Page 26 of House of Hearts

Tripp blows his vape in my face, and I choke on the fumes. “Jesus, man, you sound like my mother. Don’t call me Theodore.”

“Call him Grizzly, he likes that one,” Ash tells me with a wink. “Griswold’s a hell of a last name.”

Ash is part of our merry band tonight: there’s him, Calvin, Sadie, Tripp, me, and Birdie. Mallory’s got a case of the sniffles, and Oliver’s got a case of his girlfriend being suspicious of him disappearing at night.

The tower looms Rapunzel high above us. If this were a fairy tale, this is the part where a long braid would tumble down the side and we’d scale our way up the limestone wall. Since it’s not one, Sadie quickly pulls out the skeleton key to let us in.

We disregard the Two at a Time plaque hanging outside the door in favor of cramming inside in a single file line.

Sadie trembles in the front, her hand drifting along the spiral railing.

There’s a chill to the air, courtesy of high winds blowing against the siding and a particularly gruesome draft.

I’d probably be shivering, too, if my own paranoia wasn’t lighting matches underneath my skin.

It begins as a tiny prick in my stomach but catches quicker than a house fire.

Spreading up my arms and throat and settling hot in the back of my neck.

The view out of the window beside me is blotted out by a thick gauze of gray webbing. A spider sits in its funnel, its legs like sewing needles, its thorax a copper button. I think of Aurora and the cursed spindle, pricking her finger and sleeping forever.

Not now. Not here. Not again.

Cool fingers cover mine, Calvin’s presence stopping me before I burn myself down to the ground.

His voice is gentle and low behind me. “Focus on breathing. Can you do that for me?” he whispers, his thumb caressing a soothing path along my skin.

“We’ve already established I’ll catch you, but I don’t need a third trust fall.

I’m too young and beautiful to throw out my back. ”

I whip to face him. “You’re—”

“Incorrigible?”

I nod mutely, though I can’t admit that’s not at all what I was thinking. There’s one word coming to mind, and the realization is far worse than any panic attack.

Sweet.

It’s a bedroom.

A dusty, ancient bedroom, but a bedroom.

That’s what’s at the top of the tower. Furniture hangs inside like antique ghosts, the forms draped in moth-eaten white.

They’re shadowed by the night sky, starlight slipping through the cracks in the clockface window.

I step inside the loft and am instantly greeted by the faint clicking of gears.

Wheels whirring in place to keep the second hand ticking valiantly forward.

“Funny,” I say offhandedly.

Calvin steps out from behind me and scrunches his nose as he’s hit by a stray cobweb. “What?”

“I don’t hear anyone playing the harp.”

He arches a brow, so I elaborate.

“That’s what you told me, remember? You said I can expect baby cherubs and pearly gates.”

His eyes glint fox bright in the dark. “Oh, that’s right,” he says, playing along. “You can blame that on the budget cuts. Real bummer. We had to sell the pearly gates on eBay and kick the baby cherubs out on the street. What a tragedy.”

“What would you know about budget cuts—”

“Can you two shut up for five minutes?” Sadie hisses, her face illuminated by the blue glow of her phone.

“Who lived up here?” Birdie’s voice breaks from the back of the group. She’s the last to straggle in, and her breath hitches at the sight.

I’ve got the same question whirring around in my own brain.

I scan the room like its past owner might materialize out of thin air.

There’s a splintered hand mirror and a vintage tin of face powder, both of them thick with several months’ worth of cobwebs.

Littered around the rest of the room is a treasure trove of old junk.

There’s a collection of yellowed shawls and a single neglected kerosene lamp sitting on the counter.

Everything’s been left in a state of previously searched disarray.

“Helen Hart,” Sadie answers, dragging a path through the dust with her finger. “She spent her final days up here staring down at the hedge maze, or rather, Anastasia’s grave.”

I glance back at the long staircase behind us. “I can’t imagine an old woman climbing this every day.”

“She didn’t.” Her chin juts in the direction of the canopied bed. The mesh billows out from the mattress like a banshee wailing in the night. “Everything she needed was brought up to her, so she never had a reason to leave.”

“I don’t blame the woman. It’s got a real penthouse vibe to it,” Ash declares with a sweep of his hand. “I can dig it. She even had panoramic views.”

The aforementioned “panoramic views” showcase a direct vertical 161-foot drop. That’s 161 reasons why I shouldn’t look straight down, but because I’m a sucker for self-inflicted torture, I look anyway.

