Page 60 of House of Hearts
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 andyour 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.
