Page 67 of Divine Oaths

But to my relief, we were interrupted by voices outside the bathroom.

“I’ll see you at lunch,” Vivian said. And then she drifted off into the ceiling, disappearing entirely moments before the girls entered.

They were all from my Piano I class, which meant that I’d been gone long enough that the professor had called for our break. They commented on the flooding stall where water pooled, even as they spoke in hushed voices at the sink.

I exited and joined them in front of the mirrors, pretending to wash my hands.

One of the girls was Sarah, the Hearst girl from the Theta party. She had a suitcase with her, and her friends whispered tearful goodbyes before exiting the bathroom.

But Sarah stayed behind, watching me with pointed interest.

“I’m leaving Westfield,” she said.

“I gathered.” I nodded at the suitcase. “You’re probably better off than the rest of us staying here.”

“Tell that to my parents. They’re begging me to stick it out. At least until the end of the semester. My mother was a Theta and her mother before that, and my dad was a Sigma. That’s how they met.” She sighed, glaring at her reflection in the mirror, from her bloodshot eyes to the gray bags that had formed underneath them from lack of sleep. “Do you know what they told me? They said a Westfield degree comes with challenges. They said that Danny knew that when he enrolled, and I should have known too.”

Tears filled her eyes. She wiped them away.

I wasn’t sure what to say to her. In our time here at Westfield, our only encounters had been at the fringes of each other’s worlds, but that impact hadn’t settled right with me, not from the way she’d reported me to Alaster and not with what I’d learned looking into her past.

“What happened at Theta House was a wake-up call,” Sarah continued. “It was like there was this coldness, everywhere. And I could hear his voice. Danny. He was angry. At me. At them. At everyone. All of his thoughts, all of his pain, I felt it as my own. Like he was within me. There was the window, and then…”

She sobbed into her hands and whispered her thanks as I handed her a paper towel.

“I’m guessing you regret what you did to him.”

“Of course I do,” Sarah snapped. “But it was one fight—one awful, terrible night. And what happened to Danny—it wasn’t because of me or him. It was this place. Westfield. There’s something about it, something twisted and wrong that warps people’s minds and makes them do unspeakable things. Besides, do you really think, if I was so set on moving on and forgetting everything, I would be attending the same university as the one where he died?”

Sarah didn’t know about the curse. None of the students besides Honey did; that was clear. And yet, like everyone at Westfield, its ripple effect had seeped into her own life.

“What did Danny study while he was here?” I asked.

Sarah frowned, confused by the question. But she answered it anyway.

“Computer programming with a minor in business administration. That’s how he met Honey and Nathan Rowhouse. But he wanted to be a writer. A journalist. Danny and I had bonded over that. You know, because of my family’s background.”

At the mention of Nathan, I stilled.

“Were Nathan and Danny friends?” I asked.

“I think so. They were both rushing Sigma together, and Nathan really wanted to climb the social ladder. He thought befriending Honey and Kasem could get him a recommendation letter from Alaster. Danny thought Nathan was going too far, trying to change himself to fit in with their lifestyles. So when Nathan died, Danny sort of snapped. He wrote about it in his journal, talked about exposing the Saint James family and Westfield for what happened to Nathan.”

I followed her out of the bathroom. The stained glass windows reflected embers and fractals of the setting sun, and our shadows stretched along the empty hallways like gravestones.

“Danny was in Rose House the last time I saw him. I was visiting him in his dorm. I found his writings and things he was researching about my family and the board of trustees. It upset me. Some of his claims were… dangerous. He said the Board and my family covered up the accidents on campus, that all of the Ivies, all of the legacy students and their families, worked with Westfield’s board for their own benefit. The last time we spoke, he said he was going to publish everything he’d learned. They found his body the next morning, at Theta House, fallen from the window, his arms bound by silver rope.

“But I don’t believe it. He was doing better. He swore he’d been getting help with his anxiety from school. And where would he have gotten that rope from? Silver rope. Like that’s something you just have in a dorm.” She’d begun to tremble as we spoke, and I squeezed her arm gently, pulling away before a vision emerged.

“I didn’t kill him,” she repeated. “And he didn’t take his own life either. Something happened. His family and I have been pressing the university for answers for months now, but nothing.”

“That’s why you wanted to rush Theta,” I said, understanding settling over me. “Did Alaster promise to help you find out what happened to Danny? Is that why you told him about me?”

More tears had begun to build again at Sarah’s lashes. She wiped them away.

“Alaster helped me get that invitation to the party. He has connections to Theta and Sigma and the Board that even Honey doesn’t know about. And I’m telling you now, as a warning: Be careful of them. Not just him, all of them. Whatever demons are haunting the school, they won’t stop until we’re all consumed. It took Danny and Nathan. And now that Danny’s spirit isn’t trapped here, there’s nothing for me at Westfield. Don’t let this place fool you into thinking you can change things.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN