Page 25 of House of Hearts
Come rip out my heart.”
I clench my fists and say it a second time, then another, each repetition building in my throat. Louder and louder until the third and final chant feels like a Hollywood exorcist expelling a demon.
Nothing happens. Go figure. I square my shoulders in response, but Calvin jerks around like he’s worried the words have already taken root.
“What now?” I ask as he sheathes the knife and puts it back in a satchel across his shoulder.
“Close your eyes and count to thirty. Then you’re on your own,” he answers, like it’s that easy. His words are accompanied by the softening thuds of his footsteps as he abandons me there in the middle of nowhere with my eyes closed.
“One, two, three, four,fivesixseveneightnineten—” Screw it, I’m peeking.
He’s gone. The moon swells heavy in the sky above me, partially entombed in a shroud of fog. What little light shines through casts a faint glow on my surroundings. The grass is parched and yellow beneath my feet, and four slabs of cold marble stand behind me on the lawn.The mausoleums, I realize soberly. I stare at the death date of the one directly behind me. The life cuts off at a tragically young sixteen, and I know without looking just who it belongs to.
Anastasia Hart.
Dear Diary,
I struggle to conjure a single second in my existence when my feelings have ever been reciprocated tenfold. I can’t shake the sensation that I have cast this poor, beautiful boy under a spell. There’s the ever-present fear that he might look upon Helen’s face one day and he will be woken from his trance. If that fails to do the trick, he must only have a single conversation with my sister to discover the impossible valley between us. He will be charmed beyond return—if not by her fair looks, then by her sharp wit.
No, I simply can’t let her steal him away from me. I spent all last night into the early hours tossing and turning and thinking of all the ways I might keep him forever. I’ve thought about it in my dreams, every moment while waking, and even pondered it whilst brushing my hair at the vanity.
It’s only this evening that I received the answer I’ve been searching for all along. Perhaps I’m not casting spells yet, but maybe it is high time I learn.
—Anastasia Hart
9
Okay, so now it’s officially a bad horror movie.
But I refuse to be the girl who dies first. Guilt gnaws at my gut as I remember what happened to Emoree, but I don’t have time to dwell on her death. There are only three things that I need to do right now:
get that ridiculous heart they were prattling on about,
find my way out of this maze before the sun rises, and
track down Calvin so he can tell me what the hell is going on.
Having an agenda always helps. I can do this because I have to. I’m not the scared little girl I was at the county fair, trembling within a bunch of cornstalks.
I’ve come a long way since then. Or at least I think I have before I twist around in the dark and see I’m not alone.
“Jesus!” I hiss, my neurons taking way too long to fire between my eyes and my brain. When they’ve finally caught up, I’ve already scrambled an embarrassing foot away from an inanimate object.
It’s not a monster but a marble statue of two sisters. But one of them has been beheaded in a clear act of vandalism. The decapitatedhead smiles upward at the night sky, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that it’s Helen. There might be some legitimacy to the Anastasia story after all. I have no trouble picturing a heartbroken girl lopping off her statue sister’s head in a fit of rage. The only confusing part is why the family never restored it.
Despite one of them being clearly mutilated, the girls continue to hold hands. They’re identically portrayed, from their ringlet curls to their matching lockets.
