Chapter 12

Pompeii disappeared in the rearview mirror. As she drove, Margot tried to focus on the road’s dotted lines and not the way Van’s knees banged against the dashboard, entirely too big for a car this small.

Yesterday, he’d been a boy she only knew in her daydreams. She could hardly reconcile the grumpy version in the passenger seat with the soft-hearted author of the journal he cradled in his lap.

He gingerly thumbed through the pages—the water had warped it, the paper all clumped together and dried that way, brittle and deformed. “Almost there. Left, I think.”

“You think?” Margot asked as she twisted the volume knob down on the radio.

How far were they going to go? All the city lights had faded into a glow on the horizon. Ahead were miles of coastline in a desolate patch between Herculaneum and Pompeii, a volcanic wasteland that hadn’t recovered. Van’s directions sent them onto a gravel path riddled with potholes that rattled the car more with every mile they ventured off the main road.

Margot finally shifted into park, half-hidden beneath the canopy of a tree with gnarled roots. “Here? You’re telling me Venus hid the shard in the middle of a field? And whatever that big blobby thing is?”

“It used to be an olive grove.” Van stepped out of the car, and his shoes scuffed the hardened earth, kicking up dirt—or maybe ash. “And that blobby thing is the House of Olea. Home to some of this region’s wealthiest merchants, allegedly blessed by Venus herself. Their oil was used in rituals in her temple, so they say she granted them favor, and provided them with bountiful harvests and ensured all of their daughters would be happily married. If you believe that kind of thing.”

“Which you don’t,” Margot said.

“Not particularly.” He started toward the building without any further instruction. “Keep up, kid. Wouldn’t want anyone to think you’re slowing me down.”

Margot wrinkled her nose but rushed to keep his breakneck pace. “Why don’t you?”

“Don’t I what?”

“Believe in magic or happily ever afters?” Margot kept her eyes trained forward, afraid of what her face would convey without her permission.

“A guy like me doesn’t believe in magic. It’s impractical.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

Van peered down his nose at her. “I’m not here for fun.”

They halted in front of a string of caution tape. Well, technically attenzione tape. She might not be fluent in Italian, but the context clues were pretty obvious here. Whatever this place was, it had been off-limits for a long time.

“The House of Olea.” Van bent beneath the barrier. “It was still an active dig site last time I was here.”

House was a loose term. It was practically an outlet mall, with different wings fanning out from a central hub.

“Why would they just . . . stop excavating?” Margot followed him inside.

The structure jutted out of the earth, towering ten, maybe twelve, feet high. The roof had seen better days—patches of it gaped open, the clay shingles discarded in the dirt. In its heyday, it must have been a sight to behold. Even now, it left her breathless.

Although that might have been her dust allergy.

Van turned the corner, guiding them into a corridor with as many twists as turns. Here, the walls met at odd angles, creating sharp corners and unexpected crossroads. The deeper they dared, the darker the ruins grew as a cloud blotted out the silver moon. Black soot stained the walls, a reminder of the wrath of Vesuvius.

Something ivory slid beneath Margot’s foot, and she fumbled forward. Her goat-cheese pizza curdled in her stomach when she recognized it—a bone. Definitely human. Big enough to be a tibia, maybe a fibula? She hadn’t taken an anatomy class yet, but she didn’t need a PhD to know it once belonged to someone a lot like her.

“Why’d they stop?” Van kicked the bone out of the way, over toward the rest of the skeleton it must have belonged to. “Whoever was in here last either got what they came for or realized they never would.”

Margot gulped. Not exactly the vote of confidence she’d hoped for. “Do you think the shard’s still here?”

Van plunged into the halls. “Only one way to find out.”

The way the walls wove together, it was hard to tell left from right in the beam from Van’s borrowed flashlight. Margot couldn’t pinpoint a surefire way through—and besides, through to what?

“Whose trial is this?” she asked as they strode down the abandoned corridors.

“Aura,” Van answered. “The guardian of air.”

“I’m not sure I’d describe this house as airy,” Margot said. “Hadn’t they ever heard of an open-concept floor plan?”

The farther they strayed into the house, the closer the walls cinched together. Van’s shoulders brushed on either side ahead, and he shoved his hands in his pockets, making himself as small as possible. Which, admittedly, wasn’t very.

Cobwebs choked the narrow passages, tangling in Margot’s hair. No matter how much she swiped at them, she couldn’t unravel herself. Death by spider silk mummification sounded like a horrible way to go.

A thick one snared her leg, and Margot was pretty sure the spider was still attached.

She groaned. “This place would seriously flunk a home inspection.”

Somewhere in the House of Olea, something slammed into the earth. The impact rattled the ground, and Margot braced against the wall for support. She could feel her heartbeat in her stomach, her throat, her skull, like it was lurching around in her body, trying to fight its way out.

“What do you think that—” Margot started asking, but Van pressed a finger against his mouth, shushing her.

He cupped a hand against his ear. Margot listened, pinching her eyes closed to focus on the sound of . . .

