Chapter 26

The necropolis wasn’t a tourist attraction. There were no gilded plaques or LED lights illuminating Margot’s way down the sloped tunnel. Only a damp dark that threatened to crawl under her skin and never let go.

She took one step and then another. Dirt walls rose up around her until the sky was blotted out by dark soil. Already, her heart thumped harder in her chest. Her arms curled protectively around her ribs, but there was a thrum of excited adrenaline intertwined with the rising anxiety.

The catacombs webbed around her, a maze beneath the city. Tunnels had been hollowed out only to be filled back up with ivory bones. Margot shone her actual, double-A-powered flashlight into the corners as she came to her first fork in the road. Left was dark and cold. Right was cold and dark. It was a fifty-fifty chance, honestly.

Vibes, don’t fail me now.

Veering left, Margot kept her breathing even, forcing inhales slowly through her nose so that she wouldn’t accidentally start hyperventilating. What she was looking for, Margot wasn’t exactly sure. Each shard of the Vase had been protected by a trial, each one deadlier than the last. She wasn’t naive enough to hope this time would be different.

The air in the catacomb halls was sticky, wet. A sheen of sweat slicked the skin of her neck. As she drove deeper, marble outcroppings jutted out from the edges of the tunnels. Names in Latin letters had been etched into mausoleums.

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.

Stalking toward the goblet in the middle, she tried not to pay attention to the giant statue of death watching her every move. With two hands, she lifted the goblet to her lips. A little liquid sloshed around the bottom. Tipping the goblet back, she drained the dregs, but spat them out just as quickly.

Nope, nope, nope.

“Oh, god. Never mind,” she said, tongue sticking out. It tasted like dirt water. It probably was dirt water, just moisture that had collected underground for the last gazillion years.

Was she imagining it, or did Charon look annoyed as she set the goblet back down?

The statue’s palm opened, and he flicked something silver into the air, its surface glinting in Margot’s flashlight beam. It landed with a metallic zing, swirling on its edges until it finally rested flat.

Charon’s obol. Which Margot was pretty sure was, like, a fancy ancient Roman quarter that people had been buried with, payment for the ferryman to charter them across the River Styx into the underworld.

She really hoped that wouldn’t be her fate tonight. Imminent death had not been on her summer bucket list.

Enzo recovered from his shock, kneeling forward like a squire to be knighted. “Please find me worthy of the shard.”

A laugh rustled out of Margot. “Nice try, but it definitely doesn’t work like that.”

“How would you know?” Enzo asked, words daggered.

Margot’s smile was equally bladelike. “Just a hunch.”

With any luck, he’d fail miserably, and she’d use his disappointment as a distraction to steal the one-strapped backpack off his shoulder and solve the trial herself.

She propped her flashlight up on a rocky ledge. Its too-white light spilled through the alcove. Charon grabbed the nearest goblet and flipped it upside down, slamming it over the top of the obol. Then, he turned over the rest of the cups with nothing underneath.

Ramming his rod back into the earth, Charon bade the goblets forward as if on an invisible track, spinning and circling. They swapped forward and backward, in and out of each other’s paths in a dizzying dance. Finally, they stilled once more in a semicircle.

Margot’s head spun. She’d played games like this before. Guess the goblet that had the obol underneath it. Except when she’d played, there’d been three options, not six. And now, with twice as many, she’d completely lost track of where it could be—the last on the left, maybe?

Instead, Charon raised the second cup on the right, revealing the obol underneath it. A knot cinched behind Margot’s sternum. She’d been way off. He nodded at them—and Margot understood. Their turn.

She didn’t want to think about what might happen if she guessed incorrectly.

Her thoughts wandered, without her permission, to Van. He must have found a way to win this trial a hundred years ago, a way to outwit death itself. Margot’s 83 percent chance of guessing the wrong cup wasn’t exactly reassuring. But if she had some way to mark which goblet was which . . .

As Charon waited for them to choose which cup to put the obol under, Margot’s eyes caught on the faint red smudge on the lip of one of the goblets. The perfect red tint she’d spent months searching for. The goblet she’d tried to drink from.

“Place it here,” she said, staring up into the courier’s blank stone eyes.

Startling, Enzo bleated, “What?”

“You snooze. You lose.” Literally, she hoped.

Once more, Charon slammed his ferryman pole into the earth. Margot trained her eyes on the goblet with the obol, struggling to keep track of it as the cups gained speed. It wouldn’t matter. When they stilled, she’d know which one was right.

Enzo’s head was too busy swiveling back and forth to pay any attention to the lipstick stain. He looked like he’d tried to do a triple pirouette without finding his spot. Dizzy and completely clueless.

As the cups slowed, he turned to Margot as if trying to read her mind. Time to channel her best Van-patented bluff. She kept her mouth neutral, eyes half-lidded like she had a hundred better things to be doing, and bit the inside of her cheek to keep from saying something she’d regret.

Charon tapped his stone fingers against his chin, impatient, although it wasn’t like he had much else better to do.

Enzo stepped forward noncommittally. At first, he favored the far-right goblet. Then, he backtracked toward the middle. He glanced back at Margot, but she refused to acknowledge the red-smudged chalice on the left.

