Page 106 of Salem’s Rise

For a moment, neither of us moves. Then he looks down at the weapon buried in his chest, right at his heart. His expression is not frightened. It is offended, as though death is a personal insult he never believed would apply to him.

“You…” he gasps, his eyes lifting to mine before dropping to the blade. “The knife…”

He pulls it free, blood pouring over his hand and spreading slowly across the concrete floor. It pools in the cracks and old salt stains beneath him while I wait for him to move again. To come after me and try to kill me one last time. To scream at me for stabbing him.

He doesn’t.

A moment later, he is dead.

I don’t remember standing or dragging his body into the corner of the shed and covering it with an old dirty tarp. I don’t remember washing the blood from my hands in the rusted sink or finding the shed key hanging from a hook and locking it, the padlock snapping shut with terrible finality. I don’t even remember crossing campus, the snow blinding, wind driving it into my face hard enough to sting.

Somehow, I make it to Silas’s room with Van’s blood stiffening on my sleeve and his final words lodged inside my skull.

Ask Silas. He knows the truth.

Istand outside Silas’s dorm room, staring at the door while my mind tries to split itself between two versions of him, unsure which is the truth: Silas beneath the harbor, terrified, dragging me toward air with one arm locked around my waist, or Silas sitting with Van somewhere, sending out a text to ensnare me in a murderous trap and finish what The Rites had started.

I raise my fist and pound against the door, pulse skittering. I have no idea which Silas I’m about to find on the other side.

It opens almost immediately.

Silas is smiling.

Not the faint, careful curve of his mouth I’ve learned to recognize as amusement, but a full, unguarded smile that changes his entire face. He looks younger, almost nervous, one hand still resting on the doorknob as though he’d been standing close enough to hear my steps in the hall.

“I’m glad you came,” he says softly. Then he looks closer, and the smile disappears. “Jack—oh my God. Are you okay?”

His eyes move over my torn coat, the mud streaked across my knees, the blood still on my sleeve that I failed to remove completely. Horror empties the color from his face as he reaches for me.

“Don’t touch me!”

I recoil so sharply my shoulder strikes the opposite wall.

A door opens farther down the hall and Silas steps forward, pulling me into his room and shutting it behind us.

“What happened? Come here. You’re shaking,” he says, his voice low and urgent as he walks me over to the bed and sits me down on the edge. “Let me see where you’re hurt.”

His hand moves toward me again, but I flinch away before his fingers make contact.

“Did you do it?”

He freezes, his expression faltering. “What?”

I search his face for any sign of guilt, any flicker that tells me Van was telling the truth.

“Did you send Van to kill me?” I ask, my voice cracking on the question despite my best efforts to hold it together.

“I—what?” he gasps. “Why the hell would I do that?”

“You sent that text, and I left the library. Just like you asked. Then Van grabbed me. He—he dragged me into some gardening shed with one of your fucking ritual knives.” My hands are trembling so badly now that I curl them into fists to stop them. “He knew I was coming here. He knew,” I whisper, a shudder running through me at the memory of the blade pushed against my throat. “How did he know, Silas? How did Van know I’d be outside tonight, alone?”

He takes a step back, guilt flickering across his face.

“I was with them earlier.”

“Who?”

“Rowan… and Van.”