Nothing. The house was still. No rival band of treasure-hunting looters attacking them from behind, no volcanic eruption promising imminent demise, no giant, evil spider building its web in preparation to eat them for dinner.

“I don’t hear anything,” Margot whispered.

“It’s this thing called silence,” Van said. Jaw rigid. “It happens when you quit complaining about everything.”

What a jerk. Margot rolled her eyes. Still, she kept her lips zipped.

They paused at a crossroads. Out of the corner of her eye, Margot saw something lurch in the shadows. Another heavy thunk shook the foundations of the home. Fear speared through her chest but was quickly replaced with a rush of excitement. They must have been getting close.

“Let’s go this way . . .”

But Van had other ideas. He’d vanished around the next corner.

“Are you sure this is the right direction?” she asked, sprinting after him.

A muscle in Van’s jaw twinged. “Yes.”

She glanced over her shoulder, but this time, nothing moved in her periphery. “I thought I saw something back there.”

“Margot, please,” Van said. Tension rippled down his shoulders. “One of us is an expert, and one of us is here on a glorified vacation. Let me lead the way.”

Margot gritted her teeth. Her nails pressed into the softs of her palms. She had to bite her tongue from saying something she regretted—he was her ticket to the rest of the Vase shards. With his journal destroyed, she’d have no idea where to look on her own.

But as soon as she had all five pieces of the Vase in her hand? Then, Van Keane was getting an earful of how she really felt.

Margot lost track of how many turns they took before their path ended abruptly, an unyielding slab of stone cutting them off. Van exhaled, stiff, and Margot miraculously refrained from using a pointed I told you so.

“This way,” he grunted, retracing his steps.

Margot’s irritation bubbled to the surface. She was tired of playing second fiddle to someone who clearly barely even knew how to play fiddle. “Just admit you don’t know where you’re going.”

“It was just a detour,” he grumbled.

Something thudded again on the other side of the house, and Margot brushed past Van. She sprinted ahead, breezing through the halls toward the sound.

The ceilings lifted cathedral-high in this wing. A gust of wind whipped through the house and blasted Margot’s curls away from her face.

She’d never seen anything like this. A series of five pendulums lacerated the sanctuary. Massive feats of ancient engineering, the pendulums had been carved out of marble with bases as big as wrecking balls. They swung in a syncopated rhythm, each off-kilter just enough to make it impossible to cross the arched threshold at the end. A doorway Margot was willing to bet life and limb led to the Vase shard.

Van sidled up next to her. “And this would be the trial part.”

“So,” Margot said, “how do we do it? Without, you know, getting sliced and diced.”

Van’s face was all frown. His eyes traced zigzagged paths through the atrium. Scanning, searching. As if taking it in for the first time.

“You do know how to do it, don’t you?” Margot prompted.

“Atlas insisted he complete this trial himself while I stood guard outside.” He said the words under his breath, ashamed almost. “I never should have trusted him to do it alone. But I’ll figure it out.”

Van exhaled once and darted into the maze before Margot could say anything else. He ducked beneath the first pendulum and rolled into the lane of the second. Margot gasped and watched between her fingers.

The ground beneath him shifted. With his arms outstretched for balance, he took quick steps, but each pendulum swung faster than the one behind it. He bobbed, trying to nail the timing. Because if not . . .

Van hopped backward, seconds behind getting bulldozed by the pendulum.

Margot traced their dangerous arcs, the curve of their swings—all but one.

At first glance, it was as if the hinge on the first pendulum had gotten stuck at the top. But Margot looked closer. On a track below the pendulum’s blade rolled a soccer-ball-sized rock so polished, Margot wondered if she’d be able to see the future if she looked closely enough. It depressed a clay tile directly under the pendulum’s blade at its apex.

When the tile shifted, tilting, the ball rolled off. It tumbled between rows of columns, and when it reached the other side, it lodged in an identical tile. Thunk. The first pendulum released, swinging, and the second one stopped.

Margot counted her heartbeats. One and two and three and—tilt.

“Oh, my god.” It all made sense. “It’s like the Cave of Delphi!”

Van ducked beneath the pendulum. “The what?”

In chapter eight of Relics of the Heart, Isla and Reed arrived at the Cave of Delphi separately. They were still just rivals (not yet -to-lovers) that early in the book, working separately before they committed to teaming up. When they entered the cave, a gate trapped them inside, and to escape, they had to work together to trigger a series of chain reactions, placing stones in the correct order. That was the only way to lift the bronze gate before they were locked underground with a metric ton of pythons.

This boulder was like the Cave of Delphi’s stones. It was a counterweight that triggered the pendulums.

She raced to the edge of the first lane, timing it so that she entered the danger zone right as the pendulum swung past.

“Don’t move!” she shouted suddenly. “I’ll grab the rock when it rolls to me.”

The pendulum sank back over Margot, so close it might have trimmed a few of her hairs, but the rock rolled back to her, just like she knew it would. When it landed at her feet, she wrapped her arms around it. Or, tried to. It was heavier than it looked.

“Watch out for—”

The pendulum slammed into Margot’s stomach. She let out a surprised oof and dropped the stone as the pendulum lifted her into the air. She wrapped her arms around its base, desperate for purchase.

Van watched, a preposterously accusing look on his face. “This was your big idea?”

“Sorry, this is only my second rodeo!” Margot hollered. “Grab the boulder!”

The pendulum rose higher and higher until she was certain she’d get flattened against the ceiling. She squeezed her arms as tightly as humanly possible, curving her spine against the pendulum’s blade, and pinched her eyes closed as she drew millimeters from the carved ceiling. Surely she was only seconds from being splattered like a bug on a windshield when Van hoisted the rock into his arms. The tile released, brakes churning overhead. Her back scraped the surface, but the pendulum froze.

Margot let out a relieved breath, but it didn’t last. One boulder wasn’t enough. They needed two or they didn’t stand a chance. Her gaze combed through the nave. There had to be something else they could use to offset the timing. Then, maybe, they’d be able to make it through without getting bludgeoned to death.

But there was nothing. Just columns dividing the pendulums, each one with two sets of clay tiles that triggered each swing.

Except. Van.

Maybe they didn’t need two boulders. They just needed two people.

Van returned the stone to the checkpoint, allowing Margot to swing back toward the ground. She hopped off the pendulum as it lowered. Rushing forward, she ran to the clay tile at the far end, and the second pendulum stopped midswing, creating a path for Van. His head whipped around, awestruck.

“The tiles control the pendulums,” she said. “We have to work together. One by one, we’ll pause the pendulums for each other until we get to the other side.”

The polished counterweight rolled back to Margot’s feet. She let it take her place on the tile while she jogged ahead. Like a relay race, Van rushed forward while his pendulum was frozen, and Margot darted off the tile seconds before the pendulum would have knocked her out.

Once, twice, three times, until Margot leaped past the last pendulum.

Van laughed, bright as a clarion bell. “That was . . .”

“I know,” Margot said, cutting him off. “Reckless, careless, dangerous.”

A slanted smile graced his lips. “Actually, I was going to say brilliant.”

Fizz spread through Margot’s veins like her blood was carbonated. When she inhaled, it was like she was breathing for the first time. She clasped her hands under her chin, nodding, pink and warm. “Then, thanks. Actually.”

She and Van speared through the doorway, which was less treasure trove of your wildest dreams and more forgotten storage closet. Shelves had been carved into the chipped walls, and only a few clay amphorae remained. If they uncapped them, Margot wondered if they’d find two-thousand-year-old olive oil.

There was really only one place for the Vase shard to be.

Van approached a stone chest, carved with delicate details. Dust wafted out as he pried off the lid. The movement triggered a clanging sound behind them as the pendulums halted in their tracks.

Margot peered inside the chest, but instead of a fragment of clay, hand-painted by Venus herself, there was absolutely nothing.

It wasn’t there.

Why wasn’t it there?

Margot deflated. Every bone in her body went limp, sagging in disbelief. “I don’t reckon there’s a secret, second treasure chest we can open maybe?”

Van worked a hand through his golden hair and chewed on his lip, thinking. He kept at it until his hair rivaled Einstein. And he walked. Walked back through the pendulum’s labyrinth, their blades all stilled. Walked through the hallways, backtracking through their winding turns until hazy light poured through the exterior door.

“Van. Van.” She stopped him with a hand on his shirtsleeve. “What’s going on in there?”

“In where?” he asked, surveying his surroundings like he was so deep in his thoughts that he hadn’t registered them walking.

Margot tapped him on the forehead. “In there, dummy.”

Van sighed, a full-body movement. He rolled his neck, shook out his shoulders, slumped his spine, and shoved his hands into his pockets, all in one go. Like he’d rebooted his system. “The shard’s missing.”

“Obviously. Could your notes be mistaken?”

“I don’t make mistakes,” he said, tugging his journal out of his pocket and waving it like a white flag. “This journal is meticulous.”

Margot winced. “Well, that journal is also so water damaged, it’s practically unreadable. You probably just misread something.”

Darkness shifted in Van’s stare. If he could breathe fire, she for sure would have been incinerated. He spoke slowly, carefully. “We found the first shard right where I’d found it last time. When the pieces disappeared from the temple, they must have all returned right where they’d been found.”

“Except for this one, maybe.”

Van shook his head, defeated, and ducked beneath the caution tape, back outside into the quiet evening. “This one, too. Someone must have found it.”

This time it was Margot’s turn to pinch her face up in pointed disagreement. “You think someone did what we just did? With the boulders and the screaming and all those dead bodies on the way in?”

Another sigh raked through Van’s body. He tilted his chin toward the clouds. “If they hadn’t, it would still be in there.”

They left the House of Olea, no closer to finishing the Vase than they had been before.