Page 19 of House of Hearts

Satisfied with our silence, Sadie beckons us over to the wall and gestures to the board behind her.

“You all know the story of Anastasia Hart by now. Only it’s more than a simple ghost story we scare the freshmen with.

It’s the start of something horrible that our family has endured for generations now.

Ana was betrayed by her older sister, Helen, who stole Oleander from her.

So, she cursed every eldest Lockwell in their family line to endure the same anguish she felt that day, to be completely and truly brokenhearted.

” She nods at a daguerreotype photo behind her; the portrait is of a young woman with her gown clawing up her throat and her sleeves scaling to the ends of her wrists.

Youthful despite her slicked-back hair and genuinely frumpy attire.

“It all began with a girl named Mabel Beckwith. She was the soulmate of Helen’s first son, Ezra Lockwell.

” Sadie rests against the wall, her shoulders slumping like the weight of the world is too heavy for her to bear.

“Even back then, the family influence was large enough to pay off our own set of coroners and authorities. Because of that, ‘official reports’ say she died of a heart attack. Unofficial reports confirm what we know now: that she, like all the others to follow, died after being stabbed by a possessed Lockwell. The blade pierced directly through her heart.”

My hands freeze at my sides, and I can hear Birdie breathing heavily next to me as Sadie continues.

“The Cards were created with the sole purpose of breaking this curse to prevent passing it on to the next generation. They thought it’d be easy and that they’d be able to dissolve the organization immediately after ‘saving’ the Lockwell family…

They’d soon realize what they were up against. This curse still stands. ”

Beyond the girl’s photo is an image of her grave, the dates cutting her down to sixteen years old.

“It happened again. This time, it was a boy named Clifford Wallace, the lover of Ezra’s firstborn daughter, Mary.

Dead at seventeen. Again, a stab wound to the heart.

Mary never married, so her younger brother, Edwin, carried the curse on with his eldest son, Charles. ”

Thus begins the procession of the dead: young lovers throughout the decades in yearbook photos with gelled pompadours and mullets, middle parts and side parts, all of them Hart students, all of them dating Lockwells. And all of them stabbed through the heart.

“And then there was last year. We invited a group of new members in after Joker Night, and to all of our horror, Percy realized that the girl we let in was his soulmate. It was a race against the clock to break the curse before the curse broke him.”

Her finger glides across the board before landing on a face I know too well, a smiling, freckled Emoree Hale. Beneath it, a ripped-out newspaper article of the tower, the scene sectioned off with police tape and her mangled body covered with a black tarp.

Emoree Hale sat on a wall,

Emoree Hale had a great fall.

“I can see the pattern, thank you very much. So, you’re saying Em dated Percy, and he murdered her for it,” I snarl, stepping back from the corkboard graveyard.

Paranoia gurgles low in the pit of my stomach before raising the room several degrees hotter than it should be. A nauseous hot-and-cold wave ripples down my spine, and I don’t like this setup at all.

The group shares a look that has me cursing myself for coming in here defenseless. I’m already envisioning my own forged autopsy and all the countless ways they could shut me up for good and how I might look beneath the ground.

“I told you before, none of us ever wanted her dead,” Calvin insists, his voice hitching in his throat halfway through. Behind him, Mallory is blinking back tears and fanning her cheeks, and Ash’s cocky attitude has been swapped for a tense silence.

Calvin continues with a clench of his fists. “It was the curse, and her loss weighs on us every single day. Our club’s whole existence is centered around breaking the curse, not continuing it.”

“Bullshit.” I have to laugh. It’s sounds weird and strangled, and it makes me seem as hysterical as I feel right now. “Are you really going to act like a bunch of make-believe hocus-pocus killed her?”

Oliver clears his throat to intervene. “Magic is actually more scientific than people give it credit for. Personally, I rationalized the curse by inputting it into a formula. The variables being personal input, expressed intent, and—”

“You seriously believe that?”

“I’m not the type to subscribe to horoscopes and conspiracies, but this is actually happening, Violet,” he answers, deadpan.

“Anastasia was dabbling in the occult for years, so by the time she killed herself, she was well versed enough to know the impact of her sacrifice. She gave her own life to get ultimate revenge, and we’re still dealing with the consequences today. ”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I hiccup, more of that lunatic laughter bubbling from my throat.

“You’re not going to tell me this is about some dead lady.

You, of all people, seemed rational, and now you’re trying to get me to believe that the Lockwells are murdering their lovers because Casper the Friendly Ghost told them to?

This is as far from ‘scientific’ as it gets. ”

Calvin’s shoulders fall with a deep exhale. “Violet. You’re telling me you didn’t see anything in that maze? Or on the balcony, for that matter?”

I shudder in recollection and massage one of the scratches on my wrist. “I…It’s not like I was a reliable witness Saturday night. Not after you had us all pregaming psychedelics as soon as we went in.”

“If we did have psychedelics, do you think we would waste them on you?” Ash scoffs and shares a conspiratorial look with his girlfriend. “The party drinks were my idea, and I can assure you they were LSD-free.”

