Page 25 of House of Hearts

Here’s an equation. Multiply “locked clock tower” by “Calvin not having the goddamn keys” and divide it by “Sadie being their mother’s favorite,” and you get the following: the three of us walking up to the headmistress’s home Wednesday evening, waiting to ask if we can go up to the locked upper wing of the clock tower and have a séance, pretty please.

The house is exactly what I’d expect of the Lockwell matriarch. It’s Better Homes & Gardens meets Plymouth Colony—a colonial clapboard monster on the edge of campus with a thin trim of greenery confined to the herringbone walkway. Everything is meticulous. Everything is perfect.

“I’ll do the talking,” Sadie establishes with a roll of her shoulders. Then, in case there were any questions, she clarifies to Calvin, “Because I’m the responsible one, for starters. I’m—”

“Humble, too,” he drawls. He’s dressed down from this morning in class, his tie loosened at his throat and his collar buttons undone.

She sneers, her Van Cleef bracelet stack winking in the porch light. “That’s another reason right there. I’m less of a smart-ass.”

He’s miraculously silent as she punches in the door code. “Mom’s running late, but she’ll meet us in her study.”

The inside foyer is wallpapered in vintage green floral.

Painted ivy curls in every direction, dark leaves guiding us down a narrow hallway and to a private office room.

Beneath our feet, the hardwood flooring is draped with a Persian rug, and somewhere in the distance, a grandfather clock chimes the hour.

It’s about as charming as being escorted into the depths of hell.

“Here we are,” Sadie says with a twist of an antique crystal knob.

The door yawns open and transports us to an era of candle smoke and parchment paper.

A Tiffany floor lamp cuts through the gloom and casts a beacon down on a large mahogany desk in the center.

It sits like a caged beast between a set of leather chairs, and Sadie’s quick to claim the one on our side.

“You should see her in a game of musical chairs,” Calvin comments with a sweep of his thumb across his skin. “Cutthroat.”

“Am I supposed to apologize for sitting down?”

“You? Apologize? That’d be a first.”

I ignore their banter in favor of studying the desk in front of me. It’s remarkably empty but for a few stray pens, a scratch pad, and an old picture frame perched in the corner.

Photo Calvin is posed with his brother and sister, a rare group selfie of the three of them where they don’t look like they all actively hate each other.

Calvin’s eyes are bright, but his grin is even brighter, his arm slung over Percy’s shoulder and his other hand making bunny ears behind Sadie’s head.

Percy is the perfect gradient between Calvin’s sandy blond and Sadie’s sleek black hair.

Brown waves graze the soft slope of his jaw and match the warm depths of his eyes, his baby-fat cheeks giving him an endearingly poetic look.

Large round frames rest on the bridge of his nose, which only complete the scholar vibe he’s got going on.

He’s far from the ridiculously chiseled prince on a white horse, but I can see how Em fell for him.

“This is the last photo we took together,” Sadie says. “Before everything fell apart.”

I remember her outburst by the tower, and it’s clear she’s showing a lot of restraint. She’s yet another girl who refuses to cry. I can relate.

“Was there anything special about that day?”

“It was only special because there was nothing happening. Everything was perfect and normal. The world looked bright, and then…”

She fidgets in her seat and runs a frazzled hand through her hair.

“When Emoree came, that all went out the window. He was jittery, anxious, always zoning out like he was lost in his own head. He’d go missing for hours, and we’d find him wandering aimlessly through the gardens.

It went downhill like this,” she says, illustrating the severity with a jarring snap of her fingers.

“And then he just disappeared?”

“Precisely,” Headmistress Lockwell’s voice says from behind me.

I turn to find her hovering in the doorway like a Victorian ghost. She regards us with a dainty arch of her thin brows before breezing past the three of us to take a seat at her desk. “I trust you’ll make this quick.”

“Of course, we know your time is very valuable, Mom,” Sadie says, her answer immediately met with a gag from Calvin. Sadie’s smile thins, but she continues as rehearsed. “We need the skeleton keys for the tower. It’s for the séance.”

Headmistress Lockwell frowns at that. “The incident is fresh in everyone’s minds. You’ll need to be careful not to draw unnecessary attention.”

Sadie nods sagely, and Calvin does his part by not saying a word. He leans against the wall and busies himself with a cuff link on his sleeve.

“What makes you so sure Percy will respond to you up there?” the headmistress challenges.

