Chapter 30: Does He Sleep

Dante sat down on the edge of his own bed.

Daniel pushed the plate across the gap between them.

"Eat," he said. "I'm not interrogating a hungry man."

"I'm not hungry."

"I didn't ask what you were."

Dante took half a sandwich and held it.

Daniel watched him for a while, with his freckled face unusually grave.

"Javier told me in the corridor," he said. "He said Rossi, and don.

Then he sat on the stairs and wouldn't talk. So I'm asking you."

"Ask."

"Is it true?"

"Yes."

"Have you ever hurt anyone I know?"

"No. Rodrick put Javier in the hospital.

I have put men in a cellar. I have never touched a person on this campus."

"Have you killed anyone?"

Dante looked at him.

"Yes," he said. "Before I came here. Not since."

Daniel nodded slowly.

"All right," he said. "Thank you for not saying no."

"I owe you the truth."

"You owe him the truth. I just want to know what I'm shouting about."

He picked up the other sandwich and put it down again.

"Javier said you knew things. That you'd been somewhere.

He wouldn't say where. He said it was too stupid to say out loud."

"I've lived this year before."

Daniel's eyebrows rose.

"Before what?"

"Before the day we met. I died, and I was sent back."

Dante waited for the laugh.

It did not come.

Daniel stared at the lamp, and his lips moved as if he were counting.

"The car," he said. "The harbor road. You came to the dean's office two hours after, and you were already standing differently."

"You noticed."

"I notice everything. It's the only thing I'm good for." He rubbed his face. "And me? Was I in it?"

"You were a name on a list at the college. I never met you."

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