Chapter 17

Enzo had the stamina of a marathon runner. His relentless chase had Margot’s lungs searing.

She cut each corner close, desperately trying to add a few feet between them. As she ran, she slid the stolen shard into her backpack, zipping it up safe. Then, she used both hands to launch herself over a display case housing an alarming number of shrunken heads.

(An unalarming number of shrunken heads was probably, like, zero.)

Margot landed on her feet and powered forward. She chanced a glance back at Enzo, several stalls behind, and grinned, which was just long enough to slam into something she quickly recognized as Van’s chest. For a minute, electricity pulsed between them. But then, Margot jolted backward, like she couldn’t stand the voltage.

He held her by her shoulders. “A cornu. Nice choice for a signal.”

“I stole it,” she gasped.

“The cornu?”

Margot squinted. “The shard.”

“Like I taught you?” Van asked. Something a lot like pride welled in his gaze.

“Not exactly.” Margot faltered. “Remember rule number two?”

“Yeah . . .” Van’s eyes darted over her shoulder. Presumably toward where a very angry Enzo was running toward them at full speed. “Margot. What did you do?”

They shot off in tandem, zigzagging through the displays. Margot was running out of juice, but Van’s hand wrapped around hers, tugging her forward. Enzo wasn’t far behind.

“Duck,” Van said. Like it was voice-controlled, Margot’s body responded.

Enzo’s blade zipped overhead, and the momentum of his swing crushed a display case. Glass shattered underfoot. Margot tried not to think about how close he’d gotten and pushed forward.

Van wove through the market until Margot was thoroughly lost. But then she saw it.

Probably the most beautiful thing Margot had ever seen: stairs. Stairs that hopefully led to an emergency exit or even a window. Any semblance of an escape route would do.

Margot took the stairs two at a time to keep up with Van, seriously wishing she hadn’t abandoned her borrowed shield. At some point, Enzo had traded his short-range sword for a spear with a sharpened tip. He prodded upward, and Margot lurched left and right to avoid its jabs.

“Give it back!” Enzo yelled and hurled his spear javelin-style.

The tip of his weapon wedged into the wall, separating them. Enzo wrapped two hands around the spear’s wooden shaft, but Margot had no intention of waiting around for him to wrestle it free.

“Run faster,” she urged.

Van grouched, “You run faster.”

At the top of the stairs, a hallway spread out in a T. A set of painted-white double doors flanked either end. Apartments, maybe? Offices? Frankly, Margot didn’t care as long as they led her somewhere she wouldn’t get unceremoniously skewered.

The hall before them was, like the rest of the gallery, crowded with globes and glass-paned displays stuffed with scrolls and parchment, and broken pieces of stone friezes. Off one of the nearby tables, Van grabbed a golden apple from a potpourri cornucopia and lugged one of the doors open.

With one arm, he nudged Margot into the room, placing her protectively behind him. Around the door, he launched the apple down the hallway.

Margot heard the crash but didn’t see it. Just like she heard Enzo’s pounding footfalls chase after the noise.

Van closed the door and wrapped his arms around her, reeling her in so that her face was pressed flat against his chest, his thundering heart underneath. They stood motionless and silent on the other side of the gallery door.

Margot wriggled out of his grip, blaming the way her own heart stammered on the chase scene and not his proximity. Her eyes adjusted to the light in the room.

This part of the gallery was spacious and airy; arched windows ran the length of the walls. Instead of cluttered stalls, here there was a polished granite floor webbed with silver and onyx, the foundation for statues of great ancient leaders and the women who made them that way. Dozens of sculptures, all still and stone.

For now. But knowing their track record, probably not for long.

“Van . . .” Margot said, refusing to peel her gaze off the emperors, imposing in white marble, towering over their heads. Their plaques named them: Trajan, Nero, Augustus. Was it her imagination, or did Hadrian just blink?

Next to her, Van pressed his ear to the seam in the door. Margot could barely hear anything over her jack-hammering pulse. Her chest burned, lungs weary from all the running and the subsequent panicking. Van had barely broken a sweat.

“He’s upstairs still,” Van whispered.

Nero’s head swiveled on his neck. Oh, god. Margot was going to be sick. There was no other outlet. Just the door against her back, a hallway with an aggravated treasure hunter, and a gallery of soon-to-be murderous emperors.

“Hurry,” she urged. “We’ve got company.”

