Page 60 of Divine Oaths

I swallowed, looking away from him to the paintings in the room. If we spoke any more about ghosts or curses, I might lose my mind. So, I changed the subject. Cowardly, yes. But I was drunk and lightheaded and not used to all of this.

“Did you paint these?” I asked.

“My father did. They were his unfinished work. I’ve just been restoring some of them.”

“But you paint?”

“A little.” More than a little by the looks of it, and from what I’d gleaned when we’d run into Kasem’s ex in the School of Business.

“And you’re a finance bro?”

“With an undergraduate degree double majoring in fine arts and history, and a minor in music theory,” Kasem said, as if that absolved him of the sin. “Besides, just because I’m in the School of Business doesn’t mean I’m a finance bro. I literally have a marketing and management concentration.”

But even he couldn’t help but smile at my teasing.

Kasem had always been handsome. But when he grinned, he looked so boyish and sweet. It was different from Jojo. More earnest, as if Kasem harbored a shyness about him.

“Give me a tour,” I said.

“After you get some rest,” he said. “It’s been a long night, and you’re drunk.”

Despite his protests, I dragged him through the different rooms, making him explain each one.

There were books throughout the suite; they were packed in corners, stacked in cabinets where spices should be, and crammed into drawers. Everything from leather-bound books of poetry to plays resided here, from Shakespeare to Keats, to Emerson and Du Bois, to Langston Hughes, August Wilson, and Maya Angelou. And then there were textbooks about the arts and sciences, politics, history, folklore. Books about Reconstruction and the South during the Civil War, books about spiritualism and hoodoo, and ghosts and supernatural entities.

“Some of these were Jojo’s,” Kasem explained. “He never took them with him when he left Westfield.”

I laughed, the sound bitter and broken against my ears. “An artist and a scholar. I see why the two of you don’t get along now. Why’d you keep them if he left?”

Kasem shrugged. “It’s not like I was going to throw them out.”

From the corner of my eye, I spotted a small room. It was nearly empty except for a grand piano that was covered with sheet music. The pages of music were painted over with landscapes of Westfield, from oil paintings of its swampy depths to acrylics and watercolors of classrooms and courtyards with ghostly apparitions looming in their frames. Some of them were unfinished pieces he’d painted with intricately fine detail.

“That room’s off-limits—” Kasem began, but I’d already pushed past the door and stepped inside.

Across from the piano, crammed at the end of the room, there was a rectangular bed with an IV and monitoring machine connected to it.

I spun to face him, searching for answers.

“I was going to tell you,” he said. “I just didn’t know how.”

“Are you still recovering from the stabbing?” I asked.

“Something like that,” he said. “I, uh…” He swallowed. “I didn’t exactly wake right up after the stabbing. I mean, they treated my body, and they couldn’t find anything wrong with me—I mean, obviously except for the stab wound. But I was in a coma for a bit.”

“For a bit,” I repeated. “How long is ‘a bit’?”

He gave me a rueful smile. “Three months and, I’m assuming, not long after you arrived on campus. That’s when the sleep paralysis started, right after I woke from the coma. So, Angelica has been monitoring me.” He pointed to a small laptop that I hadn’t noticed. “If there’s anything abnormal while I sleep, she checks on me. It’s either that or have the Board conclude that I’m not healthy enough to take over Westfield.”

Kasem’s eyes scanned my concerned expression, and with a soft smile he added, “Don’t worry. The curse can’t get me that easily.”

He took a seat at the piano bench and patted the empty space beside him for me to join. “Shall we play something?”

“I don’t really play in front of people,” I said.

“Lies,” Kasem said.

“What?”