“We’re good,” he says, stepping inside. I follow.
Wings flutter above us, and Dean and I duck. Birds leave their hiding place in the rafters, swooping over us before they take to the skies.
“Shit,” he mutters, looking around at the chaos.
I turn, surveying the marble room and swallowing the weird burn of emotion building at the back of my throat.
Leaves and dirt line the floor, and vines that cover the far side of the building have since slunk in through a crack in a high window.
The Getty Villa used to be a sanctuary for me. Vanessa always had gymnastics practice and Harlow was usually getting ready for one gig or another, so I’d go alone. It was like a seaside palace—perched above the waves on a cliffside in Malibu, full of gardens and fountains and marble staircases. I would spend hours getting lost here, sipping my coffee and looking at the statues of men long since dead.
I felt at home here then.
Now I look around, at the cracked plaster of the walls, the nostalgia souring in my gut.
“You okay?” Dean asks. I feel his eyes on me. I used to love the sound of his soft voice checking in on me. I bristle at the kindness—it just shows that he doesn’t think I’m strong enough.
I pull the blade out from the sheath and step over the crumbling remnants of an upturned limestone statue before giving Dean a nod. He walks to the locked door and throws the bolt. We freeze, waiting to hear any telltale scuffles on the other side of the door. When it’s silent, he pulls it open. The hinges let out a low moan, and he sticks his head out into the hallway. Satisfied that it’s clear, he looks down at his watch and holds up a hand, flashing an open palm twice. We have ten minutes.
He pulls two knives from a holster strapped across his chest and walks stealthily down the hallway. I let myself watch him for a couple of seconds. Only a couple of seconds, admiring his broad shoulders and the slight sunburn on the back of his neck.
A familiar tinge—something like guilt and sadness—rolls over in my chest, and I force myself to turn and scan the room. It is much bigger than the other ones we’ve broken into, and filled with stands topped with ancient busts. The rays of sunlight streaming through the dirty glass ceiling throw the room into a dusty haze. The far wall is made of all windows, overlooking a great hall below. I peer over the edge, eyeing the fountain at the entryway. It used to be a shallow pool surrounded by a red velvet rope—something children would throw coins into, giggles bouncing off the marble as their parents whispered softly to make a wish.
Now the ground below it has collapsed, deepening the once-turquoise fountain into a deep pit of murky brown water. I can’t even see the bottom.
I creep through the room, pausing at a bust to my right. It had always been one of my favorites. A woman’s face stares ahead, her mouth puckered slightly. A Woman in Pompeii, the plaque beneath it reads.
Not an emperor. Not a soldier. Just a woman, carved into stone.
Pompeii. The city that disappeared into ash and fire in 79 AD. All that was left of them were things like this. I bite my lip and lift a hand, half expecting to hear a security guard hiss at me to not touch the statues. After hesitating for a second, I let myself run my finger over her lip, wondering what she’d say about all of this now, if she knew that the world survived once only to fall differently. Our sky didn’t darken when the Crimson came, and our ground didn’t tremble when it spread from the Pacific Northwest to Portugal and then Cape Town within a week. We lived in a world that predicted our doom at least twice a week. We had shows about it; people stood on street corners, screeching about the end. We were so ready for the fall of mankind. But when it actually came—we didn’t see it coming.
I wonder if this woman would tell me that we will survive this, too.
I don’t know if I’d believe her.
I step around the bust and tiptoe over to the display case, wiping my hand over the dirty glass.
The velvet lining inside is blank. To the untrained eye, this display looks empty.
And if it is? I’m going to feel like a total idiot. But I’m staking a lot—a lot—on the hope that it’s not. That all the hours I spent here, idly tracing in my sketchbook and avoiding texts from my friends, will pay off.
I break the glass with my elbow again. It sounds more like a violation than the window, and I feel bad as I use a cloth to hit pieces of glass aside and reach in to touch the velvet. I peel the bottom of the display up, revealing the lip of a drawer.
Usually, the artifacts would be safe in the curators’ building behind the museum—on the upper back slope of the hill. But I doubt, when everything fell apart, that they’d had time to do that. The next best thing, then, would be for the curators to put the artifacts in the temperature-controlled drawer beneath. I often stayed until closing, and watched the curators move artifacts more than once. I’m sure they thought they were shutting the doors of this place for a couple of weeks. I’m sure they thought they’d come right back.
I pry at the edge, lifting it slightly. It sticks, but then slides open. My breath catches in my throat.
A gold headdress with drop-like rubies sits at the bottom of the drawer, haphazardly wrapped in a cloth. The light inside is dead—there hasn’t been electricity here in years. That, I’m used to. There hasn’t been electricity anywhere except in settlements like the Palisade, which has one working generator—and even that, they use sparingly. I don’t even hesitate to grab the giant piece of jewelry. The gold is heavy and almost soft beneath my hands. I’d seen this so many times under the lights of the display. Even though I should be used to unlikely things happening—it feels strange to be holding it.
“You were right. It was there.” Dean’s voice sounds behind me. I jump, spinning around and backing up against the case. My hand hits the edge, and glass digs into my palm. I curse under my breath, and Dean rushes to me, swearing loudly as he pulls a bandanna out of his back pocket.
“You scared the shit out of me,” I grumble as he inspects the wound. I stop breathing, trying to stop the wood-spice smell of him from filling my senses. He’s close. He’s too close.
“I’m sorry! I thought you could hear me. This whole place has amazing acoustics.”
The cut is shallow, but it stings like a bitch. I whimper slightly as he tightens the bandanna across the wound and ties it around the back of my hand, just above the cuff of yet another mirrored band.
I look up at him, and he smiles down at me. A familiar twist in my gut coils around my spine as I meet his ice-blue eyes.
Dean is beautiful.
He was beautiful when I first saw him moving boxes into the house next to my grandmother’s when he was eight and I was six. He was beautiful when I was thirteen and he was fifteen, and he let me teach him how to braid hair so that he could help me with Vanessa in the mornings and we all wouldn’t be late for the bus.
He was beautiful when I found him kissing Harlow behind the snack bar at the pool two years ago. I’d never told Harlow how I felt, so I couldn’t blame her. Dean couldn’t have known, so I didn’t blame him, either. It’s almost worst, I think, when there is no blame. Maybe that would have been like a cauterizer on the wound or something. If I could be pissed at someone, then my feelings for him would have been singed up in my anger. But instead, they just curled up in my chest. Never dying, never leaving—just stirring at the worst possible moments.