Page 34 of House of Hearts

I don’t know what it says about my rapidly deteriorating mental state, but I immediately start laughing. It’s not a little giggle, either. My laughter ricochets off the vaulted ceiling and echoes back like a canned laugh track when I ask, “Melodramatic much?”

He’s not laughing. He’s staring ahead at the altarpiece with grim determination; I imagine if Calvin actually were religious, he might be asking God for the right words to say now. “Anastasia’s going to make me kill you,” he confesses finally.

That’s not the punch line I was expecting. “Don’t even joke about that.”

Dust motes play in ribbons of moonlight overhead, their speckled bodies floating in the night air.

“Do I look like I’m joking?” he asks, and okay, admittedly, he doesn’t. “I didn’t tell you before because I wasn’t completely sure, but I think we’re—”

I cut him off. “Please tell me you’re not going to say what I think you’re going to say.”

He’s horribly, tellingly silent, and I wait for him to utter the words and ruin everything. He doesn’t disappoint. “We’re soulmates,” he whispers, and the truth drapes over everything. It weighs my world down and consumes it.

I brush a thumb across my mouth, the intrinsic fear building in me as I think of the ghosts only I can see and all the little moments avalanching over one another.

“You don’t even know my middle name,” I say like it’s some magical rebuttal, an ace slapped on the table that will end this conversation.

“You’re not in love with me. There’s a million reasons not to be.

I’m cold and unpleasant and, as you saw back at the gazebo, enormously petty.

I’m also broke, and a boy in eighth grade told me I act like a robot and—”

He finally rediscovers his own voice. “Your middle name is Alice, not that it matters.”

Screw my ace.

“Wh-what?” I sputter. “How did you know that?”

Embarrassment colors his cheeks, but he doesn’t let it dissuade him.

“You’re not the super spy you think you are.

When you were playing FBI and scrolling through my Instagram, you accidentally liked one of my photos from two years ago.

I…might’ve looked up your page as well. You’ve got your middle name in your bio.

Aside from that and some old selfies, your page was pretty boring. ”

I don’t have it in me to deny the Instagram-stalking accusations.

“O-okay, fine, you know my middle name, congrats, but that doesn’t magically make you in love with me,” I relent, taking a step backward until I hit the organ keys once more.

I jump as the sound reverberates through the chapel.

“How does Anastasia even know we’re…whatever it is that we are?

I’ve only known you for a short while, and besides, you’re not the oldest child, so it doesn’t count, right? ”

He toys with a signet ring, twisting it anxiously around his finger.

“The curse relies on fate and some cosmic concept far beyond our understanding.” His knuckles bleach white as he balls his hand into a fist. “When Percy cast himself out of play, apparently it switched hands to the next eldest. I’m thirty minutes older than Sadie, so here we are. ”

My voice is too small in my throat. “How long have you known?” He doesn’t answer immediately, so I ask again, slowly, deliberately. “Calvin, how long have you known this?”

He looks anywhere and everywhere other than at me. “Part of me knew the moment I first saw you in the crowd at orientation,” he confesses when his eyes finally catch mine. “I saw you and suddenly the world disappeared and you were the only thing that seemed to exist.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Barking out a dark laugh like the Calvin I know, he asks, “How would I have done that? Should I have gone up to you and said, ‘Hi, nice to meet you, we’re soulmates, and by the way, I’m going to kill you for it’?”

“Okay.” I wince. “Not great.”

“Besides, I thought I was wrong. I wrote it off as a crush on a pretty girl with a sharp tongue.” He swallows; his eyes dip back down to my lips before he remembers himself and shakes the feeling aside.

“I never wanted to fall in love in the first place. I was always going to be the good-for-nothing flirt. The player. The heartbreaker. A far better alternative than carrying on this god-awful curse.”

My breath is ragged, and I hate that he’s right. This is more than a crush. It’s a death sentence. “That’s why you were being so weird this week? You finally admitted to yourself what was happening?”

He nods and worries at his split lip as the wind howls outside. “And now I think it’s for the best if you stay away.”

“You know it’s not that easy. Everywhere I go or turn or look, you’re always there.

” It’s only dawning on me now, but it’s been like this the whole time.

