Page 30 of Divine Oaths

Earlier that day, I’d gone to the campus store to try and buy new gloves. When I’d handed the cashier the hundred-dollar bill from the stash I’d taken in the alleyway, he’d gone to the back of the store, explaining that he’d need to get his manager to inspect its authenticity.

Instead of waiting, I’d left the gloves and the money and hadn’t dared return. And so I’d had to suffer through barely getting any sleep and being plagued with visions churning at the back of my mind whenever I accidentally touched anything. Luckily, my roommate hadn’t been much of a nuisance. I’d met her briefly, and she’d informed me that she wouldn’t be in our dorm much since her longtime boyfriend, a sophomore in the Engineering Department, had much better accommodations at Rose House. So, outside of leaving her belongings and popping in every once in a while, I was basically on my own.

On the other end of my room, there was a soft beep. The door opened and Vivian entered.

In any other situation, I would have snapped at her for stealing my key card, which, as far as I remembered, should have been in my bag. But every inch of me was bruised and worn from the maze. Only a day had passed, and the weight of what I’d witnessed, what I’d experienced, kept me moored to bed.

“Sianna? Will you just talk to me?”

I rolled over.

“Give me a minute,” I groaned. But a rush of wind surged through the room; Vivian pulled away my sheets. Annoyed, I turned to face her. She wasn’t alone. An older Black woman with long, curly Sisterlocks stood next to her. The woman wore a lab coat over a T-shirt and brown trousers, and a gold necklace with a peach pit symbol dangling from it.

Vivian was dressed in the exact same thing as the first day of orientation: a pleated moss-colored skirt and a white blouse. And, of course, that irritating navy-and-green plaid blazer with the lily crest.

“First, you miss the tour yesterday, and now you miss most of today’s orientation events and workshops,” Vivian said. “You know, as a music major, you’re supposed to take a placement test. They’re probably going to score you the lowest for ensemble.”

I couldn’t remember if Vivian had mentioned being a music student too. But also, I didn’t care. I wasn’t actually here to graduate or be a pianist again.

All that mattered was fixing my powers, and yet, that felt out of reach. So, outside of sneaking food to my dorm, my failed attempt at getting new gloves, and reconnaissance, I’d skipped our orientation events and tried to avoid campus. Alaster’s threat loomed over me too.

He’d given me until classes began to make a decision; three days to decide who I’d align myself with while I was at Westfield. But if I wanted to play this game of alliances and backstabbing, I needed to know who I was facing. I needed to know what lengths he’d cross to get what he wanted, and if his vicious ambitions could, in any way, be connected to Kasem’s stabbing.

But so far, I’d come up mostly empty-handed, even with my internet searches. Besides the stabbing, the Saint James family had an incredibly polished and highly controlled public image. Most of the articles about them focused on their charity events or their blended family, or fancy dinners they held for Westfield’s board of trustees.

Even with the whispers about them that I gleaned from other students, the only thing that had become abundantly clear was that Alaster, Honey, Kasem, and Jojo were, in some ways, Westfield royalty.

The four had immense sway over what happened at Westfield; Alaster through his role as a tenured professor in the History Department, and Jojo as a Westfield alumnus and a Saint James himself. Jojo had been hired by the board of trustees as a researcher for the History Department. And then there was Honey, the daughter of a prominent member of Westfield’s board of trustees, and Kasem, the heir to Westfield itself.

Everything about Westfield orbited around them. And with Jojo back in the picture and Alaster’s father the president of the university, now there were whispers about whether Kasem would really inherit the estate.

“It’s probably for the best that I missed so much,” I said pulling the sheets back over my head. “I haven’t played much since I auditioned for Westfield.”

The woman beside Vivian cleared her throat.

“Right,” Vivian said. “This is Angelica Aiken. She’s head of the medical center. She’s here to see you.”

I froze. Recognition flared in my mind of Honey fussing over Kasem and mentioning an “Angelica.” This was not what I’d been expecting when Vivian barged into the room.

“I’m fine,” I said. “It’s just a migraine. It’ll go away.”

After the fire, I’d been subjected to months of medical examinations and inpatient treatment. At fourteen, I’d had doctors string IVs through my veins, nurses link me to computers that monitored my brain to see if they could find out what was wrong with me, why I was hallucinating, what medication could bring me back to reality. But that was the thing with medication: If you were on the wrong one, it could introduce new symptoms, new problems that you didn’t even need treatment for. It had taken me months to get back to my normal self—sans the visions and the migraines. Ever since, seeing medical professionals or the inside of hospitals and clinics made me sweaty and anxious in a way that put my whole body on edge.

Even now, I couldn’t help jolting up from where I lay, straining as far away as possible from this woman.

“It’s all right,” Angelica said. “I’m here to do a regular checkup. Vivian said you weren’t able to stop by the medical center yourself, so I thought I’d pay a visit.” Angelica turned to Vivian, and with a meaningful look, she said, “Would you mind?”

“Of course, ma’am.” Vivian shot me a soft smile. “I’ll come back in a bit.”

I forced a smile back. “Sure.” We barely knew each other, so Vivian’s “concern” for my well-being was unsettling. It was just another reminder that I needed to be more careful about who I let into my world. Next chance I got, I’d use my powers on her, see if I could find any dirt on her and use that to leverage our interactions instead of relying on her goodwill or whatever empty friendship she thought we were forming.

The door closed behind Vivian, and Angelica approached my bed.

“Do you mind if we do a routine examination first? I’ll ask you a few questions, check your temperature, and then see if I need to write you a note so that if you miss classes, it’ll be excused.”

“Sounds great,” I lied. But as annoyed as I was about the intervention, I could use a free pass from sitting through lectures, music theory, and private lessons—which would make up the bulk of my schedule for the first half of the semester.

Angelica asked me some checkup questions: my family history, current symptoms, the works. Then she wove in the type of questions medical professionals only asked if they thought you weren’t in touch with reality: what day was it, where were we, if I could follow simple commands. When she finished, she put the equipment she’d brought with her back into a travel bag.