Page 37 of House of Hearts
“It’s a hexafoil.”
“You told me it was a daisy wheel,” Calvin sputters beneath Oliver’s knee. His voice hitches at the end with another ticklish bout of laughter.
“I told you that because you wouldn’t know what a hexafoil is.”
“Hey.”
“Was I wrong?”
“…No.”
Oliver caps his marker and stands up. What’s left in his wake is a six-petal rosette in the center of Calvin’s ribs. “It’s a form of counter-magic typically found on buildings and doors to ward off evil spirits, but since this curse is affecting the Lockwell bloodline, I thought it might be worth a try.”
“Enough with the hexafoil,” Tripp whines from over on his laptop, which has—to absolutely no one’s surprise—aSaturday Is for the Boyssticker. “I’m doing my own research over here.”
“Speaking of that, whatdoyou actually research?” Birdie walks in and does her best to sidestep a still-wriggling Calvin.
I appraise today’s level of chaos. There are more books at Ash’s side than on all of the ceiling-length bookshelves combined. Beyond that, even the checkered floor has grown more cluttered—emptied backpacks littering the Persian rug and spilling out onto the glossy tile beneath.
“Good question.” Sadie beckons us over to the somewhat-organized center. The table sits in the eye of the storm.
“We like to divide and conquer so that we can cover more ground,” she says, taking a sip of black tea before setting it back in the saucer.The porcelain cup is bloodied by red Chanel lipstick. “Ash, Mallory, and Oliver are in the curse division. Since Ash is a polyglot, he’s studying the linguistic component of spell work. Oliver’s got his whole ‘sacred geometry’ thing going on and is using that to study sigils and runes. Meanwhile, Mal studies the anatomical elements of possession—basically, what happens to the body when a ghost hitches a ride.”
“And, uh…what’s Tripp doing in the corner?”
“Oh, he’s on Reddit.”
I can’t help it. I laugh.
“Hey, man, don’t fucking knock it,” he jeers, pointing at us from behind a crushed can of Monster Energy. “I spent at least five hours in the subreddit trenches yesterday looking up the Grimaldi family curse. You’re looking at someone who knows way too much about Grace Kelly now.”
“What does Grace Kelly have to do with anything?”
“Love curses, dude. The Grimaldi family was cursed to never find happiness in marriage. Bada bing, bada boom, seven hundred years later and the whole family is still going through it.”
I clear my throat. “So, if they have countercurses and Tripp has…Reddit…what does that leave for us?”
Sadie stirs a spoon in her teacup and drags her focus back to us. “I’m studying the founding family and gathering information on Anastasia Hart. You’ll be joining me in that, Violet.” Her eyes slice Birdie’s way. “As for you, you’ll be teaming up with Calvin to investigate the soulmate element, specifically constructing a file on everything we know about Em and Percy as our most recent—and best-known—examples.”
Calvin starts to stand up, but before he can spend the rest of this meeting strutting around shirtless, I pull his blazer from my backpack and shove it against his chest. I draw my hand back immediately afterbecause the last thing I want to do is catch cooties or the plague or whatever the hell he has that makes me unable to look at him for too long.
“And who is looking for Percy in all of this?” I ask in an attempt to shift my thoughts.
Sadie tenses at the name, her knuckles burning white against her thighs. “All of us. We spent all summer searching this godforsaken campus and couldn’t find him. We’ve resorted to doing weekly séances in some of his most frequented locations. If he really is…d-dead, he’d likely want to linger in an area that meant something to him. We’re planning on trying another one here tomorrow.”
My brain balks at the idea of a Hasbro Ouija board, but I have to remind myself that logic’s been thrown out the window. We’re no longer in my domain. “Got it.”
“Now, if you don’t mind, let’s not waste any more time,” Sadie says tartly, her sour attitude a clever disguise for her watering eyes. She beckons me with a stern finger. “Violet, if you’d join me over here.”
I throw one last fleeting look at Birdie before trudging toward my fate. Sadie sits primly in the corner of the room with a collection of old boxes and photos around her. She waits until everyone’s occupied to whisper to me out of earshot. “Can I trust you not to run off again?”
My fists waver against my sides. “That was—”
She shuts me up before I can finish. “I don’t care about your excuses. I care about my brother. Don’t make me repeat myself again. Can I trust you?”
I nod.
She squints like she doesn’t buy it but relents anyway. “Okay, then, let’s get to work.” God only knows how long we spend wading through research in near-total silence. The only times Sadie opens her mouth arewhen she’s sliding something over to show me, and even then it’s mainly her nail doing the talking.
