Page 17 of House of Hearts

Okay, so now it’s officially a bad horror movie.

But I refuse to be the girl who dies first. Guilt gnaws at my gut as I remember what happened to Emoree, but I don’t have time to dwell on her death. There are only three things that I need to do right now:

get that ridiculous heart they were prattling on about,

find my way out of this maze before the sun rises, and

track down Calvin so he can tell me what the hell is going on.

Having an agenda always helps. I can do this because I have to. I’m not the scared little girl I was at the county fair, trembling within a bunch of cornstalks.

I’ve come a long way since then. Or at least I think I have before I twist around in the dark and see I’m not alone.

“Jesus!” I hiss, my neurons taking way too long to fire between my eyes and my brain. When they’ve finally caught up, I’ve already scrambled an embarrassing foot away from an inanimate object.

It’s not a monster but a marble statue of two sisters.

But one of them has been beheaded in a clear act of vandalism.

The decapitated head smiles upward at the night sky, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that it’s Helen.

There might be some legitimacy to the Anastasia story after all.

I have no trouble picturing a heartbroken girl lopping off her statue sister’s head in a fit of rage.

The only confusing part is why the family never restored it.

Despite one of them being clearly mutilated, the girls continue to hold hands. They’re identically portrayed, from their ringlet curls to their matching lockets.

I step back toward the path and pick up the flashlight left behind in the grass. It’s not very strong, and I have no idea how I’ll navigate my way out of this mess, let alone go on a scavenger hunt in the dark.

The light rain dampens my exposed shoulders as I walk, and my heels drown in the mud with every step forward. I hate to stick my feet in this mud, but I’d rather be shoeless and out of this maze than trapped here in heels.

The feel of the cool earth beneath my feet is familiar anyway. It whisks me back to childhoods spent running around, bruised, barefoot, and braver than I should’ve been. I remember the trees we’d climb and the old tires we’d swing on. Summers with Em were fireflies and tall grass and secret spots.

My thoughts break with a rush of movement to my left. It happens so quickly, I can hardly process what’s going on. Seized by pure flight-or-flight instinct, I swivel on my feet, shoe poised like a weapon in my trembling hand.

It’s a rabbit.

I smother a hysterical giggle. Here I am, clutching a kitten heel for dear life, and it’s only a bunny. “Hey, buddy, you spooked me.”

I bend down, but it rushes through the greenery, escaping quickly, out of sight. There and gone in a blink. Unfortunately, I can’t follow it through the hedges, so I’m forced to stare down at the fork in front of me and make a choice. God, which way did I come in with Calvin?

Calvin.

A shiver courses through me. He recognized me even in a mask, and he chased me out from the ballroom, yanking me back in time for us to wind up tangled together in the rain. He hadn’t seen Emoree, but somehow, some way, I had.

She’d led me out of the ballroom and through the hall, down the corridor and through the shadows, into a desolate room. There’d been the dead fireplace and the brush of her fingers, thoughtfully ghosting over the—

Wait.

She’d shown me the miniature of the maze.

I take the heel of my shoe and lower myself to a muddy patch of the ground.

I draw what I remember, which admittedly isn’t everything but might be enough.

The circular mouth of the central clearing split into a forked road, followed by a sharp right and then a left. Right, left, left, right.

I get up and follow the path as best as I can from memory, retracing my steps all while darting the flashlight left and right to keep an eye out for the heart. I take a sharp right turn, walls of greenery lifting beyond my head on either side of me.

“You can do this,” I whisper to myself, because someone has to say it.

I might not have the place completely mapped out, but what I saw in the study is enough to get by, and what I lack in memory, I make up for with muddy footprints in my wake.

The storm has slowed enough to leave a path perfectly intact behind me.

With each step forward, the hedge walls seem to grow tighter.

I could’ve sworn a couple of steps ago that I could spread my fingers out on either side of me.

Now my shoulders brush the tips of leaves, the space tightening like a clenched fist. It’s like being swallowed alive.

I’m about to make another turn when a voice calls out from the darkness.

“Violet!” It’s everywhere all at once, a disorienting echo in the night. Every part is enunciated, Vi-o-let , pitched like the voice of a windup doll. “Violet, Violet, Violet!”

I can’t tell where it’s coming from, but I know whoever is doing it is going to have a good laugh about it later. All a prank. A sick, twisted prank. Someone must be left behind in the maze to scare me, or maybe it’s another pledge, trying to get in my head. That’s all.

“Funny!” I shout, and the volume of my voice sends a black mass of birds shooting off into the sky. “Really, really funny, you guys. Absolutely hysterical.”

It feels good to yell. So good, in fact, I continue to grumble under my breath as I storm forward.

The maze ahead of me hits a dead end, and I know I made a wrong turn at the last fork. Damn it, I guess I was supposed to go right all along. I let out another groan for good measure. I’d rather them hear me frustrated than terrified.

There’s another rustle from somewhere in the distance. The crunch of soles imprinting in the dirt, the swish of a body twisting through the leaves

“Violet!” Here they go again. I’m getting sick and tired of hearing my own name. “I need your help!”

