Page 59 of Divine Oaths

Kasem laughed, a bitter tinge to the sound that made my breath catch and my heart ache.

“It’s Westfield, Sianna. You can’t trust anyone. Do you understand? Do you finally get it now?”

I was trembling. Every inch of me was shaking. Uncertainty softened Kasem’s expression. He drew me to him, holding me close, letting me sink into the warmth of him as I tried to gather myself.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “This isn’t your fault. But all of these secrets, I can’t just say them. I took a pledge to Sigma. So did Honey, when she pledged Theta. There are incantations that prevent us from sharing information about our societies to outsiders. But I should have tried to at least give you some warning. Honey should have too, when she invited you.”

“Is this all because of your curse?” I asked. “What’s happening at school—the hauntings, the accidents—it’s all connected, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I think so. Westfield’s always been like this, but there’s always been the curse too. So I think it’s all connected. It has to be.”

Hearing his words, I was terrified.

“I shouldn’t have asked you to get wrapped up in all this,” he said. “Not at the mall and not at the woodshop.” He pulled away from me, and a part of me ached at the distance now between us. “Forgive me?” he asked, tentative, pleading.

Sarah stopped in front of a stone door.

“I’ll leave you two here,” Sarah said. She gestured to herself. “She’s sobering up. I need to take her back to her dorm so she can at least wake up in her own bed.”

Sarah would probably wake hungover, not knowing that hours earlier, a spirit had taken over her body and walked her through miles of hidden corridors.

“I usually don’t do possessions,” Sarah said, and I knew it was Vivian talking to me. “I think they’re wrong. The host can never fully consent, even if they claim to. But she was going to die, Sianna. When she jumped, she wasn’t in her right mind and wouldn’t have caught the windowsill. Cecilia knows Theta messed up, but she’s too proud to admit it. They always are. And that’s why none of their actions, or the Sigmas’, have been able to stop the accidents or protect Westfield.” She was explaining herself as if my judgment of her actually mattered when she was a ghost. A dead person.

I looked away, unable to bring myself to answer.

Kasem drew me to the wall as Sarah walked past us and continued to the dorms. And then he turned the iron door, pushing it open to a library overflowing with books.

We walked inside and he closed the door behind us. From this side, it looked like a regular bookshelf that would otherwise go unnoticed.

I’d never seen a library so expansive, with so many books and scrolls and instruments filling its every crevice.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“The Saint James estate,” he said. “It’s where Ojore and I grew up.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Not one before another

THE SAINT JAMES ESTATE WAS a manor house slightly removed from campus. I’d passed by the building once on my way back from classes. Vivian had pointed it out as the faculty housing, and yet, here was the home Kasem and Jojo had spent most of their lives in.

“My family has the bottom floors,” Kasem explained. “They converted the manor so faculty live on the first, second, and third floors.”

We were in his bedroom, or what I assumed to be his. The bed was sprawling, with a gold-leaf headboard and frame intricately embellished by whoever had crafted it. A tiny alarm clock sat on a side desk, and against the wall, someone had painted a fake window that looked dangerously realistic. Canvases were stretched in every corner of the room, some of them half painted, others unfinished sketches. It was a stark contrast from hours before at Theta House, where I’d witnessed a student nearly jump from a window before being rescued by the only friend I’d made at Westfield—who, it turns out, was a ghost.

“I know this is a lot, the hauntings and ghosts and deaths… all of it,” Kasem began.

“Oh, is it?” I said, practically hysterical. “How long have you known Vivian’s a ghost?”

“Since I was a kid,” Kasem admitted. “I used to think that I was special, that only I could see her on the campus grounds, but then I enrolled at Westfield and realized she moonlights as a student pretty much every other generation. Honey, Jojo, and Alaster used to tease me about it constantly.”

“And she died because of the curse?” I asked.

“I don’t know. She doesn’t talk about it. A lot of students died here, Sianna. Some because of the curse, others through accidents that no one can explain. Even if I don’t understand it, I want to end it. I don’t want this cycle to continue.”

“So, how many more of my classmates are also dead?”

“Hey, I’m also learning all this too. Besides rush, Theta rarely has Sigma as a part of their rituals. I’ve never seen a banishment go as wrong as this one did.”