Page 19 of House of Hearts
Even beyond the grave.
7
Emoree.
Emoree!
Her name jolts me back to life. Every little hair lifts on my body. She’s here. She’s really, really here.
I tear myself from the fox boy without a word. Maybe I’m shell shocked or maybe I’ve lost my mind, but either way I don’t stop to ponder the horrific impossibilities of it all. Science be damned, it almost feels normal for her to be here. This is where she’s meant to be, alive and dancing and not rotting six feet deep.
She’s perfectly intact now. Remade and glowing, and I am calling—no, I’m yelling—but she won’t hear me. Why won’t she hear me? Her body floats against the dance floor, bobbing like a buoy in the waves. I wait for someone else to notice her, to gasp or scream or call her name, but the world pays her no mind. Beyond me, she ceases to exist.
I weave gracelessly through the crowd, my shoulders knocking into dancers’ backs and my elbows meeting their ribs. I’m met with huffs and groans andwatch where you’re goings, but I don’t care. None of this matters. She’s all I see, and I chase after her like a girl possessed.I let Emoree lead me farther away from the ballroom and the music that was once beautiful but has since grown shrill.
She’s a stray gust of wind down the corridor, her body so paper thin that she breezes forward without the slightest sound. I’m hypnotized by the arch of her heels and the sway of her tiptoes inches off the floor.
We enter a deserted parlor room, and the candles flicker upon our arrival. Velvet curtains billow down from the ceiling and sensuously frame a matching set of oxblood leather armchairs.
Beyond them, a fireplace sits untouched, the logs blackened behind an iron grate. Oleander Lockwell hangs like an omnipresent god above the mantel. In this painting, the gray strands from Sutherland Hall have won the battle; they dominate his hair and the fringes of his beard. He’s stern-faced and harsh in the low lighting, painted in the violent strokes of a hurried artist who couldn’t get away fast enough.
Emoree doesn’t spare the man a glance. Her attention is reserved for an object on an end table, her finger tracing a careful pattern in the air as she studies it. She breaks away the moment I get close, and I can’t help it, my curiosity gets the best of me. I pick up what turns out to be a wooden labyrinth, a perfect miniature of the hedge maze outside. I brush my thumb across the careful ridges and chart the same path she did, from the clearing in the center to the exit, but I feel no residual warmth in her wake.
I don’t feel any warmth at all.
The body heat in the ballroom is a distant memory. What I’m left with is an icy pocket of strange gust of frigid wind. My breath clouds the late-summer air, and I marvel at the ghost of it leaving my lips. It shouldn’t be this cold in here, but then again, Emoree shouldn’t be here.
Instead of leading me to a cursed spindle, the room gives way to a balcony behind a set of French doors. Her body drifts straight through the glass, rippling like the tail of a flame cutting out.
I welcome the storm as I follow her out into the night. It’s a sobering feeling, the rain pelting me out of a dream and back into the harshness of reality. The first thing I notice is the quiet. Rain striking the ground without a sound, thunder tapering off in the distance, and wind softening to a gentle lull.
The second thing I notice—finally, really notice—is Emoree.
Those pretty locks of hers mat with blood, red seeping from the cracked corners of her skull. She transforms before my very eyes, a grim Cinderella decomposing at midnight. Her ivory skin sallows, and she opens her mouth, the black hollow of her lips like a burial plot in the earth.
“Emoree Hale sat on a wall,
Emoree Hale had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Emoree together again!”
That morbid nursery rhyme is the last thing to leave her lips before she tips over the railing’s edge. I’m aware I’m screaming, scrambling over the side to catch her, but there’s no point.
She dies in front of me, a splatter of bones against the pavement.
No.
No.
No, she didn’t—she couldn’t—none of this could possibly—
Hands. There are hands gripping my waist, fingers digging into my skin. Someone looming over me, their hot breath against the back of my neck. Terror seizes me in a way I’ve never known. I watched Emdie, and now I’m next. Someone is going to throw me over and have my body join hers on the unforgiving earth.They’re going to kill me just like Emoree. They—
“Stop struggling! Damn it, you’re going to make us both fall!”
Wedofall, but not to our deaths. I tumble over the stranger, our bodies splaying out against the balcony floor. Muscles pulse under mine, and I feel the steady thrum of a stranger’s heartbeat traveling through their skin.
