Page 15 of House of Hearts

All righty, then. I look around to see if anyone’s buying this, and sure enough, most of the students look actively freaked out, but two of them are elbowing each other excitedly.

It’s got “fake urban legend” written all over it.

For starters, I doubt she could stay conscious long enough to drag a knife through her rib cage and pull out the very organ keeping her alive.

She’d probably die from blood loss before getting very far.

It also reads like a bad pun with her last name, so there’s that.

“The time has come for you to pledge your loyalty to the Cards and your hearts to Anastasia.”

There’s a flurry of movement as each new recruit is matched up with an existing member. Birdie is red-faced and stumbling at Sadie’s side, a kid from my econ class is trembling beneath Tripp’s hard gaze, and I’m left behind with Calvin.

He bristles as I reluctantly walk toward him, rolling his eyes at me until his sister snaps in the air and the pledge begins.

It’s all very methodical and well practiced, almost routine, even, as Calvin lifts a whole pomegranate from his pocket.

The fruit is a deep, dusky red, the ends unfurled like the jagged points of a crown.

He tosses it once in the air before peeling into its tender flesh with a pocketknife. “Eat.”

“Excuse me?”

He grins, sly and dark, his fingers bleeding red from the fruit. “Isn’t that the first rule of hell?” he whispers, his voice scraping and raw. “You need to eat its fruits to stay forever.”

I stomach my hatred and reach for it. I can eat a damn pomegranate.

He yanks it out of reach. “Open wide. Pledge your loyalty to us above all else.”

I flush but comply. “I swear it.” He leans in, his fingers brushing across my waiting mouth. As he does this, his spare hand steadies the anxious tremble that’s sparked to life in my veins.

Calvin pushes a bit of fruit between my lips, his ring finger lingering as it brushes against the sharpened tips of my canines.

It feels as if he’s silently urging me to bite down and draw blood.

The acrid taste of pomegranate trails my tongue and rolls its way down my throat, and just like that, he pulls away.

I try not to look at the fruit in his hands and think of the way I leaned into his touch. It was intimate and terrifying, but I’m not one of his pretty girls. If his type is roses, I’m a ragweed girl. Stubbornly sprouting in the cracks between the pavement, growing into my bristles.

“You want to be one of us so badly?” Sadie projects to the group of us, her voice echoing in the night. “You’ve pledged yourself to us; now it’s time to offer up your heart to Anastasia.”

Mallory grins. “Finally, time for the fun part!”

“This hasn’t been the fun part?” Calvin counters, and I briefly stop breathing as he brushes his finger on his own lips.

“You’ll be blindfolded and brought to a random point in the maze,” Sadie instructs, and there’s a smug gleam in her eyes as a nervous shiver ripples through the group.

“At that point, you’ll pledge your heart to Anastasia and be left to find your way out.

Find her heart, bring it to us before the sun rises, and you’re in. ”

“Ladies first,” Calvin says to her without a chivalrous bone in his body. If I didn’t know better, I’d guess he doesn’t want to go any farther inside. He’s got that stricken look across his face, and he gnaws on his lower lip.

Why is he afraid?

I’m hit with the memory of the one and only time I’ve been in a maze before.

Four years ago, Em and I scrounged up enough money for the county fair and beelined for the corn maze.

We rushed in giddily. It’d been fun at first, but we’d taken one too many wrong turns, and as the evening descended into night, the fear of being lost forever went from comical to very real.

We’d worked our way out, but the nerves lingered long after.

What must it be like to be trapped here in death? Lost forever? I clench my teeth. It probably feels like nothing. You can’t feel anything once you’re dead. I try to catch Birdie’s eye, but she’s focused on the dark path ahead.

“There won’t be any working together,” Sadie tells us, her voice swallowed by the enormity of the maze.

The lights on campus don’t make it past the hedges, and we’re only able to navigate our way forward by the dull glow of a flashlight.

It catches on a forked path, and that’s when Sadie twists back to address the group.

“Each one of you will go on alone. Got it?”

Even in the dark, I can see the furrow in Calvin’s brow as he approaches me.

“Remember,” Sadie hisses to her brother, her manicured finger stabbing into his chest. “Play by the rules and take this seriously. No screwing around.”

“Got it, boss,” he retorts flatly.