I freeze mid-step and whip around to search for the source.

Through the glow of my flashlight, I see her.

Whoever is in front of me in the forked path just barely turns the corner before me.

Before she disappears into the shadows, I see her hair flying out in an unruly tangle of blood-red curls.

Her ivory skin is partially concealed by a stage-costume-esque gown, because of course we have an Anastasia Hart cosplayer in the mix.

If she thinks I’m going to run away, though, she has another thing coming. I charge toward her like a possessed bloodhound. I might be exhausted, but I’m also pissed off, which is currently stronger than a double shot of espresso.

“You’re the only one who can help me.” I don’t see the girl, but I hear her again not far ahead. “I always played the damsel in distress, and you were the knight, remember?”

That makes me pause, remembering the games I used to play with Emoree. They can’t be taunting me with a girl who died on campus a year ago, right? The bar might be in hell, but this is a new low.

“Do you know how long it takes for a body to fall and break into a million pieces?” The stranger’s voice lifts from the gloom, and I see her moving ahead.

The ivory shine of her skin in the dark.

Like a body dissected, she reveals herself in parts.

A flash of a wrist, a kicked-back heel, a strand of cherry-red hair.

Her body is never stitched together, no full image for me to latch on to.

“What did you say?” There’s no denying the comparisons now. My chest tightens, questions sloshing around in my brain, drowned by the rising tide of my bad thoughts.

She doesn’t answer. She only keeps running, twisting and turning and leading me deeper. A quick lurch to the left followed by a sharp right. I’m panting trying to keep up with her. Sweat streaks a salty path down to my lips.

“Six seconds.”

The outer banks of the maze are a manicured, artificial green. Where she’s led me is a mess of thorns and dead branches. They scrape against my skin, drawing blood. My legs ache the longer I run, and my sides cramp as I try to sprint even faster.

And then, all at once, she stops, with her back to me.

“I know this is all a part of some”—I pause to suck in air—“sick hazing ritual, but joking about a dead girl? Don’t you think that’s a little low, even for…”

My anger leaches from me immediately, making way for a terror so bone deep I worry I might collapse on the spot. For the second time tonight, Emoree stares at me. Her body is wisp thin and translucent in the dark. Not alive or dead but some miserable in-between.

“Remember what I said about ghosts?” she whispers, and even her voice is reedy and not quite there.

I can’t speak. I can’t blink. I can’t do anything. The shock might’ve saved me back in the ballroom, but it feels different here in the maze. Horrifically real and impossible to wrap my mind around.

“Something really bad has to happen,” she finishes for me, her voice tapering off with the rest of her until there’s nothing left.

“Em!” I howl when she’s gone, and fall to my knees. With my body collapsed against the earth, I hear a muffled sound beneath the dirt.

VioletVioletViolet , a voice sings. I’m down here. There’s no thinking as I claw the ground bloody, dirt and debris digging beneath the tender beds of my nails. I pry the earth apart and tear through clods of soil. I don’t know what I expect to find, but what I see before me breaks my trance.

A beating heart.

I freeze and stare at it, if only to prove to myself that I didn’t see that correctly, that there’s no possible way it’s alive and moving, but it thump-thump-thump s, pulsating back to life before my very eyes.

Rip it out.

The words rattle through my skull, soft at first before building louder and louder, twice as loud as the heart.

Ripoutmyheart, RIP OUT MY HEART, rip it out, rip it out, rip it OUT!

I squeeze my eyes shut until tears spring in my vision and reach my hand out to give in and end this horrible night.

It’s still thrashing as I pluck it from the soil.

I hold it in my hands, beating and bloody, and gasp as it dies with one final thump.

With another blink, it’s no longer real but plastic in my palms.

What the hell?

I don’t get time to think about it before I hear an awful sound from the gate.

Wait a damn minute. The gate? The gate! I can see it!

I lift myself up, heart still in hand, and race to the entrance up ahead.

They’re all still waiting on the other end, the group of merry assholes kicked back on the lawn like this is some picnic and not the second-worst night of my life.

I send the plastic heart flying before I even emerge from the gate. It lands with a wet plop at Calvin’s feet, and he startles at the sight of it. Good. If only he’d seen it when it was still alive.

“That’s got to be a record.” Calvin whistles, and he has the nerve to be standing there with a timer on his phone. If I still had the plastic heart on me, I’d send it flying at his face next. “Congrats.”

I have no idea which other pledge might be joining me soon, but I’m entirely too exhausted to linger any longer.

With his free hand, Calvin fishes out yet another card from his pocket. The Queen of Hearts stares me down in the dark. She’s patterned like a typical playing card, in a gown with navy blue sleeves and a gilded collar. But instead of looking away, her eyes bore directly into mine.

“Monday,” I snarl in Calvin’s ear as I pass. I’ve had more than my fair share of nonsense, and I’m ready to get out of this dress, shake the loose twigs out of my hair, and bury my face beneath my blankets.

And if I’m lucky tonight, maybe I won’t dream at all.