Van made a noise at the back of his throat. Something between disbelief and annoyance.

Margot pinched Van’s chin between her thumb and forefinger, turning his head so he had no choice but to reckon with the fact that every statue in this corner of the gallery had gained consciousness. Because apparently that was a totally normal thing that just kept happening.

“Oh no,” was all he said.

Nero, holding a marble fiddle, shifted toward them. Every step was an earthquake. If Enzo didn’t know where they were before, he knew now. Nero swung his bowstring like a stone blade, entirely too closely for comfort.

Margot wasn’t going to wait here to get smashed to smithereens. She hauled the doors open, but waiting on the other side was Enzo.

The boy staggered back a few steps at the sight of the sentient statues. His resolve, however, resolidified the moment his gaze settled on Margot, judging by the way his jaw clenched tight. His hand still clutched the faux shard.

Sandwiched between a small militia of angry statues and Enzo, they didn’t have the greatest odds.

“I have a plan,” she said quietly. Stumbling backward, her eyes locked on Enzo as he, too, sized up the statues. Margot’s back pressed against Van’s as their opponents circled. “It’s your plan, kind of.”

“My plan was don’t get caught, and clearly that’s no longer viable.”

“Fair,” Margot leveled. With her voice low enough only Van could hear, she said, “But we could still divide and conquer. Make them look somewhere else. Then, we make a break for it.”

“Deal.” And, then, he was off.

Van went right, while Margot darted left. The statues split up as well. Half tailed Van, while the rest homed in on Margot. Enzo joined them, his stare bloodthirsty.

Augustus slashed his marble sword, and it made contact with the pedestal Margot crouched behind. Stone crumbled, the dust sifting onto her hair, her cheeks, her hands. She tucked and rolled, narrowly missing another strike.

All she had to do was split them up long enough for her and Van to escape.

Margot wove between two sculptures and jetted across the room, huddling behind a full-body depiction of Juno. At least the stone goddess of marriage wasn’t going to maim her. Worst she’d get was turned into a swan. Enzo got roped into a sparring match with one of the later rulers—Hadrian, maybe?—and it gave her just enough time to catch her breath.

A sickening crunch jolted Margot onto her feet. The sound of bone against marble.

By the looks of the way Van cradled his fingers, he’d tried to punch Emperor Trajan. To little avail. Although now didn’t seem like the best time for criticism. Scarlet stained his knuckles.

The stern-faced statue didn’t care. It raised its sword to strike again.

Margot shouted, “Watch out!”

Her hesitation was all Enzo needed for his hand to latch on to the handle of Margot’s backpack. He jerked her back, and her arms slipped through the straps.

“Get off of me!” Margot yelped. She hooked her elbow, catching the strap with her arm. But it didn’t matter. Enzo sliced his silver blade through the fabric and tore the backpack out of her grasp.

Slinging the remaining strap over his shoulder, Enzo tried to make a break for it. The operative word being try. Van lashed out, wrestling him to the ground before he could get very far.

Enzo landed an elbow to Van’s sternum, knocking the air out of his lungs, and Van rolled off, clutching his chest.

Margot couldn’t get onto her feet fast enough. Enzo nudged open one of the windows and dove through. The metal grates of the fire escape rattled beneath his feet.

Scrambling after him, Margot hoisted a leg over the windowsill. No way was he getting away with this.

But then, behind her, Van let out a strangled cry. Margot whipped around, panic flooding her system. Blood, deep red, pooled against the cotton-polyester blend of Van’s T-shirt, right across his bicep. The statue of Augustus still had his sword extended as Van thudded to his knees.

His name parted her lips. She expected Augustus to take a ruthless swing, but it didn’t come. The statue—every statue—froze. Their uncanny movements ceased entirely.

Margot was by Van’s side in an instant. “Are you okay?”

Van peeled his hand away from his arm. Gravel slipped through his fingers as he huffed out a shocked breath, his green eyes wide on hers. The sleeve was still stained crimson, but as Margot slid her palm across the dampness, searching for an injury, her hand only met cool, hard marble. Beneath the blood, which crusted into gravel under her fingers, his skin had turned to stone.

The bathroom at Mia Bella’s was as pink as the rest of it. Van did not look particularly comfortable on the closed toilet seat, despite the fact it wore a fuzzy shag cover, but there wasn’t exactly a better triage room at their disposal.

