Page 70 of House of Hearts
“Time to put an end to this once and for all.”
Actively taunting a monster in her own domain has got to be a new low for me. What felt like only thirty minutes ago, I was chucking my shoe and trying to stab her just to get away. Now I’m here, missing a shoe, missing a weapon, ready to whistle through my fingers like she’s my long-lost dog.
Percy gives me an encouraging nod as we reenter the maze. The plan is to not go very far. We can’t risk getting completely lost, but we need to get far enough to entice her. I tremble with every step and whip around like she might jump out in Calvin’s skin and yell “boo!” Or worse, given her track record.
With the opening to the center clearing just visible behind us,Percy stops in his tracks. I know it’s time before he even signals with a silent lift of his hand. Ready or not, here we come.
“Anastasia!” I cry, and the world seems to ripple with the name. Percy winces at the sound but gives me a reassuring nod. Somewhere in the maze I know she must hear me. She’s been listening and waiting and now, finally, is her chance to strike.
Every little neuron in my brain is firing with “bad idea.” I scream her name in the wind again at the top of my lungs, “ANASTASIA HART!”
Percy follows suit so we’re both shouting. It feels bizarrely like being at a sleepover and chanting “Bloody Mary” three times in the mirror for the hell of it and then being surprised when she actually shows up covered in blood and drags you kicking and screaming into the glass.
But in the beginning, wasn’t Bloody Mary someone, too? A woman before she became a monster? Em’s words echo hauntingly in my mind.Ghosts don’t appear for no reason! Something really bad has to happen to bring them back.
It’s not long before I hear the rustle of a branch and the hiss of someone’s breath, which is more than enough to shut us both up. We stop to listen, and there’s a shuffle of footsteps against soil. She’s coming. And she’ll bring Calvin’s body with her. She’ll use his hands to press into my throat and his nails to dig through my chest and tear out my heart.
I can’t help the lick of fear, the worry that we’ve made a mistake and that nothing we’ve planned will work, but there’s no turning back now. The only way out is through, so we need to be ready to see this to the bitter end. And that bitter end is rounding the corner now, a flash of bloodied hair sending my heartbeat into overdrive. She’s found us. Here goes nothing.
Percy and I ditch screaming in favor of spinning on our heels and running like hell. My chest burns with the effort, and I’m sucking in noisy gulps of air like a fish on dry land. I taste blood on the back of my tongue, the overexertion breaking me out in a white-hot heat.
I can hear Calvin sprinting behind me, his body made unnaturally fast by Anastasia’s influence. He’s quicker than he should be, and much too close for comfort behind me.
It’d be a mistake to peek back and see his clouded eyes and the screaming maw of the spirit latched to his back. You don’t look down when you’re teetering precariously on a tightrope, and yet here I am, doing just that. She’s hard to look away from. Her humanity has been stolen, and she’s made hideous by hate. Her mouth is contorted in a howl, and there’s something gangly and unnatural about the way she looms over him, an overall wrongness to the arch of her spine and the wild fury of her hair. Not like the lovesick girl I saw earlier.
We’re not far now. We’ve entered the clearing and the trap is so close, all we have to do is make it into the mausoleum, one of us leaping over the makeshift tarp and trapping her six feet under and—
Percy trips.
I process it in slow motion, the sharp twist of his ankle as he snags it on a loose root. The horror slashed across his face and the fall. He hits the ground hard, and with the cry that slips from his throat, I know he can’t run again. The most he can hope for is to crawl, but he’s nowhere near as fast as Anastasia. She gains on him in seconds. There’s a scream as she uses Calvin’s body to pin his brother down, and I feel like I might be sick.
I don’t have time to waste here. His fall has him splayed out on the ground, his palms skinned and his fingers grappling helplessly for anecklace that’s been thrown out of reach. It lands at my feet, and it’s only as I lift it up to my face that I realize it’s a near identical match to my own.
These damn necklaces. I feel my own in my pocket; I didn’t realize Percy had the other one.This must be Helen’s.The thought flickers in the forefront of my mind. For the second time today, I wonder why the hell these sisters couldn’t have just talked it out.
“Anastasia! Over here!ANASTASIA!”
I yell at the top of my lungs, but unfortunately no amount of yelling is enough to distract from Percy’s own screams. She’ll kill anyone in her way to get to what she really wants: me. I’ve got to do something else and I’ve got to do it fast, otherwise I can kiss the plan and Percy’slifegoodbye.
My opportunity arrives with the glint of a blade still lodged in Calvin’s leg. I catch a glimpse of it as Percy writhes and thrashes in an attempt to break free, and the sight propels me forward. There’s no time to think as I race onto the scene and use Calvin’s distraction as an opportunity to unsheathe the dagger from his calf.
With a wounded howl, he breaks away, leaving a limp Percy in the grass. Now it’s me he’s after, and I stagger back with both the lockets clenched in one hand and the knife in the other. I don’t have a second to process what I’ve done. I run on pure feral instinct, and Anastasia’s right behind me the entire time, lunging Calvin’s body forward in large strides.
It’ll be a cold day in hell before I pause for air. It doesn’t matter that all my muscles are actively screaming at me and my lungs have shriveled up in my chest.
I push myself to go faster and repeat my desperate mantra in my head:Thishasto work.It has to work because I can’t accept thealternative where we die here and the curse continues.
I rush up the steps of the mausoleum, the finish line in sight, and leap over my blazer. Calvin is too busy barreling forward to notice. I turn just in time to see him plummet with a shocked scream, thank God, Anastasia’s eyes wide as her hands reach for air, but I can’t celebrate for long. Not when nails dig into my ankle and he pulls me down with her. Both of us fall helplessly into the rabbit hole.
If this were a fairy tale, we’d tumble down for an eternity. The grave would portal us to an upside-down world where nothing would be as it seemed. But since it’s reality—some strange version of it at least—we crash hopelessly to the ground. The earthen walls surround us, clods of dirt showering me. I was already having a horrible time trying to breathe aboveground, but all the air has since knocked right out of my lungs. I fight the urge to hyperventilate, but my mind’s been shaken up and stirred past the point of staying calm. Is this how Em felt when we buried her? Darkness all around, the earth pressing in too tight, wet soil wedged beneath her nails and on her tongue and the fear that this isit?
Staring up, I see Ana’s spirit swirling above me just like she did in my strange waking dream. The girl from the shower. That was her. I remember lying in bed, the steady drip drip drip of blood trickling from her chest. The knife plunging through her ribs and the thin slanted cursive on the hilt.
Wait a minute.
I let the knife fall to my side. I can’t use it. Not only because it will hurt the boy I’ve come to love, but because Anastasia doesn’t deserve that either.
Especially not when she’s been murdered once already.
