Page 76 of Us in Ruins
Once, Margot realized suddenly, this hadn’t been underground at all. Her flashlight glanced from memorial to memorial. Beneath her feet, dirt gave way to cobbled streets, matted with deep brown earth, like the ruins were fighting to raise themselves from the dead. Ahead, one of the tombs had been pried open, surely by inquisitive archaeologists searching for answers to an ancient mystery.
Every step forward increased Margot’s pulse until she was certain her heart was going to jettison from her body. Of course, it was in this moment that footsteps echoed down the path behind her.
“Van?” she whispered, but her voice rang out too loudly among the dead.
No one answered, but the footsteps grew louder, closer. Had one of the guards seen her sneak down here? She couldn’t get caught now—not when so much was on the line. Margot spun, looking for something, anything, to shelter behind, just in case.
There was nothing but sealed stone tombs. Except for one.
“Ohmygodohmygodohmygodddddd,” she whispered to herself as she closed her eyes and pressed back into the tomb. Her back crunched against a bone. Her cotton shirt wasn’t nearly enough fabric between her skin and the sharp edge of someone’s scapula.
She extinguished her flashlight, darkness wrapping around her like a burial shroud. Definitely tried not to think about the super dead guy behind her, the fact that the footsteps had only quickened, or what on earth she would do if it wasn’t Van barreling down the hall—or what she’d do if it was. In fact, she tried not to think about anything except counting.
One hundred. Ninety-nine. Ninety-eight.
The catacombs glowed, orange and flickering, like whoever was coming had light burning. Shadows lashed down the hall as they strode nearer. Margot pressed back into the mausoleum.
Ninety-seven. Ninety-six.
A flash of yellow streaked past, taking the lamplight with it. The yellow of her backpack. Enzo. He darted around the corner, sprinting at full speed deeper into the catacombs. Running toward something. Or running away.
Margot launched herself forward, following the amber glow through the otherwise shadowed halls. Enzo couldn’t run forever—sooner or later, he’d reach a dead end. And then she’d corner him, steal back the shards, and never have to listen to his smarmy flirting again.
From the belly of the catacombs before her, there was a groan of effort. Ordinarily, Margot wasn’t one to believe in zombies, but given the sheer amount of mind-boggling magic she’d encountered in the last six days, she couldn’t rule it out entirely. Then, something crashed, and Enzo’s light extinguished.
That was one way to find the trial.
She was too focused on the commotion and not focused enough on the way the catacomb floor sloped down. Margot lost her footing. Her butt hit the ground with a pathetic thunk. Sliding, she careened beneath an archway sewn from skulls, their empty eye sockets watching her tumble.
She landed next to the lantern, its glass cracked. Flashing her light on, she swept the space, the concentrated beam glancing across Enzo’s face. He shielded his eyes with a hand.
“Nice backpack. Where’d you get it?” She’d meant for it to sound snarky, thick with the kind of sass that frequently landed her on house arrest for a week, but it came out shaky. It was hard to sound particularly intimidating after eating dirt.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Pretty much the same thing you are.” She shifted her flashlight beam, and her stomach twisted with fear.
Given the whole inside a catacomb thing, Margot really shouldn’t have been surprised by the skeletons. But it was, like, an egregious number of skeletons. All littered around a semicircle composed of six stone goblets.
At the apex, the nose of a boat jutted out of a rock formation, and sitting on its bow was a limestone statue of an elderly man with drawn, sallow cheeks, cloaked in heavy garments. His fist clenched the rod of a ferryman’s pole.
Margot pushed herself upright only to fumble a few steps backward, blanching. The way the ferryman’s eyes watched her... She knew it wasn’t a trick of the shadows. The shards’ magic was working.
“You need to leave,” Enzo said. Either he hadn’t noticed the giant, potentially evil statue man behind him yet, or he was choosing to ignore it.
“There’s something I need to do first.” Margot’s voice wavered. Who could really blame her?
Enzo stepped forward. “You aren’t getting the shards back, thief.”
Answering for her, the statue slammed his rod against the ground. Enzo’s mouth clamped shut. He dared a look over his shoulder and flinched when he saw who had been eavesdropping.
Margot recognized him then. Charon. Ferryman of the dead. Suki had written her application essay about him. She raked through her memory, trying to think of anything she’d absorbed from Suki’s essay. What had it been called? Charon’s oboe? Charon’s oolong?
As she thought, she pulled her lipstick from her pocket, fidgeting with the lid. Opened, closed. It clicked, again and again.
Enzo ogled her like a circus spectacle. “Lipstick? In a time like this?”
Margot frowned at him and quickly swiped it over her lips to disguise the nervous gesture. “So. Do we... drink from them?” she asked, pointing at the chalices.