Page 69 of Salem’s Rise

I’m just not foolish enough to believe it was for kindness. Or compassion. Or “guardianship.” There was strategy behind it—I just don’t know what yet.

The First Trial taught me two things:

The Rites are every bit as dangerous as Charles Alden warned me on the drive back after Veil Night.

Everyone else is playing a game whose rules I still do not understand.

Jonah died because of that game.

Though I didn’t know him well enough to claim grief in the same way Wren and Lena can, I liked him. He was always kind to me, and he didn’t deserve what happened to him.

A few days after the First Trial, the rumors start to circulate that Jonah has taken an indefinite leave of absence from the university due to academic and personal concerns. I don’t know where they came from or who started them, but everyone accepts it without question.

The other missing claimants receive stories too. One supposedly dies in a single-car accident during the weekend storm. Another suffers a mental breakdown and returns home. Another withdraws to study abroad despite the fact that the semester is already half over. Someone else leaves to care for an ill parent.

Seeing how the Veil manages its secrets from the inside is eye-opening, to say the least. I start to understand firsthand how all the strange, unexplainable incidents at Salem’s Fall get covered up so easily. It becomes obvious the Veil has been doing this for a very long time, and it is very good at it.

To be fair, the university is also large enough that students normally disappear from one another’s lives from time to time without a nefarious reason. They change dorms, switch majors, drop classes, go home, transfer, or disappear into relationships. In a town known for hauntings, occult tourism, unexplained accidents, and an unusually high tolerance for weird behavior, a handful of abrupt departures barely registers.

The week passes and then another without the next summons from The Rites appearing. It should feel like relief, but the waiting around is also its own form of punishment. Any footsteps outside my door make my heart jump. Every unfamiliar number on my phone feels like a warning. I find myself scanning my classrooms and lecture halls for my competition. We lock eyes and all I can think about is whether they will try to kill me next.

Or will I try to kill them?

I cannot stop thinking about what the Second Trial will be. Will it be worse than being stuck underground and racing against time so as not to be buried alive?

Probably.

Paranoia and fear start to take hold. I can’t eat. Can’t study. Can’t sleep. I’m becoming a mess.

With nothing else to do but sit around and imagine increasingly horrific possibilities, I start spending more time at the gym, running on the treadmill and practicing jabs and combinations on the heavy bag. I have no idea what the next trial will require, but being faster and stronger can’t hurt. Neither can being better prepared the next time Van—or some other psycho—decides to come at me.

By Friday, I finally decide I need to get out and do something, anything, that resembles a normal life before I completely lose my mind. Wren, Lena, and Micah invite me to Salem’s Fall’s annual Tree Lighting Ceremony, a holiday tradition that apparently the entire town turns out for. I’m certainly not ready to trust Wren and Lena again, but it’s only one night. I need a distraction, so I say yes.

I park my car downtown and walk alone to Founder’s Square at the center of town. Salem’s Fall looks different now than it did in October. With Thanksgiving quickly approaching and Christmas just around the corner, all signs of Halloween have been stripped away, giving way to something like holiday cheer but much darker.

All along Gallows Street, orange lights have been replaced by strings of red and green, while evergreen garlands twist around iron lampposts, threaded with sparkly pinecones and darkened bells. Above me hang banners advertising “Dark Christmas,” “Gothmas,” and “Hexmas,” along with activities like Yuletide séances, Winter Solstice portrait sessions, and cursed ornament exhibits. The shops I pass have swapped their fall wreaths for ones woven from gnarled pine branches, black feathers, and even bones. Instead of pumpkins and ghosts, their window displays now fill with winter witches and eerie, antlered creatures with names like the Winter Hag, the Hollow Saint, and the Bell Widow. Their painted eyes follow me until I finally have to look away.

I pull my coat tighter against the early chill of the incoming winter as I approach Founder’s Square and weave through the sea of vendors. Stalls that once sold pumpkin lattes now offer peppermint mochas alongside gingerbread, Yule log cakes, and iced sugar cookies shaped like witches’ hats. Children dart around me, sipping eggnog and playing beneath statues of horned monsters, while a nearby band launches into a Christmas carol in a minor key, familiar enough to recognize but strange enough to leave me vaguely unsettled.

It is all undeniably creepy but also strangely beautiful.

I find Wren, Lena, and Micah standing near the old oak at the center of Founder’s Square. The tree is enormous, its trunk split by lightning decades ago and reinforced with iron bands. According to the plaque at its base, three accused witches were once held beneath it while awaiting their executions. All three mysteriously vanished before dawn the day of their hanging.

Tonight, black ribbons stream from its branches alongside hundreds of small lights. A wooden platform has been built around the trunk, and townspeople crowd the square waiting for the annual tree lighting ceremony to begin.

“You came!” Micah waves eagerly when he sees me and envelops me in a big hug. He’s wearing a festive green scarf covered in tiny pink macarons. “I feel like we never see you anymore,” he says, making a sad face, and then shoving a paper bag into my gloved hand. “Here, have some peppermint bark. I just made it this morning.”

“Sorry,” I say, taking a bite of the chocolate deliciousness. “I’ve just been really… busy.” My eyes flick toward Wren and Lena, and I feel a flicker of guilt. I still feel bad about hiding so much from Micah, though part of me envies his ignorance.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Wren says with a cautious smile. “I wasn’t sure if you’d come.”

“Me too,” I say, and I’m surprised to realize I mean it. Maybe I’m not ready to trust her and Lena again, but it does feel nice to be doing something normal with them, at least for a few hours.

“The tree lighting was always Jonah’s favorite,” Lena says softly, one hand wrapped around a paper cup she doesn’t appear to be drinking from. Her face has looked hollow since Jonah’s death. “He came every year.”

Wren grabs Lena’s hand and gives her a little squeeze.

“I’m really sorry about Jonah,” I tell them.