She scoffs in frustration and abandons the two of us with a sneer. Calvin waits until she’s gone to fumble with the edges of his own burlap bag. “Do you mind slipping this on? I think my sister would have a stroke if you didn’t wear it.”

I’d rather not, but I don’t have any bargaining chips here, so I let him blindfold me. The two of us stumble in the dark with him as my guide. His hands are warm against mine, not a single callous to them as he steers me forward.

“I know who gave you the locket,” he whispers when we’re deep in the maze, his earlier composure immediately gone. I can’t see him, but the words seem to lodge in his throat, and his fingers tighten sharply.

I grit my teeth behind the burlap, and I’m secretly grateful he can’t see my face either. He’s silent for a second. All I can hear are the sounds of his breath and the shuffle of soil beneath our feet. All I can feel is his skin flush with mine.

“Is that so?” I ask finally. I was supposed to have a plan, but suddenly I don’t know what to do. Lie or tell the truth?

When it’s obvious I’m not going to fill in the blanks for him, he clears his throat. “Emoree Hale, right? But I guess that’s not the real question here. Why would she give it to you ?”

So much for lying. I gulp and switch tactics. “I’m sure you can figure that one out. You figured the first part out on your own, after all.”

He barks out a strange, undignified noise. “Answer the question.”

“Because I’m her best friend.”

He’s silent, and I get the sense that he’s waiting for me to elaborate.

“If you’re looking to figure out why I’m important, I’m not .

I don’t have a pedigree. I grew up in a small town, just like Em.

I’m here on scholarship, but you know that.

Unlike Tripp, my dad doesn’t own an oil rig out in Texas.

In fact, I don’t have a dad at all. But none of that matters because Em gifted this to me for the simple reason that I’m her best friend.

Why? Are you upset that you didn’t get rid of all the evidence? ”

Grass squelches beneath my steps as we round the corner. “Evidence of what?” he asks.

“Murder,” I blurt without thinking. The word momentarily sets both of us aback, and we freeze there in the middle of the path. It takes him a second to find his bearings, and in that second, I know I’m the biggest screwup to have ever lived. One week in and me and my smart mouth ruined it all.

“You think someone murdered Emoree?” he snaps, swiveling around and yanking my blindfold off briefly to look me in the eyes.

He’s haloed in green ivy, his white teeth clenched together and his focus solely on me.

From a cursory glance, I see that we’re standing in yet another clearing, this one empty save for a single stone bench in the corner.

There’s no turning back now. “I know she wouldn’t jump on her own…not unless someone pushed her.”

“You think my brother killed her,” he hisses in my ear, the proximity sending shivers skittering down my spine. It’s hardly a question. “Is that why you’re here, then? To get revenge?”

I lift my chin defiantly. “So, you admit he did it?”

“I never said that!”

“But you didn’t deny it, either, did you? So, tell me, did your brother plan it from the start? Was it some sick, twisted game of the Cards’? Or did she piss him off one day and he decided enough was enough, so he lured her up to the tower and—”

His hand snakes across my wrist, and his fingertips press divots into my skin.

“ Percy loved her! ” he yells. His voice splinters apart like cut glass in his throat, all broken syllables and sharp points, and his eyes brim with unspent tears.

“No one would ever dream of hurting her, least of all Percy. He loved her more than you could ever fucking imagine, so don’t act like you know my brother or the relationship they had.

Last I checked, only one of us was here last year, and it wasn’t you . ”

His words deeply puncture my chest, and I stagger back on impact. “I knew Emoree better than anyone.”

“Clearly you didn’t know everything,” he counters, his voice wet and sniffly. “Not at the end.”

I ball my hands into fists at my sides, and for the second time this week, I feel like crying, but I can’t and I won’t, not in front of this arrogant prick. “And I suppose you do, huh?”

He’s silent, but the answer is obvious from his devastated expression.

“So, if your dear old brother didn’t kill her,” I say, unsure what to make of his random burst of emotion but unable to fully trust him, “who did?”

“This isn’t a good place to talk,” he says, thrusting out his hand to offer me the burlap mask back. “Make it through the maze first and then find me Monday. I’ll tell you everything I know.”

“And why should I believe you?”

“You’re here for a reason,” he jabs. “And that reason is to find out all our deep, dark secrets. Does that sound about right? I think you need me, or at least the information I can give you.”

I hate that he’s right. I despise the fact that I have no pull or autonomy in the situation. “Monday.”