Chapter 8

Margot severely underestimated the extreme yuckiness of the sewer system.

The stench clogged her nose, so rotten she was certain she would never smell anything nice ever again. Not her favorite cinnamon vanilla perfume, not a fresh bouquet of peonies, not gooey chocolate chip cookies hot out of the oven. Just rotten eggs for the rest of her days.

But she wasn’t going to let Van prove her wrong just because of a little biohazard situation.

Van peered over his shoulder, checking to see if she was still there, and she wiped a Colgate smile across her face. She didn’t get braces for nothing. But the second he turned forward again, trudging through the soupy brown muck, Margot’s face screwed up in disgust.

This was not her preferred way to spend an afternoon, that was for sure.

Down here, the walls curved overhead. Van had to walk through the deepest waters in the center of the tunnel so his scalp didn’t scrape against the ceiling. Every few feet, streams of pale light filtered down from above, striped through the storm drains. A relieving detail. That meant they weren’t in a wastewater sewer, just a stormwater one. Still, Margot kept to the sidewall where a step had been carved into the channel, so only her socks got soaked.

She groused, “I don’t recall your diary mentioning this part.”

Van breathed out of his nose. “Like I said. It’s a journal, and I didn’t ask you to come. In fact, I explicitly told you not to.”

She stuck her tongue out at him and retracted it when he glared at her again. “I just saved you. Again. That makes the score two-one.”

“We’re keeping score?” Van asked.

“Only because you refuse to admit I’d make a great partner in crime.”

Street names had been carved into the stone walls, and Van followed them like a breadcrumb trail. The tunnels cut a hard right, just like Van’s journal had said—turn clockwise at the next junction. At least they were on the right path. The thought of adding another shard to her collection made the whole needing a noseplug thing a little more worth it.

As Van led the way, Margot slung her backpack off one shoulder and opened the main compartment. Wrapped up in linen, the first shard had been tucked safely inside a zippered pocket, but Van’s journal . . . Van’s journal had been right there.

“What did you—”

“Looking for this?” Van asked. He waved his journal in one hand and then slid it into his back pocket. But his head craned downward, reading something.

Not just something. Margot riffled through her backpack—pawing through makeup bags and spare maxi pads and an emergency supply of Biscoff cookies she’d snatched from the airplane—but she didn’t see it.

He hadn’t just stolen back his journal. He’d grabbed Relics of the Heart.

“How do you keep doing that?” Margot asked, shocked.

Van declined to answer. He may have been turned to stone before SCOTUS established the Miranda rights, but he was a pro at remaining silent.

Margot stretched for her book, almost toppling off her pathway, but Van held it out of reach, turning to another chapter. Curse him and his long arms. He flipped through the pages, and Margot braced for impact. She’d heard it all. Romance novels aren’t real literature. Why don’t you read something useful? What a waste of paper. As if the book that made Margot believe in hope after her parents’ happily ever after had shattered wasn’t worth its weight in gold.

After what felt like eons of him examining page after page, he said, “You seriously dog-ear your books?”

Margot’s mouth hung open.

“What kind of Neanderthal doesn’t use a bookmark?” he prodded.

“That’s hardly a criminal offense.”

Van’s eyes widened theatrically. “And you wrote in the margins?”

“That’s none of your business!” she said.

He lifted an eyebrow. “Like how reading my journal is none of yours?”

She gave him a withering look, but it did nothing to stop his finger from skimming the pages.

“Love a golden hour first kiss,” he read, tilting the book sideways to read her scribbled notes. “Here, you underlined brooding love interest thrice.”

Margot reached for the book again, and this time, her fingers grazed the curled edge of the cover. But it wasn’t enough. Her grasp slipped, and Van’s didn’t hold.

Relics of the Heart splashed into the stormwater.

“You’re such a jerk!” Margot said, more a gasp than a sentence. She plucked the book from the sewage sludge and shook it off, praying it was just damp and not destroyed. “You did that on purpose.”

Van hesitated. He stretched his fingers back, popping the bones. “I . . . didn’t.”

“Yeah, right,” she said with a groan.

“I spent the last ninety-six years as a statue. Give me a break.” His voice was so taut, she almost wanted to believe him.

The chapters stuck together as Margot flipped through them, trying to make sure they didn’t dry like that. If they did, the book would never recover. Her eyes stung with tears when she saw the black ink running, dripping from one page to the next.

Relics of the Heart wasn’t just a love story. It was the only piece of her mom that her dad hadn’t kept from her. And if he’d known she’d taken it, he certainly would have tried.

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.”

Margot raised an eyebrow. “You mean, whoever pieces it together will be golden. You know, like, adored.”