After what felt like eons of deliberation, Enzo stalled in front of the goblet second from the right. Only then did Margot make her selection. She planted her hand on the base of the red-stained cup, squaring her shoulders. No hesitation needed.

“That’s the one you’re choosing?” Enzo asked.

Margot quirked an eyebrow.

Charon noted their decisions by reaching forward with his staff and toppling Enzo’s goblet. Predictably, nothing was underneath. Shock flickered through his system—disbelief turning quickly into crestfallen disappointment, but shifting again into rage as he was struck with the realization that him being wrong meant Margot might be right.

Reaching once more, Charon tipped her goblet. Gold glimmered underneath—not the obol, but the shard. Triumph like liquid sunlight poured through her veins as she lifted it into her hands.

Before she had a chance to celebrate, Charon swiped his rod, trying to drag Enzo toward the mounds of bones in punishment, but missed, and Enzo plowed into Margot’s middle. The force slammed against her, knocking the air out of her lungs. Enzo’s arms wrapped around her as he wrestled her to the ground.

Her fingers tightened around the shard, even if she couldn’t quite remember how to breathe. Instead of in, out, in, out, her lungs malfunctioned: in, in, out, out. Her fists pounded recklessly, anywhere she could land them. Shoulders, arms, back.

It did little to discourage Enzo. He threw her around like a rag doll. The second she landed on solid ground, Margot hooked her foot around the back of Enzo’s leg. She planted her hands against his chest and shoved.

Enzo tripped and toppled back into the wall. He knocked over the flashlight, and when it crashed to the ground, the bulb flickered off, plunging them back into darkness.

Everything was ink black. Too dark to see anything but shadows. Still, Margot darted in the general direction of the flashlight. One of Enzo’s various limbs snagged against her foot, and she landed face-first in the dirt. Rough stones and uneven earth bit into her forearms.

“Has anyone ever told you you're the worst?” Margot asked.

Sputtering, she rolled right as Enzo’s fist grazed her shoulder blade. The impact struck through every tendon, and she lost her grasp on the shard. It sank into the soil. Even stretching, it was just out of reach.

She dragged herself upright, one allover bruise. In the shadows, Enzo rustled—ready to pummel her again, no doubt.

Okay, light first, then shard.

Margot dipped right and reached for the flashlight. Grasping in the darkness, her fingers grazed its cool metal hilt, and the bulb zapped back to life with a click.

Just in time for Enzo to set his sights on the exit.

Margot dove for one of the goblets. Hoisting it like a club, she whacked Enzo’s middle with it when he tried to run.

Enzo wobbled and then crumpled, palms to his stomach. Margot winced—fighting had never been her forte. She could almost feel the radiating pain as if she’d been the one hit. But a girl had to do what a girl had to do.

With both hands, Margot grabbed her backpack, ripping it upward, but it snagged on Enzo’s elbow. “Give it back,” she said through gritted teeth.

With another tug, she tore the backpack off his arm. Desperate fingers clasped onto her wrist. Too quickly, Enzo jumped to his feet and pulled her back toward Charon, her spine ramming into his boat’s pointed bow.

The stone ferryman hadn’t gone entirely motionless, magic still humming through the alcove, emanating from the shards. His empty stare was focused on Enzo—determined, almost. Waiting to strike again. The look sparked an idea that just might work.

Enzo reared, a bull charging a matador.

This time, Margot held her ground carefully. A deep breath filled her lungs. Emotion swirled through her veins, but she kept it leashed. She let Enzo make the first move. Kicking dust up with his feet as he sprinted, Enzo charged.

Margot waited until the last moment to dodge. A sickening crack rang through the catacombs when his shoulder slammed against the stone ship, and Enzo wailed. The ferryman of the dead shifted. His rod pounded against the earth, trapping Enzo next to his boat.

Sprinting, Margot scrambled toward the far end of the alcove. No matter how hard Enzo thrashed, Charon didn’t budge. The shards and their magic were just out of reach.

But when Margot unzipped the backpack to drop in the new fragment of the Vase, her fingers found fabric and little else. Empty. The backpack was empty.

No gel pens, no extra pair of socks in case someone wanted to go bowling, no emotional-support notebook, and definitely no shards. Where are the rest of them?

She flew through the pockets on the outside—nothing. Then, unzipping the front pocket, she gulped down a relieved breath. Thank god. Three black chunks of pottery sat at the bottom of the pocket.

“But this isn’t . . .” Margot trailed off.

The fragments in her hands were glossy, painted smooth. The chipped edges were porcelain white. She tugged the shard from the trial out of her pocket to compare. Totally different textures, colors. Flipping a fragment from the backpack in her hand, the words Hotel Vil had been stamped onto one side.

As in, Hotel Villa Minerva?

The pieces couldn’t fit together fast enough in her brain. The shattered coffee mug on the dresser. The shards—missing in action. Black porcelain in Enzo’s backpack. Why would he have a broken coffee mug from her hotel?

Margot didn’t notice the slope of the catacombs until it was too late. Her feet slid out from underneath her. As her skull cracked against the ground, the shards, both real and fake, flew out of her grasp.

She scrambled toward the fragments, hands reaching. Her fingers latched onto the shard, lacing around its sharp angles, as someone’s boots stepped into view.