Page 29 of House of Hearts

I have no reason to hate her, I have no reason to hate him, but hate is all I feel.

More than anything, I hate how these seconds won’t pass. And when they finally do, I hate the dizzy satisfaction spread across her face as she draws back with parted lips and flushed cheeks.

“Satisfied?” Calvin asks the group, and he’s far too casual about this whole ordeal. Of course this would be casual for him.

“All right, moving counterclockwise, Violet, it’s your turn,” the junior announces with a wink. His interest is completely unreciprocated, and yet it still has me pushing back my shoulders, emboldened by the possibility that anyone here might want to kiss me.

Calvin clears his throat. “You don’t have to play the stupid game. We can get out of here.”

I should take his advice. I shouldn’t be ruled by this horrifically petty part inside me. There are a million things I should be doing instead of grabbing this bottle.

“No, it’s okay,” I insist, flashing him a smile I don’t mean. “I’ll play.”

His brows knit, but there’s no time for him to argue. There’s no time for anything as the bottle spins and then slows in front of a lumberjack senior in my study hall. He’s handsome enough in a boy-next-door sort of way.

I think his name is Landon, but it’s the last thing on my mind as I lean in. He wastes no time smashing his lips to mine, and it’s an unwelcome sensation, as unpleasant as a shower gone cold. He’s sloppy, his mouth missing mine and his hands hovering awkwardly in the space behind my back.

His eyes might be squeezed shut, but mine stay open. I tell myself I don’t know what I’m looking for, but that’s not true. I immediately lock eyes with Calvin.

All he does is stare. Stare and stare and stare.

It’s funny how quickly a brain can draw parallels: same blond hair, same wide-set shoulders.

If I squinted, maybe I’d never know the difference, but I’m not squinting.

I’m staring right at him. I’m kissing Landon even as Calvin’s eyes sear hot onto my skin.

Calvin staggers off, his legs trembling like he’s forgotten how to walk when he’d desperately like to run. I can’t think why he’s this upset. Unless he’s so utterly repulsed by the sight that he’s going to go throw up in the bushes.

I don’t know what compels me to follow him, but it has the circle jeering yet again. They laugh at us, smack their lips, but I can’t seem to care.

He doesn’t stop walking until his back is pressed against the wall of the dorms, his hand twisting furiously through his hair. He grinds his teeth together, squeezing his eyes shut like he might block out the memory of what happened if he focuses hard enough.

I try to softly approach, but a leaf crunches underfoot, and he stiffens at the sound of it. He raises his head, expression stricken at the very sight of me. “You shouldn’t have followed me,” he says, words barely making it through his teeth.

“Why not?” I challenge, and his gaze darts to my swollen lips. A brief, infuriated stare.

“I’m sure Landon will miss you,” he barks, and there’s no denying the heat in his tone.

Hold on a minute. The realization hits me hard and fast, my subconscious unscrambling his expression and realizing I made a major miscalculation back at the gazebo.

I test my new theory by leaning in, and surely enough, his breath catches strangely in his throat.

He lets out a horrified little hiccup, but that’s not enough to stop me.

Especially not as his lips part and his gaze goes half-lidded.

That wasn’t disgust I saw in his eyes. It was desire.

“Oh, I get it,” I whisper, my accusation skipping along his skin as I loop my fingers around his neck.

“Get what?” he asks, his voice ragged and his pupils blown wide. He regards me with sick fascination, terrified yet enraptured.

“You’re jealous.”

He shudders at the accusation, and there’s not a casual bone left in his body.

It’s oddly alluring getting under his skin, so much so that I sweep a thumb against his throat.

He gasps, and the bob of his Adam’s apple is far more tantalizing than it should be.

I wait for the stereotypical markers of a first kiss: the tentative brush of lips, the hitch of shared breath as his lips part, the dizzy leap in my stomach.

None of those happen. What does happen is an emotional sucker punch to the gut.

“You think I’m jealous?” he scoffs. Any desire I thought I saw is quickly extinguished.

His features have rearranged themselves in seconds, and the face he wears now is one of pure shock and horror.

“Violet, I’m sorry. Whatever you want from me, I can’t give to you.

Don’t you remember? I’m the worst man on the planet.

An incorrigible flirt. You don’t want this. ”

I’m not wearing face paint, but I’d bet anything my cheeks are a horrible, cartoonish shade of red anyway. “A simple no would have sufficed. Shit, forget it. You’re right. Pretend this didn’t happen.”

He has the gall to look pitying . “I really don’t want to hurt you.”

“You didn’t! I don’t care. Blame it on stress-induced hysteria. A brief lapse in judgment. Whatever.”

He opens his mouth, but I’m spared the “it’s not you, it’s me” monologue by a series of loud cracks in the sky. Fireworks glimmer overhead like a pop of champagne before waterfalling down among the stars. That can only be the signal that Tripp teased. It might be beautiful if things were different.