Van laughed. A sound so unthinkable coming from him that Margot actually startled backward. “You can’t be serious.” At Margot’s flat-lipped expression, Van sobered. “You’re serious.”

“Venus was the goddess of love,” she said, like it explained everything.

“So, she’s going to give that power to just anybody? The treasure is gold. It’s the only logical solution.” Van’s words were measured. Less like he was arguing and more like he was informing. It sparked something desperate and defiant in Margot.

“Just admit it. You obviously didn’t get it because Venus knew her power would be wasted on you. You know, you really ought to give me more credit—”

Van halted abruptly. “What’s that noise?”

Margot listened: the slow trickle of water shifting beneath the city, the reverb of cars racing across the streets overhead, and then, on top of it, a pitter-patter, close and growing closer.

It almost sounded like . . .

A fat, gray rat skittered down the sewer. A shriek tore out of Van at deafening decibels. He flung himself toward Margot, and instinctively, her arms wrapped around him. The rat scampered up the tunnel, completely unfazed by the ruckus.

Van’s chest and shoulders heaved with frantic breaths. They stood like that, chest to chest, until his breathing matched the rhythm of hers. Then, like Van woke from a trance, he lurched out of her grasp. Clearing his throat with a cough, he said, “Vermin carry diseases.”

“Whatever you say, tough guy.” A laugh spilled out of Margot. It was easier to be brave when the person you wanted to impress just squealed at the sight of a rodent. “Admit it,” she said, not bothering to hide her smug smile, “you need me.”

“I’ll admit nothing of the sort.”

Margot crossed her arms against her chest. “We’re both searching for the same thing. Why can’t we search together?”

“I can think of a few reasons,” Van said, continuing forward.

Margot didn’t budge. “Tell me.”

“You’re impulsive and unpredictable. Emotional. Untrained. You don’t know north from south, and you’ve clearly never used a set of spades in your life. I have no interest in working with someone who will jeopardize my chances for success.”

The words struck Margot like a blow to the chest. Van’s features didn’t falter, didn’t flinch. He delivered every line item in her list of inadequacies with clinical precision. And Margot’s heart stung like he’d cut open all the deepest parts of her and left them there to bleed.

Her lip quivered, and she hated it. Hated that she couldn’t squash down her feelings into neat little boxes. Hated that he was right about her. About everything.

She wanted to run, hide, lick her wounds in private. Some incessantly loud part of her wanted to give in, give up. To quit like she always did when things got hard or monotonous and run off to try something she hadn’t failed at yet.

But she couldn’t. Not this time.

“You’re wrong about me.” Her voice cracked, caked with emotion. “I need you because you know where to find all the trials, but I’ve been trying to tell you that you also need me.”

Digging into the depths of her backpack, Margot pulled out her secret weapon. The shard weighed heavy in her palm. Van grasped at it, almost like his hand had a mind of its own. “The shard from the trial of Ignis. How did you—”

Margot swiped the shard out of his reach. She folded it back into its linen cloth and returned it to the inside pocket not even Van could pick. “I know you don’t understand, but if I don’t find this Vase before my dad drags me back to America, my life is over.”

Van still stared at her backpack, a puzzled look on his face.

“Let me help. I’ll do anything.”

His lips thinned, a look Margot had quickly learned to recognize as his thinking face—certain that an analytical whirring could be heard coming from his robot brain if she listened hard enough. Margot wasn’t sure what it said about her that in less than twenty-four hours she’d started picking up on his mannerisms. (That she was observant? That she couldn’t stop herself from noticing him, whether she liked it or not?)

Finally, he asked, “Anything?”

“You name it,” she said.

Van stalled next to a decrepit ladder, one hand on the middle rung. “I want the treasure. You can keep the Vase.”

Margot squinted. “What if there’s no treasure?”

“There’s treasure. There’s always treasure.”

“But what if it’s—”

“The power of love?” Van asked, his voice lightly mocking. He rolled his eyes. “You can have it. But every ounce of gold is mine.”

“Deal. Yes. Absolutely.” The words spilled out of her.

Because Van might be wrong about the gold, but he was right about her. Without Venus’s magic, Margot would always be too impulsive, too unpredictable, too emotional. Only the Vase could change all that. She’d stop being a problem her dad wanted to solve and start being the daughter he always wanted.

Without another word, Van climbed the rusted rungs and punched open a hatch. Margot followed after him, knowing he would not hesitate to leave her behind again if given the chance, gritting her teeth and vowing to keep up.

But the second she stepped off the ladder, Margot’s jaw unhinged, gaping. “What is this place?”

“This,” Van said, “is the Nymphaeum.”