Sadie’s eyes flick briefly to mine, and I ball my fists in my lap before speaking. “It wouldn’t be Percy we’d be channeling. It’d be Emoree.”

The full weight of her stare settles on me. “You think she would prove useful?”

I grit my teeth at the word “useful.” “She would know a lot more about Percy’s final days than we would. From what I’ve heard, last year was atypical.”

“That’s putting it mildly, but yes,” she agrees, leaning back in her chair as she contemplates our request. “I am not opposed to it, but I need the group to be discreet. No marching around in plain sight with a Ouija board and heading up to what is still widely considered a crime scene.”

Sadie dips her head. “Yes, ma’am.”

“We’re calling her ‘ma’am’ now?” Calvin questions with a curl of his lip. “What’s next, ‘Your Majesty’? ‘Supreme Maternal Overlord’?”

“Calvin Peregrine Lockwell.”

Peregrine, huh? Definitely storing that one in my brain for later.

“We’ll be careful,” Sadie reassures. “I have everything under control—annoying twin brothers included.”

Calvin only rolls his eyes at that before focusing on something beyond his mother’s head.

I follow his line of sight to an impressive glass curio cabinet tucked in the corner.

If you sat me down and had me guess what a rich headmistress might collect, I’d probably say fine china or antique pocket watches.

Genuinely anything under the sun other than what’s actually on display.

I have to blink three times to make sure I didn’t spontaneously conjure it out of thin air.

But no, the dagger is 100 percent real and tucked safely inside a glass frame.

The photo beside it shows a young Oleander with his father, dead pheasants at his feet and the same knife plunged into one of their chests.

Blood drips down the sides of their limp throats, oozing into a puddle at Oleander’s feet.

The accompanying plaque beneath the image reads Hart’s Most Cherished Artifacts .

“Is that knife the one that…um…” I can’t believe I’m even speaking but also can’t stop the question from flowing freely out of my mouth. “The one that you used on…your…um…”

Christ. Save me from myself.

“The one that killed my soulmate?” Headmistress Lockwell speaks plainly. “Yes.”

My mouth goes dry all at once, and I blurt out the most obvious question in my brain. “Why would you keep it?”

Sadie throws me a dark look, but it’s too late for me to discover tact in this situation.

If Headmistress Lockwell is offended by my question, she doesn’t show it.

She’s a careful portrait of restraint, her hands clasped cordially across the table.

“For starters, everything Anastasia touched has a nasty habit of lingering. I could throw this blade away several hundred times and it would still find its way back to us. Secondly, it serves as a reminder of what I’ve lost and the life I’ve gained.

I didn’t think I’d want to live after Isaac, but look at me now. ”

I squint in response. She meets my eyes briefly before casting a wistful look back at the blade. “It taught me what is truly important. When you sacrifice love, you see the world more clearly for what it truly is—a chessboard game of kings and queens where you lose a pawn or two to scale ahead.”

My breath escapes me in a short, indignant burst. “You think Isaac was a pawn?”

Her veneer chips faintly. I see it in the quiver of her lips and the press of her nails to her palm.

“He was the love of my life and my greatest heartbreak, make no mistake. I think of him every single day, and I have for the last twenty-five years. But through the grief, I realized what that loss afforded me. I’m one of the few people on this planet who can go through life with minimal distraction.

If my husband is disloyal, it doesn’t destroy me in the slightest. I have a fulfilling career and three children I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

In the place of love, I have so much more. ”

“Two,” Calvin amends.

“Excuse me?”

He lifts his attention up from his sleeve to his mother’s desk. “You said you have three kids. Percy’s missing, so you really only have two.”

“I have three,” she snaps back. “He’ll be found. Last year still has a chance to be rectified.”

Calvin says nothing to that. With his chin resting in his palm, I recognize the beat of his finger tapping as the notes of the school anthem. It seems morbidly poignant at the moment, the lyrics floating through my skull like a missed warning.

Over a hundred years, our legacy kept alive

No matter what, we will survive.

Is this what survival looks like to them?

There’s not a discreet bone in Tripp’s body, but according to Sadie, we’re dragging him along in case he needs to rough up potential witnesses (aka any students who managed to sneak out past curfew).

“You’re right,” I say as we approach the tower entrance. “Nothing says discretion like Theodore committing physical battery outside of a crime scene.”