Page 57 of Divine Oaths

Faintly, I watched the Sigma and Theta members gathered around me. Kasem had opened his eyes and watched along with them as the vision consumed me. Suddenly, my view of the present blurred as a new scene materialized: a scene from the Hearst girl’s past.

The vision took me to weeks before, to the day we freshmen had arrived at the dock where we’d be taken to Westfield University. The Hearst girl, Sarah, was hunched in a corner away from the group and talking to someone on the phone—her mother. Sarah’s voice was quiet, but in the vision, I overheard her and her mother on the other side of the line clearly, as if I was on the phone myself.

An article was going to come out about a young man named Danny who had reportedly died by suicide, and the boy’s journal entries painted Sarah in a terrible light. Sarah was desperate for her parents to pay the article’s kill fee. She’d barely known the boy, she’d claimed. Everything he’d allegedly written about her was a lie. Besides, she’d changed in these last six months. And she was going to be a freshman at Westfield University—practically a new person. Forget the past. Forget who she’d let die to get what she wanted.

“He was obsessed with me. It’s not my fault—”

The vision jumped further back, and different parts of the past began to run together; her and Danny kissing in his Westfield dorm, his funeral, the heat of his lips against her neck, her preparing the speech at his wake, his hands clasped over his ears as she screamed and laughed and mocked him. The words she had yelled, the very same ones he’d scored in his journal like poetry. Weak. Pathetic. Worthless. Then there was his college roommate, who’d discovered a journal with his handwriting two days after he’d been found dead, right here, at Theta House. No one had known what he’d been doing in Theta House that night. Cheating on his girlfriend, maybe? Sneaking into each house on Greek Row as a fraternity initiation rite, perhaps? Whatever the case, a reporter from the city paper had started covering the story. Sarah’s parents had paid them off.

Pain throbbed in my forehead, setting my nerves on fire, collecting at the bridge of my nose in a rush.

Someone grabbed the journal from my hand, and I was pulled back to the present.

At first, I thought it was Kasem, but he, like the others, watched me, unsure, and then in awe.

Everything I’d seen in the vision, I’d spoken aloud. Sarah collapsed on the floor, sobbing.

“I didn’t kill him. It was one fight. I know what I said was wrong, but I didn’t kill Danny. It was this school. It destroyed him.”

In the circle, Honey beamed with pride. “I told you. Sianna is totally Theta material.”

Cecilia nodded, impressed too. “It’ll certainly make our screenings less cumbersome.”

“We would have told you about the summoning and everything,” Honey added at my confused expression. “But it’s not something we’re able to share with outsiders who aren’t rushing for Theta or Sigma. We are bound in silence by our oath to our societies. Those chants we spoke earlier? They ensure that we can only share the events of tonight among one another.”

Someone tried to help Sarah up, but she screamed, stumbling to where the journal lay on the ground, where she started tearing through the entries, papers flying everywhere as her tears blotted the pages, making them illegible. I turned, and suddenly Vivian was standing next to me. Her eyes were wide, her Westfield blazer dripping as it always was. Like it had since the night we’d arrived at Westfield.

“We need to leave,” Vivian said. “Now.”

But the Sigmas and the Thetas were chanting, Cecilia in her mourning veil, the candle flickering in a violent rage as smoke and shadows filled the room. Suddenly there was a form; the figure of a young man no older than twenty, with pale skin and blond hair. He was dressed in the same clothes he’d worn the night he’d died: sweatpants and a Westfield hoodie. Crimson rimmed his pupils, and blood streaked his temple. He strode to Sarah, pressing his hand on her cheek. When she gazed up at him, it was like the light had gone from her eyes, like there was no one there. Holding the notebook, she strode to the window, hand in hand with the man.

“They lied about what happened,” they both said, their voices joined in one terrible chorus. “Now may the debts we owe to blood be waged in our legacy.”

The creaking window burst open. Screams filled the room. Sarah and Danny glanced down at the three stories beneath us. And then, with a faint smile and the journal torn as it was, yet still clutched in her hand, Sarah climbed the window, ready to jump from the third floor of Theta House.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge

EVERYTHING HAPPENED AT ONCE: THE screaming, the rush of wind, the doors bursting open around us. Theta’s members tried to stop Sarah, but she screeched a string of words that sounded like poetry and nails scraping across chalkboards, chanting in a voice that wasn’t her own.

A burst of wind tore through the room and knocked us to the ground, breaking all the doors from their hinges. And then, suddenly, there was Vivian. No longer at my side, her figure appeared like a ghostly apparition on the other side of the room as Sarah dropped the journal and leaped from the window.

Vivian jumped after her, levitating and shooting across the room like starlight. There was a scream, and at the last minute, a hand appeared, clinging to the windowsill.

Kasem was the one who got to Sarah first. He grabbed her arm, pulling her back into the room just as the lights sprang to life and voices from downstairs shouted that faculty was here, the party was over.

But the Theta members kept whispering, chanting as they drew closer to where Danny’s spirit hovered in front of the window. Gold lines cut through the air, threading into an intricate pattern like the lace veil Cecilia wore; like a moth. Its wings were made of light, and as the members chanted, the moth charged toward Danny’s spirit and exploded into gold fireworks as his screams pierced the night.

This wasn’t a summoning. This was an exorcism.

At the foot of the window, Sarah’s eyes were glassy as she crouched to the floor, holding on to Kasem for dear life.

“I have her,” Sarah said, but her voice wasn’t her own; it was like Vivian’s voice was speaking through her. “Danny wasn’t trying to hurt her. He was just showing us how he died. That it wasn’t like what the reports were saying.”

“It was the curse, then,” Kasem said, responding as though nothing was wrong.

Sarah—Vivian?—laughed. “It always is.”