Swiveling around to find his eyes on me in the dining hall, seeing him walking toward my dorm as if entranced, drawing me here now like a fly to a spider’s web.

A wall, trapping me here. “ Wait, that’s why I couldn’t leave campus, isn’t it? It wasn’t Emoree. It was…”

“That damn curse,” he finishes for me. His voice is a strange ripple of contradictions, fear and hate and bone-deep sadness swirling into a monstrous pool inside him. “I tested it myself yesterday. I can’t leave, either. We’re stuck together until everything plays out.”

“By that, you mean we’re stuck until you cut out my heart?” I clarify. My legs go weak beneath me, and I slump onto the organ bench.

“I’m not going to let that happen.” His words lodge in his throat, and he has to avert his eyes to the floor, like the sight of me might drive him mad all over again. “I’m going to tell the others. If everyone in the group knows, they can keep you safe.”

“Has that ever worked?” I ask, and before he can even answer, I continue.

“I don’t want the group to know. Not yet.

They’re going to lock me up in a room and keep me from solving this.

There’s got to be something I’m not seeing here.

A solution that Percy and Em were so close to grasping. I need time to figure it out.”

“There’s nothing to find. We’re screwed,” he seethes, gripping my arms and forcing me to look up at him. “I’m going to go absolutely insane and kill you. What part don’t you get?”

“The part where you want to give up. I can handle myself.”

His nostrils flare at that, his mouth curling into a grimace.

“You’re stubborn,” he corrects, “but you’re not Superwoman, and you’re not going to be able to brainstorm your way out of a knife in your chest and your heart in my hands.

” He continues, “Percy was right to do what he did. It’s a far better alternative.

I think it would be better for everyone if I also… ”

“It didn’t fix anything, though,” I shout. “Em still died.”

“There’s a difference between an accidental fall and being killed by your soulmate because they’re possessed by a poltergeist.”

Now I feel like I might throw up. I’m certainly queasy as I retort, “Does it matter? Dead is dead.”

His jaw slackens at that. “Have you considered that I don’t want to kill you?” he asks, and his eyes are pleading and wet and far more terrified than I ever recall them being.

“You won’t,” I insist, but we both know it’s a lie. “I have time to figure this out.”

He catches the quiver in my voice and rubs his cheek with a frustrated palm. “You can’t even say that like you believe it, Violet. Let’s learn to cut our losses when it’s time, okay? You and I both know all of this was a mistake, and now we’re paying for it.”

I suck in a steadying breath. I can do this. Fixing is what I do. I’m always the one putting my nose to the ground, unscrambling everyone’s problems and coming up with the clear solution.

“Give me two days, okay?” I plead.

“Two days might be too late.”

“Please. You can’t tell the Cards or your mom or anyone.

This has to be a secret,” I insist, and while I don’t elaborate, the rest of my thoughts hang heavy in my mind.

There’s no definitive reason to believe his mother can’t be trusted, but I remember the hard set of her eyes back in the office, the belief that despite the death of her soulmate, her life remained perfect in the end. “Two days. That’s all I’m asking.”

He looks like he might say something more but thinks better of it. “Two days,” he whispers. “You get two days, and I can’t even guarantee that at the rate I’m going.”

“I’ll fix this,” I promise, and the second half of my statement goes unsaid in the air between us. Or I’ll die trying.

It’s not immediately clear when I wake up if last night was real.

All it takes is one horrified look at my neck the next morning to remember.

Beyond the embarrassingly obvious trail along my collarbone, there’s an inexplicable chain of blisters beneath my necklace.

The pendant is hot to the touch, and the skin scabs like an allergic reaction around it.

I tug on the chain, but it doesn’t come off.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I whisper, pawing at the necklace in vain before realizing it’s probably another lovely side effect of the curse I’m under.

That sentence alone is difficult to wrap my mind around, but there’s no denying it.

I might not have a physical timer hanging over my head, but hours count down on the back of my eyelids nonetheless.

Giving up, I slip on a tartan scarf and down some Tylenol for the pain.

“Did you go anywhere last night?” Birdie asks from the depths of her walk-in closet. She’s a ghost of white fabric, her head hidden as she slips on her button-up. “You weren’t there when I woke up.”