It’s much higher than the last lookout, which nearly ended me. That was only a quarter of the way up, and now here I am at the tippy top.

The view is dotted with pumpkins and choked in lake fog. It’s otherworldly from this high up, a certain type of sorcery in the air that you only find at midnight. It’d almost be beautiful if it wasn’t for the dizzy rush of vertigo and the acid burning anxious holes in my gut.

Through the rising mist, my subconscious digs out a familiar rabbit hole. A sticky, dark vortex of grief. “Do you get the feeling that if you fell, you’d fall forever?” I whisper to Calvin beside me.

I can feel his eyes on me, but I don’t bother to look up.

“I’d rather not test that theory, personally.”

By the time Emoree died, our lives had already split apart like a seam tugged loose.

Without me to mend her clothes, Em would always let things unravel.

She had a habit of picking and prodding, ripping those careful threads apart.

And this time, I hadn’t tried to repair anything; I let it fall apart.

Which was why I was surprised she called the night before she died.

“Violet,” she hiccupped. “I really need to talk to you.”

A good friend would have listened and cared, but in this tale, I was no longer the fairy godmother. I wanted to trap her in her old life and keep her small.

“Sorry, Em,” I said, and I meant it. I was sorry she left and sorry that it made me into such a jealous, hateful monster. “My shift is starting soon, I can’t talk.”

“Please! Percy and I found something we shouldn’t have. There was this old desk and this book, but it wasn’t really a book, it was—”

She continued to word-vomit, but it was too late.

I hung up. Stared at the room around me.

It was as miserable as I was: the shattered TV where Mom’s last boyfriend had run a bat through the screen, the springy couch where I’d find her after their blowup fights, the grimy spot on the carpet where I’d sat with my knees tucked to my chest and wondered if this was all my life would ever be.

If only I’d known Emoree’s would end hours later.

“So, are we doing this or what?” Tripp blurts with another puff of smoke. He’s already leaning on one of the vanities, settling his weight on what could be (and honestly probably is ) a priceless antique.

“Let me set the mood first,” Ash insists with an unceremonious dump of his duffel bag onto the floor. In it, he’s got a folded-up paper Ouija board, a guitar-pick planchette, and some candles he stole from Sutherland Hall’s dining tables.

“Set the mood?” Tripp snorts. “What is this, prom night? You trying to get my clothes off after this?”

“Trust me, bruv. No one wants to see it,” Ash taunts with a strike of a match.

What follows is a mad scramble to sit down and “get the atmosphere right.” Lazy droplets of black wax roll down the sides of the candles around us. The flame eats away at the tapered edges, burning them down in strange stalagmites.

“How do we do something like this?” I ask, looking around the group for someone to chime in on Spirit Protocol 101.

“I’ve watched enough Ghost Adventures to get the gist of it,” Birdie says before throwing a shy glance Sadie’s way. “One finger on the plan-chette per person, right?”

She nods, and my stomach flutters strangely as Calvin’s hand brushes against mine.

The firelight casts curious shadows on our faces, lighting us up in primal ways. Even Tripp looks nervous as he adds his hand to the makeshift planchette. He grimaces harder to mask the worry etched in his brow.

“Emoree Marie Hale, are you with us tonight?” Sadie asks the room with a small sniff and a clench of her fist against her knee.

I strain for any sign of her, be it a tap against the windowsill or a jerk of the planchette.

I’ll take anything, anything at all, but nothing comes.

“Maybe you ought to try, Violet. You were her best friend.”

I nod even though all the moisture has wicked from my mouth and my stomach tightens with a nervous bout of energy. I can do this. “Emoree,” I say, and my voice might be small, but I desperately hope it carries to wherever she is, “can you hear us?”

This time it’s instant. All at once, I feel my finger moving upward. Yes.

“Oh my God, it’s working,” Ash whispers with a shocked laugh. “Quick, ask her where Percy is.”

“Shhh, I’ll get there,” I snap back, and my voice isn’t the only thing that’s trembling. My finger feels clammy against the planchette, my whole hand cold and slick with sweat. “Em, I’ve missed you so much. I should’ve been there for you, and…and I wasn’t, and I’m so sorry for that.”

“Emoree, side note, you still owe me five dollars,” Tripp chimes in, and as if I’m not the only one irritated by him, the flames suddenly run sideways in a sharp burst. “Sorry, fine, you can keep it, Em. Hit me back in the afterlife.”

