldn’t have caught him yet. He was still out there.
    I walked straight to the hutch behind my grandfather’s desk and unlatched its doors, behind which hung his entire collection of shovels, gleaming in the light. I picked them up one by one, testing their weight and sharpness, before choosing a small silver shovel. Its handle was just long enough for me to wield it like a sword, but just short enough that it would fit, concealed, within my coat. I then opened the bottom drawers of the hutch, where my grandfather kept his Monitoring supplies, and stuffed as many rolls of gauze as I could fit into the front pocket of my bag.
    While the staff slept, I crept into the kitchen and snuck food from the pantry. A triangle of light stretched over the tiles as I peeked into the refrigerator at the pots of leftovers. I spooned myself a plate of mushroom stew and sweet potatoes and carried it upstairs to my room. There I packed a small bag with clothes, a light blanket, and all of the money in my dresser drawer. A little over three hundred dollars. It was all I had left from what I’d saved at my job in California. Only two years had passed since then, though it felt like a lifetime had gone by. Leaning against the bed, I gazed at my bedroom, which had once belonged to my mother. She, too, was a part of a different life. She and my father were fading in my memory to something hazy and distant, their faces stuck in time. I glanced around the room at all of her things. They were my things now, though as I studied them, I realized I didn’t care that I might never see them again. I felt no attachment to the mansion, to this place, to any place. My parents had been my home, and now that they were gone, all I had left was Dante. I glanced down at my bag, the chest heavy at the bottom. Where would it lead us? And would I meet my parents there?
    I turned off the light and pulled a blanket into the closet, where I made a bed beneath my mother’s clothes. I couldn’t chance being caught. And with the hems of my mother’s dresses tickling my arms, I closed my eyes and prepared myself for what I had to do in the morning, before I left the mansion for the last time.
    I woke before the sun rose and called a taxi from the phone in my grandfather’s office, telling the driver to meet me by the end of the lane. While I waited for him to arrive, I picked up the phone again and dialed my grandfather’s mobile number. It rang three times before he picked up.
    “Dustin, yes?” he said, static crackling through his voice. So he didn’t know that Dustin had left. Strange.
    “Dustin?” my grandfather repeated. “Are you there?” Even through the weak connection, I could hear the exhaustion in his voice. He hadn’t caught up with Dante yet; I could tell.
    I swallowed. “I’m here,” I said. “But not for long. Come and find me.”
    I heard my grandfather shout just before I hung up. All my grandfather wanted to do was protect me from the