Margot propped the fossil of a first aid kit she’d found under the sink on a baby-changing table. “You could have told me sooner,” she said through clenched teeth as she tore open a plastic-wrapped bottle of antiseptic and placed it next to a brown jug of hydrogen peroxide. How did she even treat something like this?

Where there should have been an open wound, there was a marble-white gash carved into Van’s arm beneath the rolled sleeve of his T-shirt.

“Tell you what?” Van eyed her like she’d grown a second head, or maybe a third. “I didn’t know the statues were connected to the Vase. At least, not until it was too late.”

Right. Because Van had gotten stabbed. With a sword. And then his blood dried up into rubble. As if it had never existed in the first place.

“Does it still hurt?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” Van said, simmering. “It’s just a flesh wound.”

“Do you even have flesh to wound?” Margot asked. Fear thinly disguised as a laugh bubbled out of her. “I mean, what changed? You’re—are you turning back into a statue?”

“Yes, I believe.” The words scraped out of him. “The Vase shards. I think they must control the statues. Including me.”

An adrenaline-soaked montage flashed through Margot’s head. The guardians in Venus’s temple. The nymph opening her hand at the Nymphaeum. The legionary at the museum. The statue gallery. The whole time, she had shards in her backpack. Whatever power Venus imbued into that clay, it must have been enough to make even hearts of stone beat.

“So, when Enzo stole the backpack . . .”

“He took the shards too far away for their magic to reach me.”

Margot dabbed hydrogen peroxide on a cotton pad. Was she supposed to clean a wound that wasn’t there anymore? “I thought a guy like you doesn’t believe in magic because it’s impractical.”

He winced and continued, “I don’t.”

The end of the word ticked up. Making don’t sound like didn’t.

While Margot patted the cotton pad against Van’s arm where the seam of marble tore through his skin, Van clenched and unclenched his hands, testing the joints. It sparked something in her memory, him doing that outside Martines Cucine. As if reading her mind, he added, “It happened once before. The night I left you at the ruins. Slow at first. But by the time you found me—”

“It had moved down your arms to your hands,” Margot finished. “And you dropped my prized possession in the sewers. I remember.”

“Sorry about that.” Van flinched against the cotton pad, but Margot held him steady. He was warm beneath her touch. How long would it last? How much time did he have until the stone reclaimed him?

“So, we’re going after Enzo,” Margot said, tossing the cotton in the trash. “He took my backpack. We find him, we steal the shards back, and you stop turning into stone.”

Van stood, rolling his torn sleeve back down over the stripe of stark white. He took up most of the space in the cramped bathroom. “No point. We know where he’s going. Those three shards mean nothing to him without the last two. We’ll cut him off at the next trial. There’s one in Naples and one in Pompeii.”

“What if it isn’t soon enough?” Margot asked, each word delicate, like cracks might web across Van’s skin and render him to dust before her eyes.

The look Van’s face held could hardly be called an expression—he was entirely expressionless—but that was how Margot knew there was something eating away at him, termites in a log cabin. Usually he had some vaguely annoyed, presumptuous look about him. This was . . . empty. Lifeless. “I’m not supposed to be here, Margot.”

“I know we’re missing Dr. Hunt’s assignment, but I’m sure we can catch up.”

“I’m not supposed to be now.” Van closed his eyes and rattled his head. “This was always borrowed time. People like me don’t get second chances.”

And for the first time since he clawed out of that marble slab, Margot saw a version of Van she thought she recognized from his journal. The boy she could imagine chewing on the end of his fountain pen, palms smudged with black ink, who wrote careful, vulnerable words within the folds of his leather journal. A place he thought no one would ever read them.

When she needed to be brave, he’d been there. Not him. But his words. Every sentence in his journal made her feel like anything was possible. Like scheming behind her dad’s back wouldn’t be the end of the world because she’d find the Vase, just like he had.

Not that they even had the Vase shards anymore. Enzo had made sure of that.

This was just another thing Margot did halfway. Another half-written chapter in the story of Margot. The thought of the inescapable disapproving lecture she’d receive from her dad for the laundry list of things she’d screwed up in the last few days stung her chest and left an acrid taste in her mouth. She’d disappointed him. Again.

But Van. Van still needed her, whether he wanted to admit it or not. Maybe Margot had a track record of giving up on hobbies—but she wouldn’t give up on him.