“I’m here to fix things,” I start again. “You wanted me to find Percy, and now I need your help to do that. Can you please tell us if he’s still on campus?”

Yes.

I wet my lips. Okay, good, we’re making progress here. “Can you tell us if he’s alive?”

Everyone goes dead silent at that, the group of us holding our breath at once as if the first to exhale will break this spell we’re in. I wait for her to guide our hands toward a damning yes or no answer, but the planchette gravitates down to the alphabet beneath.

I…n…b…e…t…w…e…e…n

There’s a flurry of shock around the room—Birdie gasps; Tripp pretends to scoff.

Calvin continues staring down at the board incredulously.

“Could we try that one again?” he asks, his face ashen. “Preferably without speaking in riddles, Emoree?”

The planchette doesn’t budge. No further elaboration comes, and after a second and third time asking, I worry it never will. Shifting angles, I switch my question. “Okay, fine, new question. You said he’s on campus. Where?”

Finally we move again, but if I was expecting a coherent answer, I’m sorely disappointed the moment I piece together the words.

D…o…w…n…t…h…e…r…a…b…b…i…t…h…o…l…e

“This isn’t making sense,” Tripp bemoans under his breath. “I swear she’s just messing with us now. Some sort of ghost prank.”

If I didn’t know Em as well as I do, I could see myself siding with him at this moment. But I do know her, which is why I know there’s no way under the sun that this is some paranormal prank. “Please, Em, is there really nothing else you can tell us?”

The planchette doesn’t move, but the room around us does. With a flutter of a white sheet and a plume of dust, a flurry of sudden wind unearths an Edwardian writing desk waiting in the dark.

“I…think she wants me to go look,” I whisper, and I’m aware I sound half-dazed, but this all feels like a strange waking dream.

“We’ve scoured this entire room before. What evidence could you possibly find?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know, but it has to be a sign, right?”

The desk before me is solid rosewood, a genuine antique with delicate brass knobs, frieze-carved shelves, and glass inkwells. In an age before iPhones and safe-deposit boxes, there were false bottoms in desk drawers and secret compartments tucked away.

With the drawers already swung out, I move under the desktop itself and prod at the decorative panel in the center. It budges, ever so slightly, and from a rap of my knuckle against the wood it sounds promisingly hollow.

That’s all the validation I need to keep going. It takes a good ten minutes of me mapping out the underside of the desk to find a hidden depression in the wood. I’m careful as I locate the wooden spring next and pop the concealed drawer out.

A leather-bound book sits inside with a single piece of paper resting on top.

Please, Ana,

Let this end.

—Helen

Sadie’s at my side in a heartbeat. “What is it?”

“Give me a second, that’s what I’m trying to figure out,” I gripe as I turn it over in my hands. It’s a deep russet red with intricate gold tooling and a curiously shaped padlock. “It’s locked.”

Not only that, but someone’s unsuccessfully tried to rip it open. It’s clear from the significant wear and tear on the leather and the divots that someone took a screwdriver to the lock. Multiple attempts, but even more obvious than that, multiple failures. The journal stays locked.

“I’ve never seen a lock like that,” Calvin intones over my shoulder. “It almost looks like a heart.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” I ask as a glint of silver metal flashes in my peripheral.

My broken-heart necklace hangs from my throat, the pendant a perfect match to the broken-heart-shaped indent of the lock.

I feel like “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” too big, too small, just right .

With a wrench of my wrist, I place the heart in the lock, and smother a tiny gasp as the gears click to life and the front page opens.

“It’s a book of curses.”

“What?” Sadie is at my side in a second, but not before I get a better look at the first page.

The paper itself is yellowed and blotted with stray flecks of ink, the text written in a cipher and punctuated with curious sigils and eerie runes.

There’s a lot of stuff that could be running around in my head as I hold a literal magic grimoire in my hands, but all I can focus on is the faded sticker stuck between the ripped pages.

Not just any sticker; it’s one of the holographic hearts that Em would paste on her fingernails every week.

They came in a cheap pack from Amazon, and they’d peel off constantly; I’ve lost count of all the times I found one of them in my backpack or on the floor, curled up on itself like a dead spider.

She left them behind like her own personal breadcrumb trail.

And now there’s one in Anastasia’s old curse book.

“Guys, I think Em and Percy beat us to it…and they ripped out the first page.”