I cage my arms together against my chest. “Even if I did believe this ridiculous story that my best friend just so happens to be dead because of a vengeful ghost, then—”

“Then where is Percy?” Birdie finishes.

Calvin’s eyes rest miserably on the floor. “He’s gone.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he’s hiding in Switzerland to wait this murder out, but I’d really like to hear from him.”

Calvin drags his attention from the floor and blows out a measured breath. He levels his exhausted expression at me. His previously perfect face is marred by severe black eye bags I hadn’t noticed before. “No, Violet, you’re not getting it. He’s gone . Poof. Nowhere.”

Birdie sneers at Oliver. “What happened to him being at Le Rosey?”

“It was the only thing I could think of,” he apologizes as he readjusts his frames on his face. “It wasn’t personal.”

She folds her arms to her chest, and for the first time in the last five minutes, she’s looking at me again. “Do I have a sticker on my forehead that says ‘Hello, world, please lie to me’ or something?”

I know I should try to fix things with her, but my eyes are now glued to the photo before me. “Was the cause of Emoree’s death a lie?”

The lenses of Oliver’s glasses fog over with a hot breath as he gasps.

“Last year shouldn’t have happened,” he chimes back in, methodically cleaning his glasses in lieu of looking up at us.

He loses himself to the task, rubbing the same circle repeatedly without stopping.

“It was an anomaly. Completely and totally unprecedented. It broke every part of the curse’s formula.

In a normal timeline, Emoree would’ve been found”—his composure breaks, and he pauses his hands where they are, staring down miserably as the words lodge in his throat—“in the maze with a fatal chest wound and Percy would’ve been beside her, shaking off the last bits of possession.

In this case, E-Emoree actually did die after falling from the tower, and Percy was nowhere to be found. ”

Calvin picks up where Oliver leaves off.

“Percy’s not the type to get up and flee the country either.

Even if he did, we would’ve seen a withdrawal from his bank or a flight ticket purchase or something.

He woke up one day and was never seen again…

and we have reasons to believe the curse is involved somehow. ”

Spurred by Calvin’s declaration, Ash kicks his legs up on the end table and turns to him like he’s been waiting for this part. “What do you say, Cal?” he asks, though he doesn’t sound nearly as playful as he normally does. “Should we do a magic trick of our own and show them?”

Mallory might be gripping a mascara-blobbed tissue, but her eyes light up at Ash’s question. “God, I freaked when I first saw it. You two aren’t ready,” she says with a final sniff.

Calvin grimaces. “I’m glad my brother’s disappearance is funny for someone.”

“No, mate, I didn’t mean it like that—”

Sadie squares her shoulders and takes several steps to reach her brother’s side. “He’s right, let’s show them. It’s the quickest way to prove what we’re talking about.”

I watch as Calvin’s shoulders lift and fall with a measured breath before he gives her a tiny nod and the two of them hold their phone screens out for us to see.

“Percival Vincent Lockwell,” Sadie whispers, and for once her tone is soft and pleading like a little sister tugging on her brother’s sleeve.

Calvin’s voice wavers, but he joins his sister in chanting out his brother’s full name. “Percival Vincent Lockwell.”

It’s only after the third round that their phones illuminate with a message, Percy’s text flashing in unison on their screens.

I’m going to end this

That’s all it says, and it’s easy to imagine their snickering older brother in the other room, pressing send as soon as he hears the signal.

The perfect parlor trick to scare us. Then the text sends again.

The exact same message but doubled, tripled.

Their wallpapers are eclipsed with the same words over and over again.

I’M GOING TO END THIS on a terrifying electronic loop, several hundred messages spawning in a matter of minutes before a heat warning flashes and the phones power off.

“That was his last message to us,” Sadie sighs, and with a tap of her finger, her phone returns to life. The screen is blank like the last two minutes never happened, and when she finds her group message with Calvin and Percy, there’s only one iteration of his text.

And it was sent last fall.

Birdie clenches a hand over her mouth, but all I can do is stand there. Stubborn tears prick in the corners of my eyes, and I swat at them before they can fall. I can’t do this. I can’t do this!

I stagger back two steps at a time, wanting to place as much distance as I can between myself and this crazy situation.

“You didn’t strike me as the type of person who’s easily scared,” Calvin says, and he’s right, I’m not, but that’s because there’s always been an explanation. Logic hiding behind every bump in the night.

My own haunted message loops in my brain, find Percy , over and over and over again .

What good will my revenge do if I’m finding a sack of bones and asking it to confess?

And if this truly is a curse and not cold-blooded murder, there’s nothing for me to prove and no way to get closure.

How do you get justice when the culprit has been dead for over a hundred years?

No, no , it’s not possible. It isn’t possible.

“I’m not scared,” I snap. “I’m just not the type of person who likes wasting time.”

Sadie’s the first to speak up again as I storm my way over to the office door. “Where are you going?”

I turn back with my hand gripping the knob. “Anywhere but here.”