extra forty-three seconds to open a drawer he should’ve left shut.
This is different, though. This is personal. So I’m leaving no stone unturned.
I’m here to do damage.
Using a thighbone from coffin number three as a crowbar, I begin prying the heavy stone lid, my breath coming out in white puffs. The marker on the sarcophagus reads Amandine de Morel—Rainier’s Sister? Cousin? Mother?—and dates her death as February 29th, seventeen years ago. I’m drunk enough to find that both funny and kind of heartbreaking. Imagine the anniversary of your death only being marked every four years.
It makes me wonder when my parents died exactly. And how? And if maybe they’re buried somewhere in this eerie, frozen cemetery.
I’m not really sure I want to know.
The stone cover inches to the side as I coax it with my nifty bone. When there’s finally enough space for me to grip the edge, I shove the damn thing with all my might. It slides over, revealing a shiny mahogany coffin inside. The lid pops off like a rotten tooth, and like a rotten tooth, the stench is eye-watering.
My first reaction, after wanting to heave up all the wine, is disappointment. All that artifice for a decaying corpse with no jeweled crown or tiara. She doesn’t even have worthless pennies over her lids like the others, and her palms aren’t sandwiched in prayer around a family heirloom.
She only has one hand resting over her heart. Her left arm is tucked underneath the rotting silk of her skirt. With one gloved finger, I push the material aside.
Holy. Fucking. Hell.
Jackpot.
A gold ring with an enormous scarlet gem adorns the retracting flesh of her bony finger. The oval stone looks like something out of a museum. Something housed behind bulletproof glass and protected by a hi-tech security system.
I whoop in celebration, hiccupping from my wine-fest, then take my phone from where it’s propped on a ledge and beam the flashlight directly onto the ring. The red stone’s so translucent it seems to pulse and swirl. I like beautiful things. But this . . . this goes beyond beautiful. It’s exquisite.
I pick it up. It’s larger than expected, heavier. Amandine de Morel must’ve had some seriously big hands. There are words engraved inside the band, written in a language I’m unfamiliar with. Still, I sound them out for the fun of it: “Erenez e v’am.”
In my head, I’m already compiling a list of potential buyers for this beauty.
Tugging off my leather glove with my teeth, I slide the ring onto my middle finger. The gem, which covers my finger to the knuckle, is oddly warm. I raise my hand and flip off the entire crypt. But what I’m really doing is giving the finger to Rainier de Morel himself.
“Screw you, De Morel, you enfoiré!” My voice reverberates off the dank walls.
In my drunkenness, it feels like the whole damn crypt shakes and tilts. I grab on to the stone casing and wait for the tremors to pass.
I pull at the ring to stash it inside my pockets with the rest of my loot, but the damn thing won’t budge. Which is really messed up, because it was loose going on.
I yank at it. With each tug, the skin of my middle finger twists and stretches as if the band’s been superglued to my flesh.
“Bordel de merde!” I curse.
For the next fifteen minutes I try everything I can think of to remove the damn ring short of sawing off my finger. I try slathering it with the lip balm I keep in my coat pocket. I try wedging it against the inner corner of the sarcophagus and wrenching it off. I try to pry it off with my teeth. I poke it with my dorm key. Nothing. As a last attempt, the heretic that I am tries praying.
Suffice it to say, it doesn’t do shit.
Panic grips my lungs like iron fists as I stumble out of the crypt. The snow has stopped falling, but the temperature has dropped. It takes me a minute, but I’m finally able to stretch my leather glove over the ring. Just barely.
The lump makes me rage harder against that salaud Rainier de Morel. His name runs on a loop inside my head.
I keep my eyes down, putting one foot in front of the other, not paying attention to anything but my own drunken fury. That’s when I collide with something soft and skid on the freezing ground. I fall, and the momentum upends the contents of