Page 34 of Written in the Stars
“It’s not what?” Her nose tingled as she staved off another sneeze.
“A hardship. Liking you... pretending... this—” Darcy sighed heavily. “You took me by surprise, okay?”
Suddenly there was a hand on the bare skin of Elle’s thigh where the hem of her skirt met her leg. Elle’s breath caught and a sharp gasp escaped Darcy’s lips, no doubt realizing what she was touching,whereshe was touching. Only, Darcy didn’t immediately move her hand. Instead her fingers twitched and Elle heard her swallow in the darkness, her breath quickening. Elle held so still she nearly shook as Darcy’s touch lingered, frozen, before Darcy finally yanked her hand away as if she’d been burned. If the rest of Elle’s body was as scorching as her face, it was no wonder.
Surprise was right. If it hadn’t been for Darcy’s muttered, “Fuck,” Elle might’ve wondered if she’d imagined the whole thing.
“Hey, keep it PG under there,” Brendon joked, making Darcy groan.
Elle shook off the shock and snickered, though her pulse still raced, her skin tingling where Darcy had touched. “Nothing about me is PG, Brendon.”
Brendon laughed. “Not trying to ruin the mood, but we’re down to fifty minutes.”
Elle changed trajectory, tracing her fingers along the bottom of the table above her head. Her thumb raked over a rough notch, an inconsistency in the wood.
“I found something.” Elle scrambled out from under the table and blinked, eyesight adjusting. She whipped back the tablecloth as a neon-red-faced Darcy straightened, brushing invisible dust from her knees. Their eyes met and Darcy’s lips turned up at the corners, making Elle’s pulse leap.
Pressing that lever had ejected a secret compartment from the side of the table. Nestled inside was a ring of skeleton keys and beside them, an old deck of cards, weathered with fraying edges. Not just any deck of cards. A deck oftarotcards.
Brendon pumped a fist in the air. “Hell yes. We’re rocking this.”
Ever the realist, Darcy’s gaze locked on the timer. “What now?”
“We could try the keys?” Cherry suggested.
Brendon shook his head, grimacing softly. “We don’t know which door is right.”
And there were half a dozen keys, each marked with a different number.Eight, twenty-six, thirty-four, forty-two, fifty-five, ninety.
Elle flipped through the deck. There was nothing special about it. All the Major and Minor Arcana were present.
“Um, I think I found something.”
Across the room, Cherry had lifted a corner of the rug with the toe of her pump, revealing a series of symbols written on the stone floor in ominous red paint.
Brendon cocked his head. “Are those hieroglyphs?”
Elle bounced on her toes. It was like she was inIndiana Jones, or better yet,The Mummy. This wastoocool.
“Okay, so we’ve got a code to crack.” Darcy set her hands on her hips, a furrow forming between her brows as her gaze darted between the hieroglyphs and the timer.
Cherry stuck her hand in her purse and pulled out her phone. “Can’t we google it?”
“No!” Darcy and Brendon shouted in tandem.
Darcy glared. “That’s cheating. We’re going to win this and we’re going to do it fair and square.”
Brendon nodded. “There’s got to be a codex somewhere. Do you see any of these symbols on those cards?”
Acodex. Elle covered her mouth, concealing her smile. Brendon and Darcy took this shit seriously and Elle loved that they did. An image of Darcy with a wide-brimmed, high-crowned fedora, a leather jacket, and a whip flitted through Elle’s head.
“Elle?” Brendon stared at her expectantly.
What? Oh.Right. Elle shuffled through the deck. No dice. “Nope.”
Darcy cracked her knuckles. “Check every surface. We’re down to forty-five minutes.”
Twenty minutes later, every chair had been overturned, the tablecloth examined, and the rug lifted and flipped. Darcy ran her fingers through her hair, tugging at the roots. “God. This is bullshit.”
