Page 23 of Us in Ruins
When her mom left, she’d packed up only what she could fit into a carry-on suitcase and a tote bag. Everything else had been shoved in the spare bedroom and sat dormant until the paperwork had been finalized. While the ink was still drying, her dad had piled it into the back of the car to take to the donation center—erasing her from their lives like she was a wine stain on a white tablecloth and he had a gallon of bleach.
Relics of the Heart had been the one thing she had stolen out of those boxes. Margot couldn’t let it go.
She knew she should be mad at her mom for leaving. And for a long time, she had been. But Parker Rhodes didn’t have a secret boyfriend or leave to start another family. She’d left for an adventure, a life bigger than anything Dogwood Hollow, Georgia, could have ever offered.
That much, Margot understood.
Now, she shoved Relics of the Heart back into her backpack and slowed to a stop next to Van when the tunnels split. To the right, the stones had dried, and to the left, shadows clung to the curve of the sewers, the waters darker, deeper.
Margot’s gaze darted between them. Creepy tunnel of doom or a nice, light, dry tunnel. She knew which one she chose. “Let’s go this way.”
“Head south until the double palm, and then look below the last column.” Margot recognized the last line of Van’s directions immediately. Matter-of-factly, he added, “This way is south.”
Margot pouted. “Why can’t this way be south?”
Van reached under his shirt for his chained compass. An emblem Margot couldn’t quite see had been engraved on the yellow gold face, and when he flipped it open like a locket, the little white arrow pointed due south. He tapped the glass with his forefinger. “Because it’s not.”
“Well, the vibes are way better over here.” Margot trekked into the dry tunnel, relishing the solid floors beneath her feet.
Van didn’t budge. “The vibes?”
Margot nodded. “You know, like how that way looks cursed, and this way doesn’t.”
“Thankfully, the poles are not beholden to your so-called vibes, and neither am I,” he said before plunging down the darkened corridor.
Swearing under her breath, Margot trailed after him. Here, the darkness was cloying, the smell thicker. Van blurred into an outline ahead of her. Her palms slicked with nerves.
The channel filled, and while Van was only up to his hips, Margot waded through chest-high tides. She hiked her backpack as far up as she could, then hefted it over her head, trying to protect it. “When you found the shards before,” she asked, “how did you do it?”
Van’s response came quick, defensive. “I completed the trials.”
“Sure.” Margot stepped on something squishy but unseen in the murky water—ew. She wouldn’t let herself imagine the myriad wretched things it might have been. “But I mean, no one else had ever done it. How did you even know where to look?”
He turned right, and Margot followed on his heels. She could tell in the way the corner of his mouth lifted and sank again that he was measuring how much to trust her with. Van Keane probably never did anything without thinking it through from six different directions.
“It’s like the old myths—the gods needed everything to be proven. So, heroes were given tasks.” He zapped the magic straight out of it with his cold analysis. Margot found it hard to believe that somebody this gruff, this unyielding, had managed to outwit the goddess of love. “They were instructions, and I followed them.”
“Are they dangerous?” Margot asked.
Van rolled his eyes. “If I say yes, will you give up and leave me alone?”
“No,” Margot said with a shrug.
He sighed, a whole-body movement that came with the sloshing sound of the water all around his waist. “They are dangerous, but I’m not the type to be able to afford to walk away from a fight.”
“There’s a reward for finding all of the shards, right?” Margot asked as they trudged farther into the shadows. The waterline receded as they turned another corner, stepping back onto dry ground. “Did you... get it?”
Her real question went unsaid: Why didn’t it work? Because obviously it didn’t work. He’d been hocus pocused into a statue, the Vase had disappeared, and Van was only about as likable as escargot. Hardly eternally beloved. Maybe he was simply too callous for Venus’s magic to work on him.
Van leaned over his shoulder, peering down at her. “You seem to know a lot about the Vase.”
She hurried to say, “I’ve studied it in class, that’s all.”
“I thought you said no one but me had ever seen the shards.” A caustic tang lifted the corners of his words.
Margot swallowed. If she said anything, her feeble attempt at a lie would just make it more obvious she’d stashed a sliver of the shard as far down in her backpack as physically possible. She didn’t trust Van any farther than she could throw him, and she had skipped arm day for the last forever. So, it was her turn for the silent treatment.
“Yes, there’s a reward. There’s an inscription on the Vase, a Latin phrase,” Van said, conceding. “It means that gold awaits whoever pieces the shards back together.”