Page 65 of House of Hearts
I couldn’t fight against his embrace, had no hope to break free as he kissed me. With each kiss, he breathed me in deeper and stole the air right out of my lungs. I gasped for it, my skin a strangled lilac blue, but he didn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop until I felt myself go cold. It was then that he began to dig an earthen plot in the soil. The exact dimensions to bury me.
“I’ve planted every seed in this garden,” he whispered, his hand coming to rest on my cheek. “And you, my dear, will be the prettiest flower of them all.”
—Anastasia Hart
20
“Intuition” isn’t a Magic 8 Ball squished between my ribs or an old lady fortune teller whispering prophecies in my ear. There’s science behind the mysticism, a subconscious survival instinct built upon a series of somatic markers. And what it’s telling me now is that even beyond the obvious curse, something is terribly wrong.
I notice that wrongness immediately after recovering from my fall. The rough landing tears my tights, ripping the black fabric at my knees and exposing the bruised skin beneath. I hiss at the impact and smear the cuts clean with the sleeve of my blazer. After the last twenty-four hours, I’m sure my body is a Rorschach inkblot of bruises beneath my clothes. I don’t have time to check, though, because the instant I sit up, I take stock of the bizarre world around me.
The hedges are the same, but there’s a dizzy lurch in my gut and a strangeness sticking to everything I see. It begins with an otherworldly ripple of the grass and continues with the gate behind me, padlocks clattering a discordant melody against the bars before everything goes silent. I look up, and even the sky is wrong. The sunset is long gone, stars flickering like stop-motion animation, constellations rippling past in a blur. And then it’s sunrise, the sun a bloody cough against the white fringed dawn.
This can’t be happening.
Except it totally is, and I have no choice but to grip the ever-changing gate behind me to keep my wobbly legs upright. My body rebels against all of it—the changing sky and the world slipping between my fingers. I make the mistake of looking back out through the bars and immediately want to throw up.
It’s my high school, but it isn’t. It’s stripped down from a century’s worth of modernization, the streetlamps replaced with old-fashioned gas lamps; the flag banners winked out of existence. Second by second, the campus molts beyond my recognition. Buildings broken down and remade, the tower yet to be built.
It all gives way to a vast stretch of nothing and no one. Thick fog rolls in from the left and blankets the campus in gray. I narrow my eyes and squint into the gloom. The fog swallows what’s left of the campus until there’s no world beyond the maze, no north or south or east or west. Only here.
Here stretches on forever. It’s like being trapped within a cloud, a shapeless blur until images lift from the mist, appearing before me like memories playing out on a vintage projector. Two strangers meander down a beaten path beyond the maze, their bodies corporeal and yet fuzzy around the edges.
They stroll closer toward me, but neither person acknowledges my presence in the slightest. They’re both swept away in conversation, speaking as if I don’t exist beside them.
“His name is Oleander Lockwell, is it not?” a young woman’s voice pries. “The lover you’re meeting with. He’s a student here.”
My entire body goes tense. For a dead girl, Anastasia Hart is very alive right now at her sister’s side. Rosacea colors the apples of hercheeks, a bright flush of pink against her ivory skin. She’s more than an urban legend. She’s tendons and flesh and bone; a girl my age, alive and breathing and oblivious as to what’s to come.
“What of it?” she sniffs, her wide-eyed stare giving her face an ethereal, Renaissance quality. Her bright red hair is bundled high atop her head, crowned with a series of intricate braids. She’s beautiful, but her shoulders slump, her fingers toying self-consciously with a loose curl.
“Did you know he was engaged once before?” her sister asks. “The girl died.”
Helen couldn’t be any more her opposite. Everything about her is confident, vibrant, electric.
Anastasia wrings her hands helplessly at her side, her mouth thinning into a severe tight line. There’s a tense beat of silence between them, an unspoken challenge flaring hot in her eyes. “Is a man not allowed to experience tragedy?” she asks after a telling moment.
“I never said that, but it’s odd for him to have fled town after and then pursued you, don’t you think?” Helen challenges, her expression a mingled mess of desperation and steadfastness.
“It’s odd for you to concern yourself with him,” Anastasia replies tartly, her eyes darting briefly to mine, but apparently seeing nothing beyond the rustle of greenery. I shiver all the same. “You don’t know him.”
“It’s my duty as your sister—”
“To spoil my happiness?” she snaps, her hands balled tightly and her nostrils flared. “Is that your great familial duty?”
Helen captures her sister’s fists in her own hands. “My duty is to keep you safe, Ana!”
Tearing herself away, Anastasia gestures dramatically at her body, her fingers a flourish from top to bottom. “Do I look harmed? Do I lookas though I might be in any sort of danger? I’m happier than I’ve ever been, and you’d do well to stick your nose elsewhere.”
Helen blows a measured breath between her teeth. “Any other man. Go for anyone else other than him. He’s bad news. I need you to listen to me.”
Ana’s expression teeters beyond rage and sends her into a deep, watery-eyed chasm. She sniffles, and the high planes of her cheeks color further. “Who would you have court me? Christopher McNally? Oh, wait, yes, that’s right, he’s smitten with you. Bernie Hawthorn? Hmm, no, that’s right, he also favored you. It’s easy for you to look for another suitor when you have the whole world vying for your attention.”
Helen balks. “That isn’t what I meant.”
“No, I know what you meant, sister. I finally found my own slice of happiness, and you wish to dash it. So what is it now?”
“He is only with you for your inheritance!”