Her question from weeks earlier has left an imprint of its own on my mind. Can you promise me you won’t keep things from me again?

I make eye contact with Birdie’s antique Georgian brooch instead of her. She probably thrifted it at an estate sale. It’s a lover’s eye encrusted in pearls and stitched with diamond tears. Immortal and ever watching, just like Anastasia. “Were you going to see anyone?”

“No…I, um, I needed some air,” I say, which isn’t a lie but is most definitely not the full truth, either. I’ll tell her , I rationalize to myself, but not yet.

“And you didn’t stop and talk to anyone while you were out? It felt like you were gone for ages.”

I force out a strained chuckle. “Are you my mom?”

With her intense stare and the brooch she’s sporting, there are three eyes glaring down at me when she says, “No, just a concerned friend.”

My throat bobs. “You don’t have to worry about me, Bird.”

“Somehow I don’t quite believe that.”

Too bad Hieronymus Bosch is long dead; he probably could’ve used my day to draw up another portrait of hell. We’re missing bagpipe-playing demons, but otherwise my schedule is complete with a whole host of horrors beyond comprehension.

It begins with breakfast.

“So, it’s a hard no for my Lockwell article?” Amber asks through a spoonful of oatmeal. Swallowing, she shifts direction and uses her spoon as a pointer at Calvin’s empty seat. “He freaked out for days, and now he’s mysteriously out sick. C’mon.”

Birdie’s gaze cuts sharply to me, but she stays silent as Oliver fields his girlfriend’s questions. “What would you even write in your article?”

Amber’s eyes gleam. “Hypothesis number one: mind control. I saw a hypnotist once with my family in Vegas, and he got a woman onstage to think she was a parrot and—”

“Good thing this isn’t Las Vegas,” he retorts, then: “Also, do you hear him squawking like a bird?”

“I’d have to listen to him longer,” Birdie offers unhelpfully.

They keep talking, but I’m not listening. The conversation bleeds away in the background while I’m distracted by the plate beneath me. I could’ve sworn I put a croissant on it, but that’s not what I see there now. It’s a heart , just like the one I saw back in the maze.

I whip around to see if anyone else looks even remotely horrified, but no one so much as bats an eye. That’s because it’s not real , I remind myself. I prod it experimentally on my tray. It’s meatier than I expected, all muscle and no gelatinous fat.

The room is suddenly sweltering as anxiety flames in my gut.

I grip the handle of my water glass for dear life and try to get a hold of myself.

This is all a product of my imagination.

Some sick illusion making me feel like I’m losing my mind.

I can’t just not eat. I have to find a way to stomach it—

The organ twitches, and suddenly there’s one on every plate. The cafeteria is a rat-king chain of hearts, all of them alive and throbbing. The chorus clatters the silverware, rattling the table beneath its weight.

I squeeze my eyes shut until tears spring up. It’s not real. None of it is real. This is what nightmares are made of, terrors that only your mind can cook up. But what I feel next is very, very real, and I gasp at the flare of pain as glass cuts through my palm.

I didn’t even know I was gripping my cup for dear life until it explodes in a sea of shards on my tray.

I risk opening my eyes, and not only has the world returned to normal, but everyone is staring. Gawking. The appropriate response when someone is actively losing their shit in public and breaking glasses.

“Christ, Violet, are you all right?”

It’s Amber.

I take stock of the scene. The heart is no longer a heart at all but a croissant on my plate, crimson blood reduced to a jam spread along the side.

I cradle my hand to my chest. “I-I’m sorry,” I respond, sounding anything but stable, and to be quite honest, I’m not sure I am stable.

“You’re bleeding .”

“I’m okay, I’m just lightheaded,” I lie, and when I go to stand up, I realize that’s true. My legs buckle beneath me, and I have to grip the table with my good hand to keep from falling.

“You’re most definitely not okay,” Birdie snaps at the same time Amber whispers, “Mind control,” under her breath with ten times more conviction.

I don’t wait to listen as I scramble out of the cafeteria. It’s almost, almost a relief to be out here in the crisp autumn air and away from the deafening chorus in the dining hall. Unfortunately, that lasts all of five minutes before a hot new horror enters the villa.