Right now all I want to do is disappear into the earth. I break away from Calvin, already beelining for the gate. “That’s our cue.”

“Violet—”

“Already walking! Try and keep up!”

It’s a good thing we’re going to a grave site, because this awkward silence might kill me.

I’m trying my hardest not to look at Calvin, or speak to Calvin, or accidentally brush against Calvin, because if I do, I’ll be forced to acknowledge the most mortifying thing I’ve ever done, and I truly can’t handle that right now.

Thankfully, Birdie must pick up on this strange tension, so she mercifully fills the silence. “How did Tripp smuggle fireworks on campus in the first place?”

Sadie trudges forward with a shrug of her shoulders and a swish of her cape. She’s a witch tonight, with a pointed black hat and gnarled black broom. “You can always count on Tripp to know a guy. And if he doesn’t know a guy, he knows a guy who knows a guy . ”

On cue, another firework crackles overhead and casts the hedge walls in neon blue. This sort of thing would be a major write-up for any other student on campus, but I already know Tripp will get let off with a slap on the wrist.

“You make him sound like a glorified mob boss,” I say as I realize we’ve finally made it to the center of the maze. The Lockwell twins know this place like the back of their hand. I almost have to wonder if the route is etched in the family DNA.

“No, he’s just well connected,” she retorts before gesturing at the four mausoleums in front of us.

I stop to read the inscriptions as we pass each tomb.

Calvin flashes a light on each one and briefly brings the words to life.

Dearly Beloved, Departed Too Soon, Rest in Peace.

A whole family alive and dead like sand sifted through your fingertips. “All right, here we are.”

The silence returns. The only noise comes from a bat chirping overhead and the buzz of a fly spun in a spider’s web. We’re alone and yet we’re surrounded, this maze teeming with all sorts of nocturnal horrors. And I have the distinct, horrible feeling that more are yet to come.

“Hypothetically, would you say this counts as grave robbing?” Calvin asks finally.

“By definition of the word, it doesn’t count as grave robbing if we’re not robbing a grave,” I argue, breaking off the silent treatment . “We’re grave peeking, which is ethically questionable, but not as bad.”

“All right, grave peeking. That’s loads better,” he says, sucking his lips into an anxious, tight line before digging the key into the lock. “All right, then, who wants to call dibs on Anastasia’s grave?”

I grit my teeth. No turning back now. “I’ll do it.”

If this were a low-budget horror movie, this would have the whole audience groaning and pelting popcorn at the screen. It’s the kind of self-sacrifice that gets you killed first. “Dead Girl #1” in the credits.

“Violet, are you sure?” Birdie asks.

“Someone’s got to. Let’s split up and get this over with before anyone notices, okay?”

Birdie looks at me like I’m using a Disney FastPass to get to the front of the execution line, but she doesn’t argue, and just like that, I’m alone and staring down the entrance of Anastasia’s tomb.

My imagination has already painted the scene of what I might find inside: a macabre mix of the Parisian catacombs and the royal vault at Windsor Castle.

Surprisingly, the room inside is neither.

The crypt might be cold and uninviting, but it’s not some eighteenth-century hovel constructed out of femur bones.

Similarly, the alabaster chest tomb is beautifully embellished, but the surrounding room is so musty and dank, the royal family would roll over in their graves at the thought of being buried here.

I throw a queasy look at the casket and remind myself that there actually is someone buried here.

She’s not one of the plastic skeletons on display at school, either. This is a real person, and perhaps that’s more terrifying than any ghost or zombie or make-believe monster. Someone who lived and died and was buried here to slowly decompose.

Horrifying mental image aside, there’s nothing all too damning about the tomb from an evidence standpoint. No satanic sigils on the ground or HELP written backward on the wall in blood. It’s a simple marble crypt with a stone floor and a sealed casket in the center and really not much else.

Maybe I misunderstood what Em was trying to tell me. “Down the rabbit hole” could mean literally anything. Or, if Tripp is to be believed, it could mean nothing whatsoever. Another dead lead in an unsolvable case.

I’m about to abort the mission when I feel the prickle of something brushing against my leg. I stumble back in a panic and land my ass on the cold hard ground before seeing it was a centipede.

It’s only as I’m struggling to sit my bruised self up that I feel it .

A pale stone juts out strangely on the floor beneath me, not quite grouted like the rest of the tile.

It wiggles in place beneath my fingers, and that’s all the incentive I need to shimmy the stone free.

Tile by tile, the floor comes apart beneath me, the stones pushing back to reveal a wooden trapdoor.

I take it back. Now we’re in horror-movie territory. No sane individual would open a secret door in a haunted mausoleum, but here I am doing it anyway. I expect to find a lot of horrible things—a portal to the underworld or an Indiana Jones snake pit.

What I don’t expect to find is Percy.