Page 69 of House of Hearts
“She fell.”
The scene plays out in my mind. A million little clues finally pieced together into a fairy-tale tragedy—Emoree waiting in Helen’s old room, alone and terrified for Percy. Searching the maze for a glimpse of him, chest pressed too close to the railing, the wind swirling.
It’s so easy to imagine how the maze might’ve played tricks on her even from afar. She could’ve seen the silhouette of a woman. Maybe Em saw Ana follow Percy into the mausoleum, or maybe Anastasia simply stood there, staring up at the tower, beckoning for Emoree to lean in and look closer.
And Em did just that. She strained over the railing, the perch under her feet slippery from a rain-heavy winter. A sharp wind and a fall.
Emoree Hale sat on a wall,
Emoree Hale had a great fall.
Six seconds.
And then nothing—nothing at all.
“If she’s dead…” he attempts to say, the words a choked cry. He looks nauseous at the very idea, and it takes him two tries to even finish his thought. He rubs his eyes like this is all some lucid dream he can shake off. If only it was that easy. “If she’s dead and you’re here, in this world, then that means the curse has extended to you and…Calvin?”
I nod, and even the sound of Calvin’s name in the air is enough for me to crumple in on myself. A nervous half giggle gurgles up his throat, echoing the delirium I feel.
“Well, shit,” he says, and it’s such a heart-wrenchingly normal thing to say that I almost forget where we are. We could be two friends sitting in the school courtyard for lunch, swapping poor test grades and shrugging it off with a muttered curse.
“Yeah, ‘well, shit,’ ” I repeat.
Percy’s expression sobers up, and he looks achingly broken.
“This has gone on for too long,” he snarls to himself, and it’s not difficult to match his anger. Thinking of Calvin alone out there in the maze, bloodied and stripped of any free will, makes me want to punch a hole in the wall.
“How many hearts do you think she’s stolen?” I ask even though I’m not sure I want to know the answer.
“Too many,” Percy says, wiping the beginnings of tears with the back of his hand. “It needs to end. I won’t let Emoree die in vain. I won’t let Calvin get roped any further into this mess. We have to end it.”
“How?” I ask, looking around us at the mausoleum. Nothing aboutit seems like it’s equipped for curse breaking. There’s nothing but sterile white walls and…the hole he dug. “Wait a minute. We could lure her in here, couldn’t we?” I whisper in a daze.
With the door stuck behind him, Percy had been trapped inside Ana’s mausoleum and had resorted to trying to dig his way out. Is it possible to trap her now while she’s corporeal?
Percy throws a disparaging look back in the direction of the hole, but nods. “You might be onto something there. We can have her—or, my brother I guess—chase us into the mausoleum. If we could somehow get them to fall into the hole, it’ll buy us time to trap her and work up a counterspell. We’ll need to cover it, though, so she doesn’t see what’s directly under her until it’s too late.”
“Not sure with what,” I say, scanning around for a convenient camouflage tarp. Unfortunately for me, the maze is fresh out. It’s just hedges and dirt and more dirt. “There’s nothing here.”
He considers that, and I watch him do the same miserable sweep of our surroundings. Finally, his gaze lands on my shoulders and he nods in my direction. “Your blazer should do.”
With as many falls and tumbles as I’ve taken today, my blazer very nearly matches the raw floor in color. I shrug it off my shoulders and do just as he said, covering the hole and staking my sleeves on either end with two thorned branches. “All that’s left now is the bait.”
I throw an anxious glance to the distance to make sure we’re still alone. We seem to be for now, but I don’t trust Anastasia not to come barreling out of nowhere. I smother the naive rush of hope in my chest at this plan. I’m not foolish enough to think we’ll escape alive, but I know I’ll go down swinging.
“It’s risky taunting her out in the maze,” I say, weighing our odds.“There’s a chance she could draw us away and lead us deeper into her labyrinth.”
Percy tightens his fists and steps away from the trap. “That’s why I’ll be the one to bait her. No use riskingbothof us.”
I scoff. “Over my dead body.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.”
I narrow my eyes into slits. “There’s no way I’m letting you face her alone.” I lift my chin defiantly and take a step forward until my finger wedges against his chest. “I wasn’t there for Emoree when she needed me most, and I refuse to make the same mistake again.” I gulp and wet my parched lips. “We’ll go together, and when this is over, we’ll find a way to free Calvin.”
He smiles somberly. “I can see why you’re his true love. You two complement each other well. Okay. We’ll both do it then. If she gets too close to one of us, the other will need to shout out to distract her.”
He offers me a hand, and we shake on it.
