Page 62 of House of Hearts
“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,almosta 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.
19
I’m surrounded by the dead.
Shadows wade in and out of focus all around me, their spectral forms born from thin air. Anastasia is the first to float along the lawn, her bare feet bent at an impossible angle and her toes barely grazing the ground. She stares at me like an owl, eyes a wide, milk-foam white. There and gone before Oleander replaces her.
He strides purposefully my way, his figure aging as he walks. Over several steps, he transforms from young student to graying Headmaster. His expression is the one constant: a grim determination thinning his lips and a haughty lift of his chin in the air.
I’m frozen in place as his astral form breezesthroughme. I flinch with the icy gust of a spirit cutting through mine, and it’s enough to send me running. As soon as I find my strength, I’m sprinting through the academy’s open-air corridors, outrunning the hearts in the cafeteria and the ghouls waiting for me around every corner.Was Calvin right? Is there really no hope here? Am I doomed like Emoree was, fretting over an unsolvable problem?
I’m no closer to figuring any of these questions out as I slide down the stone siding of the Winthrop Music Hall to catch my breath. I cranemy neck around the side of the building and search my surroundings for students and spirits alike.
Satisfied that I’m well and truly alone, I sacrifice my scarf and use it to staunch the bleeding on my palm. Then I whip out my phone and scroll to Mom in my contacts list. Her smile in her profile picture might be weathered from a lifetime of labor and lost love, but despite it all, her eyes remain childishly hopeful for the future. I wish I had her optimism.
I wage war with the part of me that would throw away my phone and go back to hyperventilating on the ground. In the end, the sliver of me that misses my mom wins out, and I cradle the phone to my ear. I’m prepared to give up on the fifth ring when her voice crinkles through the speakers.
“Honey? What’s up, is everything okay?” She might be miles away from me, but with her voice in my ear, I can easily pretend the two of us are together on the couch.
I do my best not to sniffle. “Yeah, everything is fine. I just miss you, Mom.”
“Aww, I’ve missed you too, honey,” she hums softly on the other end. It’s such a strange feeling to be the broken one.
“How are things at home?” I ask, and I wonder whether she’s eaten today. Whether the fridge is stocked and the bills are paid. I worry if she’s back at her typical dating haunts, plucking terrible men out of obscurity and shoving them in the hole in her heart.
“G-good, things are good,” she mumbles absently, her mind clearly elsewhere. I listen to the groan of creaking wood and the telling squeal of cabinets. She’s pacing in circles, yanking out drawers and rummaging frantically inside.
“Are you looking for your keys again?” I guess, and the familiarity of it all is strangely soothing.
The noise stops all at once, overtaken by a trill of shocked laughter. “I swear you’re psychic.”
“Psychics don’t exist,” I say before remembering I’m literallycursedby aghost,so God only knows at this point. “If they’re not in between the couch cushions, they’re on your bedside table. If they’re not on the bedside table, there’s a decent chance you left them in the fridge.”
Hell, maybe I am psychic. I’m in a whole other state, and I can still picture the moment Mom storms over to the kitchen, swings open the freezer door to rummage around in the frozen peas, the smothered gasp when she brushes against cold metal, and the jangle of her lanyard as she pulls it out.
“That’s my girl,” she marvels, but the tail end of her voice is lost to static. The sound stretches out longer than it should, devolving to the shrill pitch of a whistle.
“Did you hear that?” I ask, wincing as I put distance between my phone and myself.
“Hear what, hun?” she asks, but the words are warped and underwater.
“My phone’s acting up,” I explain, but there’s aknowingdeep in my bones that tells me otherwise.
“Violet.” Mom’s voice is more than distorted. It’s wrong. I sense it down to my marrow, feel it running in the currents of my veins. This isn’t my mother. “It’s all in your head.”
I’m surprised I can speak at all. “It isn’t,” I manage to say, but the words tremble on their way out.
“It’s all in your head.” The voice flows from the receiver, spillingalong my shoulders like a shawl of morning mist. “Or maybe it’s not your head; maybe it’s your heart.”
I hitch in a staggering breath, and there’s no mistaking what this is about now.
“Don’t worry, you won’t have it for much longer,” the voice says, and that’sit.
I throw my phone against the wall and let the screen shatter into a million horrible pieces. It doesn’t matter; the static continues to erupt from broken speakers, humming in my ears like a biblical swarm of locusts. I abandon my phone there on the ground, my mother’s face cracked and distorted, the screen splintered where her eyes should be.
I don’t even have a moment to catch my breath before I see Oliver and Birdie around the corner. If I had any question about whether I was still cursed, all I have to do is watch as they storm across the open lawn, chattering hurriedly to themselves until they make it to the woman waiting for them.
